Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - James Altucher: Seinfeld Unfriended Me! A Special Livestream Edition (#071)

Episode Date: September 5, 2020

  A conversation with @James Altucher about the explosive controversy surrounding his LinkedIn piece “NYC is DEAD”, the repercussions of which are still resonating around the globe! We begin by chatting about Jerry Seinfeld who inveighed against James in a shallow, but widely read Op-Ed in the NY Times. Judge for yourself — whose argument is more convincing and less full of ad hominem attacks? James harangued online by NYC Mayor DeBlasio: (https://twitter.com/jaltucher/status/1298079402983673857?s=20) https://youtu.be/0wpalJRusz8?t=1344 Seinfeld’s criticism: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/24/opinion/jerry-seinfeld-new-york-coronavirus.html or James’s piece — that drew Jerry’s ire: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nyc-dead-forever-heres-why-james-altucher/ James’s response to Jerry Seinfeld https://nypost.com/2020/08/24/sorry-seinfeld-your-love-of-nyc-wont-change-the-facts-about-its-crisis/ We also discussed James’s phenomenal piece in LinkedIn about the persuasive power of Eminem: Eminem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7UQHgZZAfU https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/12-secrets-persuasion-i-learned-from-eminem-james-altucher/ Here’s my appearance on THE JAMES ALTUCHER SHOW https://youtu.be/HeRWBR_fFOw?sub_confirmation=1 and James’s appearances on my show: https://youtu.be/K-1tB0X85ZE?sub_confirmation=1 Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos: Eric Weinstein: https://youtu.be/YjsPb3kBGnk?sub_confirmation=1 Jim Simons: https://youtu.be/6fr8XOtbPqM?sub_confirmation=1 Noam Chomsky: https://youtu.be/Iaz6JIxDh6Y?sub_confirmation=1 Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/V6dMM2-X6nk?sub_confirmation=1 Sarah Scoles: https://youtu.be/apVKobWigMw Stephen Wolfram: https://youtu.be/nSAemRxzmXM Brian Keating’s most popular Youtube Videos: Eric Weinstein:  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Oh, hey James. Mayor de Blasio was just referring to me live on a press conference, which is just insane that I'm not, I think my article is not that important compared to many of the issues that my article brings up. Yes. So I think people have translated my article to being an issue. I'm not creating the problem.

the article is not creating the problem. The article is pointing out the problem. And even de Blasio's like, oh, this person wants to leave and give up on the city. I said no such thing, of course. I just, I point out the facts that are undeniable, but, and I talk about my own love for the city. And everybody went insane on it. So, James, first of all, thank you so much for your courage. I always tell you you've got the rarest human trait, which is courage, because this withering, I mean, imagine like if I told you two weeks ago, you're going to wake up, one of the most famous human beings who's ever lived, a billionaire is going to be besieging you, attacking you,

not for something you did. You didn't do anything. And the mayor of the largest city in America would be attacking you, assailing you, criticizing you. I mean, you thought 2020 was a simulation before. Where's your mind out right now? It's so funny you bring up the simulation thing because first off, I woke. I mean, the article was already creating weight. I wrote the article a week and a half ago.

You know, the title is New York City is dead forever. Here's why. And I really wanted it to be a wake-up call. These, this is my city, too. I was born in this city. I lived in it. I lived here all through the pandemic, but I was also living right next to Ground Zero on 9-11. I was living on Wall Street during the financial collapse. And not quite as a reporter, but as someone who's a concerned, lifelong New Yorker. And it got a lot of attention last week. You know, people wrote articles like this guy could just drop dead. You know, I hope he jumps in the water with a lead lifesaver.

This guy, I was, people would send me entire videos. You should be hung. And I was getting some, a lot of hate, but also a lot of people were saying, yeah, you know, people were privately messaging me like, yeah, you know, there's issues. We left New York or this is why we're. We're moving to Memphis, Tennessee, or whatever. And my point was, too, is that opportunity now, the good side of this is opportunity now might be decentralized throughout the whole country. We live in a country built on innovationism.

Let's use that word instead of capitalism. So innovationism, our ability for each generation to innovate. And this might mean that the entire country now will innovation will be dispersed from San Francisco, L.A., New York City. And every city now could be a source of innovation. But New York City is going to have these economic issues. And also, I don't know what to do about them. Like they're really important, huge issues. And again, they're facts.

They're not my opinion. And then everybody went crazy. And that was last week. So then Monday, I figure, okay, it's died down now. Everything's going to be okay. I was a little stressed out because it's not, I usually get some hate. You know, you're not really writing anything interesting

if there's not a little bit of controversy. Yeah. Because then you're not stating a new opinion. But then I wake up and I saw, I woke up and I saw right when somebody texted me, hey, hey, you putts, what's going on? And I'm like, why is this woman I hardly ever speak to calling me a putts?

Like, what, I've never been called that before. And then apparently there was a reason. Jerry Seinfeld in the New York Times. had singled me out for some reason and was saying basically the worst he was eviscerating me like you know he's he's a funny guy so yeah he told it wasn't funny it was ad homonym which is not yeah no right he he i don't know what he was doing like and i don't i still don't know why really he was tearing me apart and he was and it was because of the article but he wasn't addressing he didn't address the fact that look thousand up to 30 to 40 to 40

to 50% of restaurants in New York City might be shut down forever. Yeah. Broadway is might be shut. Like who's going to invest in the next Broadway production? Where's Broadway going? It might be going outdoors, James. It's going to be on Broadway. Literally, you're going to be on.

Right, which will be impossible because of the way Broadway is structured with unions. But then what happens to the whole economy around Broadway, the restaurants, the hotels, the tourism, you know, what happens to commercial real estate when everybody goes remote and why are they going to go remote? Well, bandwidth now, you and I were talking at 30, 40 megabits per second, whereas in 2008 it was only two megabits per second. So now we can do this remote. And every company has realized that and it turns out remote. Actually, there's studies on this. Remote is more productive and it's cost savings. So what does happen to New York City tax revenues? Meanwhile, deficits are going up. So and look, it's not me.

saying this. I know. Blasio is firing 22,000 workers on August 31st. He's firing EMTs, teachers, MTA workers, police, garbage collectors. So what's going to happen? Just going to be garbage all over the streets. People's lives are going to be in danger. And I just point this all out. Jerry Seinfeld could have helped, you know, he's in a strong position of influence, much more influential than me. Maybe he could have pointed to some solutions or he could have written, hey, maybe we need some sort of bailout or maybe we need people to gather together and help the community. Instead, he just, he spent almost the entire article, like 95% of it, attacking me personally and 5% saying New York's got grit.

Yeah, always aim more for something. The other thing, James, I pointed out, sorry to interrupt, is that the absolute derision that he has for anyone who's not New York. And, you know, I was saying to my listeners before you've got to. on, you know, like Jerry's writing this from a mansion, which I personally have seen that has, you know, a phalanx of Porsches out in front of it from the 1950s to today, you know, next to a private jet. So he says, I'm in new, I'm also have a place on Long Island, you know, like it's in Bayshore,

you know, he's in like Amagansett or East Hampton, I forget which one, but the derision that he has for Florida, for Maine, for Vermont, for anywhere that's, it's like that New Yorker cartoon where they show like the New Yorker's view of the, world and look jerry you james me we're all new york jews i thought you know signfeld was not jewish enough you know i used to say that uh but look this is this is not a good look i mean saying like are you kidding me like tennessee i just is speaking i know a multi multi millionaire whose kids are in hollywood they're in i can't tell you which production they make tons of money on on movies and so forth, you know, child actors and they're pampered. They were living in in Florida, in Los Angeles.

I called them last week. How you doing? We should get together for, for dinner sometimes. That'll be hard because I'm in Nashville. I'm like, what the heck? You're in Nashville? He's like, yeah, I couldn't take it anymore. And I'm like, L.A. has much more going for it right now because of our temperature, proximity to the Pacific lack of coronavirus patients compared to New York City. Unfortunately, it was, you know, you and I and Jerry are all lifelong New Yorkers at heart. But he moved and he's a New Yorker. But he moved from L.A. to Nashville. What's wrong with Nashville?

I mean, he said he got seven times the house that he was living in, you know, in Hollywood. He got, you know, he's got immediately he do his work remote over. I was talking to him over Zoom. He's a, you know, he's doing this. And now he's setting up his kids can do voiceovers and stuff for Disney using Zoom. That's what they're doing. And to have this vitriol for people, you know, in Tennessee, you know, this guy can run rings. And not to mention the fact.

that you're doing comedy still from stand up New York, but you're doing it outside. Are we gonna keep doing that in January? I mean, this has gotten ridiculous. But the ad homonym attack, the last thing I'll say before you continue is, it reminded me of this conversation I had with Noam Chomsky. And you remember I was asking you for advice.

Should I publish this thing? I was kind of nervous because I don't agree with him on much politically, but you were like, that's precisely the reason you have to publish this. You encourage me to have courage. And that was the, I call that the all-toucher assay. You know, when you have this nagging thing, wringled out. Should I do this? Should I put make the put push the post button? That's exactly when

you have to gut over the hurdle, go through the tunnel and push that button. And, um, and when I was talking to Nome, there was a point in the conversation where it's just funny. Like he has his dog come in and his dog is like barking his head off. And I'm like, God, how am I going to talk to this 92 year old guy, you know, born 10 years to the day before Pearl Harbor or whatever. And the dog's barking and I'm like, no, would you mind, you know, the dog's linguistics are, you know, kind of challenging me. You mind putting a muzzle on? I was just joking or whatever.

