Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - What's Important for the 2nd Half of Your Life? James Altucher & Brian Keating Part 2 of 2 (#285)

Episode Date: December 31, 2022

Today's episode with Dr. Brian Keating - concluding our conversation from last week. Brian and James delve into the perils of fame-seeking ambition and how their world views have changed after recently cresting age 50. Brian also gives some business ideas he's been ruminating on and asks for James' feedback: • "Yellowstone" but Based Around the Biblical Patriarchy (00:11:53) • Anti-Doxing as a Service (00:21:36) • Deepfake & Chatbot Detectors (00:23:11) https://BrianKeating.com/listConnect with Professor Keating: 🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/DrBrianKeating  🔔 Subscribe https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list; just click here http://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Detailed Blog posts here: https://briankeating.com/blog.php 🎙️ Listen on audio-only platforms: https://briankeating.com/podcast Subscribe to the Jordan Harbinger Show for amazing content from Apple’s best podcast of 2018! https://www.jordanharbinger.com/podcasts  Can you do me a favor? Please leave a rating and review of my Podcast:  🎧 On Apple devices, click here, https://apple.co/39UaHlB scroll down to the ratings and leave a 5 star rating and review The INTO THE IMPOSSIBLE Podcast. 🎙️On Spotify it’s here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2G3PRMUhxGQkyQzLiiCqlf?si=8656119458df4555 🎧 On Audible it’s here : https://www.audible.com/pd/Into-the-Impossible-With-Brian-Keating-Podcast/B08K56PXJX?action_code=ASSGB149080119000H&share_location=pdp&shareTest=TestShar Other ways to rate here: https://briankeating.com/podcast Support the podcast on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/drbriankeating  or become a Member on YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmXH_moPhfkqCk6S3b9RWuw/join Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

People you think right now, James, are not living the life that they want. And they're leading it because, like, an 80-year-old or 70-year-old. Of course people. It was only when I really started writing about my own stories in 2010. And I was, I reduced my expenses. And because I, you know, I had just gotten out of a period of going broke. And I was able to, and I wasn't working for anybody. I was able to live a life true to my life.

myself. And I've always tried to stick to that, but it's hard, I think, because of so many different agendas. And I think the more ambition one has, the less you can live true to yourself, because the more you have to cater to the people you're ambitious about. Happy New Year, dear listeners. Welcome to Part 2 of a special two-part co-lab edition of Into the Impossible with the ever popular James Altuture Show, and you are host, Brian Keating. For your New Year's resolutions, Brian and James provide their philosophy. for living an authentic life without regrets. In this fast-paced conversation,

get advice for moving beyond childhood traumas. Here, for the first time, Brian's side hustle pitches for the next blockbuster TV series. Get some controversial opinions on cancel culture and internet security, plus some original business ideas, thoughts on podcasting, and some plans for 20203. Please, leave us a review and a New Year's celebration of five stars to boost our ratings into 2023.

So for your holiday cheer, sit back and enjoy part two of this two-part episode with James Altutcher in conversation with Into the Impossible host, Brian Keating. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Open the Bob Bay doors, please, how? Brian, you and I, I consider us friends, but we've only met on podcasts. No, we've met. That's not true. Yeah, the TEDx in San Diego. Yeah, we met in person.

In the green room. Yes, yeah. That was like eight years ago. Yeah. I can't believe it. But like, like, I should spend more time face to face with my friends. You know, you invited me to, I think it was your 50th party. I was not able to make.

I should have made an effort, more of an effort to make it. I had intended initially to go and then things caught up with me and I couldn't make that. And, you know, I feel I should be less. ambitious and more about, you know, improving my relationships, improving my mentorships, improving at the things I love doing instead of always chasing after false accolades and things I don't necessarily enjoy doing. This is advice. Have you ever heard this book before called The Five Regrets of the Die? Yeah. So yeah, exactly. One of those is, as you said, I wish I kept up with my friends. I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others

expected of me. I wonder how many people are actually doing that, though. Like, like when you're, and these are people on hospice, basically, or right before hospice. At the end of our life, there's some caregiver and that's asking, a nurse that's asking these questions. I think she's in Australia. It's a great book. I haven't read it, but the summary is just like, I mean, it's one of these books like, you know, it's like the book of the Ten Command. You just need to read them, I think. I wish I'd let myself be happier. I wish I had the courage to express my opinions and my feelings, and I wish I hadn't worked so hard. So I I see that. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

Nobody is on their dying, you know, Ben said, I wish to spend more time on Zoom telecons. You know, definitely agree with that. But I wish I had the courage to live a life. How many people you think right now, James, are not living the life that they want? And they're leading it because, like an 80-year-old or 70-year-old. Most people.

