Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 487: Andrew Yang

Episode Date: January 15, 2022

Andrew Yang, brilliant human and presidential candidate, joins the DTFH! You can find Andrew's many books, The War on Normal People, Smart People Should Build Things, and the newly-released Forward wherever books are sold. And you can learn more about his new nonprofit to end poverty at HumanityForward.com! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Athletic Greens - Visit AthleticGreens.com/Duncan for a FREE 1 year supply of vitamin D and 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase! Lucy - Visit Lucy.co and use promo code DUNCAN for 20% off your first order! BLUECHEW - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping.

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reporting to you from my home studio. Why am I home? You ask? Well, I'll tell you. I'm home because my entire family was stricken with COVID. My wife, my two kids, they're all fine, thank God. Holy shit. To all of you out there who are going through this insanity right now, my heart goes out

to you. If you're feeling a little crazy, if you're a mom who feels like you're a couple of tantrums away from stigmata exploding out of your nipples, if you're a dad who is trying with all your might to not seem like you think this actually might be the end of the world, whoever you may be right now as we go through what I have dubbed the week of sorrow, which will probably be sadly a couple of weeks of sorrow, I send to you my loving blessings. Did my wife and I get in a fight because she couldn't go to Target? Yes, we did.

I got in a fight over Target a few days ago, but we're getting through it. I don't even know what getting through it looks like now. It's like we've all been in a marathon except right when you got to the finish line. They're like, actually, this is a double marathon. And then when you got to that finish line, they're like, you're just fucking running, okay? There is no finish line. We made that shit up.

And then they look at you and they're like, surely you could think of a better metaphor for the pandemic than a marathon. I mean, marathons are, they start off consensually unless you're talking about some, that's Stephen King dystopian novella, the running man, the Schwarzenegger, they made a movie about it. And you say to them, I think it's a pretty good metaphor. I mean, they're like, no, it completely falls apart. A marathon you sign up for, you get a number, nobody signed up for the fucking pandemic.

There's a million others you could say a sea voyage where you thought you would see land. And you realize that there is no land because you're lost at sea. They say that you should use that as the metaphor. And you look at them and you're like, you know what, I think I will use that as a metaphor. Thank you so much. And they're like, no problem, just make sure you mentioned that it was our idea, not yours. So I want to thank the imaginary people from my marathon metaphor for offering me a better

metaphor for what we've been in, which is like a long sea voyage. It's like we've been at sea for a long time and we were promised that soon we would reach some beautiful shore. And as it turns out, either the map was wrong or the beach we thought we were going to get to didn't exist. And now we all find ourselves stuck in the same boat on the same ocean floating there looking at each other. And some of us are saying, stop with the fucking metaphors.

We've been on this fucking boat for almost three years and you've been doing these shitty metaphors. Do you remember when you did the marathon metaphor? Do you remember that one? And you're like, yeah, well, I was wrong. That was a dumb metaphor for this. And they're like, yeah, so is the fucking boat metaphor. Because at least if you're on a boat, you know that you're surrounded by an ocean and there's

some sense that somewhere there's land. This is more like we've been floating in a void that we just blooped into. And then somebody else is like, no, it's not like that. It's not like a void we blooped into. What does that even mean? And then someone's like, hey, everyone just calm down. And then somebody else is like, don't fucking tell me to calm down right now. I don't need your whatever the fucking energy that is because I'm not going to fucking calm

down. I'm frustrated and I'm stuck in a metaphor right now. Who even am I? I'm some kind of imaginary, unnamed being living in a metaphor. And then everybody in the boat is like, that's it. That's the metaphor. We're all like imaginary beings living in a metaphor, trying to make sense of our existence and attempting to pull some meaning out of whatever our incredibly fleeting and transient

existence is. I mean, we all do seem to have some kind of temporary identity, even though after this never ending metaphor ends, we will cease to exist regardless of whatever is happening in the external world. One thing is for certain, as soon as this long winded stoner metaphor, meta thing ends, we will cease to exist. And so in the flickering amount of time that we happen to be on this boat, even though we don't even have names and even though we'd like to be somewhere else, maybe the best

thing we can do is figure out a way to be kind to each other. And then everybody on the boat stops for a moment and looks at that person. And then someone's like, go grab those fucking two by fours. And they nail them together. And they nail that person to a cross and then slowly watch him die. That's what it's like. But we'll get through it. And we are really lucky because today here with us today is a brilliant human who I got

to spend an entire hour with. Andrew Yang. The presidential candidate, the author, the entrepreneur, the philosopher, the economist, and most importantly, the person who put the idea of universal basic income on the map is here with us today. We're going to jump right into it. But first this, I want to thank Athletic Greens for supporting this episode of the DTFH. I started taking Athletic Greens because I don't have the discipline or focus to be one

of those vitamin people who get like 17 different vitamins and slurp them down. I don't want to be that guy or girl or person. I don't want to carry around a bag of vitamins in my pocket. Like I'm some kind of vitamin junkie. I just need something easy, simple, and that's what Athletic Greens is for me. It doesn't taste like it's healthy. It tastes good. It's got a wonderful sort of tropical taste to it, but it only has less than one gram

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I don't care. I just like that Athletic Greens tastes good and makes me feel good. And we're heading into cold. We're in cold and flu season and might I add, I'm not making any claims on behalf of this company. So sorry, Athletic Greens, but I'm the only one in the house right now who doesn't have COVID. Again, not making any claims or connections or anything like that, but as a sort of coincidence.

To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com forward slash Duncan again. That's athleticgreens.com forward slash Duncan to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance. Thank you, Athletic Greens. And we're back. I'd like to invite you to join my Patreon.

It's at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. And as my attorneys continue to advise me, I don't think that if you subscribe, you're going to have protection from the small animals that have been attacking people all over the planet. Obviously, I have nothing to do with that. And I'm not making any statement that if you subscribe to the Patreon, that's not going to happen. Even though up until this point, none of my subscribers have been attacked by raccoons

or crows or squirrels since they subscribed. It's at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. You'll get commercial free episodes of this podcast along with access to the DTFH family, which is existing at this present day in our Discord server. And we hang out twice a week at our weekly meditation and our Friday family gathering. With us here today is Andrew Yang. I'm sure you're already aware of him. I know lots of you are members of the Yang Gang as am I.