And people were like yelling at me. And then I said, they were like, how could you tell Nome's dog? I said, there's a famous quote from like Epictetus or, you know, Ryan Holiday could tell us who it is. But the quote is,

the dog barks at that which it does not understand. And I kept thinking that when I read Jerry's op-ed. He's just barking. There's nothing there. He doesn't understand it. I mean, his main point was that people are, this guy, meaning me, is just, I wouldn't want to be in a war with him.

Like he's just giving up. And look, I don't recall Jerry being a Vietnam vet or a Gulf War vet or anything, but I don't know, I would want to be with- The Kola Wars. He served proudly in the Kolo Wars. Right. And I would want to be with someone who could accurately assess the situation and start to come up with solutions

other than just we've got a grit and storm the front lines, like, which is, look, I'm a New Yorker, I'm still a New Yorker. My kids go to school in New York. I own a comedy club in New York. I haven't been, you know, Jerry's been in, and I don't mean to say anything, but he criticized me on this.

I was in New York from March through July. He was in, he's been in the Hampton since March. And like you said, in a castle, like, I'm envious of his situation. And I don't understand what, and I can understand there was a lot of anger from people who maybe didn't understand that I was trying to do a wake up call

and point out problems and people are scared. People are scared, their real estate's gonna go to zero. They're scared, their jobs are gonna be lost. And I'm trying to say, a third, you know, there's, again, even the New York Times says that a third of small businesses in New York City might not ever come back. Yeah.

And you know, this is a scary thing. So yes, I didn't expect people to direct their anger at me, but it happened, whatever. But I don't know what his agenda was or why he, did it or he's a smart guy. I'm not questioning that. I just don't understand it like, okay, well, Jerry, what, how does grit help when every, uh, uh, restaurant goes out of business?

How does grit, you know, some people are saying if, if indoor dining is closed through the winter, 90% of restaurants might go out of business. Yeah. What, what's, what's going to happen then? You tell us like, yeah. The only thing I see grit doing is encouraging people to wear masks. Like people have this feel the. need to actually do something. Humans are, you know, animus, you know, an animal that likes to do

something, right? And so putting on a mask and, you know, there's differing, you know, kind of philosophy, some resisted, some don't. But the point is, the mask is something that you can do actively. Tell me, you know, when you have five kids and you have to educate them and you've got one computer, not like Jerry, you know, presumably, and, et cetera, and they're all fighting over it and they have to be quiet and you've got one pair of headphones and they got six Zoom class. It is a night And there's never been, 9-11, you could go to, I went down to 9-11 ground zero. My cousin went down there as it was happening. And he was just trying to help.

Yeah, you were right next to it when that happened. And you could do something. And people did, and their hearts poured out. What do you do now? People use this metaphor of the virus. We're in a war against the virus. We're not. There's no war.

There's no enemy that you can fight. You know, like all of a sudden, we're all going to become epidemiologists and molecular biologist. I mean, that's the, that's what we're left with. But the fact that he, he just, like, it was kind of like this, I felt it was a little pandering. You know, he's kind of like New York's going to be there, you know, kind of like the Billy Joel anthem after 9-11 or, you know,

it's kind of like, now we're going to solidify in it. But the fact, how does it feel that, you know, yeah, this is, this is targeting around you. And it's not even targeting your ideas because he's just like, everyone hate Zoom. Okay. So like, I'm on a lot more Zooms than you are, Jerry. I'm sure.

You know, I used to joke that I thought, as an astronomer, I'd be on telescopes, but I'm on telecons most of my life. And for him to like, you know, oh, Zoom sucks. Okay. So like when you have your virtual 3D hologram, you know, virtual presence, you know, are you still going to not, you know, believe that there's something that's different qualitatively. And the other thing I'll say before you go on, James, is, you know, he makes fun of like,

he says, well, Silicon Valley, do you know why people live there? The biggest tower, I believe, west of Manhattan is the Salesforce tower in in San Francisco. go. Do you know how long it's going to be closed for? Like this enormous building, you know, like nearly the size of the of the one world trade center. They're closing it for at least the year. They're saying you don't have to come back to Salesforce. You don't have to come back to Twitter. You don't have to come back to. All my friends that are working at Google in LA in the Bay Area, they're working from home. It's not affecting them as much as Jerry might think they were because they don't have the in-person, you know, energy as he calls it. So what do you make of that?

Like what can, yeah. You know, just on that point, though, you know, it's interesting. He says people don't want to do that. Well, A, I haven't found that to be true. Most people I speak to, yes, sometimes they like going into the office and sometimes they don't. But many people don't like going into a cubicle and just hanging out with their cubicle mates all day long. I always ask people, are you going to go to the funeral of your cubicle mate? Like, is that, are you guys lifelong friends?

I don't even like to go to the bathroom with half of them. Right. Exactly. And and and and but it's but even besides that it's not the individual's choice unfortunately like corporations have many issues. A they don't know what the liability issues are around the virus so it no laws have been set there are liability issues they don't know if someone gets sick while they're coming to work and being in a conference room meeting with someone coughing is the does the company get they don't know so they want people to work remote. Then there are many studies that show that people are simply

more productive working remotely. Not for every job, but for most jobs. Now, people say, well, you know, New York's not like Detroit, where Detroit, of course, is in shambles. And they're very correct. Detroit was actually hard to have, you can't have people work remote in Detroit because they were making cars. You have to be in the factory making the car. In New York, the main industries are finance and media and tech. And those are all. industries, of course you could work remote, particularly now that we have Zoom. So companies, instead of renting expensive real estate in New York, can say, okay, we're going to go downsize from seven floors to one floor and we'll send everybody remote and Citigroup, J.P. Morgan,

you mentioned Google. Many hundreds of companies are doing this and people are fine. Like I know people all over the country now. One friend of mine just moved, I mentioned in the article, we just moved to Phoenix and he was in the office every day until this pandemic. Now, He's never going to have to go back to the office again. He's in Phoenix. Salary is stayed the same, but the company reduced their floor space. Every company is doing this. But that has consequences.

New York City, real estate goes down. Restaurants have less customers. The hot dog stand outside, the bodega, the newspaper guy, the transit system, the subways, the buses, the trains. And then, again, Broadway, the entire ecosystem around that. restaurants, the entire ecosystem around the restaurant industry or this, you know, there's quarter million small businesses in New York that, that may never, you know, 30% of them may never open again is, you know, some estimates quoted in the New York Times.

So I don't, I, I think there are big problems. And then when you, again, when you have deficits this high and tax revenues that could get cut in half, we haven't even seen the effects of it, but we have seen the effects of sales taxes going down. why de Blasio, who was just live making fun of me on TV, he is on August 31st. He has to cut, according to a city spokesperson, he has to cut 22,000 jobs, including EMTs, garbage, collectors, police, and so on. So that's what starts to happen in a city in New York's situation, unless there's, it's not like this utopia where all of a sudden rents are cheap and young people and artists can move in. Bad things happen first to get to that point. That

point doesn't happen for 20 years or ever. That's right. And again, it could be the case that opportunity gets dispersed. The young, up-and-coming, you know, let's say we live in this innovationist culture. Like, let's not call it capitalist for a second. Let's call it innovationist. So innovationists are usually young people who move to San Francisco, L.A., New York City. They're going to strike out on their own and they're going to make it big.

If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere. Well, now they can make it big in Nashville, in Memphis, in St. Louis in Denver, in Dallas, in Austin, in Miami, they don't have to be in New York, L.A. or San Francisco anymore. They can make friends in these cities. They could make industries, careers. They can move to Phoenix and work on Wall Street. So the world's a different place. And so, again, I'm not sure why, you know, not to bring it back to Jerry Seinfeld's personal attack on me, but I don't know why he did that instead of addressing real issues and real solutions. The thing is, you know, it's like, I guess I missed Jerry's newsletter where he has this great track record of forecasting.

I compiled a short list of things that you've been dead spot on. I call you, you know, just on the money, James. So you called Bitcoin back in 2010, I believe. It was the first time you started, man, the hell is he talking about? You know, I've been following you for stalking. I'm following you for 20 years or 15 years. We spoke together at TEDx, San Diego. You called Bitcoin when it was like a penny.

You charged, you know, like one Bitcoin for copies of your book. In 2013, I built probably the first e-commerce store for Bitcoin. I only sold my book in it, so I was able to claim I was the best-selling author on Bitcoin only ever. Yeah. And you took, you know, very courageous stance back in the early days of Amazon self-publishing. You called the Apple to be the first company across $1 trillion. Called the first time Apple across $2 trillion. You called the South Sea bubble.

You called the tulip mania. I mean, you've been right so many times, James. Like, what's Jerry's record of social societal prognostication? Well, I would say he was a genius. And I will, here's where, and this is more of a Larry David thing, but let's combine them together for a second. Yeah. You know, a show about nothing was kind of,

a show where you learn nothing was kind of an innovation in entertainment in mainstream media entertainment. But it wasn't just that. Where they really were innovative with Seinfeld. It was they gave each main character. Obviously, there were four main characters, you know, Kramer and George and Elaine and Jerry. In every episode, each character had a storyline

that all came together at the end. No other sitcom had done that before. And I think that was really Larry David's innovation. He didn't want just as a leader, which most people don't think of Larry David, as an example of leadership, but he really is. As a leader, he knew he didn't want any of his main stars who were becoming celebrities to be just sitting around

for an entire episode. So he made sure every episode included all of them. And then another innovation was he knew that he needed a constant feeding of New York City stories that he was going to run out eventually. So he would fire the whole writing staff every year and bring in new, from what I understand. Maybe not 100%, but like 90%.