Really? Yeah, I can think. Who do you care about? I mean, like, let's take Jay. You think Jay is living a life, you know, Jay is living the best life he could possibly be living right now. Jay has no complaint. So Jay and I have spent more time together in the last two years than you and I have.

We had an amazing Chinese food. Looking for James is my best time ever. Yeah, it's true. I know. How long have you guys been together? Does he still get you anniversary presents? 2016. 2016.

We even have... Have you given him a raise? Wait, is he going on strike? Jay, are you going on strike soon? No, never on strike with James. Damn. Never on strike with James. James is probably the only employer that I would never go on strike with.

longer than most of your marriages, James? It's longer than all of them. So my business partner, my business partner, Dan, he's my partner in investing, and he's been my partner on several Entrepreneur Avengers. He's been on this podcast actually about six or seven times now because we did.

Yeah, yeah. And we've been partners. Well, he started working for me in late 1999 or early 2000. So he was working for me. But we've been actual 50 partners since 2001. So that's 21 and a half years right now. And we have never once had an argument.

Now, we've disagreed. We've disagreed on lots of things, but we've never been, like I've never been upset, angry at him. And I'm pretty sure vice versa, which is a really great, I'm really happy about that partnership. I wish I had more of that in my life.

Jay and I. Yeah, no. Yeah, no. But I think, like, living a life that's not true to yourself. Like, my father, you know, again, I ended up reuniting with him. But he always blamed, like, his mother, you know, as like a 50-year-old. As, you know, when I knew him as an adult, we were both adults. And he brain, like, my mother didn't, like, even know how to breastfeed and this.

And I'm like, you're 50 years old, man. Like, you know, like, I'm overweight. Like, I could lose another 15, 20 pounds. You don't seem overweight. Well, I carry it well. I did drop. Can, 5-11. Yeah, how much you weigh?

5-11, 5-12 with the Afro. How much do I weigh? That's very personal. I weigh north of 200 pounds. All right, so. I could lose 25 pounds and be really, then I'd be as ripped as you are looking right now. Okay, I'm at the upper end of my weight in my life. Like, so I'm 5'9 and I'm 160 pounds.

So really, I feel like I should be, normally I've been about around 150. And for some reason, now I'm 160. And I don't know why. Well, some reason. I don't know what happened the last couple of years. Not that you were like jogging six kilometers a day, you know, back. I wear the same size clothes. I have a theory that I've been working out more.

So, and muscle weighs more than fat. That's true. It does. It does. But, you know, my father would say things like, and I have one of my sons is like, I call my twin. And he looks like me. He acts like me.

He's got the same personality. He wants to have a podcast. He wants to meet Jay. But, and he's overweight. as I was really overweight as a kid. He's not as bad as I am and he's much taller. He's like super tall. He's almost five feet tall and he's just 10 years old.

But when I look at him and I'm like, okay, so I was overweight as a kid. Now, if I go to a therapist and we have this like Matt Damon, you know, in Goodwill hunting, remember that movie? Yeah. Like if I've learned anything from movies, James, is that to have a psychological breakthrough, a man has to like become completely weepy, teary and just bawling on his therapist, you know, Robin Williams' chair, right? Okay.

So like, let's say that's true for me because my parents got divorced. My father abandoned me, my older brother and me, and went off, created a new life, got remarried, didn't talk to me, you know, did his thing. Then, you know, and I live with my stepfather who had, you know, he would drink a lot. He would hit, you know, on occasion, you know, just discipline. I wasn't abused, you know, thank God. And I have a lot of respect for what he did. But this is just a reality of my life, right? It happened.

I was uprooted and moved five times before going a freshman year of high school. It was a lot for me. And so you could say, oh, well, like, that's why you're overweight, you know, as a kid. And that's why maybe you're still overweight because you, you know, you haven't dealt with this childhood trauma. Maybe I do need that, James. Maybe I need to go to Robin Williams and just break down and ball my eyes out. But I haven't.

You know, whatever. I'm not saying anything negative about psychotherapy. I think it's fine. But then I look at my son, you know, And he's also a little overweight. Again, not nearly as much as I was. He's had like two loving parents, never moved, never lived in a different room. You know, it goes to great school, has a lot of, you know, and he's like, oh.

So in other words, if I'm, like, blaming my childhood as a 51-year-old man, I think I'm, like, kind of a loser. And I think, you know, to do that, like, people like, well, maybe you just need to get in touch with this childhood trauma. And I know you had challenges and you had issues. But, like, I think there has to be a statute of limitations. When you are like, first of all, I'm like, now I'm taking care of my mother. Like I'm financially, my brother and I, we have to support her. She's in her 80s, right? And she's not married.

You know, my father's dead. You know, so I'm taking care of my children. I'm taking care of my parents. You know, it's very awkward. And my career is in like full bloom, right? And I'm doing all these side hustles. And, you know, like, you got to stop blaming your past. You got to stop blaming your parents.