He's written a book. He's written more than one book, a few wonderful books, the war on normal people, smart people should build things. And most recently, a really, really great book about his experience running for president along with some really pragmatic ideas for how to transform things from the awful satanic gridlock mess that they happen to be in. It's called forward. And he is creating a political, a brand new political party.

You can participate with some of his incredible ideas by heading over to humanityforward.com and checking it out. Great join up. It was a really cool and inspiring thing to talk to a person who is actively attempting to end human poverty. He's a brilliant, awesome, sweet, funny person. And now, everybody, please welcome to the DTFH Andrew Yang. Andrew Yang, welcome to the DTFH.

I'm so excited that I get some time to chat with you. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Duncan. Thanks for asking. It's great to be here. Oh, it's great to have you here. I was a member of the Yang Gang. Can I still be a member of the Yang Gang, even though we have a different president now?

Yes, the Yang Gang lives forever. But thank you. That means a ton. Wonderful. Okay, so I want to start off talking a little bit about politics, but I think that there are so many more brilliant people out there who have already interviewed you about politics that people could go and listen to or look at that maybe I would like to diverge from that after the first few questions, if that's okay with you.

Yeah, sure. I'd welcome it. Okay, beautiful. Great. I've just, you are the very first presidential candidate that I've ever met in my life. And having spent some time with your newest book, which is Riveting, by the way, hearing all the stories running for president, I just have a few questions for someone who's been in the lion's den, and I just want to play for you this clip to start off.

This is one, do you know the comedian Bill Hicks? Not well. I don't know Bill well, but go ahead. Is this a clip from him? This is one of my favorite Bill Hicks jokes. I'm just going to play it to you because you're a presidential candidate and this directly applies to what could have happened to you and what could be your future. I have this feeling, man, because you know there's a handful of people actually run everything.

That's true. It's provable. It's not a fuck. I'm not a conspiracy nut. It's provable. Handful, very small elite running on these corporations, which include the mainstream media. I had this feeling who's ever an elected president, like Clinton was, no matter what, you're

going to promise as you promise on the campaign trail, blah, blah, blah. When you win, you go into this smoky room with the 12 industrialists, capitalist scum fucks who got you in there, and you're in this smoky room and this little film screen comes down, and a big guy in a cigar rolls a film, and it's a shot of a Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before. It looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll, and then the film, the screen goes up and the lights come up and they go to the new president. Any questions?

Just what my agenda is. Surely, especially with your ideas about universal basic income and with your incredible plan to restructure this political system that is obviously so fucked up right now, surely. As you began to realize that running for president, I actually might happen. A lot of us thought, this is going to happen, surely you thought, I don't know. Do I really want to bear the burden of that much responsibility and place myself in that level of danger? I just wanted to know whether aliens were real for sure, man.

But that joke or a version of it did occur to me ahead of time, where my main concern when I was running for president was just trying to fight my way through this interview, this event, this hurdle. But sometimes I would think to myself, man, if I win, am I going to be able to get all or any of this shit done? And when you have a list of the impediments, would there be people lying in wait being like, hey, if you fuck with us, we're going to kill you? Almost certainly yes.

When I think about the Kennedy assassination, I do think that he called out the military industrial complex shortly before he was assassinated. And you have an industry that now is worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And if you were to come in and say, hey, guys, maybe we shouldn't be spending quite this much on the military, would there be very powerful actors who are like, oh, I hate this guy. So there'd be some version of that lying in wait for sure. It's one reason why Americans feel so frustrated is because we can sense that we're kind of

on this ride and there are various forces propelling the wagon forward, even though we all can see that the wagon is not leading us any place good. But I don't know if it's a smoke filled room in that kind of film, or if it's some other way that they try and keep you from getting stuff done. It was something I thought about a fair amount. To add to that question, it seems like if you become president, you inevitably end up making a decision or not making a decision that gets people killed. Every president, including Biden, who just ordered oil in July, ordered airstrikes, every

comedian, every president ends up getting people killed. I hope not every comedian gets people killed, brother. A few actually do, but it's a different, that's when you interview me. But yes, this is another, didn't that occur to you, like, if I become president, it's essentially like I'm saddling up on an unruly dragon that from time to time blows people up. That to become president is to commit yourself to inevitably being responsible for some form of violence in the world.

Do you think there is a way to be an American president and not get people killed? I ran for president because I had a vision for how we can improve people's lives every day. And certainly universal basic income was my chief goal. Does the president order the violent killings of various people on the regular? Sure. Do I trust my own judgment more than someone else's typically? Yes.

So I would sit in that chair and think, okay, is this necessary to protect the American people? Is there another better course of action? I mean, I'd take the role very seriously where if ordering someone's death would help protect Americans, I would do it. But I'd like to think that I'd have a line that would enable me to sleep at night. Yeah, I just, I don't know. It seems like, you know, when I was going to ask you that question, I wanted to look

back to make sure I was right. And I think different... I'm sure you're right, Duncan, but one of the things, one of the ways I approach the world is like the value gap. So let's say there's a chair and someone's going to be in that chair, the president's chair, and then make certain decisions. Really the question is whether I thought I'd make better decisions than that person in the majority of instances, you know what I mean?

So let's say the average president orders the deaths of, oh gosh, I wouldn't want to hazard a number. Let's say, let's say for argument's sake, it's like a thousand people per administration or whatever that number is. You know, so that's going to happen if it's someone else. And then my calculation is like, hey, if I'm there, maybe I can shave that number down. Maybe I can make it so that like certain decisions are made a little bit better than they would have been otherwise.

But there are some things, like I would not sit in that chair and think, you know, like I refuse to order people's deaths because I don't think that's realistic in that instance. That's what I'm talking about. That's the part that seems so, you know, that what you mentioned earlier about many of us just having this sense of, well, we have no control. It's like, you know, having a rotten dog in your backyard and it's going to get out no matter what. And it keeps biting people.