He'd fire the whole writing staff and bring in new New York City writers to tell new, stories and you know they he did a really good job running the show and uh you know and jerry continued that after after larry left and of course jay was not only writing and he was starring in it so he they were innovative for what they were and as a comedian he's very innovative at taking the commonplace and finding the unusual in it and so i will i will give him you know full 100% credit he's the best in the world at that but in terms of social commentary I don't know.

And again, the only time I've ever seen him make any social commentary was he wrote this op-ed. I have never seen him write anything about anything before. And I've never seen an op-ed so thoroughly just be a non-stop insult before. Yeah. It was almost, I couldn't tell whether it would be funny or stressed that it was about me. Like, it was funny in the sense that this is clearly a simulation now. I've proven it. And everybody is fake and this is just about me and I'm tired of this game.

You could turn it off now. And at the same time, I was getting, particularly in the morning, I was getting so much hate that it was unbelievable. Like and then everybody, people I had known 20 years ago who must have been holding onto some tiny grudge for me, you know, suddenly piggybacked because it was safe, you know, Seinfeld's anger. And it was just very disturbing. And then I wrote a rebuttal and people kind of, even if they didn't read the original article, maybe they read the rebuttal.

But by the end of the day, I felt like people were starting to say, oh, Jerry was just insulting this guy and this guy was just presenting real rational issues. And by the way, he's from New York also born and bread. And he had real things to say. Yeah. I was, you know, saying to my wife, I was like, why don't they these two guys just settle it like New Yorkers have traditionally done for hundreds of years? like Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. Like we should just have, you know, that's a gentlemanly way to do it. You guys should just hash it out.

But, you know, this saying, you know, I wrote you on Twitter. I said, you know, something like, you know, this ratings gold. Like now you're getting so much attention. There's a book, 1984, you surely know it, Animal Farm, another one. And Animal Farm Orwell talks about Benjamin the donkey. And he's like, yeah, I've got this great tail. And the tail keeps away the flies. And the pigs like, oh, you're so lucky.

And Benjamin's the donkey's like, yeah, but I'd rather not have the flies and not need the tail. It's like, how do you come down on that now? Like this is, it's hard to imagine that you're going to get like this. Again, a billionaire, super powerful Hollywood guy. And I'm talking about James Altucher. I'm talking about Jerry. And then he's like, and it's all the, all the plot. It's online.

Oh, just thank you, Jerry, you know, for standing up to the, like this guy who's, you know, I mean, it's true. you're not at his level of wealth and fame but do you want it is that like were you like oh great now i'm going to kind of ride the tide and surf the wake of jerry seinfeld cracking out uh you know also he doesn't mention you but he mentions your club i thought it was kind of weird you know on one hand he's saying he trash the club and by the way he's performed regularly there he lives around when he's in manhattan he's around the corner from i'm sure he is yeah he performs that and he says you need to spruce it up uh every comedy club in the world needs to be spruce i was just going to

to say that. I forgot about all those comedy clubs where I eat off the floor. You know, I drop my, my martini on the ground. I just lick it up because it's so clean and modern. I mean, give me a break. This episode is brought to you by Netflix. Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Ronda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event. Plus co-main's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry. And the best heavy weight in the world, Frances Ngano, versus Feliz.

Lince. Watch Ronda Rousey versus Gina Carrano. Live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th and 9 p.m. Eastern Center time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. And by the way, the club is giving back to the city. Like, we're having 503 shows. Outdoor shows in every single park this week. No other comedy club is doing that.

And, you know, and all through this, I mean, there was things that I've done all through this pandemic to try to help the community and, you know, being, you know, you know, I don't really need to talk about all of them. Yeah, but I know you have. You've done GoFund. I'll say it for you. I don't want you to brag for you. You've done GoFund me things.

People like no questions ask. Anything for charity. Anything for business. You've been giving away 10 business ideas a week. You know, in the beginning, you were on live every day just answering people's questions. And James, you were partially like a psychologist, even for me. I mean, what the hell is an astrophysicists have to do with some, you know, comedy club

owner, you know, come, but you're, you know, the way that you analyze the world, in contradistinction to someone like Jerry. And again, Jerry put himself into this position. Now we can criticize him. It's fair to say, like, what's your record? What's your level? Is it just for your own virtue signaling? What are you doing this for?

But I won't, I'll avoid that. I actually said in the beginning because he says, like, you know, I say this in the best possible way when he like slams middle America, which is totally offensive, especially since we know both of us, know many people who are lifelong New Yorkers, grew up there, love it there, and came there for the very reasons you talk about. and he talks about and have left and gone to Nashville and Atlanta and all the places you point out from your research driven article with data from Redfin with bandwidth facts from from online

usage and and it is just pure emotion and I'm looking at him saying well you know James is giving away so much for free and and I guess it's just like how do you how do you react to that because I think you were doing it altruistically now I mean do you kind of like you give so much you're so vulnerable I told the audience that before you came on this man gives of himself yeah I mean you have businesses and you do that and and you're actually like doing things like making new improved tools for podcasting and and and you're writing books uh you kind of serve as a social pundit that also is has a very serious side you have a very generous vulnerable serious side that uh is incredibly endearing and helps millions of people literally millions of people so I i you know

i'll brag on your behalf now you go on and say what you're going to say what you're going to say about what else is going on in New York City. Well, well, I just, you know, I was, I've always been interested in right in the beginning of this pandemic, I said, look, this is an opportunity now to show that the way a community survived is when the community comes together and thinks about giving to each other. Rich or poor, you know, big or small, regardless of race. And I was hoping that would happen more instead of everybody just waiting. online for bailouts, but also I'm glad the bailouts happened and hopefully more will happen.

But you can't, again, you can't ignore the problems New York's going through. I mean, again, you're right. In the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of the issue was what is coronavirus? How long is this going to last? The New York Times said there's a hundred, there's going to be 140 million deaths around the world. Is that true? Like, what's going to happen? So I was going through the mathematical models and showing why some were wrong. Some were right. I was trying to explain the math of what does exponential mean in a real world environment. It doesn't mean you double forever.

It means it's like a learning curve. You double and then you level off, which a pandemic curve is the same as it looks like a learning curve. And, you know, and then with the economy, I was having Federal Reserve governors on. I was having on economists, you know, investors, congressmen, and on several politicians. just to understand, okay, this is what could happen. And I was worried if the pandemic lasts for a certain period of time or the lockdown, and this is not a statement on the medicine of it or anything, it's just the lockdown is what it is now.

This is what would happen. We could have a problem. These problems are starting to come to life now. The article was really a continuation of what I've been saying all along, that these are some of the problems that not only could exist, but now they do exist. And, you know, the hope, I don't know if there's hope or not, but there's just certainly more and more uncertainty. And again, for him to ignore that, I get it because he is not going to face the problems.

The workers are going to face the problems. And the city is going to face the problems. And the people working for the city and the people working for the ecosystem around the city. And, you know, the people who own assets like real estate in the city. And again, last week, I think I don't know what I could have done differently. Like I don't know why, maybe because I told my own personal story in there, it got a little bit more emotionally charged. So that created a cognitive bias of some sort that was aimed at me instead of aimed at the issues. But then for Seinfeld, like, why do you think Seinfeld did that?

Like, why would he need to do that? I think, I think, you know, people, again, they want to do something. So, you know, we have a role as pilots. We say, you know, don't just do something, stand there. Or another adage from like the World War II, but now it doesn't work with, you know, an Apple Watch. But it used to be in case of emergency, step one on your checklist, wind your watch. And it's like people don't like that. It makes them feel very uncomfortable. They like to have, you know, it's like inertia bias. Like they need to feel like they're doing something or else they feel helpless. And I think he's basically, you know, I mean, what is the, you know, I think in a pandemic, let's say an. asteroid is coming to the earth. Let's get a comedian. Like, no, it's not going to happen. Like,

that's not, not to say he's, he does, he probably gives charity. I actually don't know much about what he does. But I know, you know, he's, his job is to do, is to make people entertain and to make people laugh. I'm not even saying, oh, stay in your lane, but that's his skill set. That's his, and he is a businessman. He has a leader, et cetera. I think, you know, combined with a lot of good luck that he had, that he acknowledges. But on the, on the other flip side, It's like, I think people in that world that are purely entertainers, unlike you, like actresses. Like every year, every four years, we get, we get a statement from Hollywood actors and actresses on which why we should vote for the Democrat who's running for president, right?

It's never like we get the same thing from 70 Nobel Prize winners every four years like clockwork. This is why you should vote for the Democrat. Fine. I don't talk politics on the show, as you know. But I think that there's, you know, even for scientists, like what we do when I study the universe, It's significant on some level, on some meta, huge level of thinking about the most important things in the universe. But on a daily basis, you know, I saw a tweet from Andrew Cuomo, who's, you know, he actually, I saw a tweet that he's attacking you now live on NBC.

No, no, he's not. But it wouldn't surprise me, right? Yeah. So Cuomo's like having a battle with de Blasio. I think he's probably staying away from it. That's the only thing that's protecting me. So he's the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Exactly right.