That's true. But living a life true to yourself is more than that, right? Like maybe you're working for a boss who you're always trying to kiss his ass because you want promotions or whatever. Or maybe you're married to someone who politically is one way and you're politically another way. But you can't say where you feel politically because you're afraid she would lose interest in you. Or maybe you're a salesman. So you're always trying to please the people you're selling. There's a lot of reasons why, like I feel from the year 2000,

to the year 2010 roughly, roughly a 10-year period, maybe even longer, maybe 1995 to 2010. I was totally not living a life true to myself. It was only when I really started writing about my own stories in 2010, and I reduced my expenses because I had just gotten out of a period of going broke, and I was able to, and I wasn't working for anybody. I was able to live a life true to myself. And I've always tried to stick to that,

but it's hard, I think, because of so many different agendas. And I think the more ambition one has, the less you can live true to yourself because the more you have to cater to the people you're ambitious about. Yeah, but I mean, do you feel like the fact that you weren't, that's a specific circumstance.

So unless you're totally self-employed or inherit money or, you know, born, you know, on third base, you know, at a certain point, when is the statute of limitations when you are out of the nest, every decision at some level, like you could have quit, right?

You felt pressure as you couldn't, but you could have quit, right? I mean, it wasn't, you weren't a slave. A day after I left their house, like, when I was 18. Sorry, you didn't talk to them, you said? I didn't care what they thought. Oh, you didn't care, right. So that was living a life true to yourself.

So from 18, at least with the vector in the direction of your parents, you are living a life true to yourself. And now you're certainly living, in other words, I guess I'm just, I'm skeptical of these notions of catharsis, that like everything has a root cause or, you know, Freud thought everything was traceable to sex

or, you know, Frankl thought everything was traced to like searching for meaning. And, you know, there's kind of like, like I said, a statute of limitations when you were an adult. And, yes, you may have been actually traumatized. I mean, you, you know, and I have mutual friends that have been like legitimately traumatized, abused, and so forth.

And yet, they're incredibly healthy individuals. And they've gotten past that. And it's almost like they weren't responsible for what happened to them, God forbid. But they were, they're responsible for how they react to it. Look, I think this is really important. Like, I wrote a book, Choose Yourself, because it was basically, don't let anyone else choose your opinions, your job, your passions, you're anything. and the whole book was about that.

But I wrote it because it was something I had to learn because I wasn't choosing myself. I wanted to be picked and selected. I wanted some group of people to like me and reward me. And to live true to yourself, you have to at every level, choose who you are. And it's not like it happens once

and then forever after you're free. It's like every single day. You have to do this. Every single day you have to make progress. Even if it doesn't mean make progress at X. I can't make progress at basketball every day because I'm getting older. I'm going to get worse at basketball every day. I don't play basketball, but I'm just using that as an...

Despite the 5-9 hops that you have. But it actually reminds me of a notepad idea I have. I have a couple of ideas for you. So you've been watching 1883, right? Yes. And Yellowstone. Yeah, in 1923. is coming out in a few days.

Yeah. What do you think of this idea? You know how that's kind of rekindled this notion of of like Westerns and like tractor supply company is like seeing this huge explosion and there's whiskey brands

and whatever, all these Western themes? I have an idea mapping directly on from Yellowstone onto, stay with me, the biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph and Jacob and Joseph, okay? So the Yellowstone.

By the way, it totally maps one to one. I'm sure it was inspired by that. Well, it may have been, although you really can't see much of that. But watching 1883, as I did on a 12-hour flight from Santiago to Los Angeles, that show, it's really, of course, there's people dying, and there's attacks by Native Americans, and then there's this, and there's disease, and there's bandits. All those themes are happening in the Old Testament,

in the first book of the five books of Moses called Genesis. There's not a single, there's only two laws in that whole book that starts, it's 40% of the Torah, the Old Testament. It only has two commandments, like be fruitful and multiply and circumcision. That's basically, and the rest of the Torah has. Wait a second. Don't eat the apple. That's in Genesis.

That's not one of the 613 commandments, but yes, yeah. There are, I'm saying it's all narrative. It's all stories. and Genesis. That's right. Onanism. Yes, very good. That's actually technically spilling your seed.

It's not masturbating, but masturbating does the same thing that onanism does. So in other words, let's not get into that. The point is that Genesis is all stories and the other four books of Moses are almost no stories in all laws. So it's kind of interesting. But the stories are, you know, there's rape. There's like tribal invasions. There's wars between kings and queens, and there's takeovers and political dynasties and intermarried, all incredible themes.

And you can almost map like John Dutton today onto, like, say, Joseph, when he's become the king of Egypt. Effectively, the pharaoh, you know, the courtier to the pharaoh, save the life. There's a famine. There's wars. His brothers who sold him into slavery and told his father he had been killed, you know, because they were jealous of his dreams, and he was hit upon by the Pharaoh's wife. It's incredible drama, right?