And most Americans don't want anyone to get hurt. And so that this is the... I certainly don't. I'll tell you that. I'm like, you know, I'd much rather the number be zero. Exactly. And this is one of, I think, one of the many things, many of them, what you mentioned in your book that is making a lot of people just feel hopeless or nihilistic or just a general

sense of not wanting to engage at all in the political system of the United States because just any kind of engagement in some sad way will make you responsible in a microwave for the deaths that follow from the person who you voted for getting elected. This is where I feel disgruntled and disheartened is, I think, is what is it? Is it that our country just demands, like, it is so violent, it's such a war-like country that it's hopeless, you know, and then, you know, I don't know. It's interesting. Very interesting.

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sure to use promo code Duncan. Well, we are we are a very divided country and people who decide to ignore politics are wise on a level, Duncan. You know, I'm very grateful that you supported my presidential campaign. A lot of people that supported me had no interest in politics previously or were trying to avoid it. And that is a reasonable decision, because if you do get involved in politics, it tends to make you sad, anxious, depressed, angry.

Yeah, like politics, it kind of feeds this outrage machine on both sides. Now, I don't think that way. I never wanted to operate that way. And even now with the forward party, I'm trying to just uplift people. But folks who who find it too nasty and negative to pay attention to, I get it, you know, and the fact that you'll get berated if you're if you're not paying attention. It's like a perfectly rational, reasonable, emotionally healthy decision to make it to try to try and avoid it.

Yes, yes. And then but then the avoidance itself, you become guilty, you know, and the the non participation is its own form of violence. And so you no matter what, you know, if you're born in this country, you have some responsibility to interact with it. And yet the interaction it is, you know, no matter what, you know, now that you're on the podcast, someone is going to be like, are you serious? What? Yeah, I heard that one time he tried to give someone money.

That monster, that monster out there. I do, though, I think that you are the one candidate that truly addressed our sort of game of thrones reality. Winter is coming. We know that first and no one seems to want to talk about it. Even now no one's talking about it. But the truth of the matter is that we are entering into an era of automation where it will become cheaper to have machines do an AI,

whether it's an online machine or whether it's an actual robot, do human jobs, meaning that we are looking at a future where unemployment is going to go even higher than it is now. And capitalism, as we know, it becomes completely unsustainable. If that's based on people working and getting paychecks, there won't be any more jobs. And so this idea of universal basic income, it seems to be the only logical solution. The other one, I guess, just being chaos.

But can you talk a little bit about what the future looks like when AI and robots are taking all of the jobs and there isn't universal basic income and people aren't being supported or sustained? What would that future look like? It would be miserable and violent, truly. And some of the examples I use are the two million plus Americans who work at call centers right now. We know that Google has AI that can do the work of the average call center worker.

So their days are numbered. And then what happens to those people and those families? One of the jobs I talked about on the trail was driving a truck. It's the most common job in over half the country. And what happens when the trucks eventually start being able to drive themselves? So if we don't start making massive adjustments, you're going to wind up with a war torn country of people who don't have a means of supporting themselves outside of

really that there's like no means of supporting themselves in many instances. And the most common jobs in the country you can sense right now are diminishing in number, where two of them are retail clerk. And you know that a lot of the stores are going online and closing. And then the other is administrative and clerical, which a lot of that paper shuffling is going to get eliminated. By AI and technology. So it's gruesome, man.

I mean, I was talking about the stuff running for president in 2019 and 2020. And that stuff is sped up because of the pandemic. You know, half of companies have come out and said, yeah, I'm investing more in this. And now if you are a customer and you get something delivered to you without talking to a human, you're like, oh, good. You know, like people used to make an argument. It's like, oh, people want to deal with people. It's like, well, I wasn't so sure if that was true.

Even pre-COVID. But now you applaud a company for figuring out a way to do it without human involved. That's right. Yes. Well, this is the, you know, there's I live in North Carolina. There's the biggest house, I think, in the country here called the Biltmore House. And they have these things called dumb waiters, you know. And the idea was these super rich people, they didn't want to see the servants. You see the servants, you have to feel like, you know, guilty about

like the fact that you're enjoying this beautiful house and they're having to work for you. So the way to solve the problem, little food elevators where people from down in the kitchen pull up the food and then you get it. You don't have to interact with them anymore. And so it's a version of that, really. It's like, you know, in that direct interaction with people, at the very least, you have to deal with the fact that somebody's going making your hamburger that you're getting. Somebody's making those French fries and those people are supporting families

and those people aren't getting paid a living wage. And so you have to have some flickering sense of like, you know, that's that's difficult. That's hard. And so this is something that's going to go away. You won't even see those people anymore. But here's my question about universal basic income. And it's and it's something that I one of my spiritual teachers, Ramdas, he and Tim Leary, they were hanging out in the house after getting fired from Harvard. I think they were taking a lot of acid at the time and going into deep

spiritual states of consciousness. But I someone came over to the house they were at and they're just dishes piled up in the sink, flies all over the place. And from that, a slogan emerged, which is someone's got to wash the dishes. So I'm going to wash the dishes, you know, during the pandemic, I would look at our sink every day. And this is actually one of the household tasks that I specialize in. Really? So so my wife knows that just, you know,

just leave the dishes, leave the garbage like that. That's Andrew's jam. Well, that's a sign of an enlightened person, you know, like in the Hari Krishna temples, you don't get to only like the like only like it's a very special thing if you get to wash the dishes, because it's such a service role. Like it's the it's the ultimate service. Nobody wants to wash the dishes or but enlightened people and all my Buddhist friends are always talking about how beautiful it is to wash dishes.

Is this why you wanted to be president? Is it? I mean, like everyone is suspicious when someone runs for president. They think this is a megalomaniac. This is a person who just wants power. This is a person who's any time I think about any time the thought is even flickered into my mind, I might run for president. It's like a bad it's a red flag for me. It's like you got to cut back on the marijuana friend.

You're not running for president. But is this what inspired you to to try to get the most difficult job? Maybe on the planet, you just want to be a servant. I don't have a burning desire to be president of the United States. Like I didn't even what I was running. I ran because I thought I could help advance the the human condition. Yeah, I thought I could accelerate the end of poverty. Imagine waking up and in my case, it was 2017 thinking, you know,

if I put my heart and soul into this, there's a chance I can speed up the end of poverty and alleviate untold human misery. And you think that there is like a one percent chance you could do that? You probably should do it, right? Now, I know I was a confident fellow, so I thought the chances were higher than one percent, but I wasn't, you know, insane. Like I didn't think that there was like an first. I did not think that there was a fifty one percent chance of my becoming

president of the United States. And second, I didn't even think there's a fifty one percent chance that I was going to be able to contend the way that I did. And thanks to people like you, you know, like we made seven debate stages and made a really compelling case. Now a majority of Americans are for universal basic income or some version of it. Right. So. It was an act of service.