Yeah. That's right. So I looked at his tweet. It's like, you know, retweet if you think scientists, you know, that people should listen to scientists, not politicians. I'm like, I'm a scientist. I'm not going to retweet that. Like, I know a lot about the early universe, the big bang, different ways the universe

could have started. But, you know, you're going to listen to me just because I have, you know, I understand differential geometry, topology, early universe. You're going to listen to me about like, like how we should impact, you know, the continuation of stimulus. No, that's why we elected you, buddy. Don't try to push that off on me. You know, unless you're going to start paying me that salary.

So I'm happy to advise if Gavin Newsom, my boss here in California as a state employee, if he calls me up and he wants me to do some mathematical modeling, do some physical testing in my lab. And we volunteered to do that early on. But come on, listen to scientists because, but scientists want to do it. And I salute that. It's a virtue to want to be significant, to have an impact, to save a life, you know, et cetera.

So I think Jerry wants to like save the economy and do something significant because I think ultimately he knows deep down inside it's and it's not the job of an entertainer to be significant to have deep thoughts or to be a politician but i sometimes think they have envy you know like physicists have math envy you know because we can't prove things the way math and fishing it sometimes comedians have you know kind of politician envy that's why you see people like this hannah gadsby you know like they'll have things and they'll say you are not going to laugh at our show like no i have enough things where i don't laugh make me laugh clown Right. Well, you know, comedians have a very particular skill at walking into a room and seeing what's unusual in this room. And but, you know, so take someone like John Stewart. John Stewart over decades honed that particular muscle to spot the unusual in the domain of news and politics. He got extremely good at pointing out what's unusual in the political system, in the news, whatever. Whether you agree with him or not, that was his skill set.

But, you know, again, Jerry, you know, he talks about Pop Tarts, TV dinners, which people don't even eat. I don't know if people, if they even sell TV dinners anymore. But he talks about these other things that are kind of, he's an expert at the mundane. I've actually, like I said before, I never have seen him comment on something, you know, not that he's not allowed to, by the way, but again, just don't, like you say, it's called an ad hominant attack where if you don't have anything to say you just attack the the you shoot the messenger it's another way of saying shoot the messenger instead of understand the message and i don't i i don't think he added to the conversation and then of course de blasio who's defending his record is holding up his article saying thank you jerry who's this other guy and you know well the bill de blasio you're

the one who's going to have to fire everyone and by the way then it's happening to l.A. and san Francisco next. So what's what's going to happen? There's a lot of uncertainty. And and when if we don't trust our leadership, we need to at least be aware of their flaws so that we can make decisions for ourselves. Yes, New York City people have grit and Americans have grit and resilience and we have a sense of the frontier. We can make it on our own to the frontier. Well, now the frontier is is also inside of ourselves because we have to overcome this this fear about this pandemic and this economic unsecurity. I mean, 55 million people in the country at some point or other in the past five months filed for

unemployment insurance. That's more than one out of three workers. It's incredibly scary. And, you know, you have to be able to. Jerry had a lay off three of his butlers. I mean, yeah, exactly. And, you know, and I'm sure maybe some movies he was working on. I don't know.

I don't even know what he does. I know he has a book coming out in October. So maybe this was part of that. campaign is oh he was given some space in the op-ed so he decided to focus it on on this issue but since he's never really written on issues before he didn't he didn't have that skill set I don't even know but he certainly knows how to tear someone apart like he has that skill set I know it was funny you said you know finally you wrote some new material right like I had to respond a little bit so so I said yeah like I'm glad I inspired Seinfeld to finally write some some new jokes but

which by the way a lot of well-known comedians sent me messages after that like they didn't say it publicly where they were like good job you know yeah i thought it was great you know and the other thing i want to say is another thing i gleaned from noem chomsky and again thank you for really encouraging me to do that it's like one of my most popular videos now this interview that i was reluctant to do but you encourage me you know go like feed the feed the beast like the uh the what's the Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey guy, he said, the hero of a thousand faces said, you know, the cave that you fear to enter holds the treasure you are seeking. And, you know, when you said that, not, you know, it's a little overblown for Noam Chomsky, you know, guy, guys, you know,

old enough to be my, my great-grandfather, but a brilliant person. And yet, you know, he was saying things like when people, which you got a lot of criticism for, which I think is a vector that Seinfeld is being influenced by. And that's how a lot of the outlets that picked up your article were conservative Fox News, Glenn Beck, and you got all the attention for that. And people are criticizing you, some guy, you know, tens, millions of followers say, you know, you should be careful, James. Before this is before, pre-Signfeld attack. And they're like, you shouldn't have written this because now all these idiot rubs in middle America are, you know, watching you on Fox News and then they're, you know, they're having, tackling in glee. And it reminded

me of what Nome said to me when we had our interview, I asked them like, how did you feel about the backlash to this letter that you wrote in heart? Harper's, he's like, I found it entirely irrational because people were responding to what was done with the article after I wrote it. In particular, you know, J.K. Rowling now, like, I wouldn't mind if J.K. Rowling, you know, has something to say about what I wrote. It doesn't, it doesn't, by properties of time invariance under reversal of the time cord, you know, like, you don't know what someone's going to do with your article. You didn't write it for Fox News. You weren't like commissioned by Rupert Murdoch. Here you go, James, write this article and here's 10 million dollars. You wrote

it and it happened to be picked up and it hit a nerve. Now, there's some schadenfreude. I think that there are, you know, people certainly, you know, the people that are in Middle America that are being derided by the Seinfelds of the world for living in Nashville, which is just preposter. I mean, I just got back from, you know, a few days in Jackson Hall, Wyoming. I was speaking. I was doing some stargazing for my channel using the enormous telescopes, really fun time. And it was very pleasant to be. Beautiful skies there, too, right? Beautiful skies there. And it was very pleasant to be there. And I'm like, you know, I'm a New Yorker, California now. And being there, the people are salt to the, like, can you imagine what?

If he thinks that way about Nashville, can you imagine what he thinks about Jackson, Wyoming? So I just find it very, very irrational as Nome does, when people criticize what's done with your work. And you put so much out there, do you ever get scared, like, retroactively, what's going to happen based on something you might have said a few years ago, or is it like you just assume that someone's going to misconstruer what you do, or do you allow yourself to learn? Like, maybe you'll write a thing, maya culpa, I was wrong. You know, I can't see Jerry doing that, but how do you handle the kind of entropy of these kinds of being so public? Because it's very daunting to me. I think, I think it's a lot of good points. So I have a, you know, starting from the beginning

of what you were saying, I don't like to hit publish, and we've talked about this before, I don't like to hit publish unless I'm a little bit afraid or a lot of afraid of what people will think of me and of the piece. Because again, if you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not saying something new. Like if I was just writing New York's going to come back because it's got grit and resilience. Everybody on the street is saying that. And it's not new. They don't need my extra voice. So my energy and efforts, I'm not trying to say something controversial, but I should say something that I research and have a unique opinion on. And so, but having a unique opinion, you know if you're going to stick out like a nail you're going to get hammered and so that's

going to happen if you're if you're truly afraid of something you're doing then it means you're doing something new that's ever been done before because you're going into the unknown and but i don't do it just for the sake of doing it as some have accused me i just don't write unless i have an opinion that hasn't been written before i otherwise i'll just spend time reading and learning and and experiencing and experimenting and coming up with new material. And just like, just like I'm not going to tell a joke about Pop-Tarts when I do stand-up because, oh, Jerry Seinfeld's done that. You know, Rosie O'Donnell, and I'm not, this is all well-known, back in the 70s,

when they were all performing in L.A., by the way, where Jerry lived for 30 years, when Rosie O'Donnell was at performing at, I forgot the name of the, it might have been the comedy store. Or a castorizing star when I was playing. Yeah, one of those places. And she was known for copying Jerry Seinfeld's jokes. Okay, you're not doing anything new, so you're not really making a stake for yourself in comedy. Like Jerry Seinfeld's known in comedy because he carved out his own unique voice.

Dave Chappelle has his own unique voice. George Carlin had his own unique voice. Richard Pryor was the first one to really talk autobiographically about the hardships he went through and how he made it funny. So these are people who said, who did, who went into the unknown. They said things they were afraid to say and became known for it. So that's, I think that's the key for writing, for art, for, look, even for science, right? You're going to, by the nature of it, you have to go into the unknown. And that's how you risk, you risk everything.

When you go to the South Pole with a, you know, huge telescope, the Bicep 2, and you're looking to see gravitational waves past, the cosmic microwave background radiation, you're taking a risk. You might not see anything. Might not come back. You're right. Yeah, you might not come back.

But you're also having a, because it's so unknown and so interesting, you're taking also a chance for, you know, greatness and the Nobel Prize and seeing the birth of the universe. And so the, you know, experimenting and going outside your comfort zone and going into the unknown, whether you're an artist, a scientist, a politician, economist. This is important. Yeah.

And again, I don't think, I think Seinfeld obviously is an expert at that with television and comedy. John Stewart was good at that with mixing comedy and news and politics. Same with Bill Maher, whether you agree with them or not. It's, they're good at it. And for me, I've been writing about these types of issues for 20 years.

And but I do it in a very, where I go into the unknown and where I started going into the unknown many years ago is I always weave it, with personal stories and that gets it very emotionally charged. And I have had backlash before, never quite like this, but we're also in the time unprecedented, which is sort of making my point actually that this time is different.

And again, I think it would have been, it's better if people with such a platform and influence like Jerry Seinfeld, he could write in the New York Times op-ed. I wrote to the New York Times yesterday and I said, let me do a rebuttal. They never responded to me. Yeah. New York Times, he's got that platform.

