The Joe Rogan Experience - #1855 - Chris Best

Episode Date: August 11, 2022

Chris Best is a tech entrepreneur, CEO of Substack and one of its co-founders. www.substack.com

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. What's up Chris? How are you? Good. Have you done podcasts before? Nothing like this. I've done a few. Yeah. Okay. Cool. So tell me, first of all, tell me what was the inspiration to start Substack? Like how did it come about? I've always been an avid reader. My dad was an English teacher growing up. We had books around the house. And I've always thought that what you read matters. Like It shapes who you are. It shapes how you think. It creates who you are as a

person. And so great writing matters a lot. In my other life, I do software. Software is this magical thing where you can write a piece of code and it does something for a million people. If you write a great essay, a great book, a great thought, you can change who a million people are. you write a great essay, a great book, a great thought, you can change who a million people are. And so great writing is this valuable thing. And when I took a sabbatical from a company that I'd done, I was like, I should be a writer. That would be good. Like, how hard could it be? These guys are doing good things. I started writing what I thought was going to be like an essay or a blog post or a screed or something, outlining my frustration with the state of the media industry, the state

of incentives on the internet, basically complaining, uh, wow, wow, wow. Social media is breaking our brains, you know, this kind of shit. And I sent it to my friend Hamish, who's really a writer. And he told me like, anybody can complain about this stuff. You're not as original as you think. All of my friends who are writers know all of this stuff. The more interesting question is, if all of this is true, what could you do about it? And that turned into Substack. And what year was this? 2017. It's really perfect timing for when everything started getting really heavy in terms of censorship and also the chaos that came about because of the pandemic and journalists getting canceled. And there was so much weird stuff in terms of what you were allowed to write about or not allowed to write about. And then, of course, the Hunter Biden thing, the laptop, all that stuff like came about in the first few years. A lot of the best writers in the world, in my estimation, were getting kind of tissue

rejected from the places where they would have been before. Tissue rejected? Like, it's an analogy. Like they're getting like an organ transplant that fails kind of thing. They're getting sort of pushed out from the places that would have been their home and where they could have done the thing that mattered to them before. What happened? How do you think that... What steps fell into place that caused all this?

My theory on this is that it's a combination of natural human affairs. There's human nature. people act in certain ways, there's dark tendencies that come out when you get people together at scale, colliding with the consequences of the first generation of the internet revolution, basically. The way that the first generation of the internet played out was this massive land grab for human attention. So first of all, the computer, and then even more so the smartphone kind of gobbled up all of this slices of people's lives that were just sitting there. People used to get bored. And then the smartphone came along and that just didn't exist anymore. And in that phase, the things that won were the things that were the most efficient at gobbling up everyone's attention.

And so you had this sort of, the game that everyone played was like, get everyone's eyeballs. And the things that you do to win at that game create an incentive landscape that drives everyone crazy. Yeah, the way to win at that game is be outraged or get people outraged. Yeah, the way to win at Twitter is be bad in a lot of ways. And if you don't want to do it, somebody else will.

Be bad. Well, I mean, bad in some, like be outrageous, be the ultimate tweet, as I've found out myself sometimes, is not the thing that everyone agrees with or even the thing that everyone hates is the thing that maximally divides people. the thing that everyone hates is the thing that maximally divides people. The thing that most separates the people that are in your tribe on your side and makes them kind of like cheer and at the same time spits in the face of the other people. That is the recipe for a successful tweet because that's the incentive landscape that makes Twitter succeed. Yeah. It's just, I go on Twitter once a day, maybe twice a day, just to see what kind of shit the monkeys are throwing at each other. It seems like a mental institution sometimes.

I see people arguing over things and things that are trending that have zero impact in my life, and I don't understand why people are putting so much attention to it, but it seems like the recreational outrage that comes about because of Twitter is one of the most addictive things I've ever witnessed people take part in. I mean, I say people, I took part in it a little bit for a while, but now I don't engage at all. I literally, I don't read my mentions. I occasionally post things and then I just get the fuck out of there. I just think it's too

It's just too Poisoned yeah You're a wiser man than most Well, I just see it. I see it in other people. I see what it does to people you know I just It's very strange because I never thought Twitter was going to become that. I always thought Twitter was just like some innocuous thing. When it first came around, it was silly. A lot of comedians loved it cause it was a great little,

uh, because in the beginning it was only 140 characters. It's great to keep your jokes succinct and little short little blurbs and try to fun, find fun, funny things to say. But then it just became some strange way for people to expose their mental illness.

Yeah. And none of that stuff is new. None of the bad things that people do on social media are a new facet of humanity. It amplifies it and it creates this false reality that everyone sees that slowly drives us crazy. So how difficult was it to A, start Substack, and then B, get journalists to come on board? The hardest part of starting Substack was convincing ourselves that it could work. Because it started as I was literally writing this essay. And Hamish and I were talking and we just came across this idea of like, what if we let writers go independent themselves? What if we let you start your own thing? You get the email addresses, you own everything. People can

pay you directly. Now you're getting hired and fired by your readers. It's this super, it sounded too simple to possibly work. We're like, if this thing could work, somebody would have done this already. It seems stupid, but we kind of talked each other into it. And you know, I'm a tech nerd. I'm a product guy. Hamish is not that he's a writer. He knows that world. And we kind of talked each other into it. And, you know, I'm a tech nerd. I'm a product guy. Hamish is not that. He's a writer. He knows that world. And we kind of both thought that it could work. And so we just sort of like slowly talked each other into it. He had a friend who was a writer who like needed it right away, basically, had wanted something like this and became our first customer. A guy called Bill Bishop writes Cynicism. It's a newsletter about China that everybody in business and government reads. Why did he need it right away?

Well, he, I mean, he, so he'd had this newsletter that he'd been writing for free and paying for the privilege of sending that was just like, what the hell is actually going on in China for anybody who needs to actually know? And, you know, lots of business people, government people all over the world would read it. And he like i should charge instead of paying to send this thing out i should charge people for this obviously but i couldn't figure out how to get the you know wire up the payment with the sending and the like he just needed someone to handle the details of it and we were like great we'll do that for you we'll like we'll do everything for you except the hard part. And then so you got him. And how did you get the word out?

Like how did it start to really become a player? A lot of it was we started with Hamish's friends, like people who he knew. And we would just go and talk to them. And especially early on, a lot of it was just telling people about this, why we were doing this thing and what we thought was wrong and how this fairly simple platform we were building could help. And if people bought this, like believed in the things we were saying, then they would think, oh, maybe I'll try this. And it really started with just great writers that Hamish knew or that people that we brought on knew. And we just were

like, here's what we're doing and why. Do you guys get resistance? Because I know there were some people that were writing bad things about Substack or saying that Substack is a bad idea. What was the argument? There's been a few. I mean, one that comes up a lot is there's been a few generations of it. At the very start, you're asking how we started. The argument was like, no one's going to pay for anything. You idiots. Right.

It's like, you know, writers on the Internet, social media is bad. Yeah, all sounds good theoretically, but I'm never going to pay for anything. Never going to work. Good luck. And I had this parlor trick where I'd run on people. I just be like, well, who's your favorite writer? After they just told me they would never pay for a writer. And then I'm like, who's your favorite writer? They'd say, ah, it's so-and-so. I'd be like, would you pay five bucks a month to like get their stuff directly? And they'd be like, yeah, I probably would, but that's different. It's that person. It's this thing. And so we sort of, there was this weird thing where nobody thought it would work in the abstract, but it worked once you had something that you cared about. So we kind of crossed the like, it's never going to work thing. And then immediately got into the, it's working

in its bad time for a bunch of things. Probably the most prominent of which is we started with this really strong commitment to free speech. If we think that we're making a platform for writers that is, you know, can be a positive force in our intellectual climate, we just think that's table stakes. That's something that's an important principle. And we came up in a time that not everyone believes in that at all. We took a lot of shit for a bunch a bunch of different times for well why do you let this person send emails to people that want to get it from them like what specifically like can you say like what writers were problematic would you like to avoid that um why'd avoid

that I don't want to put anyone on blast let's just talk about like subjects like what would you do like here's a question. What if you had, I mean, I think Substack is like, how many people do you have on it right now? In terms of writers? How many people? There's like tens of thousands. Wow. Pretty cool. It's going.

Yeah, it's wild. That happened so quickly. What if you got a Holocaust denier that starts publishing stuff on Substack? What have you got? It's like a Holocaust denier that starts publishing stuff on Substack. So we have a terms of service that we set out that has a couple of like really strict, really tightly construed things. Most of it's like you can't spam. You can't do these things.

We do. I mean, we do have a couple of things like there's no porn. You're not allowed to like advocate for literal violence uh there's a few things that that are sort of just like bright lines that are intended to be kind of like a really high bar and allow for space where there's a lot of shit on substack that we ourselves disagree with and find awful we try to take you know we think that kind of the old school aclu approach on this is correct right where they're protesting to like help the Nazis have their free speech rights. Right.

Not because we think those things are good, but because we think that airing them is more valuable and in the long run better than trying to solve the problem by censoring them. So there are people that are on Substack that everybody sort of agrees are gross. I mean, I don't know if there's anybody that everybody agrees are gross. But you guys?

For any individual, I think anybody that exists could find someone on Substack that they think is the greatest thing ever, and they could find someone on Substack they think is terrible, and we take that as a sign that we're doing it right. So, no porn, what are the other ones? I'd have to look it up. It's like, yeah, I think there's a doxing thing. There's like advocating violence. There's a few like kind of things that just break the edges.

Do you allow erotica? Like if someone published like Bigfoot porn? Yeah, we can. Our genius take on this is that we disallow porn, but we allow erotica. And it turns out that's like a non-trivial thing. But the intention is like, look, there's already OnlyFans. If you're just doing that, there's a place for you. And we're not – I don't even think – I don't have a problem with it.