So that's, that's Yellowstone. Okay, so Joseph is Yellowstone. Then you go back to 1883, that's Abraham. That's clear. So Abraham, like, sets off into the land. He leaves Iraq, and he goes to Canaan and Israel, and he has all these battles with the kings and his son. He has to sacrifice his son, these things.

He's talking to God. He gets divorced from his wife. It's incredible, right? Yeah. The drama. And then Isaac is in there, because Isaac is actually the one that we know least about. There's only like two or three chapters about him. And the women in Genesis are the heroes.

They are the brilliant ones who tell the husbands are like kind of bumbling, you know, like there's too ethereal. They're talking to God. And the women are like, this, you know, kid who's living in our house is going to try to kill our son. And even the twins in my womb, you know, Rebecca, you know, says like, the one is going to try to kill the other one, Assov and Isaac and Jacob.

Anyway, and then the 1923 is like, is Jacob. It was where, you know, he goes and he settles, you know, he settles the land and he has these dreams and ladders. And anyway, I thought that, I'd like to get your opinion. I actually pitched this to someone that, I don't think you've had on your show, Ben Shapiro, who's become, I've become friendly with Ben Shapiro, who's had an incredible year himself.

Yeah. And he said, I like the idea, which, which I thought was pretty high praise. So I'm going to pitch that to his pretty. He has a whole production company now, and I'm going to pitch it to them as a screenplay. So, stay tuned for that. But what's the idea?

Just Genesis itself or another? No, like Yellowstone, but mapped onto the Patriarch. So it would be called Canaan instead of Yellowstone or maybe it would be called Patriarchs. Yeah. And it would be like a multi-series, multi-part, but not like, I don't want it to go on forever, like, you know, friends or something.

It should be very stressful. Like, look, whenever they've done this in other religions, like in India, when they did the Mahabharza as a TV series, it was like the most popular TV series in all of me. Yeah. That was must see TV. Yeah, no one's ever done that, really. I mean, they've done that about Jesus,

but no one's ever done that about, and they've done, of course, the Ten Commandments, but nobody's ever done it about Genesis. And you're right. You know, it's so funny, James, is that, like, people say, people say like Kanye West I love the way by the way that we have to

respect his choice of like we have to call him yay or it's like not respect who cares this freaking loser anti-semi you know scumbag I'm not going to call him yay I agree it's a shame this stuff has come out about him I do think he's like the greatest music producer

at least for hip hop of all time you know regardless he might be he might be but that's again I just did a video about this guy Fritz Haber who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry who invented fertilization techniques and also invented the tools that created the gas chambers

and created chemical warfare is called the father of chemical warfare and I have this video called The Man Who Killed Millions and then won a Nobel Prize. But anyway, so you could be very smart but you can be very evil, right? So intelligence, wisdom, and knowledge

are totally different things. Yeah. Okay, so that's one idea that maps. And the reason I think it would be so successful is that people have this romanticization about the past. Like, they forget about, like, even after seeing, like, a guy gets bitten, I'm not spoiling it too much. But let's say someone gets bitten by a snake in 1883, right?

And it's like a death sentence. Like, you spraying your ankle and you're dead. You know, like, we have this, but like sales of cowboy boots and Western and the Airbnb where Yellowstone is shot, you know, the Y when the barn, let's like rents for like $10,000 a night now. Anyway, people romanticize it. they're moving to Montana, they're changing the culture and the lifestyle. But the same thing could happen with respect to the Middle East.

Like the Middle East is kind of having a renaissance. There's more peace there. Maybe not with Palestinians, but that'll happen, I hope. But the rest, you know, UAE, Dubai, the World Cup is in Qatar. You know, it's like almost a renaissance in the zeitgeist that people are getting very, very infatuated with Middle Eastern and the culture and the hospitality of the Middle East and showing that and how it traces back literally thousands of years. It's not like made up.

You can call the Bible, you know, whatever you want. But the culture, like those things, family dynamics, the role of women, the role of children, those are all crystallized back then. Your summer starts now with Memorial Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer cookouts with the next grill, four-burner gas grill, on special buy for only $199. and entertain all season with the Hampton Bay West Grove

seven-piece outdoor dining set for only $499. This Memorial Day get low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. While supplies last, price invalid May 14th or May 27th, US-only exclusions apply, see Home Depot.com slash price match for details. One thing I'm always interested in is, I think,

first of all, I agree, I think the story of Genesis would make a great TV series, whatever. But I would argue if you take any topic and map Genesis onto it, like you're making the comparison with the Yellowstone, that's going to be successful. So you have to decide,

do you want the topic to be biblical, or you could make a science fiction space opera like Star Wars, you could map Genesis onto Star Wars because there's a generational thing happening and there's about who inherits the family power essentially, And all these things happen in many sorts. You know what also is the books of Samuel 1 and 2, I think would make a great series because that's King David,

which is arguably the most interesting story in the Bible, because that's got real like, you know, palace intrigue and wars and deception and betrayal. I mean, so does Genesis. But I think books of Samuel even more with King David and King Saul and Solomon and then if Israel split in half after Solomon. So we could, we could, you know what we should do was just take every section of the Bible and turn it into a TV series. Exactly, right.