There's many things he can do with it other than attack me. Yeah. And look, I'm a big boy. I could handle it. It was upsetting and distressing for like a few hours yesterday. And then I got over it. And also I wrote a rebuttal. People saw the rebuttal and were very positive and encouraging overwhelmingly.

And, you know, because they saw where I was coming from and it was a good place. And like you mentioned before, in general throughout this pandemic, I've been coming from a good place. and trying to help people. Maybe this was a little bit more emotionally charged with a little bit more negativity than I usually have because I have a little more uncertainty here. I don't think so, James. I mean, actually, this reminds me of something

that's really delightfully serendipitously connected to the way that you and I met. And that's your article from June, also on LinkedIn, 12 secrets of persuasion I learned from M&M. And you start that off with, I walked out of the TEDx conference 20 minutes before my talk and I was planning on just going to the airport and flying home.

I'm a quitter. was terrified. I did not want to give this talk. My plan wants to go home and never return into the angry calls from the organizers. And you and I talk when you came, when you're gracious enough to come on my podcast last time, I was like, I was kind of the opposite. Like, I was like, this is my time. I'm going to do it the M&M song. But also, and then like I was even diffusing it. My mother-in-law came out. I said, are you nervous to speak? You know, there's 2,000 people there. And I was like, I wasn't nervous until now, now that you make me think about it. And she felt horrible. And I was just like, no, I'm just kidding, mom. But, but you

writing this article and I saw and I don't know if it was intentional or not, but you weave through your article on LinkedIn about New York City Dead Forever with some of these things like you presage the criticisms that your enemies are going to level at you. You have, you start with negativity bias. You know, and you talk about all these things. And but in the LinkedIn article about Eminem, the secrets that you learn from Eminem, these are persuasive secrets that are in his bat, battle with baby or whatever his name is. I still haven't seen that. But, but, but, thankfully you wrote this great post with a with a YouTube link as well. That's a great scene.

I know. And it's just so awesome. You go through all the biases and you talk about the in-group bias. And you start with that. Was that intentional? Because you start with like, I'm a New Yorker. In-group bias. Boom. I read that first.

Herd behavior. What are all these people going to do? Here's like the collective, how they're reacting to it. Number three. Availability Cascade. There's so many things happening. There's so much data. People are leaving.

And you just lay out the data. boom, distinction bias, outgroup bias. People like, you don't have to live in New York to get great food. There's going to be other places that spring up. There's going to be opportunity bias. There's ambiguity bias. How do you know, like, what actual aspect of this pandemic afflicting New York City is going to be most pernicious?

We don't know. It's ambiguous. Credential bias. You're talking about how you started off, what your stakes are. You own half of a comedy club. You share a part owner of a comedy club, stand up New York, which is a great, you know, it's Seinfeld talks about it. He's been there. You have stakes in this. Your daughter goes to college there. You're from there. You would love to go, believe me, I know you, the little I know of you, you would like to go back to New York City. If it was just like, virus, you'd be out of Florida in a minute. It's not like, oh, I need that. But it's not just a virus. It's the reaction to the virus. And I think that's what you're speaking about. And that's why it's so perplexing, but it's not surprising that they would publish what he wrote.

Yeah. And I, but, you know, it's funny because, And then I also answer all the objections. Like, people will say, this is like the 70s. No, it's not. And so I answered, you know, there's another thing in the M&M thing where he, he, before the other guy starts rapping, he says, I am white, I am a bum. I live in a trailer with my mom.

My boy, future is Uncle Tom. I have a dumb friend named Cheddar Bob, but he shops over. You go through all this and you say all the objections. So like, was that part of this article? Like, was that intentional or is it just the way your brain works now? Yeah, I didn't consciously think about it,

but that is how, think about about these articles I always try to have a miniature arc of the hero inside even a very nonfiction type of a narrative and and you know these things all belong in you know all these biases happen in the arc of the hero and because you know like you know a big criticism of of let's say a piece of fiction or or an art and even a nonfiction story is the deus X Maconagh where just some lightning from the sky comes and saves the hero. Well, people that people will object to that so you can't do that. You have to address that in the story that through his own or her own ingenuity, the hero survives.

And it's the same thing. The same kind of cognitive biases have to be addressed in any article, except for an academic article. Right. Yeah. Right. If I lead off with I am a bum, right. But, but, you know, I do wonder if, you know, it seems like because this was so charged and I was trying to have the in-group bias, like I'm a New Yorker, there was a desperate attempt to somehow label me not a New Yorker. And I don't even know how that started other than the fact like, okay, for a week or two, I've been in Florida, but I was, the other 52 years I've been in New York. So, and all through the pandemic.

So I don't know how I got labeled. I don't want some non new some guy from Iowa telling me what to do like right. You know, I got a video last night. Somebody is like, you know, threatening me like I don't want some non-New Yorker coming here and telling me my city's dead like, you know, and threatening me. And, you know, I again, you know, I think it's I think there's going to be hopeful things like I think. the country will change it's it's like the economy is not up or down right now it's tilted and how the you know the water instead of going down one stream has gotten you know started going down other streams i don't know what how you say it like things that split off from a stream but

tributaries tributaries yeah so there's other tributaries now flowing into some of these second and third tier cities by the way this is something that's been written about for the past few months i'm not the first to say it so you know i guess maybe just me saying it all together And then I had a strong title, but people were critical of the title, but if I didn't have that title, nobody would have clicked on it. And there's real danger that the title is truth. And I don't know what to say. I don't think I would have done anything differently. And I did do another article saying, look, here's the hope is that, you know, opportunity gets dispersed and decentralized.

And then I did it, you know, I had to do the rebuttal to Seinfeld, so I kind of more clearly laid out the issues without as much of the, you know, the story and so it was a little calmer and you know but you may have a point earlier though that people are kind of going in and out of different lanes like I've spoken to a lot of scientists during this pandemic and like you wouldn't have given me advice on hydroxychloroquine for instance but I've seen I've talked to epidemiologists I've talked to other types of doctors I've talked to the virologist, immunologists. I've talked to all sorts. And one thing I have noticed is that some scientists who have the MD, you know, the initials in front of them or after them, they do kind of veer out of their lanes a little bit.

And with a little bit of research, I could see, oh, this guy doesn't really know anything more than anybody else. You know, particularly if they weren't an epidemiologist. Right. You know, like some... That's what I always say, James. When somebody asks me, like, I give a talk about cosmology, it'll be to a big audience, a popular, not a university lecture. I'll give it on...

What do you think about climate change? Like, you know, okay. And I always prefaced it by saying, I hope when you invite someone to speak about, you know, oceanography and atmospheric chemistry, that when you ask them, what do you think about different ways the universe could have begun, that they say, please consult a cosmologist. You know, so it's like, yes, I understand differential equations, Newton's laws, quantum mechanics, et cetera. But there's more to being an expert, you know, I mean, theoretically what Dyrac used to say, Paul Daraq, Nobel Prize winner, discovery of the predictor of antimatter, essentially advanced quantum

mechanical dynamics. He said, you know, my equations describe all, you know, all of chemistry and most of physical, you know. And then he would say things like biology is just a plightly. applied chemistry. But it's very, you know, I don't think you want, you know, by that logic in medicine is just applied biology. So do you want Dirac who could barely tie his own shoelace? Do you want him to do brain surgery on me? I mean, it's this authority bias, halo effect. That's another bias that comes in. And because I, you know, like Einstein, they wanted him to be the president of Israel. And he was just like, what the heck? You know, or, you know, I wouldn't go

to Einstein for like fatherly advice. He basically abandoned his kids. He had sex with his cousins or something. I forget exactly the details, but, but the bottom line is like we have this halo effect around scientists, which is why Andrew Cuomo is saying, like, you should listen just to scientists. No, you should listen to scientists, but we voted for you, Andrew Cuomo, or the New Yorkers did, or Gavin Newsom here in California, because you have to make the hard decisions, not outsource for brain because smart people. Yeah. And let me ask you a question, though. Like, like one, I, I agree with you, but I'm curious if you could broaden what your expertise is in the sense that, yes, you have answers to, you know, cosmological questions, but also my guess is you're better

at asking questions regardless of the field. So if someone said to you, what's the answer about climate change? You might not know the answer, but you might be able to say, well, here's 10 questions I would think about asking if this was my field. I bet you that you could do with some expertise because questions are just as hard as answers in many cases. Yeah, I get asked, for example, I get asked and I see different things because I'm not an expert in that field. I'll give you an example. Because I'm not an expert in oceanography, I'll sometimes be asked to review proposals about like physical oceanography. And in fact, once it came down to reviewing a proposal about why is there a difference between the melting rate of the North Pole versus the South Pole ice caps.

There should be identical just based upon irradiation and other factors. There's some current effect, but the scientists, you know, I won't say who it was, but they couldn't get funding because, you know, it kind of was disagreeing with some of the orthodoxy of what their field had suggested was the truth. And so the only way they could get is sort of like a private entity affiliated with the university I was at. And so I would read about it and I'd understand it. But because I wasn't so invested in the field, I didn't have that sunk cost into like the narrative of my field that I could see things from a different perspective and ultimately was able to persuade people that, you know, it wasn't like, it was like 50K or something.