I don't think that's wrong, but that's just not the thing that we're trying to serve. Right. But people are allowed to do that. They're trying to serve. Right. But so, but people are allowed to do that. They're allowed to like write. Yeah. Yeah. And so when, when it comes to like controversial things, like I'm sure a big controversy, I know Alex Berenson was a controversy because he was publishing a lot of negative studies

and things on, on COVID vaccines that a lot of people didn't want him to talk about. And this is how he got kicked off Twitter. And this is how he wound up suing Twitter and actually winning and getting back on Twitter, which is pretty fucking crazy. I could not believe they let him back on. Well, he was right. The problem is he's citing scientific studies from other countries that they don't like what the data represents. And there was also the CDC study where they were talking about boosters for 18 to 49 people, and they didn't want to release the data because they felt it would contribute to vaccine hesitancy. And he's like, what the fuck are you doing?

seen hesitancy and he's like what the fuck are you doing and that kind of stuff like publishing stuff that makes people uncomfortable but it is actually accurate it's a big part of journalism and he wasn't able to do that uh in these public forums like twitter and i would i would go a step further i mean i think publishing things that are true but uncomfortable is obviously journalism. And the value to that is obvious. And history is exceedingly clear that you can't always sort out at the time which is which. And the thing that that leads us to is that even things that aren't like we don't want to be in the business of trying to adjudicate what's true. And so we don't even have, we're not like, well, you can publish things that are true that make people mad. We're kind of like, look, this is,

you can publish things. This is your thing. People are trusting you. You're not subscribing to Substack. You're subscribing to some writer. And we think that it's better to allow the stuff to be like, to have people have a platform and have freedom of speech and let that stuff get sorted out because all of the alternatives that sound really good end up in disaster. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more. I mean, a good funny example is Trump's truth social. Right. So he he puts out this new social media platform, Truth Social, and then they start censoring people who talk about January 6th. Like, apparently they're- Like, they talk about it in a negative way. Yes. If they're like, January 6th might not have been great, they're like, that's your

band. Well, I don't think it's that simple. I think when they start talking about people who either incited or were saying things or... Let's find out. Find out what... Because Truth Social does censor things on the January 6th committee and all the investigations that are currently underway. I don't think they want to shine a light on the fact that, you know, not only did that happen, but there's some really troubling things about a lot of people that were involved in it.

Yeah, and as soon as you get to the place where you think your job as a platform, as somebody that's making the things where people are publishing their ideas, is not to let people publish what they want and let the market sort it out, but instead to push some narrative, even if the narrative is right, even if you're trying to push something that's unambiguously good and true by trying to publish it through censorship and through forced conformity, you end up doing more harm than good, at least we believe. Do you think that social media was the driving force for these ideologically driven journalists

now, instead of being a journalist that reports uncomfortable truths even if they don't agree even if the the side that they're supposedly on whether they're conservative or liberal whatever those uncomfortable truths are that fly in the face of whatever the narrative is that that side is pushing like is it social media and the echo chambers and worried about the blowback from either followers or other journalists? What caused that? I think that's definitely part of it. And I think it's not a new thing. If you look at every age, people who are saying things that are true and are uncomfortable to some dominant narrative, people always take flack.

There's always efforts to censor them. You can go back and look at, you know, people who are accused of being communists in the 60s. Like in every age that thing exists. I do think that social media amplifies that impulse and creates a situation where a few people who are displaying being very upset can create a false sense of consensus. Yes. Right. There's this, there's, there's like the, you know, Twitter and some of these platforms, you can get like a hundred or like even like 30 or 40 people

that are just really mad can make it look like the whole world is coming down around you and that everybody hates you and wants to burn you as a witch. Even if that's not actually true, even if that's just a small fraction of people feel that way. And if either you aren't strong enough to deal with that, or more likely if you're part of an institution that doesn't have the fortitude and the principles to push back against that, that's where I think that force can cause things to crumble in a way they ought not to. And that is what we're seeing. Yeah. And it is, well, it's an increasingly growing number of people, but it was relatively small initially. And now it seems like there's these mobs of people

that hop on any narrative to try to enforce. It's almost like they're just trying to get a win for the team. It seems very strange that that's taking place in journalism because it's always disturbing to me that people don't remember the lessons of the past and we have to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Like the example that you used of the ACLU, how they were literally defending Nazis and their right to free speech because their perspective was free speech should be an absolute thing.

And the correct response to that is not to censor these people. It's to correct them with correct speech. The optimistic take on this is that every generation has to learn this for themselves. People forget. The lessons from the past don't feel real until you've lived through it. But that once we live through it, people will understand, right? I think people are starting to get a new appreciation for why free speech is a principle that matters. I think it's something if you come up taking that for granted and living in a world

that you enjoy all the benefits of that without ever having to really think about it. You can forget why it matters, and then as soon as that comes for you, it flips it back on. I think we'll see if people will come in the other direction. I think people are starting to turn in that direction now, and I think it speaks to the success of Substack, that people are recognizing that you really do have to have some sort of a forum where someone can speak their mind and not have... I mean, your fears of criticism, that's not the issue.

The issue is being deplatformed, where you can't express yourself anymore because whatever you're saying troubles people. Right. And then the consensus reality is that these viewpoints, nobody is saying these things. Uh, when in fact there are people that would be saying them if, if, if they hadn't been kicked out of the, kicked out of the thing. That's a, that's, that has been one of the things that we've deliberately like put our minds to at Substack. This is one of the things that was in, in my whiny essay that I wrote for Hamish complaining about everything that's broken,

but it's not even the whole problem. I don't think, I think it's one of the things that's gone wrong. And the other one is just like the way that we spend our attention at all and the way that we can value quality versus just time and entertainment has been eroded because of the platforms that have taken over. And these two things like go hand in hand, but having people read things that are smart and good by somebody whose incentive is to like earn and keep people's trust, even if it's not, you know, even if it's not something they're going to get canceled for, that stuff doesn't always exist unless you have a model that supports it. And with Substack, do you have an algorithm, like say, if you enjoy Barry Weiss's work,

I recommend this? So the way we do this is very thoughtful because on the one hand, we want to have a network effect for the platform, right? We want it to be true that when you come to Substack, you know, yes, it's a great tool. Yes, it's all these good things. It's free until you take money and then we charge you 10%. But we also want it to be like, you're going to grow, right? You're going to find people who would love your stuff are going to be able to find it. And by being here, you get more benefit than we're asking in return. On the flip side, all of the obvious ways that you would do that,

if we were to copy the way that Twitter does this or the way that YouTube does this, we would just be recreating some of the things that we kind of like set out to fight against. And so as we build those features, we do have a thing that introduces you to recommended writers. The difference is it's not Substack or Substack's algorithm that's recommending,

it's the writer that you already subscribe to that's recommending. Oh. Well, I like how Barry uses her page because she uses her page to promote other journalists and other writers. Yeah, yeah, and we also have that. She has the guest posts and she's sort of like,

the same way that people coming on here can be like a career-making thing, like people going on Common Sense can be like a major turning point and she can bring somebody into the world that the world needs. The, when I say the pushback against sub stack, like has,

have there been major critical articles written about sub stack? Yeah. I mean, we've had a few, there's been a series of fun ones from the New York times. There was one that was like, is the sub stack economy bad for democracy? Which we thought was good.

There's been a few critical ones. What was their argument? How could you be bad for democracy? First of all, what a loaded thing to say. Is it bad for democracy? Is it the end of human civilization? Yeah. Will Substack kill us all?

Yeah, that's it. Subscribe for the next year to find out year that's the boiled down headline you know like youtubers do that they'll have like uh like a title to the video that's just pure clickbait yeah with a crazy photo on it like well it's you know betterage's law of headlines which is if the headline asks a question, the answer is just always no. Right. UFOs, are they real and among us today? No. Probably.

Maybe. Yeah, maybe I picked the wrong example there. Maybe in this room. I mean, look, we knew what we were getting ourselves into when we set out to build this thing, right? We're like, hey, we're making something that is aimed at the heart of the culture war. We're like, hey, we're making something that is aimed at the heart of the culture war. We're making something that we think can make some small positive difference in the forces that are tearing things apart and breaking things down. And if we are successful at that, there's no world where we get to do that where we don't have to take a lot of heat. You know, we're going to make people – there's no way to do that without making the people in the existing places mad. And I think that doesn't mean

that we shouldn't listen to criticism. That doesn't mean if we're wrong about stuff and people pointed out to us, we should cover our ears. But the correct amount of skeptical press and skeptical attention that Substack gets is never going to be zero. Yeah, no, I think it's good. I mean, I think in a way they're advertising for you for sure. I mean,

not in a way. I mean, they're definitely doing it. What they're doing by complaining about you is sort of the same thing that mainstream media does about podcasts. They don't understand what they're doing. That's how Trump got elected. Yeah, exactly how Trump got elected. They were talking about him constantly and it gave him press. And the thing about what's happening with Substack that parallels with mainstream media and podcasting is that they're bringing about their own demise by their very format. By what they're doing is sort of highlighting the strengths of what you guys have been able to accomplish. And one of the parallels in podcasting is, a show like CNN is never going to be able

to truly compete with a show like Breaking Points. Breaking Points on YouTube with Sagar and Crystal Ball. The reason why they're not going to compete is that, first of all, they're captured by whether it's executives or the corporations that run them, they're not independent. And so they have to have a slant on whatever particular thing that's in the news that whatever interests need them to have a slant on, you know, brought to you by Pfizer. I mean, we see these things over and over and over again in mainstream media to the point where people have lost their faith that this is objective journalism.

And so these other shows thrive, like the Jimmy Dore show and all these shows that highlight real problems and the real journalists of the world, like guys like Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, like those people flock to them now. Like surely there's got to be a rational take on this. Where the fuck do I get it? And then boom, Substack is there. Yeah. I think that's right.