So that's one of my ideas. Then the other one, okay, so what's the problem? Like when people get really famous, right? So they're getting really, like, internet famous. And people are saying, like, they'd rather be famous even for doing something bad. And that's why, like, Ben Shapiro actually does something important. If there's a mass shooting, like at the nightclub, the LGBT. KKKee a nightclub in Colorado last month.

He won't use the name of the shooter. He won't ever mention that. Whereas the New York Times, they'll print the name and like, oh, his upbringing and like he complained with his mother because he was overweight. He used to not to historically. Well, I look at that. But then you've got this whole thing where people are, you know, like some people are saying to Elon Musk, like, you better have a food taster.

And, you know, like, so, you know, then you get so big that you become like a target and everything you say and you make fun of pronouns, you know, prosecute, and this and that. And like, oh, like, and you get death threats, right? So, or you get doxed. So imagine a service. So this is anti-doxing as a service. A-D-A-A-A-S, okay? And so you go out there and you basically do what's called a white hat hacking thing. You like find out everything about Jay, you know, that you can possibly find out. And then, and then you just like protect him against all these different threat vectors. You know, so like, it's basically like insurance against

you know Jay getting doxed you know like oh he works you know he he just moved you know back to Malaysia I don't know it's making stuff up so what do you think about that like like as as more things in society become more kind of highly prized like fame attention

I think it's going to get worse like people are going to go after like Josh Peck like I've become friends with Shua Peck you know like he's like has to have security it's insane yeah he's got 13 million followers but I think it's a I think it's a good idea if it were possible. It's sort of like cybersecurity.

Like cybersecurity is an important industry now in society, but as has been described to me by cybersecurity companies, the good guys will never be as good as the bad guys are at creating the threats. And so for doxing, I think it's very hard to create that as a company. Now, you can provide insurance against doxing. That might be a company. Exactly. So that's right.

That might be an interest. that might be another thing, and then you have to just figure out if someone's gaming that or not. But to prevent it, yeah, you can provide consulting to help prevent it, but it's unpreventable.

And then the last idea has to do with, like, this chat, AI chat, GPT, these chat bots, which are very interesting. I don't think they're quite there yet. I mean, maybe because it's more subjective

than, like, beating somebody in chess or Al, ago or whatever, folding of protein simulate. But you have these things. So I guess the analog would be kind of something that test for biases in these chats. So like

I got one from my brother yesterday. He put in like, what is the Great Reset? Write three paragraphs about the Great Reset and why Carl Schwab is trying to have a social credit system implemented. You know, just for fun. He sent me the

output of it. It's like, that's a myth. GPD comes back with like, that's a right-wing talking point that has a... So it's obviously like looking at Wikipedia. So if I ever do a video about COVID, which I have one coming out with Dr. J. Badacharya, I don't know if you know that name. Yeah, yeah. He's a...

Oh, he's the Stanford professor who was just made news because he was in the Twitter files. He is in the Twitter files, but the reason that he was in the Twitter files is because he established what was called the Great Barrington Declaration, which was a common-sense protocol that we should work to... not do social lockdowns and complete society shutdown, which we did do,

because that would have ultimately negative downstream consequences on mental health and physical health and economic health. And he's an epidemiologist and a medical doctor at the Stanford Medical School. And he was later targeted specifically by Fauci and Francis Collins, the director of the NIH. And they called for a takedown of him. And one of his colleagues, Michael Levitt, who's a Nobel Prize winner at Stanford, for being fringe, quote, this is what Collins, imagine like basically any boss,

the ultimate boss of the world, you know, of this world of academia. He's a director of the NIH which supplies $50 billion a year in medical research. And he called him a fringe epidemiologist and that he called for a takedown of them, public takedown, basically calling for a public shaming. And Fauci said, I largely agree.

And this is just despicable. So I have a podcast coming out with him. But when I do the podcast, YouTube will insert in the YouTube, and this is why I don't like YouTube very much, even though I'm trying to grow my channel's audience. But they'll put a warning and they'll link to Wikipedia. It's just like if you put COVID anywhere in there, here's the thing on COVID.

Or if you put it in The Great Reset, I did an interview with Neil Ferguson, the historian also at Stanford. And it was about the Great Reset. The Great Reset is a myth. And it just refers to Wikipedia, which is like wildly, as left wing as Twitter ever was, and it'll refer you to there.