It wasn't tremendous amount of money for my scientific standards to support students and go on a vessel or whatever. But he ended up getting it and did good work, interesting work. But when the stakes, there's a difference when the stakes are really high. And that can actually occur in my field, you know, like we said we discovered the origin of the universe in a huge, you know, cataclysmic event called inflation. That had huge implications. And actually on the very day that we announced the results on that I describe and losing the Nobel Prize, my book, I'll plug it now, that we actually had people on like atheists saying this proves there is no God. And then we had this is the proof of the handiwork of God. Like on the same day, you know, for eminent scientists or

theologians or scientists, theologians. And it's just so funny that even in that thing where it's where it should be the most objective data here are gravitational waves which are indicative of a quantum perturbations in a primordial scalar field, blah, blah, blah, there could be like what gets layered on top, the super the superstructure that then gets erected around it is really dramatic. I'm actually reading Galileo's book, The Dialogue, the Dialogue on the Two World Systems, which is fascinating book. It's not only, you know, and it made me think, I keep thinking back. It's still stuck in my craw when you gave these awesome tips on how to read a nonfiction book

and talked about these crappy science. No, no, no. You talked to it like, how do you read it? And there's a preface to it that says most books like Newton's Principia, one of the most influential books of all time, is basically unreason. Exema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis, a once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month- or longer dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking ebbglis,

achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. Ebglis, Libricizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per 2mm liter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema. Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. Ebglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to ebbglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur.

Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Ebbglis. Before starting Ebbglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about Ebbglis.com or call 1800 LilyRX or 1,800 545-97579. I mean, even by me, I can hardly understand it. And I've seen the original copy. I've read translation. I can't get past the first couple pages.

The dialogue is written as a dialogue, as a platonic conversation between two or three people. And it's so engaging. It's 400 years old almost. And you're just like, you're wrapped up. And this guy had this amazing ability to do the hardest thing that you always talk about. If you can tell a story, you've got it made. It doesn't matter if you're a salesman. You're running website.

You're doing copy editing. You have a skill. And you stress this often. But part of the problem is most scientists don't think that that's a value. So you ask me like, can I talk about client? Yeah, I can talk about. I can talk about like the quantum mechanical properties of drugs. You know, like if you don't use zinc, if you know, people are saying, oh, zinc is

just like only used in diaper rash ointment. Well, that's not really true. Like, there's a lot of medicines that you take for like lupus that have arsenic in them. Like, okay, I thought arsenic kills you. You know, like, you know, so just to say, oh, zinc is only used for diaper rash, that's fundamentally an irrational objection. Now, I'm not making a stamp because I actually haven't studied it. I do think, you know, people using it around the world for 50 years or whatever.

At least we know it's safe. It's not going to kill. Now, some people with heart condition. Anyway, I'm not a doctor of that variety. But getting back to it, I think most scientists can't tell a story really in the way that their subject matter is the greatest subject matter there is. And that storytellers are doing such a poor job at it, which is why I feel like my mission is kind of like make things interesting the way Joe Rogan does about science. That's really passionate. But explain the work of my colleagues who are more brilliant than I am, but are not as good at maybe telling a story or weaving together the threads.

That's what I see my mission is. while I'm also trying to do real science. Well, let me ask you this. Like Richard Feynman is obviously one of the greatest physicists ever. Yeah. But part of the reason why I think he's one of the greatest businesses ever, because I have no clue really, is because he writes such compelling stories.

Like, surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman, is maybe the most popular modern science book around, like for the past 50 years. And, you know, and then also you have kind of these string theorists, like, you know, Brian Green, Michio Keku. who have popularized science. Look, Neil Grass-Tyson, I don't know if he's a good scientist or not,

but he's a good storyteller, so he's one of the most well-known scientists, at least. I think he's the most well-known scientist in human history because of just the advent of media, et cetera. Yeah, exactly. Scientists has been known by more people on the face of the planet. Maybe Stephen Hawking. Yeah, maybe Einstein, yeah.

Yeah. Hawking was really good at it, but he was also, he had that wit. He didn't take himself so seriously. And it's very hard, James, when you talk about a pandemic that can kill, millions of people or global warming, which some say will render the earth uninhabitable and kill everybody. You know, it's hard to make light of that. Like, let's, you know, here's 10 jokes on

the way the world will end, you know, by fire, by ice, et cetera. Those kind of, you know, things are not endemically, you know, just hilarious, you know, gut busters. But you're right, these people have a skill. And the hard thing is to do that and continue to do real science. And that is a little bit rare. Brian Green does that exceptionally well. You know, Neil deGrasse Tyson will say he's not currently assigned. And actually he does a great thing. If you ask him, oh, tell me about the big bang, Neil, you're so smart. He'll say go talk to, well, he won't say go talk to Brian Keating. He doesn't return my emails or calls, but maybe someday he will. Not when he finds out that, you know, I talk to you and that you're, you know, ransacking New York City where he calls home and makes his

living. But I've been on his podcast a couple of times. He's been on mine. But that was then. much I much for that was then that was when New York City was vibrant right now I'm not allowed to go back to New York City there's like a you're forbidden airport yeah yeah it's like by the way if you're coming to New York my friends there now you know working on you know the university system which you talk about I mean you're just giving facts you're saying here are all the dorm rooms that are going to be unused here and like what are the kids aren't going to pay dorm you know fees they're going to be remote they're going to pay tuition at a lot of places but the what the landlord's going to do how are you're going to stay afloat comedy clubs like Jerry's like oh you're comedy club blah blah blah like like I heard it said that, and I think you told me this, you know, most the average American has $500 saved to their name. What would you say is the average amount that the average comedian has saved up? Probably less than $500. Negative, yeah. I know, and this is, I don't say this in a happy way. I know a very good comedian, very talented, maybe one of the most talented in the world, actually,

and one of the most well known, if I were to say his name. and during this time he's been delivering for Grubhub. Like, you know, it's just his skill was kind of. I know a physician, James. I know a neonatologist. I know like she works in an ICU. She was doing Grubhub. Both for financial reasons because they laid off doctors, right?

We laid off our essential work, some essential workers. People don't talk about that. She had to make a living. And she's, you know, she's single. She made a good living. They furloughed her one day a week. That's a huge thing when you have built in expenses. And it's not like the PPP or whatever was called covered all that.

But the other thing is she also missed social contact and she missed seeing people. And even, you know, she's single. And so she couldn't, you know, she couldn't meet people. And it wasn't like, you know, she's going out and it's like Tinder and real life or something. But she wanted to just have human contact. And I think that's what's missing. And I think, you know, how much longer can this go on? You come to New York City now.

You have to quarantine for two weeks or you get like a $10,000 fine. Like, has there ever been a state? Like after 9-11, they didn't let me get too close to ground zero, but you could get very close to it, actually, for a couple of days. Could have walked through it and it was dangerous. I didn't do that. I came around early November of 2001. But it wasn't like you had a quarantine when you came there for two weeks.

I mean, what's that going to do? No, I know. And that's why, again, this time is different. And so it's a different set of questions. Like, okay, they took the economic playbook of 2008, 2009, which is the Federal Reserve reduces interest rates to basically zero. They start what's called moving up the curve. Instead of just buying treasury bills, they buy other types of bonds.

This is all economic stuff. But basically they followed that playbook, but to a little bit more of an extreme. And then there was also a Keynesian-style stimulus package passed by Congress. But then nothing else about this is the same. as any other event, not World War II, not the Depression, not the 70s. It's different. And also, then you have like these nuances like the fact that bandwidth is pretty good. Like we could, you know, we could have meetings with people now and then be more productive. We could have meeting after meeting and, and then go back to work without moving or we could jog around the block or there's a lot,

there's a wide variety of options now for us to get our work done. And it's just, it's just a different world and that and that has to be acknowledged but also the economic problems of you know what's happened has to be acknowledged again i i i keep saying it and i and maybe it's because it's still i i can't it still bothers me i really don't know why i got i wish i hadn't gotten so much hate and uh i think james you know you did again you know i'm going to give you your own advice you know doctor here like self, Dr. Altucher, you know, what you do is so rare. And you have to think about it. How many people have the platform to do something that requires courage? Like me saying something to you, I've got, you know, a few thousand followers. It doesn't take that much courage. I actually

tweeted out to, you know, Jerry, I was going to say something. Tell me if you think this is funny. Like, you know, Jerry refuses to come on college. He's so brave. I tweeted out, you know, he attacks James Altucher, but he's too scared to come on college campuses. And I was going to put unlike the old days where he used to go on high school campuses to find his future partner. Anyway, I didn't go that way. That's funny. I didn't go that. But like, let's say I did.

You know, like I was a little nervous. I'm not going to say that. You know, maybe Jerry's not going to see what Brian Keating. What the hell? He doesn't care about that. But, yeah, I didn't publish it anyway. But, you know, but it took no courage not to do that because I don't have any backlash from Jerry Seinfeldon's not going to come down on me.