And I mean, isn't your show 10 times bigger than the biggest CNN show? Supposedly. I'm skeptical that it your show 10 times bigger than the biggest CNN show? Supposedly. I'm skeptical that it's only 10 times bigger. I can't imagine anybody's really watching that. Who's watching this stuff? It's all like TV screens in airports. It is a lot of that, but I think they've kind of eliminated it from airports. Isn't that true recently?

Didn't they lose some sort of a deal with airports? People got tired of being bummed out at the fucking airport. I mean, the format sucks, period. The format where you have a conversation for five minutes and then you have to let the person go because there's a commercial break. And then right after that, you have another thing scheduled. It ensures that you're never going to get a real deep dive into something. And we all know as human beings, if you want to talk to someone about something, it takes time. If you want to really find out what someone's opinions are, you have to have a conversation with them and you have to find out where they're coming from. What's

your perspective? How did you grow up? Like, where did you form these ideas? Like, what was a major turning point in your philosophy and the way you view things? And you have to want that in the first place. Yeah. You have to just be curious what people actually think rather than bring people on to be the avatar of some opinion you already want, like the theme you already want the show to be about. Exactly. And so in many ways,

it's sort of ensuring the success of Substack because the system appears, if it's not broken, it's on a really shitty foundation. Let's hope. Yeah. I don't think you have to hope. Let's hope that it's good for Substack.

I'm not cheering for the demise of anything, really. Oh, I'm not either. I mean, I still read the New York Times and Washington Post and a bunch of other periodicals. I think that it's important. I think there's a lot of people that work for the Times and a lot of these other organizations that are much maligned that do great work. They're great journalists, but I think they're captured in some ways by the institution that they work for. And it's flooded with ideologically driven people and a very left-leaning ideologically driven populace. There's not a lot of very popular, very influential right-wing publications

that compete with all the left-wing publications. It's very unbalanced. And it's not like the right-wing outlets that do exist are bastions of free speech and independent ideas and not having a narrative. You mean OAN News is not awesome? I can't believe they're not. They're doing the truth social thing, right, where it's the same enforced narrative, enforced views just from a different way and the same mechanisms in a way that breaks the thing. And they've been – we talk about the way the internet changed all this stuff. The internet changed all these businesses too because they exist in a world where they're competing

for a slice of people's attention with Twitter, with TikTok, with YouTube, with everything. So there's this game where you're trying to grab people at all costs is just a tough game for the truth. Yeah. It is a tough game for the truth. But isn't that sort of what creates the interest for your very business? That's kind of cool for you. I mean, it really is kind of a perfect storm in many ways. The thing that I get the most excited about with Substack is getting to hang out with my heroes a bunch, like getting to meet people who are making things on Substack that I think matter for the world. Who are some of the ones that you go to on a regular basis on Substack?

Who are some good ones? You should have Ethan Strauss on here. This guy does House of Strauss. He's an ex-s ones? You should have Ethan Strauss on here. This guy does House of Strauss. He's an ex-sports journalist. Strauss. Strauss. S-T-R-A-U-S-S. And he, this is just at the tip of my tongue, he was a sports journalist and kind of like left for a bunch of these same things. He kind of like got disillusioned with how things were going and just started a newsletter and a podcast on Substack. And it's just fast.

I'm not even a sports guy. Like I'm a computer nerd. I don't follow sports, but I read and listen to this guy and it's just fascinating. You guys have podcasts on Substack? Yeah, we added a podcast thing. So you can do,

a lot of writers want to like. Interesting. Interesting. Do you have video? Yeah. Yeah, we had a video. Do you have video? Yeah. Yeah, we had a video. That's going pretty good, actually. That's great.

Why do you ask? Well, I mean, why do I ask? Because I was very concerned with where podcasts were going. I mean, Apple has been pretty cool. They never gave us a hard time. Apple has been pretty cool. They never gave us a hard time. But YouTube, they gave us a hard time about a bunch of episodes, particularly during the pandemic when they didn't like having dissenting opinions and different scientists that had different perspectives.

There's one woman on Substack who's amazing, Emily Oster. She writes about – she wrote some books about pregnancy. She's like an economist that writes about the real – there's so many crazy myths around pregnancy and raising kids and she just writes like the real stuff and she did some podcast episodes uh and a lot of it's like like my kids in covid like what do i do how much should i worry about and she's like super good and mainstream and sensible about all this stuff and i went to she does the podcast on substack but it's available on spotify too i went to spotify and like half the page has these warnings they put on there that's like look out if you if you read this like don't believe anything that's in here here's the here's the stuff you should believe and it's links to like the official

government sources and a few news things and i I understand why it's there. I understand why people feel like having accurate information matters. I don't think that that's, you know, I don't think that they're coming from an evil place wanting to do that, but it makes me queasy. I don't think that it's the right, I worry that we're losing our minds on that stuff, I guess. Yeah. Well, the problem is oftentimes they're wrong. And a lot of that information that they say is disinformation or misinformation turns out to actually be accurate. And the place where you're getting misinformation is the mainstream reporting. What's true is often very hard to sort out in advance, especially when something's like developing rapidly, things are changing.

to sort out in advance, especially when something's like developing rapidly, things are changing. It's the idea that, you know, you can have an official source that can just adjudicate in real time what's real and what's not is a fiction, right? And I think everybody when pressed would admit that. Nobody thinks that there's one authority

you could go to and say, yes, they're going to have exactly all the answers. And yet when you get into the regime of saying, well, who's allowed to talk about this? You know, this is the thing people fall back to you like, well, we'll just see. We'll see who the official things are good. And it's even more complicated than that because individual people, the kind of thing that makes people interesting. And this is true in like science and technology as well, is the kind of personality that makes you someone that can do exceptional things can also lead you to do crazy things.

I like the example of Isaac Newton, who co-invented calculus, invented a lot of the physics that engineers use to this day. and it turned out that he had a side hustle of like weird like bible conspiracy theories slash alchemy where he had this thing where he's like like basically a lunatic like a conspiracy theory guy yeah and he did like he did both right he had a crazy lunatic hobby and co-invented calculus and modern physics and if you look at him and said and this is a thing that could have happened at the time uh and said well this is heresy like this one thing you're doing is crazy like you're canceled um you miss out on something yeah for sure and

isaac newton wasn't he didn't he also die a virgin i don't know i think he he did. Checks out? I think there was a thing about... I just think he was averse to human contact, which, I mean, he might have been on the spectrum, right? I mean, if you really think about it, the type of person that could develop a theory of gravity, when... What year was that? I don't know. I mean, what the fuck did they know i mean the

alchemy he probably thought he was onto something yeah i mean it's like both of these probably seemed promising to him like to this guy that's smart enough to co-invent calculus was like all right but i've got two things going here they're both pretty interesting if one of these pans out, I'm sad. Yeah. Yeah, that is a thing about, look, I'm a giant Hunter S. Thompson fan. Huge. But he was a terrible person in a lot of ways. I mean, a lot of the stuff he did and a lot of the stuff he said, and he's just constantly snorting coke and drinking and screaming at people and throwing things at them.

There's a famous video of him having a gunfight with his neighbor have you ever seen that video okay find that literally a hundred times has a gunfight with his neighbor yeah they're shooting at each other yeah but not only that while there's cameras there like hunters like leaning around a corner and shooting at his neighbor this is like colorado and in the 1970s yeah he was out of his fucking mind that's wild but also fucking brilliant like and some of the things that he wrote to this day you know I'll go over some of those passages and they just like the people who did this decoration of independence and the Constitution were good people.

Look at him. It's a good place. Here we are in the middle of it, up on the mountain. If this son of a bitch wants to bitch about his cows over here, and should it be, well... It's our country. It's not theirs. It's not a bunch of used car dealers from Southern California. The Bucs say you have to be a player. I wish this guy was around to be on Substack. He probably wouldn't have wrote much, unfortunately. He was just too busy getting drunk and high at the end of his life.

You could have caught him, you know, if you caught him in like 1966, 67, it would have been fun. I think he would have been perfect for Substack. I think Matt Taibbi, who's big on Substack, had the same job at the Rolling Stone. Yes. Yeah, he did. Yeah. I love Matt Taibbi. I think there's room for a certain amount of chaos in individuals that have something to offer.

Like you just can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. And this is, I think this is how you make progress, right? Like you, if you insist on having kind of like a low variance and everything needs to be as safe and as good as possible, you might limit the downside or how wrong things are. But inevitably, you also limit the downside or how wrong things are but inevitably you also limit the upside right if you if you if you prevent people from being you know doing something dumb that's against the consensus you always prevent them from doing something that's genius that's against against the consensus and it's that thing there's like asymmetric upside there it's that genius

thing that moves the world forward and And so if you cut it off, it breaks, it breaks things. And that's the argument for freedom, right? And that's the argument for freedom of expression, freedom of just freedom of speech and of thought and the ability to be wrong, the ability to communicate in a way where you're, you don't have to jump through hoops to get your thoughts out. And I think there's pros and cons that come with that, right? You're going to have some people write things that, boy, it would be nice if we had an editor to go over this. But it's also really nice when I know there's not an editor. When I love reading Barry's writing, that I know that it's coming from her.

This is not fucked with because I've talked to Barry about pieces that she wrote where – I mean there's a thing she wrote about me for the New York Times where they had to change. They wouldn't let her say something. Or they add a headline that's like suddenly different than the thing. So editors can be good though, right? Lots of – there's people on Subsect that have editors. The difference is the writer hires the editor. Yes. Yes.

Right? Well, it's a collaborative venture. It's a collaborative venture. And ultimately, the person that you're subscribing to, the person that you're choosing to trust is the person that you're hearing from. Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm not opposed to other people's contributions. I mean, with stand-up comedy, it's critical.