And so it's GPT chat. It's just searching Wikipedia. So it's like these biases are just getting like mega, mega amplified. And so we need some kind of tool to like an AI tool that's basically going to be the anti-turing test. So it's a tool that's going to prove that you're a computer. And I don't know how to implement it.

I mean, you know much more about computer science than I do. But like we're going to need some way, it was just like detecting, you know, oh, this guy, Tom Cruise, you know, or Michael Sayler, you know, is telling you to buy this crap coin, let me say, that, you know, oh, well, this is a deep fake. But we need the same thing. We need like deep fake detectors. We need chatbot detectors and all sorts of things. I think it's going to become very, very, very serious pretty soon. I think you could be right. And I think my solution is to withdraw more and more from social media. And this relates to our, beginning conversation, which is, you know, every day I used to be on social media and try to get more followers and engage with my, you know, with people and as many people as possible. And now I just realize, A, not only the uselessness of it, but it just gets me in more and more trouble.

But your point about AI, I just want to tell you, on Nopad, we have an AI, we have GPT3 hooked up. And if you need AI-based ideas to add to your own list, we have, we, you know, coded it up that you can do that. And so I had a bad business idea. I called a bad idea the day. And it was called the podcast family tree. So like, you've been on my podcast. So you're like a quote unquote son of mine on my podcast.

And Ryan Howe. And Jordan Harbinger, just to interrupt, was the reason that I was able to come on your podcast. Right. And so I've been on Gordon and get you on my podcast. Or let's say Andrew Huberman's been mine and Lex Friedman also had Andrew Huberman.

And so Lex Freeman and I would be sort of like in-laws together of Andrew Huberman. And the idea of the podcast family tree, the business point is that you could see which podcasts are similar to yours, the ones you have the most kind of genetic, quote unquote, you know, genetic material together on this family tree. And also it could help you find guests. You could see which podcasts have had guests, which podcasts similar to yours on the family tree have had guests that you haven't had and so on. So anyway. Correct. Yes. Networking.

Yeah, the network of networks. Yeah, it's like Facebook. But I had the AI generate an additional idea for this list. I kind of, the list was describing the idea. And then I fed in just a phrase podcast family tree to the AI and to have it come up with an idea. So it didn't really understand what I was asking. So here's the, here is the idea came up with. The title of the idea is the family tree of bad ideas.

And then it says the description of the family tree of bad ideas is how capital is, how capitalism is ruining our planet. In this podcast, or how capitalism is ruining our planet, we trace its origins back to its creator and see how it has spawned a new generation of terrible ideas. That was the AI-generated idea.

It had nothing to do with capitalism when I was asking you, but that was like its impulse. So you're right. It's just like weird bias that we have to be careful. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, exactly.

Yep. So look, Brian, you got to come on the podcast we're off, We can't have it be like, you know, I'm scared. And we should also figure out another thing to work on. We always were thinking out things to work on. Yeah.

Well, we had a pod pub, which, you know, we kind of, we should get back to, you know, distilling books. Are you still bullish, you know, on podcasting as a, you know, a big thing or you think we're reaching peak podcast? No, I'm, I'm, I'm, well, I don't see the podcast world growing, but, but podcast, but it's not shrinking either. And I think there is always a voice for people want to listen to things when they're driving to work or they're at their gym. They can't watch things.

They listen to things then. And they want to hear good ideas and interesting ideas and insightful ideas or good stories. True Crime is the biggest podcast category, actually. So I think there's, I think, you know, people always say books are dead and now they're saying podcasts are dead. None of these things are true. It's just that TikTok is amazing. So yeah exactly I started to do the short video I can't get into TikTok I just oh my I think it's going to get shut down the most talented humans on the planet okay whether it's

TikTok or Instagram Reels whatever the most talented yeah you see these like kids jumping from building the building and then doing flips and then and then other kids doing you know magic that's unbelievable and it's amazing the talent that finds itself on TikTok what is going to be the TikTok I asked a question on Twitter I was like what's going to be what is you know what What is, now there's post news and then it was Mastodon? I was like, what is post news going to be the Mastodon of, you know, like, because like Twitter's just going to stay, right? I mean, you're still pretty optimistic about Twitter. Oh, yeah, yeah.

No, I think Elon Musk is going to do a great job. And he's already doing a great job. But notepad, N-O-T-E-P-D.com. Yeah. The social network of ideas. This is the most actual insightful social network out there with a great community. I'm self-promoting because it's my site. Yeah.

No, I love it. I love this site. I got the Brian. I got the at Brian at Notepad. I got the premium handle, the five-character handle. Yeah. Thanks to Jay setting it up. You're going to get offers for millions for that.