You know, I joked like after the campaign ended, it was not like I was at home being like, oh, if I could only be president, you know, like I'm like, I'm like, all right, we. So this is genuinely the way I felt about it, Duncan. So for the better part of three years, I was single minded. I was like, I am going to make this case to the American people and nothing else matters. The only other thing that matters is staying married to jobs and poverty, stay married.

As long as those two things are on track, nothing else matters. Yeah. And there was a lot of bullshit, like a lot of stuff where like, you know, like it was like a mental trial most days because like, I consider myself like a fairly normal person. I know it's crazy to say if you ran for president, but like, like a person, you know, I wake up in a place like, OK, what am I doing today? Today, I'm in a coffee shop in New Hampshire to try and like, you know, get someone interested in my campaign.

OK, I do this. I do that. Like there are just a lot of tasks. It was a lot of washing dishes, really, if you think about it, like the equivalent. But I was like, if I just grind for three years and I'm an entrepreneur, so you just think, well, you know, I can grind for three years. Like if I grind for three years, there's a non-trivial chance I can help accelerate the end of poverty. OK, that's the task. And then when the campaign ends, then I'm like, OK, I more or less did

what I set out to do now. What was really because I was because I was so single-minded. I was just like, I'm going to do this and do this. And it was interesting. There was part of me that did dunk in just want to like right off into the sunset, be like, OK, like, you know, I like Andrew Yang made a splash, helped people understand the need for universal basic income. Like now I can, you know, resume some something else.

But you wake up the next day and you realize the problems are still there. And oh, by the way, they're getting worse. And despite the fact that a majority of Americans are now for universal basic income, where we don't have it, right? And so then you think, OK, like, you know, like, how do I keep trying to make it happen? So, you know, then I started an organization. I wrote the book forward that I'm really glad you liked. And I'm sending me a copy that I only I'm listening to the audible.

I love your reading of it is really good. It's really like you did a great job. Thanks, man. They put me in a recording studio. And I had the mic and the headphones. I pretended I was a rapper. I took a picture of myself. No, you you did such a good job. No, it's so I mean, some people don't like audible.

But if you want to get into the book, I would highly recommend the audible version. It's wonderful. It's really, really good. Oh, thanks, man. You can speed it up to one point two five. I can talk a little faster. I know people who do that. I feel like if you got to speed up your audibles, you need to get in a therapy or something. Come on, are you in that in a hurry? You could you could listen to it normal speed.

But we're getting off track here. I want to go back to here is the right now I know like the subreddit and what's it called anti work, you know, that subreddit anti work familiar. Yes. Well, it's because it's becoming one of the most popular subreddits, you know, and we are witnessing what are they calling it? The great resignation, I think, is what they're calling it. Where so many people are

seemingly having epiphanies about the value of their life versus the value of what they're being paid as an hourly wage. Some of these places where they're working are just the general and dehumanization of the worker and some of these companies. People are being treated like shit. They're not being paid anything. And they realize it would probably be better to not have a job. This is a global phenomena.

I've read a little bit about it in other places, too, where people are just figuring out ways to live at the very bare minimum rather than sell their life energy to corporations to for not enough money to even sustain themselves. So with universal basic income, the place where I wonder who's going to wash the dishes is this is something that is going to have to be rolled out over the over many, many years, it's going to happen prior to the full automation of everything.

So how, you know, in some world where people finally do realize, oh, no, this isn't like some silly thing. This is going to be necessary to sustain human society as we know it in an era where technology is becoming increasingly inexpensive and increasingly more powerful. Who does the dishes? Who does these jobs that are not pleasurable or that most people wouldn't want to do?

And and that, you know, to make themselves feel better, they're like, oh, that's a job for high school kids. No, it isn't. These are parents. These are people who are trying to sustain themselves off of two or three of these jobs. Who does those jobs if everyone is getting a universal basic income and no longer has to do that work? I've started a number of small businesses. And let's say you start a like a cafe or something along those lines

and you have like different types of people working there. You do a range of different tasks, some of them very, very you know, thankless and gritty and the rest of it because you care about the greater project. Now, in my ideal world, people are doing work not because if they stop doing it, they die. But that like the people have their basic needs met. But then you come together, you work in that cafe anyway.

Maybe you get paid a bit more so that like there's a bigger impact on your life that you're not going home and starving, despite the fact that you worked a full day. Right. And then some of you, you know, are going to be washing the dishes like in any given day. There are some communities, I don't know if North Carolina is one of them where where there are, frankly, like immigrants of various kinds who assume some of the tasks that like a lot of people

don't want to spend all of their time doing. And that would be the reality in some contexts. But I do think that imagining deprivation as the motivation for for people doing things is a loser over time. If you're like, oh, we have to starve everyone because someone has to wash the dishes. It's like, well, really? Is that like the recipe for success or thriving? I mean, yeah, it's horrible.

It's it's like it's essentially, you know, it's not saying, look, we're going to like we're going to whip you if you don't do this work. It's saying we're going to starve you to death if you don't do this work. It's just another way of using a more kind of ambiguous sort of violence to get people to do these jobs. Yeah, you know, we're in the other question that everyone has about universal basic income is where is the world? Where do these resources come from?

Who pays for this? Is it an increase in taxes? Is it bringing money out of the military industrial complex and putting it into universal basic income? We have so much money getting pumped through the system right now that people don't receive earlier in the pandemic last year. The CARES Act passed with a headline cost of two point two trillion dollars. Now, I'm the math guy.

Yes, two point two trillion dollars is enough to give every American man, woman and child in the country a thousand bucks a month for more than six months. Wow. That that got spent, by the way, or or authorized. Now, we all didn't get six thousand dollars. I think out of that act, we got twelve hundred dollars. The total number was around 17 percent. People got about 17 percent of that money.

Now, where did the other 83 percent go? Banks, airlines, megacorps, oil companies like wherever it went into the pipes. It went into the system that when we talked before about how it's like, oh, we're on this ride and like no one knows what to do. I think of it as a giant machine with these wheels grinding forward. And then everyone's like, well, I can't do anything about it. This machine is going to keep on grinding.