We rely on the audience for their contribution. And we also rely on other comedians. Like someone will say, I think if you said it this way, it'll work better. And like, Ooh, you're right. Oh, thank you. You know, it's like you need other perspectives, but you also, you know, there's, I mean, I guess this is what you get from podcasts is one of the things that I'm so fascinated about Substack is that I find real parallels with the way Substack is dealing with journalism versus the way podcasts are dealing with free-form conversations. And there's a lot of similarities in this world where it's like, okay, the attention monster social media things are taking over everyone's attention. Everyone's got their phone now. People don't go to websites anymore.

Everything has to be in one of the apps on your home screen to be in your life. And it turns out that most of the apps on your home screen are controlled by one of these algorithms that's kind of working against you to just grab as much of your time as possible with a few exceptions. One is the podcast app where it's using this RSS format where you subscribe to things. And then those things from the people you subscribe to show up. Yeah. And you have this unmediated connection where you can actually choose who you want to spend your mind and life with. And another one is the email app where people can send you emails.

those last sort of like bastions of direct connection between people that are making things and people that care about them is the source of a lot of the power of the model, I would say. This thing where you're, you know, I'm subscribing to you on Substack, I'm listening to your podcast because I trust you to curate a slice of my intellectual life for me, right? If what I read, what I listen to is is Who I am you're one of the people I want shaping Who I am that's a big investment I'm not gonna hand I don't we shouldn't be handing that off to what Twitter thinks will make me mad yeah for sure what do you do like when you when you guys have meetings and you look at like how do we make this better what are our problems like what what are the the dilemmas that you guys encounter?

So the big thing we've done that's good is we picked a business model that aligns us with the people on the platform, right? So it's free to publish. Once you start charging money, we take 10%. So if you're a writer, when you make more money, that's how Substack makes money. When you're a reader, when you find stuff that's valuable enough that you actually want to choose to pay for it, that's also how Substack makes money. And so that sort of like guides us in the things we want to build. It's like, hey, we want to do the things that help writers, which are all the things that help readers, which are also the things that help Substack. And the dilemmas end up being like, OK, how do we do that? are the things that help Substack. And the dilemmas end up being like, OK, how do we do that?

And how do we do that in ways that don't erode the fundamental value that we're creating? Because there's lots of short-term things that we could do that would seem like really great ideas. Like, why don't we just show you eight recommendations of cool things to click on that the algorithm thinks are good? Or why don't we start to erode the direct connection you have with the writers because you know we could do this more efficient thing um but we know that the the reason the thing works

at all is because of the trust and because of the direct connection and so it's sort of like how are we how can we do the thing that brings the power of the network the power that all of these social media platforms has have harnessed but do it in a way that brings the power of the network, the power that all of these social media platforms have harnessed, but do it in a way that puts the people in charge, puts the writers and the readers in charge. There's not really a blueprint for that because that hasn't existed, I don't think, fully until now. Yeah. What do you do other than an algorithm? And people are terrified of algorithms because they've seen the effect that it's had on Twitter and YouTube. And, you know, it's unfortunate, but it does sort of highlight the worst instincts in human nature in terms of, like, accumulating information. You go towards things that are outrage-oriented.

Yeah. The algorithms, it's a bit of a misnomer, too. I'm a software guy and a nerdy by the stuff. And it's sort of like everything's an algorithm. It's like, are you using an algorithm? Are you using electricity? Like, of course you are. Right.

When we say algorithm, we mean like something that is showing you stuff in a way to achieve some goal that it has that might or might not be your goal. And so I think the way to think about it is not like, do you have an algorithm or not? But it's like, what is that algorithm trying to do, right? If the algorithm is trying to get you to use TikTok for as long as possible every day, that's going to have a different consequence

than an algorithm that's trying to introduce you to a writer that you trust enough that you might want to pay for them and care about them. Right. But how do you do that? How do you find an algorithm that's going to introduce you to someone that you would think would be interesting based on who you already think is interesting other than creating an echo chamber? These are the exciting problems we get to solve. I'll tell you some of the stuff that's working really well so far is this principle of putting the writers in charge and putting the readers in charge. So we added a recommendations feature. And rather than say, we're going to figure out who you want

to do, we let the writers pick. And you don't have to pick anyone. You can say, people come to me, I'm not going to send anybody anywhere. Or you can say, hey, if you're coming to me, one of the things that I can do for you is put you onto other things that I think are interesting, that I think are worthwhile. And I'm sort of putting my name on that as something that you would check out. Now that's going to be less efficient

if you just look at the numbers of like how much engagement does that get. It's going to be impossible to build something that is as efficient as like the YouTube page that's like, I know what you want better than you do yourself. But as a reader, I'm going to choose to spend my time on Substack around that stuff because it creates a real alternative. Because I know that I'm not giving my mind to something that's kind of operating against me. And I know that if I'm

seeing something, there's like a human being that made that decision and I know who they are. And I know that if I'm seeing something, there's like a human being that made that decision and I know who they are. And it's sort of like about that trusted relationship rather than the algorithm, the scary thing. Are you Canadian? I am. Thank you for noticing. Snuck it out. A boat. I heard it, buddy. You only had one. It's been like slowly disappearing. There's a period of time when I first moved where I, my ears accommodated before my voice. And so I sounded like I had a funny accent to myself, which was very unsettling. I, I, I feel you. Cause I had a Boston accent for a while and I heard myself on television.

I was like, Ooh, can you still do the Boston accent? Oh yeah. If I get drunk. Yeah. Especially when I'm drunk with my friends from high school. It'll come out because they have it hard. They still live there. Are you a public company? No, private company. Do you intend on staying that way? It seems like that's the only way you could avoid influence. I'm not sure that's true.

The thing that success for Substack looks like being an independent company, right? We're trying to bring this thing into the world that's new, and we think that it's got a real business model that works. We think we're on to something important, and the way that we can best serve that is staying independent and running it ourselves and making it the best thing that it can be. And I think at some point, you know, you can go public and do that. And there's ways to do it that are not, don't subject you to the kinds of pressures. How could you do that, though, if the whole business model is about, I mean, if it's a public company and people buy stock in the company, you have an obligation to your stockholders to make the maximum amount of money.

Yeah. And this is actually maybe at the core of how I think about Substack. One way you could say this is like, well, we have a choice. Either we can do the things that make us money or we can do the things that we think matter. And we're just going to be really good, virtuous people and ignore all that money and just do the things that matter. And we're just going to be really good, virtuous people and like ignore all that money and just do the things that matter. And I think a better solution to actually making change is to find a way to set things up so that in order to make money, you want to do the things that matter. Right. And so we set, okay. I'm sorry. You're offering yourself as this is, there's a

financially viable solution. Like you, there's obviously a market for this. Yeah. And not just viable, but like compelling, right? There's ways that you can set it up where the things that we do to grow and the things that we do to be successful are also the things that make the ecosystem good and make the writer successful. One example of this is on Substack as a writer, you own all your content. You own your mailing list. You have a direct billing relationship with people. And if you want, you can leave. And people do leave. And it's terrible for us. And we hate it. People have left?

People have left. And what do they do? They just leave and they start their own website? I think so. They use one of the other clones. Some of them eventually come back. I didn't know that there's people of clone Substack. You don't have to mention names, but how many of them eventually come back. I didn't know that there's people of clone sub stack. You don't have to mention names, but how many of them? There's a handful. Twitter and Facebook both copied us very shamelessly, which is one of these things that happens when you're making something.

Oh, yeah. You can subscribe to people on Twitter now, right? Is that real? Like you can pay money to get better tweets or something? Yeah, they have super followers. Anyway. Super followers? The point of the-

Is that what it's called? Yeah, I think that's- That's what it's called? That's a real thing they did. The point though is that by tying our hands in this way, the fact that the people on Substack can leave means that the only way to make money and grow is to make it good enough that they choose to stay, right? Like, you know, other companies are like, we'll lock you in. We'll make it so that you can't

leave. And then that's how, that's great. But for us, we're like, well, you can leave. Therefore, we have to actually do the work to keep you. And that means that in order to succeed, we have to, like, we have to do the right thing. And I think that's the way that you actually make change in business at scale is not by like you know being like we're gonna we're we're angels we'll turn down the money we'll do this this nice thing it's like no let's figure out a thing that actually works and makes financial sense and does something that matters well when you say turn down the money your business model is entirely dependent upon people enjoying and subscribing to these journalists.

And you don't have advertising, which seems to, that seems to be where the pressure comes in, is when advertisers either don't like content or they don't like particular points of view that people are espousing. Yeah. And I actually think that advertising, a particular kind of advertising is the root problem that created a lot of these dynamics on the social media networks where it's not just advertising, but it's programmatic advertising, right? Where I'm not buying an ad on Joe Rogan necessarily, but I'm buying an ad to show to like Jimmy Smith, this person who I can target minutely. And so all of Twitter and Facebook

and all these things, they sell these things that you can target down to the level of the person. And so the thing that the platform's ultimately aggregating is just a bunch of attention that maximizes how much of people's time that you have. And it doesn't actually matter what they were watching in between. Like the advertiser doesn't know or care unless it's embarrassing for them and they want to cause some stink. But that dynamic, the fact that that business model works so well and then they're doing the things that make them money and it pulls in a bad direction is why we are the way they are. It's not like the people at Twitter are evil. They're not trying to do bad like they're not no I think they think

they're doing good I genuinely do and they probably have done a lot of good I don't want to be so down on Twitter that we can't acknowledge that there's good things about it there definitely are yeah no for sure listen it gets out information it's like if you want to find out what's going on, it's like the best place to go to immediately to find out like, you know, some country got overthrown. Some chaos is happening somewhere in the world. At least you're getting something. And you also, you're getting various perspectives. You're getting some boots on the ground perspective.