But I think what you're doing, again, you did it for pure reason. If you did it to like, you know, you're going to sell. you know, shares in your in your time share in southern Florida, wherever you are now, I think that's another story. But I personally know, like, Jerry's not like making fun of Joe Rogan, is he? He's not making fun of, you know, like people. And Joe Rogan has twice read my article on the air. Yeah. It's just unbelievable. And, you know, and so like you didn't do it for ulterior motives. I know you, you're doing it for purity of you give away so much. And, and you still have, you know, have this extreme degree of,

of courage, but I'm just, I think it's too soon to tell, you know, like they used to ask Cho en Lai, you know, in Vietnam, like, what do you think of the French revolution in the 1970s? And Chau and Lai said, too soon to tell. And I think it's too soon to tell, you know, about, about the revolution of this article. Look, we all want to get back to New York City. I can't wait to go there. I've got some friends, family, investing, you know, kind of, I was thinking about buying, you know, and renting a Piettaire there someday if I, if I could afford it because I love it so much and I miss my family there so much I mean my brother my cousins I don't know right now if I could do it and and part of me was just like oh I'm just torn between

all this and you know for me to to think about that's the way that New York now I didn't say like I hate you James for bringing it up I said this is this is very courageous and so again I don't second guess it it's it's had a lot more goodness the fact that you're getting the attention And look, again, if I wrote to the San Diego Union Tribune, you know, New York's dead. Like, no, but he went right back and Blasio wouldn't care. But you're making them think and they have to confront you. And if they don't let you respond in kind, I think that that's, you know, almost proof. Like you did, you did the final thing you did from the M&M, you know, kind of, what do you want to call it, debrief, take down analysis that you did about his persuasive techniques.

At the very end of the article and at the very end of the M&M article, you talk about the, the, reciprocity bias or you know what you'd call the ben franklin effect which is you know ben franklin used to use a technique to win over his political enemies he would ask them to borrow a book from his political rival his his rival would give him a book and then then the rival would think hmm now i'm the type of person that gives ben franklin books so i must have this fondness for ben franklin and it completely uh alternated his view about ben franklin at the end of your article or at the end of your statements to Jerry, you're like, you're welcome back. You know, like, come on back, Jerry.

You know, will he do it? I think it's proof that he won't. I think it's proof that that he doesn't have the courage that you have. Anyone can write that. I mean, could the point is, could you write Jerry's article, James? Could you steal a man? No. Well, I could.

I mean, you could do it. Like, Brian Keating writes, like, Florida sucks. Like, could you write, you know, could you write, you know, could you do with Jerry Seinfeld? In other words, just defend New York, grit, resilience. Plattitude here, insert, you know, polemic there. I can't do exactly that, but I could do because that wouldn't quite steal man. Like you said, that was an ad hominin attack? No, I don't mean that.

I just mean, could you write an article about how great New York is going to come back and not attack personally because that's not your style? But you could write an article that's hopeful, resilience, grit, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So if I was Jerry Seinfeld or anybody, so this is a great exercise. So the steel man exercise or Charlie Munger calls this inverting. which is you have to argue the other, before you may have an opinion,

you have to argue the other side better than even than your opponents can argue it. So let's say I was trying to argue the other side of my article. I don't even want to say better than Jerry Seinfeld because there's like five levels higher to argue this. But I would say this. Look, a lot of it's going to boil down

to the relationship between the mythology of New York City with the mythology of America. It's obviously they're connected. New York City's not only the financial capital of America. It's really like the capital of the world in some ways. And let's look at it in terms of the election. If Biden wins, he's going to certainly bail out New York City. Now, is $10 billion enough?

No, that's a Band-Aid. You still have to issues with, are people going to leave? Are people going to, you know, is Broadway? actor is going to move to Nashville or wherever. So maybe you need a little bit more than $10 billion. Maybe you need $20 billion. Then you also need to temporarily give New York City enough money to give corporate incentives for companies to come back or huge incentives for them to stay and maybe even hire more

employees. Like give them tax incentives the more employees they hire. And then you have to argue that's going to happen. So if Biden's elected, that will happen. And if Trump is reelected, you can say, look, Trump's a lifelong. New Yorker. He wants to come in as savior. Dinkins is on his way out. So, you know, at that point, Trump's not quite a lame duck, but Cuomo could possibly take credit if he works out a deal with Trump to bail out New York

City. New York City needs money. It's a financial issue to keep people in. And then it needs to create incentives to keep people and companies in there right now because people are leaving. Like, like you call any moving company. They're overbooked. They don't even return the phone calls. Yeah. I sent you that article from the New York, like, or are they canceling that like we're turning away business yeah exactly so so that's how i would steal man it is that the likelihood is i can make an argument that the likelihood is is that there will be a bailout of some sort now and i didn't address that in my article because that that i don't know if that will happen that's a lot of uncertainty but i could see a path towards that happening

but the bailout would have to be massive and much more massive than they have their handout for so But I could be wrong too. It could be maybe not as massive because of this resilience and so on. But, you know, that's how I would steal man it. I would say James brings up good points. Let's address them one by one. And that's how answering the objections. And then I would say, look, okay, restaurants, we should provide incentives maybe for, you know, New York residents and tourists.

Like, hey, let's do a deal with tourists. Like if you come now, you get $100 of meals for free at the airport or something. I don't know. Like, but there should be some game of incentives that's played. And that's how I would steal man the argument. So in the last couple of minutes that we have, James, you know, if you could rewrite it, redo it, what would you do differently? Would you go even more in the data side?

I really like that you have this, you know, data backed up. And it's actually not too dissimilar. there used to be, I was reading again, Galileo's dialogue book, and it's just so funny. You know, in 1632, these guys are going back and forth. You know, Newton had Leibniz who he hated. Actually, Galileo, funny enough, he sabotaged in some sense his own freedom because he, there were data points from Kepler that could have added weight to the Copernican theory that the sun is the center of the universe.

That was what Galileo was arguing about in his book called the dialogue on two world systems. The two world systems are Aristotelian earth-centered geocentrism, where the earth is the center of the universe. And then Copernican's heliocentric, where the sun is the center of the universe. Well, Kepler had this phenomenal data that went back to, that went back to Tico Brahe and others. Tico Brahe, with his rival, you know, he got his nose cut off and a duel with a scientific rival or, you know, political rival. So, you know, things have calmed down somewhat. We settled things nowadays with, you know, fistfights and the faculty club. But now, Galileo basically ruined some of his own support because Kepler had these data points.

And Kepler, according to Galileo, was this basically this fraudulent grifting astrologer. You know, he had such derision for him. He wouldn't even show him his telescope. So he, like, kept it to himself. So what would you do differently about this article, if anything, or, you know, Or, you know, would you add more to it? Because I think it's such a powerful, it's such a powerful piece. I mean, I could have added more to it, but it was already very long.

So I didn't want to add that much more to it. It was one of my longer articles. But, you know, first off, let me ask you, why are you reading Galileo? I think that's very interesting. Oh, so I'm participating in a book club, this Prager University, which I did a very popular course on, you know, kind of five-minute video. not a real university. You're like, well, can you be on something? It's not a real university. I'm like, I once went to Budweiser University to get a beer, you know, like, give me a break. But anyway,

I did one about the multiverse and why so many scientists have almost like a religious, like, faith in it. And it got a lot of attention and he, you know, from scientists and non-scientists, people can check that out on YouTube or elsewhere. But now they want to do a course on the classic books of all time. So things like 1984, um, Victor, Frankl's man's search for meaning. So they want to have something in the scientific realm and something that influenced me as a professional scientist was Galileo's book, The Dialogue, because it's really a work of popular science. It's a work that has tremendous impact on kind of the battle between science and religion, politics and science. But it also is a, you know,

psychology study in this man, Galileo. And it's fascinating to see what his, what his, what his desires, his compulsions, his biases. The original title for that book, tell me, you know, if you do A-B testing, which is better, the dialogue on two world systems or on how tides on earth work? I might like the dog on two world systems, actually. That's what it was called. But originally Galileo wanted to call it how tides work or something like that, which I didn't know until I started rereading this book, and I'd forgotten it. But everyone knows is the book that got him in trouble, eventually got him imprisoned and he was, you know, in some sense, on trial for reason. You know, some people see he was in prison for for being rational. And there are all these myths about him

that, you know, he went to jail and was torture, all this stuff, some of which I actually, you know, included my TEDx talk, which you may or may not remember. Actually, you were about on your way to the airport. Yeah, I think I was vomiting then. So, so I'm reading because it's a study in psychology. So just like you have with Eminem, I want to do kind of a breakdown like, What is a scientist like? What makes a scientist? What drives him or her? The biases, the humanity.

Because this vision that, like, a scientist is Einstein. I'm not Einstein. Therefore, I can't be a scientist. That's detrimental to progress in science. So those are the reason I'm rereading this book. And the reason I ask is I think it's a very important aspect of mastery and learning to read the history of your field. Yeah. Like I'm always amazed, for instance, you know, in like, let's say, you know, when I used to be a professional investor, how many of my peers did not know the history of investing, the history of bubbles, the history of the different economies. I know a lot of people now who don't really know, you know, you know, pundits or investors or economists or people who write about these things, don't really know how the depression started, how it ended, how they don't really know the roots of the great recession. I did a whole kind of. I did a whole kind of. of what I call a Twitter masterclass on it and people were amazed that they didn't really think

of it in these in these ways but it reminds me of how Bobby Fisher one time when he was a kid he uh so he was the greatest chess player ever arguably and at one point he took a year off when he was like 12 years old 13 years old and he disappeared for a year and during that year he read he studied every single game played in the 1800s you know so there was all these classic players And they had a very different style of playing then. It was called the romantic style of playing chess, but it was considered very basic by the time Fisher was around. But what he did was he studied these eight games from like the 1830s so much

that he found improvements in every game. And then he came back, played in the U.S. championship, all of these ancient openings that people were like, oh, this is just easy. And he had improvements, though, and he won like with a perfect score, the U.S. championship and became the youngest chess grandmaster in history. And so studying the ancients and studying the older material really does build in any field this kind of mastery of the fundamentals. And people kind of forget that, I think.