Looking up, like, wait, shouldn't we maybe stop the grinding if it's going to lead us to violence and civil war over time and insanity and like misery and deprivation? And then people are like, no, no, can't stop the machine. Yeah, I mean, that like that's really the insanity of this like this country at this place, this, you know, point in history. Yes. And I think people saw in me hope because they're like, hey, this guy, I joked with someone else.

It's like, you know that the machine wasn't behind me because no one would send the anonymous Asian guy to Iowa. I'd be like, yeah, this will work. This is a good plan. Right. Right. Like everyone knew that this was very much like a chance to interrupt the system. I want to thank Blue Choo for supporting this episode of the DTFH.

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But the system is deploying hundreds of billions of dollars in resources all the time to maintaining the system itself and not to families, not to kids, not to communities. Like the money is being spent. Right. Right. Yes. That's yes. And again, you know, that is where you, you know, we're all running into this, in

visible or not so invisible barrier. And what it looks like is people like you, people like Bernie Sanders, people who have some new way of moving those resources around, just, you know, they, exactly what you're saying. It's like, yeah, don't worry, that person's not getting elected. It's not going to happen. And so, and then we just see the same thing happening. And again, somewhere like, you know, in the old days that you would be considered like

a nut when you said this could lead to some kind of civil war. You know, this could lead to real violence. My very rusty understanding of the system is that it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. And so, and then we just see the same people, these political dynasties or people loosely related with these political dynasties, you know, get into power. And so, you know, it's a very rusty understanding of, you know, why we have a democracy and

the idea behind, you know, having elections every four years is that, you know, the founding fathers recognized how bloody and violent revolution and civil war is. And that mechanism of redistributing power gets so many people killed. So brilliant idea. We'll have a rebel, a peaceful revolution every four years. And so, when that peaceful revolution is not resulting in what revolutions result in, which is profound change, but rather the sort of onerous, never-ending, grinding sort of thing that you're talking about, the sustenance of this golem creature that is literally grinding

human beings up, whether it's from war or from grinding them up by putting them out on the streets because they can't afford a place to live, you know, we all see it. And so then people start getting angrier and angrier and angrier and that's scary. And that's what we're all experiencing. It's terrifying. Do you, do you see any hope in the next, in the midterms or the next election cycle? Because when I see what's coming, I'm sorry, I told you we wouldn't talk about politics. When I, when I see what's coming, it seems, it just seems like more of the same.

It's going to be a rough several years, Duncan. I mean, when you talk about the hope, I mean, 2020 gave us an opportunity. I tried to take advantage of it. You know, I fell short. Bernie tried to take advantage of it. I do wish that Joe would make some bigger moves because this window of opportunity is fading. It looks like the Republicans are going to take the house and maybe the Senate in 10 months from now, at which point nothing is going to get done because you're going to

have a divided government. And then in 24, I think Trump runs and I think that you'd have to consider him the favorite against just about any of the Democrats you could line up in part because that's the in part because that's the kind of energy right now where there's like, and this is one of the opportunities. It's funny. This country gets divided into left, right, which I think is a way just to maintain power. It's a way to separate people and maintain power.

The fact is there are a lot of Trump voters who would have been a okay with Bernie. And the reason for that is that there are a lot of people who just want something different, want to change, want something that they know is not rigged and is not corrupt. And everyone felt like, okay, Bernie, Bernie's definitely not corrupt. Like he, you know, he wears his motivations on his sleeve. And I think this was one of Trump's appeal, too, is like this guy's going to drain the swamp. He's from outside the system.

He's an outsider. If you look back over the last number of cycles, Barack Obama in 08, Bernie in 16, Trump in 16, even, I'm going to say, interestingly enough, Joe Biden in 20, everything was a change. Everything is like, we want change because shit's not working. We want change. Shit's not working. Now, unfortunately, the we want change.

Shit's not working energy is going to go towards the Republicans for the next two cycles, in my opinion, when I say cycles, I mean 22 and 24. So are we going to get some of the things that we'd like to see happen in terms of positive changes out of DC? It's very difficult to project that. Now, I'm going to be doing things that I think might increase the chances of that. Like I have an organization, for example, that literally, and this is born of an onion article, Duncan.

So there's an onion article 11 years ago that said the American people hire a lobbyist to fight for their interests on Capitol Hill. And there's a picture of a guy in a suit. And he was like, no, the people will take the public serious, like American voters seriously. It's really hysterical when you think about it. Yeah. And I read this article and I said, this is brilliant because this actually would help American voters get taken seriously if there's a lobbyist.

So you're not going to believe this, Duncan, but I then went out and hired like a dozen lobbyists. They're on Capitol Hill right now when they just call up members of Congress and they're like, hey, Enhanced Child Tax Credit voters like it alleviates poverty. It's an anti-poverty lobbying organization called Humanity Forward. So we try and make this case quietly to legislators every day. So I'm still pushing like mad to try and make good things happen, but I'm not optimistic about the next few years. I think it's going to be really dark politically.

Yeah. Okay. Great. On to the next question. I wiped tears away. What has your personal experience been with poverty? I've been fortunate enough to grow up to parents who were middle class. I was a child of immigrants, but my parents were educated and the messages I got were

to try and do well in school and get a good job. My parents did a great job of brainwashing me and my brother to think we were poor, even though by any objective standard, we weren't rich, but we weren't poor, that's for sure. So I vividly remember my brother and I, for example, going into an arcade and only having one quarter and then just having to try and defend that quarter for as long as possible. So we would just like stand there in the arcade and like just hit those coin return slots and hope that a quarter came out. That was one thing we did.

Every once in a while, some kid would have to run away with the game still going and then we would like jump in there and play it. And then with the one quarter, we would have to try and make a lot. So like we were brought up to be very mindful and stingy. And I worked as a busboy at a Chinese restaurant. I worked as a knife salesman. I worked as a clerk, a snack bar worker. Like I've done a lot of menial jobs at different points.