You're getting some official perspectives. You know, it's just the problem is like sorting it out. It's not a good platform for sorting out what's accurate, what's not accurate. It's like you just get, okay, let's see how this plays out. Like you get a little piece of the information like, okay, let's see what the real thing is. Every new technology fucks things up, right? Every time we make something new, there's also like terrible consequences that we have to grapple with and like when they came up with the printing press it like broke the world

you got like the protestant reformation it was it was a whole thing and i think we're just we're living through one of those things where we've got this like for the first time very quickly every human being in the world is wired together into one giant network and like paying attention to this thing is insane and we shouldn't expect that it it that goes over smoothly and everything just works perfectly the first time it's gonna make a mess and we're gonna have to figure out how to make it serve us it's kind of wild that there's really only one though with the we're when speaking about twitter it's kind of wild that there's really one place where people go to bitch about things. You know, I mean, it really is.

I guess people go to Facebook, too, but I don't read that either. It's just every time I go to Facebook, it's like these long diatribes and people screaming in the comments. It's kind of the same thing. But Twitter in that short format of, you know, tweeting and quote tweeting and that kind of thing. It seems like it's bizarre that no, it's also bizarre that no one has replicated YouTube successfully. Like YouTube has, as much as you might not like the algorithm, it's fucking genius in that it really does captivate people. It's fucking genius in that it really does captivate people. I mean, and it really is dependent.

Like my friend Ari did a test once where all he looked up was videos on puppies. That's all he looked up. And he goes, and what do you know? My fucking algorithm is all puppies. And he goes, it's really the problem is not the algorithm. The problem is people. And that really is, I mean, if you go to my YouTube feed, it's mostly nonsense in that it's mostly mindless things that I enjoy watching, like professional pool and hot rods and stuff like that. Mostly stuff that's non-consequential.

And then occasionally some deep dive into some world economic forum conspiracy. I'm like, oh, fucking Christ. It's not bad to have stuff that's fun, though. You don't want a world with no puppies. Just that shouldn't be the only way that we find out everything about the world. But it's just fascinating that these algorithms, you've seen the social network, the documentary. I mean, I think what those folks have kind of exposed

that worked in these social media companies is that they knew what these algorithms were going to do and they did it anyway and they know where this is going and it seems to be going in a terrible way that it looks like Civil War or some sort of horrible divide of our country just based on human nature applied to this very disruptive technology. Yeah. It's scary shit.

It really is. I mean, the stuff was going through my head when I did the stupid essay in 2017. And at the time it was like, even saying that out loud, even being like, there could be a civil war was like, felt insane.

Insane. But I'm like, but look at like, just play the movie forward. Like what happens tim pool said that on my podcast years ago and i thought he was being i thought it was just going over way way too over the top he said i think we're going to civil war i'm like what the fuck come on man relax but now i'm like oh maybe he was right um i mean let's not though it would be better if we

know if we're sure let's buy a wide margin by a wide margin let's not but though. It would be better if we could not. No, for sure. Let's not. By a wide margin. By a wide margin. Let's not. But at least we are most certainly in some sort of a battle of ideas that is so uncharitable and so rigid in its sides and its ideologies. It fucking freaks me out. It freaks me, the lack of nuance and perspective and the lack of objectivity in recognizing the flaws of both sides. I mean, you see, obviously see that in politics, right? You're always going to see that

where the people that are in the positions of power, whether it's the White House press secretary, they're always going to give you the best possible spin on everything they can. And when the questions get weird, they end the conversation and they leave. They're just trying to propagandize, just trying to promote a certain thing. The trap is believing that it's a battle between these two teams. It's like the left versus the right and that the other team is so bad that whatever our team does to fight them is necessary and justified. That's the trap. And the reality is it's like everybody who's sane versus actually a tiny minority of people who are nuts, but who have

massive amplified power because of the way these dynamics work and the way that institutions have played out in the whole thing. Also and the way that institutions have played out in this the whole thing Also the things that they're talking about they're consequential like the when you have a small amount of people that are Arguing about things or yelling about things these things are consequential and these are these little battlegrounds that thing that these ideas play out on and they recognize the significance of these battlegrounds and they put all their time into it and then you have a lot of people that are just like genuinely mentally ill because of these platforms i i think it's ramped up anxiety at an unprecedented level

i mean and there's some people that it carries over i have some friends that are on twitter too much and then we'll go out to dinner and they carry Twitter out into the regular everyday life. And this is what's wrong with it. Like, here we are right now. It's Austin. It's beautiful. Like, we're having dinner. We're having a good time.

And you're freaking out about some argument that people are having about something that has literally nothing to do with you. Yeah, I find myself doing it because I'm sort of addicted to Twitter as well. I go through a phase where I, like, delete the app, and then I, like, get it on my browser on my phone, and then I hate myself, and because I'm sort of addicted to Twitter as well. I go through a phase where I delete the app and then I get it on my browser on my phone and then I hate myself and then I delete it again. And when you get into it, you talk to someone who's just a normal person in the world and you find yourself saying something about what's happening like it makes any sense. And you're like, what the hell am I talking about? This is literally insane and I couldn't realize that it was insane until I just talked to someone that just had no idea what the hell.

But on the flip side of that, I felt that same way about all the woke chaos that was coming out of universities in like 2014. We were talking about it in 2014 and 2015 and people were like, why are you focusing on this? This has zero effect on your life. And my take was this is going to spill in. These kids are going to graduate. Why are you focusing on a virus that's only in one little Chinese city? Exactly. There's a new one to worry about now.

Have you heard about the new one? Which one? Oh, the one that just came out. Have you seen that, Jamie? I'll send it to you. Yeah, there's some. New virus just dropped? Yep, new virus just dropped.

Good times here. It's 35 people have been affected by this this thing I'll send it to you right now John the long Lang yeah yes Langia virus China sounds alarm here I'll send it to you it is the Daily Mail it's been reported by tons of places oh yeah I'm sure it's real. Here it is. So it's from Shrews. But what does this do? Is it like a monkeypox type deal that sucks but it doesn't kill you or is it a real problem?

A virus known to kill up to 75% of cases. Okay, but of what? Shrews or of humans? None of the cases in two Chinese provinces so far resulted in people dying. That's what I wanted to know. So 35 people got it. No one's dead. Experts believe the virus is passed on by animals, including shrews. Doctors have raised the alarm for a brand new virus. I'm fucking terrified that we've become conditioned now to start freaking out about every virus that comes

our way because we've always had swine flu and avian flu. Yeah, you pay attention now. You know what would be good though is if we actually took the lessons we learned from coronavirus and prepared correctly for the next thing. Well, we need a Substack for medicine. That would be a good idea. I mean, obviously you have it and there's some great doctors and clinical researchers that do post on Substack. And I've read a lot of their work. And, you know, the problem is there's great consequences in those industries if you step outside the lines and you talk about things that are unpopular. And that's one of the real positive things about Substack is you do give people, if they get cast out of these institutions,

you give them a very viable and often better alternative. And now, because of the popularity of Substack, there's a real good argument that they wouldn't just reach the same amount of people, they reach more people, particularly if these things get promoted by other people like Barry or other journalists that are very popular in Substack. And there, you know, there is a cost to that, right? Sometimes people get cast out of places because they're nuts and they're wrong. Right. Like that, that does happen. Right. And so if you have a platform where people can publish, like you're going to get some, some, some crazy people. But you're also going to get the people who are cast out for the wrong reasons. And this is why the thing where, you know, choosing which human beings you trust on Substack, building a relationship

over time with people, making your own guess of their integrity, and then being able to find out like who's reading what, who's like sharing what, who's promoting what, I think is a better answer to how can we get all of the points of view out, even though it's still imperfect, right? There's still going to be downsides to any tack you can take with this stuff. What's the big dispute in the Substack office when you guys discuss these things? Is everybody on the same page? I think mostly. I mean, one thing that we've done fairly carefully

is that we know what our stance is on these things, and we've written down, we've written, Hamish and I and Jay have written essays about, like, excuse me. There's a little cough button there to use it I love using that thing that's a real show that's a genius invention you know we wrote down this stuff we made it public and we made it public before we had we were in some some controversy or people were mad at us. We sort of like take the time to think like, what do we believe? Why do we believe it? Why are we working on this thing? Why is it worth working on? And then when people join the company, they know that stuff. And if you come to Substack

and you're like, actually, I think you should, you know, not give people a platform and not put writers in charge and have this tight view of what's real. It would just be crazy because it's just not putting the work into something that's against what you believe in doesn't make sense. Also, it would be kind of like managing at scale. How could you when you have tens of thousands? So that means you would have to have tens of thousands of people going over everyone's stuff, making sure that it's accurate and it doesn't promote some harmful narrative. And those people end up making mistakes and the mistakes are really unfair. Right.

And I think people have had this experience at this point. There's been lots of people that just have had like, you know, warnings or bans from Twitter for just over dumb stuff that was. And then the company's like, oh oh yeah, that was a mistake. Like it's just hard. It's not feasible to be an arbiter of what's true and what's good at scale. If it were a lot of our problems would just go away, but it's not. Managing at scale. I try to explain this to people when they shit all over YouTube. I'm like, could you imagine being YouTube? There's the sheer volume of videos that get produced every day is insane. The sheer amount of- How many hours of video per second are they getting?

It's pretty crazy. Jamie, what is the- Well, we could probably just get hours per day. The amount of hours per day that youtube and obviously there's multiple languages and so you get into that and like good luck because you know how many translators are you going to have and all these different countries that are going to read all these or watch read transcripts or watch videos as as of july 3rd there is in is 500 hours of videos uploaded per minute. That doesn't seem like that much.

Per minute, though. I know. It adds up, obviously. 500 hours, though. I know. That's a lot. Yeah, it's definitely a lot. That's a ton.

And what is it going to be in five years? It's probably going to be 10 times that. Yeah. Do you read anything on Substack? Do I read anything? I read Barry's. I read Alex Berenson. I read ones that get recommended to me.