I know. I'm going to sell that squatter domain and squat on that. So last question for you maybe is like it revolves around. So one of the things that's been hard for me is like I don't, you know, I get paid. I'm a public, you know, university professor. I get paid fine. But, you know, obviously I get sponsor opportunities for the podcast. And you always said, you know, in the, when I was first asking you, like, should I accept this, you know, click, you know, CPM, whatever that stands for cost per mill.

And I said, you know, should I accept, you know, a dollar, whatever, $15, $20. And you were like, well, there's the actual money aspect of it, which is important. But then there's a like, there's kind of the prestige that you are in a category of people that can advertise and monetize your podcast. I think that is valuable. But now, now, like, it is also an overhead. There's a burden. There's managing expectations. And there's, like, looking for advertisers.

Then there's vetting their things. Like, do I really want to do, like, manscaping again, you know, like, how much is there left to mow on my lawn? You know, whatever. Like, and just for the brand and, like, I'm supposed to be a serious professional. And then sometimes it'll be some program, like, they'll put in, like, eBay, and it'll be, like, 500 decibel loud, you know, like, get your Christmas card. whatever. I'm like, well, I'm assigned. Like, I've got a Nobel Prize winner on right now.

I guess I'm asking you, should I, I don't need the money, you know, necessarily. It's not that much. It is a workload. It is a kind of managerial overhead, a burden, bandwidth detractor. So your pain point, so let's just look at the pain points first. One is, is there's a reputation thing. You say you're a serious professor. It looks weird when you're talking about manskeeping and whatever. Second is the managerial overhead.

third is what? The third is like giving something away for free on one hand, it could increase your audience, right? Because people like, I just skip over.

Even your ads, like half the time I'll just fast forward 45 seconds skip. Yeah. You know, I have this thing when I'm listening to Ben Shapiro. I know what he's going to say like,

but now. And as soon as he says like, but now, like it's 45, 45, 45, 45. And then like he's back. And I don't listen to him. But I'd like to not have to do that, you know,

and it would make me more endeared to a podcast. because he's not selling me stuff. He's not the type of person that I have to worry he's going to sell me athletic greens or whatever. Right. So I would say for you, you probably don't need to do ads to, you know, you have a lot of things like you're, look, me too.

I probably don't need to have ads. But here's the thing. First off, I still stand by. It shows that you're the type of podcast who's big enough that people want to advertise on you. And then your content is such that people want to advertise. That's a kind of authority legitimacy. But a lot of your pain points have nothing to do with ads,

but like managerial overhead, you can use a third-party ad placement agency like mid-roll to do all your ad placements. And you could say, I don't want to do any host red ads. I just want to do ones that are read by someone else and placed into the podcast. I want to have nothing to do with them. So then you have zero managerial overhead

and zero personal stake in what you're averaging. You still have this thing that you are in a category of someone who's pitching. you, you know, to my audience, now I'm like a salesman. I'm a vector to sell them. Sure, I agree. It's one step removed, but like, let's say I just like, like, this all-in podcast, you know, I think one of the reasons I like listening to them is, you know, if I'm going to sleep, you know, they're, I'm not going to get interrupted with some ad for eBay

in the middle or some, you know, ad for, you know, athletic greens, I guess. I don't think you need to do ads. One, one reason I like to do ads is that, uh, I also feel everything I do should have, at some point, should be profitable. Because that's another way of measuring that I'm doing something that is, I don't want to say worthwhile, but it is doing something that it hits some bar that people have said, okay, this is worth it. The problem with that is that, yes, right. So as long as you're not like, I have to break even or I have to, you know, make money,

I think that's when it becomes like, I got into this for fun. Unless you're like Joe Rogan or Ben Shapiro. Or Tim Ferriss or, yeah, exactly, or Andrew Huberman, but won't come on my show. Like, I like to know that everything I do pays for itself. So, yeah, I wasn't always like that. This gives me a good discipline about the quality of what I'm doing so I don't take it for granted. It gives me a good discipline about, you know, understanding what to pay people and what, you know, what different costs are worth it. So this is only a new philosophy for me.

And I think, but it was told to me by Navine James. who's a billionaire who started InfoSpace in the 90s, and now he has various entrepreneurship activities. Because I asked him, why'd you raise $20 million for your latest business when you're a billionaire? Why didn't you just fund it yourself? And he said that if he paid for himself,

he would never know if it really had value. You know when it has value and other people value it. That's true. But at a certain point, but you only want to know it has value because you want it to be not sunk cost and kind of giving leaving money on the table or whatever.

In other words, you could just start a charity, you know, or whatever. I don't want to do that. I want to do a podcast. What do you want to do? Let me ask you a question. Next year, what's like your calendar look like? You're kind of in all different dimensions.

A weak scale for the whole year. Like, if I had asked myself last year, why I wouldn't have imagined how great this year would be with the one major tragedy of losing a very close friend at a very young age. with young children, that's equal to all the good stuff that happened and more.