I remember getting my wages and tips at the Chinese restaurant and so I pledged always to tip well. So there were experiences like that that I had growing up as a kid that I think gave me at least some perspective, but I've never been hungry in that way. I was just like a kid who had parents that had conditioned them to think that we're always at the edge. You know how I knew when I realized I was poor? I asked my mom, mom, are we rich? And she goes, we're rich in spirit. And I'm like, oh, shit, we are.

Oh, no. We're rich in spirit. Are you kidding? Well, but so having never really, and I haven't. I mean, my parents were, I've never encountered, but many, you know, many people are. I've had people on the podcast who've lived in their car with their kids. What I mean, just outside of just basic human compassion, what has inspired you in this way to try to end poverty in the United States?

Like where is that? What is that springing from? I just hate seeing shit that you know could be solved, go unsolved. Like, you know what I mean? Like I see someone out on the street and I'm like, this person can be not on the street. Like I'm confident about that. My own experience with this has been that I did a job that I didn't like and then I quit that job and tried to start a business and it was very hard and the business failed and I went through a lot

of stuff. But I think that so many people have something within them that they want to do and most of them never get a chance to do that. I was singularly fortunate where despite my failure, I got another chance and then ended up having some success and when I had some success, I ran a company that created jobs for some other people and seeing someone get an opportunity that they appreciated and liked and then in some cases it actually made their family circumstances better. It's like the greatest feeling in the world. And so if you can create that for people at any level, then it's magic.

And so like I've wanted to do that for a long time, but a lot of us just seeing that there's like unnecessary human suffering and very solvable problems going unsolved, it's funny Duncan. I don't consider myself any more virtuous than the next person. Let's put it that way. I see myself as a problem solver and poverty is a problem that can be solved genuinely. Like we have the resources, if we just got our shit together, we actually could like alleviate poverty in the vast majority of instances. And a friend of mine, Zander Schultz said this to me too. He was like, this is a relatively new development. Like if you rewind a number of decades, you'd be like, hey, like could we just

alleviate poverty? It's like, no, we just don't have enough stuff to go around. Like now do we have enough stuff to go around? Oh yeah, we do. Like when did that transition happen? You know, some number of years ago, I mean, like as the math guy, like I could look it up and be like, huh, you have an economy of $22 trillion and you know, 330 million people and like, let me, let me do that math for a second. It's like, wow, you know, that means you're like walking around at like $84,000 ahead or whatever it is. It's like, if you felt like it could, like could you? So that's like the problem that, you know, that I want to solve and it has profound human implications, you know, positively.

Yeah, absolutely. It's, I mean, you know, I saw that you, you attend church. Do you still attend church? Do you go regularly? Post COVID, we have not been attending much because, you know, it's like that just in person services kind of got. Oh yeah. Yeah, like less attended and but our, you know, this is going to make us out terrible. It's like we, we sometimes have been dropping our kids off at the Sunday school. It's not, it's not great role modeling. But you are, I mean, you are a Christian. Do you consider yourself a Christian? You know, my, my wife's a Christian. Our kids are being brought up Christian. I was not brought up Christian, but I'm very grateful that, that my family is in the church and, you know, that

where my our kids are being brought up Christian. Okay, right. Your mom is a statistician who became an artist. Can you talk about that? How does that, that is this? I've heard a lot of different people becoming artists, but how does one make that transition? What kind of art was she doing? She's doing pastel art. You can actually see her artwork at Nancy Yang art.com. I think it's an immigrant story, Duncan, where my dad was a physicist. My mom was a statistician and they both took jobs at big organizations. My dad was at GE and IBM in the lab. He had 69 patents. So he invented stuff. And when I was a kid and realized that he generated patents, I was like, Hey, dad, how much they pay you when you get a patent? Because it sounded really

important, right? I was like, Oh, we're rich. And then he said like $250 or so. And then I said, No, that doesn't sound like very much. And he said, Well, they also pay me a salary so I can house feed and clothe you and your brother. Yeah, I said, Okay, I, I, I, you know, it's like, thanks for explaining that, dad. My mom worked at the Department of Computer Services at a State University of New York. So these are just very practical jobs. And then when my mom lost her job, she was like, You know, I've always wanted to be an artist. And so she started taking art classes and working on pastel. And I have to say, Duncan, as her son, I was like, Yeah, like good luck with that. Like I was like, I'm not going to go anywhere. But it turns out that

she'd wanted to be an artist as a young person, which predated, you know, my existence as her child. So I like, I hadn't seen her working in that. But now she has a thriving second career as an artist. And, you know, it's really like, even if she didn't, I'd still obviously be like, great, like, you know, it's awesome and admirable. But the fact that she's actually, you know, been successful is awesome. What, like, what was it like chatting with your parents when you were in the running to become the next president of the United States? This is, I mean, I just can't, I have two children and like, I love, I love them no matter what they do. But if I had to sit and watch one of them go through

what anyone running for president has to go through, those brutal debates, the viciousness of the media, and also the pride inside of me, it would explode my brain. How did they react to the fact that, I mean, they've only, they came, they came from Taiwan, that it just must have exploded their brains. How did they react? When I first said, Hey, mom and dad, I'm going to run for president. They were not pleased that they thought it was crazy. They were concerned about my safety. There was a lot of like, one of them tried to talk me out of it. They were like, Are you sure you want to do this? Wow. Yeah, it's going to be a lot of strain on the family, like all this stuff. Not wrong. I mean, this stuff, it's like, you know, it's probably pretty

sensible advice. And I knew I was not going to be able to travel for a while. So right before I declared, I brought my now nine year old, so then he must have been four or so son back to Taiwan to visit some family members there, like my grandmother. So my son's great grandmother who ended up dying a few months later. So and I kind of knew that I was like, Hey, I might be able to get my son to meet his great grandma. And so we were at dinner in Taiwan. I told the table was like, Hey, when I get back, I'm running for president of the United States. And there was like, that's nice past the soy sauce kind of thing. Because like to them, you know, it's like their random nephew, or like even my parents kid, even saying we want to run for president, like it's just too far out to really

understand or reckon with like, like, is he kidding? Is he serious? I don't know. Andrew's always had like, you know, like a weird career. I never don't really understand what he's doing half the time. So so really, no one took it seriously. And then when I started running, my parents were still concerned for most of it. But then as we gathered steam, they became incredibly proud people in Taiwan actually called my mom asking like, How did you raise Andrew to even have this kind of ambition? And so she got like interviewed in the press. My dad went to a debate watch party in Taiwan, and then said, That's my son. And then everyone like cheered him and like, you know, like, so these were incredibly heartwarming stories. Like, you know, that I was

getting on the trail, like I'd come off the debate stage, and I'd be like, Oh, I thought that one went alright. And like, you know, get get tons of messages. And I heard that my dad was at a debate watch party in Taiwan, and everyone was like cheering him. And I got to say, Duncan, that was probably the most invigorating thing I heard. Like I was like, Oh, my like, my family is freaking basking in the glory across the world. Like, you know, like that this this thing is actually having positive impacts in ways I never could have imagined. Do you um, I guess you answered this earlier, but do you have a spiritual practice? Do you pray? Do you meditate? Do you?