Generally, it's by clinical physicians or doctors or people reporting um life extension stuff and health things and things along those lines i love it for that it's great for it it's great for me because i really feel like i'm getting the perspective of the writer which i really enjoy because that's what i really love about podcasts as well is that i'm getting a clear, I like when I know that it's coming from the person, that I'm getting this individual's mind translated into words. They might be right. They might be wrong. Yeah, but I'm getting it from them.

And, you know, like with someone like Matt Taibbi, I love the way he writes. I just, I love the way his mind works. So when he writes, I'm getting his writing. I'm getting his thought process and his editing. And it's a piece of art. You know, it's interesting. It's an interesting form of art because it's an art that focuses on thought process and all of this person's life experiences and education and how it translates in them trying

to broadcast this to people. It's cool. I think Substack is one of the most important things that's ever happened to journalism in my lifetime because it's a free portal, a new method of distributing content that just is very exciting. When I first found out about it,

and then when Barry left the New York Times and went over there, I was like, ooh. I'm like, this is exciting. One thing that's new about it and then when Barry left the New York Times and went over there I was like oh I'm like this is exciting and one thing that's that's new about it I think is everybody thinks of the people they think of Barry Barry Weiss like famous journalists that I know that left X and came to Substack and that's the idea that people have in their mind of who's on Substack but there's a growing set of people that I think is much larger over time of people who weren't writers, right, who had something to give the world as a writer, as a thinker, but didn't see a path to doing that in what existed before. Right. And so, but for Substack would have like gone to law school like their parents wanted them to or whatever.

parents wanted them to or whatever. And so you're starting to see people on Substack who become professional writers on the platform. And you start to get perspectives that otherwise never would have existed. I mean, you see this with some of the doctors that are very interesting. You see people from other industries. And there's just people growing up that have something to give the world and would not have been able to write if they didn't have this. Yeah, that's the parallel to podcasting. Exactly. Because the barrier to entry is so small, particularly for audio podcasts. It's so easy.

You literally can press the Voice Notes app on your phone and you could, bam, make a podcast. Which means there are a ton of terrible podcasts that nobody listens to. Oh, yeah. Sure. But that's okay. That's okay. I mean, it's the same thing with YouTube videos. I mean, how many people who make YouTube videos are literally just using their webcam and just talking to it and they might have fucking 5 million subscribers. It's,

it's pretty wild in that regard. The barrier for entry is, is much lower. So you're going to have a lot more nonsense content and bullshit content, But you're also going to have people that maybe have something to offer and didn't really think that it was possible for them before, which is me. I mean, that's how I became a podcaster. I never thought anybody was going to give me a fucking radio show. If I had to try to pitch the model of what the JRE is to some company. They would have kicked me out of the office a long time ago. There's no way. I want to just have people I'm interested in talking to. I don't give a fuck if they're famous. What do I find interesting? Let's talk to those folks.

Do you believe in audience capture? Do you think about this? Do you believe in audience capture? Do you think about this? a thing where it gets them the most amount of juice, the most amount of traction, and they lean into that. They get love and support. I mean, I've seen people convert political ideologies because of it, because it seems like the right is pretty good at that. It's really interesting. Like Fox News has said more positive things about me than any left-wing company, and I think that could be a problem for people is they do switch their ideology because of they they find they're getting a certain amount of love from

one direction or the other i was reading a good sub stack piece about this yesterday this guy wrote a the example he used was this youtuber who was this like kind of normal kid um and he has a picture at the start it's like this skinny guy that made these videos and started found this found a niche like eating dinner and talking to the camera and people started to watch it and over time the end picture is like years later he's this famous guy he's got millions of subscribers making all this money, but he's like just destroyed. He's like this huge, morbidly obese, terrible health problems thing. And this post makes this convincing argument that the way he got there was this process of capture. And it wasn't, it wasn't, uh, conscious. It wasn't like this guy was like, I know I'm going to become this horrible train wreck in order to make money and be famous.

And that's a good idea. So I'm going to do it. But it's the thing that happens where you get these subtle cues. It's kind of the same way that you become the average of the people you hang out with. And so you got to choose who you hang out with intelligently because you can't resist that. And when you're on a platform, you get, even if you don't want to you get these signals of like What's working? What's making people watch this? What's making the comments? What are people asking me for and makes a pretty convincing case that

That thing can like go really, you know destroyed this guy's life. I think well an argument against that is mr. Beast Yeah, you know, mr. Beast is the biggest An argument against that is Mr. Beast. Yeah. You know, Mr. Beast is the biggest YouTuber, and he could not be a nicer guy. And his whole thing is about figuring out what captures people's attention. But it's all super positive. He's very charitable. He has these, like, turkey drives where he gives away free turkeys for people for Thanksgiving.

He makes this fun video about it. He runs a food bank. He does so much for charitable organizations. But yet he's 100% driven in his idea that I want to make a video that reaches the most amount of people possible. So what can I do in terms of editing? What can I do in terms of the caption? What can I do in terms of the image that I use? And he's very meticulous about that,

but yet is not, in fact, he's become more charitable, more nice, more friendly, more happy. It's almost like there's a good version and a bad version of it. Yeah. If you let yourself get captured by people who want you to be the best version of yourself, that's good. Right. If you're getting more charitable to be massively successful, that sounds great. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, if that – but I don't think that's even what he's doing. I mean, he's a very interesting guy because he's very young and very wise for a young guy, but also silly, he's fun, and he's figured out a way to be successful and still maintain who he is. That's where it gets tricky with people because some people don't have a rigid foundation. don't have a rigid foundation. They don't, they don't really, you know, they don't have like a strict set of ethics and morals and, you know, a code that they live by. And so then anything that's successful, they gravitate towards that, like metal filings towards a magnet.

And the irony of that, no pun intended, is that it's probably less successful in the long run, right? If you have the principles and you know what you're doing, ultimately that's the thing that people, if you, if that thing is right, that's the thing that people will follow you for. That's the thing that people care about. It depends on how you define success, right? If you define success in terms of popularity, there's a lot of terrible people that are popular, you know, because they're, they're popular for talking shit or being mean, or they're popular for popular for you know causing fights and creating drama and there's a real currency in drama unfortunately there's a lot of people that that's their main thing is uh just being shitty so there's a bunch of different ways you could go

but audience capture yeah it's real and um i i I try very hard to make sure that I don't get sucked into any of that. That's why you only go on Twitter twice a day? Yeah. I mean, if I go on, I go on for a couple seconds, really. I go on every now and then to check stuff and see what's happening, what's trending. And then I go, ugh, let me get out of here before I read something about me. It's just, I just think that human beings are very malleable.

We're very easily influenced whether we like it or not. That's why cults exist. You just gotta be meticulous about the way you think about things and also you have to spend a lot of time alone thinking like genuinely alone no electronics thinking about how you view life how you view yourself how you view all the the various projects you have that you're doing and what are you doing with them why are you doing it right the magic is not I'm gonna be immune

to the influence of everything that I read and see. The magic is at some point I control where I spend my time and attention. I control whether I'm gonna go for a walk or who I'm gonna listen to and spend my time with. And by choosing that intelligently, I can shape who I am, what I think. That's the value of discipline.

You have to have discipline in any sort of thing you're doing, especially any sort of high-pressure thing. You have to have discipline. You have to have understandings. You have to have an understanding of exactly why you're doing it and what you're doing. And some people don't. Some people just lick their finger and which way is the wind going.

I'm going that way. And you can be successful that way too. There's a lot of people that are grifters. They're successful just grifting, you know, and some of them, you know, they have a large amount of people that hate them, but there's enough people that pay attention that it pays the bills and they keep going. I'm sure you have that on Subst the bills, and they keep going. I'm sure you have that on Substack too, right? It's an index fund of the whole internet. You get everything.

We wouldn't be successful if there wasn't something for every new show. Why did you ask about audience capture? It was something I read yesterday that was really interesting, and it's something I think about a lot. There's a lot of things about the Substack model that I think are magical and good, right? The fact that your readers are the ones hiring and firing you, the fact that you can actually make money from subscriptions, the fact that a relatively small number of people that really like you can make you a, you know, a living or even a fortune from subscriptions, all that stuff is great. One of the things I do sometimes think about is like, well,

is this a recipe for audience capture, right? Is this a thing where if I, you know, if I notice what's going to get me subscribers, can I get pulled into this thing? You know, I think a lot about is the subject model helping people be the best versions of themselves, right? Is it helping writers become the best, do the work that they actually believe in. And if it's making the money, if it's helping their own their craft, if it's like working with their discipline, that's good. If it's pulling them to become the wrong thing, then that's bad. And I think there is some of that, to be honest. I think that's not a zero thing, but I think it's not unique to Substack. I think every platform has that. And it's a kind of a question of like, how do you, you can't avoid those forces. So it's a question of how do you harness them for something positive.

Yeah or how do you avoid how do you avoid changing in a way you don't want to change like what is it about audience capture that's so compelling? I guess people want acceptance and they want love. And when they find it's generally going in this certain direction and they get positive responses, they tend to lean into it. I think the best writers are often quite disagreeable. quite disagreeable. Best writers, best journalists are often the people who kind of like poop in the punch bowl in social settings sometimes who are willing to like have the strongest natural personality that goes against those urges. But everybody's human, right? Everyone has human nature at some point and that becomes really powerful. I don't know. You just, you seem to be someone that has contended with this stuff at a scale that almost nobody has. And it's, yeah, I'm just curious how you think about it.

Yeah, I worry about it. I mean, maybe that's why I haven't gotten sucked into it. You know? I mean, also, I don't know. I mean, it's going to sound crazy, but I really think that this thing created itself. I feel like it just tricked me into doing it. I really do. Sometimes.