But, you know, I couldn't have fathomed what would happen this year and it's great and I feel blessed. What are you looking forward to next year? That's reasonable. That's possible to occur. First of all, I always make predictions for myself at the beginning of year and they always change. I remember, yeah, with 2014 or 2015, I wanted to write a novel and I ended up getting obsessed with stand-up comedy. And that's all I did. And, but I, I'm really excited about, I want to really, I help so many people with their writing, and I really love it and enjoy it. I enjoy coaching writing now more than I even enjoy writing.

And I'm really excited about making a writing course on whether I put it on Udemy or wherever else, I don't know, but I'm, Jay and I are videotaping that this coming weekend. The other thing is, I've been working, you know, when I was a lad in the 90s, I, you know, achieved a high chess ranking. and my goal is to achieve an even higher one this coming year and then write a book about it because the book has been so fascinating. It's not about chess.

There's so many things I've experienced on this journey of trying to achieve something I achieved as a 27-year-old that it's blown my mind. I learned things I did not realize I'd be learning about myself, about the brain, about health, about ambition, all of these things that we've talked about has come from just simply trying to achieve the chess rating I had. in the 90s.

So that's kind of like your metric, summarizing your metric for next year. Yeah, I guess, yeah. Because if I do that, it means I will have put myself through a study program and discipline to a level that I've never done before. Like, it's much harder for... Exactly. No, I get it. And it's kind of like an encrypted,

you know, very dense encryption that summarize a lot of things. And it reminds me of a very famous Russian physicist who was the intellectual son. of another great Russian physicist, Yaakov Zeldovich. He said that this guy Zeldovich would always tell him, he would say, like when he was a young man, he said, you must take your son or daughter skiing.

Like, that's your goal in life. And he never knew what the hell he meant. Like, first of all, he was single. Second, he didn't have any kids that he knew about it. But he was like, what the hell is he talking about? Like, imagine what it means to take your kid skiing. You have to have physical health. You have to have a kid.

You have to have, you know, maybe you've been married. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. And then you have to have the, wherewithal to go there. That is the per... Isn't that interesting? An analogy.

Sorry to interrupt. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's right. Because I realize now I need to think, and this I realized a while ago, but I've been needing to think about my nutrition. I've been needing to think about my sleep schedule, my stamina, my energy. So I have to exercise.

Study it. And just neuroscience. I've had to learn like what things just at the age of 50 are different than at the age age of 27. And I always thought I was very good at learning how to learn. but there's a different level now achieving something at this age that is

the industry itself has changed the chess world has changed but I've changed so the discipline is like enormous. It's much more than what I thought I needed. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough.

Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises.

It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. It's like, imagine I tell you, James, you're going to come in last in your final race. You're like, what the hell? You know, I don't want to come in last. But if I say, oh, you set the world record for over a hundred-year-old speedwalkers,

you'd be like, hell yeah. That'll be awesome, just to know that. So anyway, I wish that you will have at least the fourth power of my chest rating coming this year and that you won't have to cheat to get there, you know, putting something, you know, in some orifice of your body as alleged by somebody about somebody else. But I do wish you all the best. And yes, I hope that we can talk a little bit more frequently and maybe get together. I'm going to, yeah, I'm not going to, I'll tell you, I have a really cool kind of adventure. that's coming up in January, February.

Where are you going? We've talked about it later. It's related to Sam Bankman-Fried, though. So I'm going to need your advice. I'm going to go visit him. All right. I want to get him on the podcast, but I need some help in vetting it.

He doesn't know about this at all, by the way. But I'm going to be in his neighborhood. So I figured I'd give it a try. The Bahamas? Yeah. All right. All right. Well, look, Brian, once again,

such a great time having you on the podcast. And I actually had a bunch of science questions for you, but we should do another one in a month where... Yeah. Because I always get these articles, like, turns out time in the universe never really... I get these weird, like a visit... Wormhole was created in the lab in a quantum computer.

You're like... Yeah. Just putting all these salads together. I have all these, like, I want to, you know, things that I really want to learn what they mean. Because I want to be your house... Your science... I want you to treat me like I treat my grad students.

I believe it. Totally exploited. I will do that. I will do that. All right. Okay. Ryan, well, happy Hanukkah. Have Merry Christmas. Everybody out there. And, yeah, can we talk to you again soon? Okay. Talk to you later. Bye. We hope you enjoyed part two of this special two-part co-lab episode with Brian Keating and James Altutcher. Please help us celebrate New Year's and subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen. Get more of James on its ever-popular, James L. Tucher Show podcast. For a chance to win some actual 4 billion-year-old space dust, subscribe to Brian's mailing list at briankeeting.com. Happy New Year from all of us at Into the Impossible

and resolve to always be curious in 2023. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition. for citizens back.