So my family prays every night. And I joined them. So, so yeah, like I pray. Can you share what can you share what kind of prayers that your family says? So typically, my wife leads it. And she says, you know, thank you for keeping our family strong, healthy and together. Please protect us. Please help us do your work. And help us bath, enjoy and reflect and project your love and your desires for the world. It's really lovely. My boys then say amen, you know, as do I. And it's a really warm ritual that we enjoy every night. That is beautiful. Did you feel as you were running? As you, and even now, I mean, you know, you are a gigantic voice in the world right now.

And, and, you know, your book has some real solutions. And, you know, reading it, it does give, you know, these days, flirtations with hope. It's like, am I really going to like let any kind of inkling of this like flicker inside of me? But did you have some sense when you were going through this of like, I'm sorry to put you in this position, but like a divine calling, like a feeling that you were in some way or another, bringing that kind of love into the world? I did have that feeling, Duncan, on the trail. And it's hard not to feel that way when you're standing in front of thousands of people who've invested their hopes for a better future for themselves and their families in you. And you're there and you're like, wow,

like this is incredible. And, you know, I'm following a plan. It's certainly not something that I thought had, you know, everything to do with me as an individual, you know, like I was like a piece of it. Cory Booker, who's a friend, like would even say to me on the trail, he's like, God definitely has a plan for you, brother. And different people who are spiritual would say versions of that to me at different times. And I did feel that it was awesome and empowering on a level I'd never felt before. Andrew, thank you. This hour is just zipped by we only have about 10 more minutes. So I want to jump back to the point where you said it's going to be a rough few years. And what during this rough few years that we're all feeling is ahead of us,

if anyone's been doom scrolling, we're all burnout on this pandemic, we're all secretly or not so secretly going completely nuts. What are some pragmatic ways that we can start sort of emerging from this hopelessness, this sense of complete powerlessness and the general malaise that is crept into most people's consciousness during this rotten time. On a personal level, just got to take care of yourself and your loved ones. So to me, that means trying to get some nature every day, trying to get a bit of exercise, trying to tell your loved ones that you love and appreciate them, try to put down the internet, try and put down the social media apps and the rest of it. Because that stuff right now, if it's a tough time and

people are struggling and then you frankly get to glimpse what's going on in their minds, it doesn't uplift you. You're just like whoa. So you have to be able to balance it and moderate it. The other big thing is to take some kind of positive action, whether that's in your own community, with your church or religious organization, with a local nonprofit. My political movement right now is the forward party, which I hope people find as one of the ways that they can make a positive contribution. And we want to be the antidote to the current political culture, where we don't demonize or villainize anyone. We love our fellow Americans and people. And we think that right now, the zero-sum politics where you're asked to judge or demonize tens of millions of other Americans

is disastrous. And it turns out that most people of every political alignment agree on some basic goals. So let's try and make progress in those directions. In my book forward, I talk about how the fact is the duopoly will ruin us. The duopoly is designed just to play you lose, I lose, while we all lose and become more angry and upset and the rest of it. So the forward party wants to change that dynamic. And there is a real life way we can do it. It's by switching from closed-party primaries to nonpartisan open primaries, so that all of a sudden legislators have to respond to what the majority of people in their districts want, as opposed to just the most rabid 10 to 15%. And these are issues, people talk to me about this, the issues are asymmetrical

in the different parties. They are. What's going on in the Republican party is different than what's going on in the Democratic party. And the problems are, the Democratic party, I'll just describe my sense of it is that there's like a corrupt corporate layer that kind of quashes anything. It's a bit different than what's going on in the Republican party, which is animated by a particular form of extremism in a lot of districts. But either way, the incentives are keeping us from coming together, from getting anything done. And so if you want to help change those incentives, then the forward party is my movement to make the change that we want to see in the world. And I can see what real life reforms we would need to help make that possible.

How? What are those? Like, how do you change the primaries? How can you possibly, at this point, get into the system at that level and change it when it is a existential threat to the two parties that are controlling everything? Excuse me, I'm just going to close the door to the sounds a little better. I can go a few minutes over. I just want to make sure the sound of it. Okay, perfect. Thanks. So yeah, how do we, what is the, how do you get in and change these, like, the, any effort to do what you're talking about is going to be met with extreme resistance from the duopoly. Because I think they must understand that if people, you know, if we start allowing third parties, if there's a way to get third parties in, that no one's going to, it's going to

If we gave them a real choice that, you know, there's no telling what without, yeah. Truly, truly. Truly. So right now, 44 to 50% of Americans consider themselves independence, and 62% want to move on from the duopoly. The problem is that all of the mechanisms to actually vote for anyone that's not in the duopoly make it impossible to compete and win. So it's like kind of a chicken with the egg problem. Yep. There is hope because 24 of the states allow you to switch from closed party primaries to open primaries where anyone can vote for anybody. And one state already made that change in 2020, that state being Alaska, where now you can just go straight to the general population.