I just feel like, sometimes I feel like I didn't know that this is what I wanted to do until I started doing it. And then when I started doing it, I was like, oh. And then the more I do it, the more I feel like I'm just sort of showing up and just turning on the antenna and letting it happen. And then bringing in all these people that I find interesting. And then all these other people that listen also find those people interesting. And then they have this hunger for it. And then that sort of that excites me.

And then I hear from so many people that got inspired to do different things with their life, to maybe start exercising and eating well and also recognizing the effect that that has on their mental state and just seeing the way I interact with my friends. And I have a really, I'm very fortunate that I have a really good group of friends. Everyone's really fun and smart and supportive and we laugh a lot. And that also encourages people to seek that out in their own lives and to have that kind of interactions or those kinds of interactions with other people that they care about. And it inspires similar kinds of conversations and also similar podcasts. There's a lot of podcasts that were inspired because of this. And that's, that's exciting to me. And so I feel like

I have this obligation to make sure that I'm not fucking it up, you know But I really do feel like it made itself It do I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but it's maybe it's a way of alleviating responsibility on my half Maybe I just think I don't even do it. It's doing itself That's something that needed to exist and you just happened happened along and we're the perfect person in the perfect place Yeah, it's but it's I felt compelled to were the perfect person in the perfect place? Yeah, but I felt compelled to do it. Like in the beginning it was making no money

and my wife was like, why are you doing this? My friends were saying that. They were like, why are you doing this? I'm like, I don't know man, I feel like I need to do it. Just feel like it's something, it's fun, I enjoy doing it, but I also feel like it's drawing me towards it. I know that sounds grandiose, but it does, I don't know, maybe that's what everything

that's successful feels like. It feels like, oh, this is supposed to happen this way. It's like it's pulled me into it. I feel a little bit like that with Substack. We're not at the same scale of success, but I didn't set out to do this. I was doing something else, and it's sort of like, just this became this undeniable thing, and it's like, well, if that, if that, if that could exist,

it needs to exist. Like how can, how can we not do this? Right. But that always, doesn't that always happen in the world though? I mean, that's one of the things about human beings is that human things, they encounter a dilemma and then a solution to that dilemma becomes inescapable. They, they feel like they have to do this. Do you think if you got hit by a bus the day that you, you know, you died somehow the day that you were going to start the show, that someone else would have made something similar to this? Or do you think history would be totally different?

It's a good question. Yeah, someone would have done something similar. I don't know. You know, maybe not that similar. I don't know. You know, maybe not that similar. I don't know. I mean, I'm often shocked that someone hasn't done it exactly the same way. It's not that hard to do.

Just talk to people. It's literally one of the easiest things. But there's people that are inspired. So they set out to copy it and they just don't copy what's important? I think you have to have genuine curiosity. I think that's a, I mean, if I really wanted to break, if I was a journalist trying to break down the success of my show, I would probably say genuine curiosity is the most important factor. And also a wide range of interests you know i i'm interested

in all kinds of things so when i talk to someone i'm genuinely curious just like what was it about this that was so compelling to you why'd you start what did you have doubts like what were those doubts and what was fueled by was there any time you thought about quitting like what is it what what's what's going on in your head and what can i get out of that that it enhances my my focus or my perspective yeah and then you know don't be a douchebag easier said than done sometimes yeah that's very easy you're sitting done sometimes because there's also a lot of pressure that comes with things, and pressure makes people act and behave in shitty ways sometimes because they're just overwhelmed. Does any of the flack you take discourage you?

There's like people are mad on the internet, people are mad at Spotify or whatever place. Does that slow you down? No, not that flack. No. No, that just makes me laugh. Well, okay. So it sounds like there is flack that would discourage you.

Yeah. If I, um, if I genuinely did a bad thing, like if I genuine, like if I, um, said something mean and incorrect about someone, or if I did, you know, that would discourage me. And then someone said something like, oh, you shouldn't have said that because of this. And then I'm like, oh God damn it, they're right. But I would just say it. I would just correct myself. I would just come on and apologize and say, this is why I thought this.

And it just turns out to not be true. And then, you know, I didn't mean to hurt people's feelings. But that's also part of just being a human being and communication. That's also part of just being a human being and communication. And also it's impossible for me to, you know, you're not going to do, it's not going to be perfect. It's just, that's one of the things that's interesting about conversations. This is, I don't know the next word out of my mouth right now. You know, and that's what's exciting about it it's not planned out and

i think when people do see very planned out statements and planned out interviews they're not like like obama did a podcast and you know nobody wanted to listen which is crazy it's one of the most popular presidents of all time one of the most interesting people that's ever lived. Nobody gives a fuck. Why? Because what he's talking about is like, listen, he's free. Okay? He's gone. He's no longer the president.

He's the former two-term president. He's insanely rich. If anybody can say what he thinks, it's that guy. But he can't. But he can't. You know? He's completely... I mean, if Obama just had a podcast and he smoked a joint, started talking shit about things, it would be fucking amazing.

It would be amazing. But would that interrupt his ability to make $400,000 to a speech for bankers? It probably would. Yeah. for bankers it probably would yeah so and it also fuck with his chance of being a leader in the party and you know people would face all kinds of criticism you know fox news would run some horrible story about it you can't stuck see i i'm a cage fighting commentator who's also a stand-up comedian. There's a lot of built-in escape valves. If we wanted to make Substack better for the interesting version of this, for people that are doing the things that you can't predict, if you were the king of Substack, what do you think

we should do? I think you're doing the right thing. I think the way you're doing it, I don't I think you're doing the right thing. I think the way you're doing it, I don't have some sort of a tricky algorithm. Don't be compelled by advertisers. That's the recipe for success for what you're doing. journalism outlet where people, you know, like guys like Glenn Greenwald who get kicked out of the very newspaper that he fucking founded, you know, because he wanted to report on the Hunter Biden laptop case, which is wild because now here we are two years later, it's fucking true. It's true and it's wild and it's wilder than we even thought it was because more stuff is coming out. And there's pretty clear evidence of corruption. And this would have been a consideration when people were voting.

And they were so terrified that Trump was going to win again. And he just, he represented in many people's eyes this ultimate enemy this ultimate evil and they wanted him out by all means necessary by any means necessary and so they were willing to censor legitimate information from one of the oldest newspapers in the country the New York Post which was writing about it which is pretty fucking crazy and scary to me because this is all, in my eyes, this is a gradual process. And if you'll accept that, you'll accept more.

And if you'll accept that kind of censorship. Yeah, you get used to it and then the next thing and the next thing. Especially if you can demonize the person that you're censoring against. You know, if this is all ultimately to get Trump out of office, well, who the fuck didn't want that? Let's get him out of there. Who cares? Just let that thing come out in February. But in November, no fucking chance. We can't print this. And so those sort of decisions that people make, although they think they're doing the right thing, that's where you have to have these steadfast ethics you have to have these rock solid foundation foundational ethics where you are not going to give in to any sort of peer pressure

or any irrational people that seem to think that he's some sort of a threat to humanity and a threat to democracy and no what, you have to make sure that that doesn't happen. And we could work all the rest out later. The problem is once you agree to that, that's a slippery slope. It's like my, that was the thing about the Patriot Act, where they were talking about indefinite detention of people. And Obama was like, you know, I would never use that. Don't worry, I would never use that. Don't worry. I would never use that. Well, okay. But what about the next guy? What about the person after you? And it turns out the next guy was Trump. And we were scared of him using something

like that. And we're scared about someone who's worse than Trump. If we can't come up with some sort of a common ground, a middle ground in this country and agree that we're all a part of a community, that's where we're supposed to be. We're supposed to be the community of the United States of America. That's ultimately what a country is. It's a massive community. We want the best for the greater good, the whole. But we can't look at it that way and we keep looking at it like there's people that are

going to ruin the GOP. I'm the sworn enemy of the GOP we got to get them out of office and these fucking liberals are ruined and want to turn everyone into a Marxist and your kids are all going to be trans like if we don't find some sort of a rational common ground in this country we're we're going to continue to feed into this is going to escalate It's going to keep going. That's where I'm really worried. I'm really worried that cooler heads have not prevailed. Yeah. And there's not enough voices that say what I just said. Not enough voices that say like, we're supposed to be all together.

And ultimately, the whole world is supposed to be all together. One of the more beautiful things about the internet is the internet allows you, first of all, you can translate things into a million different languages. And you have access to all this information all around the world. And more people around the world should be able to realize that we all share common interests. We all want to have a good life. We all want to be able to do whatever we want. We all want to be able to express ourselves honestly. We all want happiness for our families and our loved ones. And we all want to be living in a world that's

not fucking polluted and on fire. I mean, there seem to be like pretty common, very important bedrock foundational ideas that we all agree on worldwide. And then we have people that are making insane amounts of money by sort of hijacking these individual ideas and individual issues that we all seem to find important. And some of it's they're making money, and some of it, I think the thing that fascinates me is a lot of the time I think it's good people

trying to do their best. Yeah. Screwing it up, right? There's cases where there's people tenting their fingers and being like, I'm going to profit off the world going to hell in this way. You got to say that in German accent. I don't know if I can do a good enough German accent. You will owe nothing and you will be happy.

It's fun that you just say that. But it's like the scary thing is you don't need that you don't need sure there's villains out there but you don't need there to be a villain this stuff can happen by good people yes and this you know you talked about the hundred by anything i think that was a low point for tech i think people at twitter and facebook made disastrously the wrong call to some extent they admitted it later and i have more sympathy for them than i otherwise might because i know what it feels like when you're in that moment you're in that moment where like it feels like this is a whole new thing you lose the perspective of history you lose the perspective of the long view you're just looking at what people are saying on

social media it feels like everything's on fire it feels like you like you know you have to do this you just you get buffeted by circumstance and even if you are good or want good things you can make the wrong call um and you can do that if you just lose the the broader historical perspective the solution to a lot of this stuff is not unknown right we inherited a lot of really good ideas like maybe we should have free speech maybe Maybe we should have the rule of law. Maybe we should have right. These things other generations learn this stuff the hard way and gave it to us. And then a lot of the time we just forget. And I think we got to do better at that. I mean, one of the things that we did, I told you, we wrote this stuff down. We wrote this stuff down. We were not in the heat of it. And then we were in the heat of it. We just look back at what we wrote. We're like, what the hell do we believe? What are we going to do? And when you do that, it makes it easier not to screw up in that way, not to get just like lost in the plot. And it's like, oh, the current moment is everything and we have to do something, something, something and lose yourself.