I try to teach them to my students. Actually, on the final day of their defense, hopefully none of them are listening. They're all hard at work in the lab. But I ask them things like you're a professional astronomer now or astrophysicist. Now you have Ph.D. doctor or so-and-so. I think the earth is not only flat, but it's also stationary. Prove me wrong. And sometimes even my colleagues in the room can't answer,

how do we know that we don't now? That transports you back to the time of Galileo. So the reason he wanted to call it the book, How Tides Work, was because he felt that was the most convincing evidence for the motion of the earth around the sun, which is the central tenant of Copernican theory that he was trying to espouse and support. And he used as evidence for it, this, this, you know, mug of vodka, my Irish up coffee over here.

So he said, you know, you have coffee and it slashes around and there you can barely see it. And that's because the earth is rotating on its axis like this, but it's also going around. So just like the coffee in this cup slashes around as it goes, so to do the tides. And that was his theory. And the Catholic Church forbid him from calling it that. And thank goodness that they did. and then he basically had to rewrite it and that became lesser known

as one of the pieces of evidence because we, and it's good for him it turned out really well for him to listen to your editors even when they have like swords and and pitchforks or whatever the rack and so forth my editors are slightly more kind they are sometimes right

in that that theory turned out to be completely wrong the moon causes the tide has nothing to do with the earth's motion around the sun at all zero nada, Zilch, FIS, not a whatever And so he was prevented, you know, we wouldn't even know about it. If he had used the original title that he wanted, it wouldn't have had the impact. It probably maybe never would have gotten published.

Maybe he wouldn't have been as famous as he was because other people around the same time were coming up with the same theories. But he stood out because of his the book, his personality, his imprisonment, his fights with the church. Exactly. The legend, the story, as you keep bringing up, the story resonates so loudly that the forward written to that book is by Albert Einstein. And he even talks about the addition that I have, you know, where he writes the forward to that, to the translation that, you know, yeah, great men can have great flaws, basically, is the thesis that we come up with from reading Einstein's forward. And he even talks about like how they knew what they knew, but think about what you just said. To be a great painter, I believe you should go back and first paint every great painting in history. Just reproduce it.

Oh, it's beneath you. You've got these great ideas for like doing whatever. Fine, you can have those ideas, but first understand it. And the problem with things like the Nobel Prize, the influence that the Nobel Prize has that's pernicious in science, is that it teaches you the answers before you had the questions. Like it teaches you, here's the right answer. Einstein, here's the right answer, direct, Schrodinger, blah, blah, blah,

but you never go through the process. Like, what if I was in 1631 and I want to prove, you know, I get teleported back in this famous example that gives you night terrors? You know, if James gets teleported back, I mean, you have very few skills. You've admitted. I have slightly more because I, you know, I can divine and make predictions about eclips. I would kill myself as soon as I got a toothache. What am I going to do?

The poorest person, you know, that we know, has better dental care, hopefully, than the richest, you know, king of England did in 1632. But how would you, how would I prove it? How would I prove that the earth? And surprisingly, as I said, you know, look at this picture behind me. Like Manhattan looks pretty flat. New York looks pretty, like the earth looks pretty flat. Prove it wrong.

And that will shift your brain. That's a hard question. I ask people all the time, can you prove that the world is not flat? And they're like, oh, come on. The world's everyone knows. No one can prove it. It's very hard. Or they say, go into space.

And I'm like, no, no, no, you're in 1632. Like, there is no spaceship. Like, you're going to tell the king of England to go into a spaceship. So I agree with you 100%. This underappreciated kind of masters of Western and, you know, and even in Eastern civilizations, they had great technology. Reproduce those. And it's just like training your jokes.

You know, you could probably. I do really good job in comedy. Maybe, you know, we talked about this once before, but like, just like telling Seinfeld's joke, whatever, like see if you would do it differently. Like, see if you get a laugh. If you don't get a laugh, but he got a laugh, why is that? And no, that's a really good point. Like I said to my daughter once, she was thinking of going to do an open mic. And I said, okay, take a bunch of Seinfeld's jokes and I and, and try them. And I said, and she said, isn't that stealing? And stealing is a big no, no in comedy. which I agree with that no, no.

Like if you're performing in front of professionally in front of an audience, do not steal anyone's jokes. But I said to her, no, it's like you're doing a cover. And the only other audience is beginning comedians that had opened mic. So you're just doing a cover to, you're isolating what people think is the key component of comedy, which is the joke. And you're getting everything else correct. So we know the joke is funny.

So now we have to master stage presence, crowd work, your nervousness, the way you hold the mic, you know, all your likability, your charm on the stage. So let's see if you get, if you can get those going, then you could start to write your own material. Yeah. It's, it's like just doing a cover of a joke and seeing if you could do a good job. I don't, I've never done that because I went straight for better or for worse to the, the stage, but I'll do it in my home.

I will imitate in front of a mirror like Dave Chappelle or Jerry Seinfeld or, you know, whoever my favorite comedian of the day is like you know I've had hundreds of favorite comedians so I will I will imitate them until I've got their style down and then I don't tell their jokes on stage but at least I know oh here's a situation that T.J. Miller once found himself in and he did this I'll try to do something similar and so you build up this vocabulary of you know techniques built through history yeah you had a podcast with like the most funniest joke it's about like state abbreviations or whatever like oh yeah Gary

Goldman, man, that is a brilliant joke. So one thing you get just directly is now you can imitate, like if you work on impressions, which are very hard to do perfect, you know, well. But, you know, you can get their voice. Like, did you ever know, like, whatever? You could actually literally imitate Jerry or whatever and get their accent. So like you would actually be building something new in your repertoire, even though it's derivative of what they did.

And of course, yeah, I mean, like the marvelous Mrs. Maisel is kind of based on like her husband that becomes her ex-fell. It's like copying jokes from, I don't know, like Bob Newhart or somebody. Yeah, right. Dave Chappelle of his time, maybe. But the interesting thing to me is like, I noticed this with my students. I'm really lucky. I've got students from all over the world that come here.

I have students from China, from Thailand. I had students from Uganda, from Kenya. And with the graduate students I had, I would pay out of my own pocket because the university, for some reason, doesn't value this. But I would pay for them to go to Toastmasters. And what do you think they do there? They're like, you know, doing a toast or roast or what? whatever. They don't know, like, whatever, they're talking about, like Eisenhower at the Rose Garden in

1952, you know, whatever. They're just reading stuff, but they have to then, they get these meta skills of presentation of a crowd warming, of salesmen. It's extremely valuable. It's extremely valuable. We never teach it. And maybe next time we chat, because I know you have to go, I've kept you over, but we'll talk, we'll talk some other time about academia. And I want to get your kind of, I'd love to know, I've asked this of, you know, Noam Chomsky, Eric Weinstein, some non. non-Jewish people too. I've asked them what would they teach at their university. So if Altitry University comes to fruition as I'm hoping it will and I'd like to be the first Dean, Provost, Chancellor of that fine institution. But I want to know what would you,

what kind of things encapsulate the sum of human knowledge of, you know, and it could be things like speaking, comedy, you know, art, etc. So let's save that. Hopefully you'll Yeah, that's a great topic. And it could be divided into two, which is what's good from you know, first through 12th grade and then what's good as an adult? Yeah. Because there's different skill sets. Yeah. You know, that are needed.

And actually, I've also like to kind of just thinking about it, think about which of these things require, if any, in-person presence or which can we actually use in the virtual environment and things like virtual reality, et cetera. I want to get your impressions about that. And then we'll have, we'll have, you know, Bill de Blasio and Jerry Seinfeld come in and talk about politics. Oh my God. I wonder if I just were to call Bill de Blasio right now.

And like, I'm going to do this as an experiment. Yeah, let's do it. I'm going to call. Let's see. Call his office. Exclusive. You're inviting him to come on your show to discuss this. That's a good idea.

I am James Aldecher. Okay. Thank you very much. So there's basically no way. to get a hold of him. I had to submit a comment in 50 words or less, and he'll get back to me within two weeks, and under no circumstances,

should I call the number again about the same topic. That's very, you know, it's like New York is just so welcoming. I mean, I forgot about that. I wonder if there's anyway. Like, I could just call up, like, I'm friends with the Brooklyn Borough president, so I could just call him on his phone,

and he's coming on my podcast next week to talk about my article. But I guess de Blasio is not as, accessible. Well, yeah, I mean, that's Eric Adams, right? Yeah. Yeah, he's great. I love him. So hopefully he'll be the next mayor. Who knows? But actually, you could say when you write him this 50-word thing, you know, you want to give equal opportunity, Eric Adams and you to come on the show to talk about this article instead of just, you know, tweeting about it. You're a businessman. You own and employ people, own real estate. You employ people. And you're trying to do, you're trying to help New York. And that's the bottom line. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think you're, you're tremendously

courageous, as I said. And I really, I really have a fond spot in my heart for you, James. It's always fun to talk to you. Yeah, ditto, Brian. I'm looking forward to chapter two of when we talk about how the universe began. I'm all ready. I've got questions. I can't wait until I get back in my lane. That's all I want to do is swim in my lane down the East River over here. James, awesome to chat with you. Thank you so much. Be sure. strong, be courageous. There's millions of people that support you all over the world. Keep doing what you're doing. Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate it. I appreciate always coming on the show. And thank you so much. We'll talk soon. Bye, James. See you.

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