You don't need to be a member of the Democratic or Republican party to either run or vote for any candidate. Now, we can make the same thing happen in Missouri, in Nevada, in another 20 plus states around the country. And believe it or not, there are ballot initiatives on the docket for 2022 to try and make this change. So this isn't abstract. We can actually just get a bunch of Americans together and say, hey, you know what, I'd like to be able to vote for someone like regardless of the letter next to their name. I think they should answer to 51% of us instead of just the folks who are in the party primary. And even if the same person is in that seat, then their incentives would be dramatically better because instead of having to

just placate or please the most partisan 10 to 15%, they'd have to deliver for the general population. Wow, that is brilliant. Yeah, I thought it was hopeless. That's great to hear. I honestly, I haven't finished your book, so my apologies. I didn't get to that. No, no, not at all, man. Because I surveyed all the literature, Duncan. I was trying to figure out, okay, we're stuck, we're ruined, we're screwed. What's our way out of this? And then this brilliant woman, Catherine Gale, said like, look, there's actually an opportunity in these ballot initiatives and Alaska already did it. And we can do it in a bunch of other states. And if we do that, we'd liberate our representatives to do the right thing. So let's do that. And I was like,

oh, this is genius. Like I'm going to start the forward party to make this happen in half the states around the country. And then if we got half the states around the country, then the other states would have no choice but to follow suit. Because if you were like right next to another state where people could vote for anyone they want, what's your argument to be like, no, you just have to vote for it? It's a really bad argument. I mean, the majority of people you know, just want to be able to vote for whoever they want. Yes, yes. And I love that you're saying liberate the representatives because I think it would be easy to think that when you see some politician making these decisions that just seem like the

exact same decisions that the last person made and the last person made, it would be easy to think that the politician is making these decisions because that's who they are rather than no. They have to make these decisions because they've become essentially puppets. They have no choice. So they're not even able to do what they probably most of them set out to do, which is make real change. I mean, was that your sense when you were running in your life in politics that many of the people who are currently being demonized are actually... They're stuck. They're puppets. They're flies and amber. I mean, the temptation is to be like, oh, these people are evil. It's like, no, you could take a reasonable person and the system is

corruptive and will make them seem like evil people. And that's what needs to change. Do I think that we could use some new people in office? Yes, I do. But right now, I think one, you wouldn't get the right people in. And even if they were to get in, they wouldn't be able to do the things you'd want them to do. So you have to change the incentives of the system. And then we have a chance. So that's what the Ford party is about, is about trying to rewire the system itself and then make it so that independence can win, people with the right motivations can win. Maybe we can actually start to genuinely affect the grinding wheels of the machine. Yes. But how do we join... Now, how does someone become a member of the Ford party?

How do we do that? It is so easy, Duncan. It's even easier than joining the Yang Yang, I'll say. So if you just go to forwardparty.com, donate $1 and then you'll be a member of the Ford party and will make a common cause with all these awesome activists and reform movement workers in states around the country to try and change the elections themselves. We will be supporting candidates who want to do the right thing too, whether they're running as Dems or Republicans or independents. Yeah, but it's very easy to join. Just forwardparty.com and let's do it. Great. Joining right after I get offline with you. One last question. What is this thing about you stopped an attack on a journalist on a ferry? Can you talk about that?

Is that real? Sure. So I was on the Staten Island ferry with a small group of people, Annie Lowry from the Atlantic, and then there was a photojournalist from Getty, I believe. And while I was talking to Annie, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the photographer get shoved. And so I rushed outside, and he was getting attacked by this guy with a stick or a cane. And the attacker had his back to me. And so I tried to interrupt the attack, so I just ran up to him, put my hand on the shoulder and was like, Hey, there's no need for that. Like, stop, calm down. And so the guy with the cane, it was about a, I'd say he was like a 45 year old guy who was like, he was fairly large. He was like six, one, six, two. So he

turned around. And then he saw me and said, Yang. And I said, Yes. And then it was a Yang gang initiation. You know, that's what they're doing now to join. And so then the photographer ran off happily. While I was talking this guy down, and then he calmed down and just seemed like, like fascinated by the fact that I was in front of him. And during that time, then some cops came and started questioning him because the photographer ran off to get some cops on the ferry. Now here's where it gets dark, Duncan, is that the cops, after questioning him, he wasn't aggressive anymore, let him go. And then about three weeks later, he was arrested for beating an elderly Asian man on the subway. It's pretty terrible.

So not a happy ending. Oh, so it was a happy ending in the sense that, like, I managed to interrupt his attack on this photographer, but then an unhappy ending in that he didn't get the help he needed. And, you know, in my case, I was just trying to keep a bad situation from getting worse. You're the only person on that ferry who tried to stop the attack. Yeah, you know, I was, I probably had the best line of sight on it. I mean, it was not going well, though, I gotta say, like this guy, yeah, I mean, he was just like, he'd kind of shoved the photographer down and was like towering over him with the stick. Like it was not a good situation when I got there. That must have been such a weird moment for that rotten, racist, fairy asshole who was beating

someone to turn around and see you. That's, it was probably, you know what, it probably just confirmed whatever bizarre delusion he was having that he's living in some kind of dream. Because if I was beating someone with a cane and turn around and saw you, I'd be like, oh, yeah, I've definitely gone nuts. I'm not talking to Andrew Yang right now. He's not stopping me from beating someone. He was like, Yang, is that you? And I was like, yes. And then he was like, hey, what are you doing on the stand on the ferry? And I was like, oh, I'm just like, getting sent out of the campaign. And then he was like, can I get a picture to prove that this happened? And I was like, yes, you can. And then by the time this went on, the cops came.

So my celebrity defused the situation, which is very fortunate. Andrew, thank you so much for giving me this much time. It's been a joy talking to you. And I am excited about my new party that I'm about to join. Thank you. Well, forward party. Thank you, Duncan. And again, to the people out there, this is a very, very tough time. But feel free to unplug, like, you know, like the world, there's a meme that I really enjoyed, which is like, there was a guy in the woods without a phone. And it was like, poor guy with no phone. He doesn't know how upset he's supposed to be. Wow. Yeah, whoever said that must have been a genius. But thank you so much for coming on the

show. Everybody, let's join the forward party. This is something real that we could all be part of. Thank you, Andrew Yang. I really appreciate it. Appreciate the heck out of you, Duncan. Best to you and the family. Howdy, Christian. Thank you. That was Andrew Yang, everybody. You can follow, you know, where he's at, he's on Twitter, he's on all the places, but definitely check out humanityforward.com and chip in. He's a great person. He's been an hour with me. So he deserves your love. Big thank you to our sponsors for supporting us and much thanks to you for listening. We'll see you next week. Until then, Hare Krishna. A good time starts with a great wardrobe. Next stop, JCPenney. Family get-togethers to fancy

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