Where do you think, do you have an idea of where the country's going? I don't. That's an open-ended question, isn't it? I wish, I wish I did. I mean, I have, I have fears and I have hopes. What's your fears? I think my fears are the things that you've been saying, right? The, the, the escalating divisionating division, the way that we understand ourselves, right? The media, the social media, the various things, the way that we form a picture of what the country is and who each other are, keep becoming this funhouse mirror that turns us into the thing that we feared, which is lunatics that are at each other's throats. I think that's my fear. That's a little bit of why I wanted to work on

Substack in the first place. I was like, it feels like there's wheels in motion that are pulling in that direction. And the thing that you hope is that the pendulum swings, right? That it's like, we go crazy, we lose the plot a little bit, We experience a bunch of the bad stuff. And then we remember why these values were important, what the right way to do this is, and the fever breaks. And I think that pendulum does exist. Like in history, you see this, you see these moral panics come and go, you see these things come and go. But I kind of think the mechanism of that, like what causes the pendulum to swing back? War. Sometimes, right? It's like something happens. It the pendulum to swing back war sometimes right it's like something happens it doesn't just swing back on its own natural disaster something happens like

some it's like something breaks and then you really like you know you can get really bad or sometimes people fix it sometimes people see things going wrong i mean a lot of people laugh about the uh what was it the The ozone layer, right? Where it was like, when I was a kid, it was like, oh no, there's a hole in the ozone layer. And some people are like, oh man, remember when they said there was a hole in the ozone layer? Like, and that's not a problem anymore. Those bozos. But isn't it still a problem? Like, isn't it a problem in Australia? Isn't that the thing about Australia is that they don't have any ozone? Like, oh, when you go to Australia, one of the things you notice is there's skin cancer warnings everywhere.

Like, they had them on the side of buses and shit. I was like, how much fucking skin cancer is here? And then someone told me that there's, like, a real issue with the ozone layer in Australia. I never looked into it. That's why we're looking into it now. I'm going to trust whatever Google says over whatever I say. Let's go to DuckDuckGo just in case. Let's go to duck duck go just in case let's go to brave i don't necessarily know if this is accurate the drum roll please

what's up with the ozone.substack.com the thing that i thought which could turn out to be totally wrong is that we kind of we we made a big dent in it and we like there's still a hole in the ozone layer whatever happened to the hole in the ozone layer um this is what comes up is there still a hole in the study found the hole in the ozone layer is closing oh it is closing it's still long okay a couple years ago four years ago there's still a long way to go for complete recovery the holes peak last year measured two and a half times the size of the U.S. Whoa! CFCs can linger in the atmosphere for 50 to 100 years

according to Ann Douglas, co-author of The Atmospheric Scientist at Goddard. I think it opens and closes every year. In some years it's bigger than others. So it was though because of CFCs, right? Like, they did find a direct link. It's not like some sort of a natural cycle, right?

But is there a hole over Australia? It's over Antarctica. Oh. Which isn't far from Australia, but... Huh. So that's where the big hole is. So it's that big look at that image down there that's the fucking size the whole of the ozone layer

20 looking at that one right there is that real that's fucking terrifying and that thing keeps shrinking and that's the hole in the ozone layer whoa wow it's all over Antarctica so get is it getting better though or is it still just equally bad I think they're saying that it's getting better so it says 12th largest on record what is that right when did they start recording it when does the 10th largest one or the ninth the whole is worsening yeah I don't know yeah I don't know either Yeah, I don't know either. This was going to be my example of sometimes things can be good, so if it turns out not to be true, I'll be very depressed. Hmm, yeah. But that's crazy, just the image of it.

If that's human-created, is that human-created? Is the ozone layer human-created, or has it never been uniform? Do they know that? We definitely were exacerbating it, right? The ozone layer is good. That's the thing we want. The hole is bad. Let's see.

Ozone watch facts. History of the ozone hole. As of 1912, Antarctic explorers recorded observations of unusual veil-type clouds in the polar stratosphere. But doesn't cold temperature play a factor as well? I think the cold temperature plays a factor in the ozone layer, which would make sense.

The coldest part of the world has no ozone. The first thing I clicked on didn't really give me the thing I was looking for. This is where I don't spend a lot of time digging through brave results. So we're in a new space. Okay. Anyway. All right. Ozone hole bad. There we said it.

But yeah. So what you're saying is that we kind of fixed it. I think there's hope. I think the fact that we have real problems doesn't mean that there's no solution. It doesn't mean that there's nothing anyone can do. problems doesn't mean that there's no solution. It doesn't mean that there's nothing anyone can do. It doesn't mean that we're doomed. It just means that there's stakes.

It means there's things that matter. And even if there's nothing we can do, I'd rather be trying, I think. Oh, yeah, for sure. Oh yeah, for sure. One of the concerns that I have in this country is that when you see what's happening in China, I'm worried about centralized digital currency and I'm worried about some sort of a system, like an app that gives you a credit score, like a social credit score system. I'm really worried about someone implementing something like that over here, because I think that could have disastrous results in terms of the amount of control that people have over your ability to do certain things and express yourself. If you centralize that much power, it's only a matter of time. Yeah.

And there's been calls. I mean, was it Maxine Waters or someone like that was doing some speech recently where she was talking about how we need to institute digital currency to compete with China. Oh, that's not the way. You know, we need to institute some sort of a communist dictatorship to compete with China. Like that's the next step. Like what do you mean compete with China? Is that what we need to do? Yeah. What are we competing to achieve? Right. Yeah. Is it digital currency is the only way to do this? I think the world of crypto is really interesting for this. I'm kind of a skeptic of a lot of the

hype, but I do think that the fundamental thing of here's a thing that can function as a currency, as money in some sense, that is outside of the scope of government and kind of in some important way uncontroll I think they're under attack for very good reasons because people are terrified of decentralized money. They're terrified of not being able to control money. And if that does become our primary source of currency, that's a really radical change in how people buy and sell things. And that alone could be one of the most disruptive things the world has ever seen. But the problem is it's under attack. And also people don't have full confidence. And in this most recent crash sort of highlights their fears. I mean, how far down is Bitcoin now? What's it at now? Jamie's all over the Bitcoin.

Down compared to where it was? Yeah. It was up around 60. It's at 23, 24,000 today. That's a big drop. But compared to where it was, it's a big gain, too. From the beginning. Yeah.

Yeah, sure. From the beginning, it was worth nothing. When you talk about centralized platforms like Twitter and Facebook having the power to Yeah. Yeah, sure. In the beginning, it was worth nothing. When you talk about centralized platforms like Twitter and Facebook having the power to censor stuff, the credit card companies are scary for this. Oh, yeah. Like they're, you know,

forget about government control, just the amount of power that MasterCard and these other companies have over what people can spend their money on is a pretty interesting interesting hole well system that's what i found fascinating about when canada cracked down on the trucker convoy they went after people i saw stories of going after people that just like donated a small amount not really just like to the cause not knowing what was happening just like i'm some random

person living somewhere throwing some money to go fund me and their stuff like their accounts get closed yeah it's that's scary stuff well that's like banana republic dictatorship and that's why i thought that was terrifying that was coming from canada and coming from this guy who's supposedly this really progressive you know leader of Canada I was like that is a crazy thing to do it's so it's the antithesis of free speech the the idea that someone would want to do that that someone would want to close the bank account of someone who contributed to something that you disagree with it's crazy And it's crazy that

it didn't get more pushback. And I think it's damaged him politically, but I don't, I mean, I guess people in Canada still think he's, there's a certain amount that still think he's all right. That was a weird moment for me because I would just comparing what people were talking about those protests and then calling my family back home and hearing them like what they were hearing about it, what they were thinking about it. I was talking to someone in my family that was like, I heard that they they're bringing their kids as hostages so they can't get kicked out of the thing.

And I'm like, is that what you heard? Like, like does that, do you think they're bringing their kids as hostage, their own children as hostages so they can stay like I'm just like you just you can see from the outside that people are in one of these moments where they've like they've been whipped up into a frenzy about this. This legitimately like scary thing. And you lose perspective.

You lose like the ability to empathize with people who are your fellow human beings that think they're protesting something they care about, whether they're right or wrong, they're just people. Right. Yeah, they are just people. And if you can close someone's bank account for that, that's scary. It's scary. I mean, what's next? I mean, if you, I mean, what's next? I mean, do you remember when, if you remember when Trump was in office, when he first got out of office, there was a bunch of people that were calling for lists of people that supported him and any of his ideas or any of the things that he said that's scary that's blacklist shit that's like now we're he gets you back to a witch hunt now

you're in like the red scare and the basic thing that you have to do to avoid that which you did earlier you just turn around you're like if the other guy gets in and then they do this the other team does the same thing right is this going to be good or bad like am i glad that this is a a tactic that we have is this a good thing like to exist and it's just being unwilling to even ask that question leads to the madness i think i agree i agree wholeheartedly it does it leads to madness And that's what scares me is I think we've already crossed that threshold in many ways with a lot of people. And I think social media unquestionably exacerbates that. But when things are going crazy, people who tell the truth as they see it become this radical, important focal point. this radical, important focal point, right?

The fact that there's people that can dissent, that can call things crazy, that can criticize this stuff and keep saying it and just exist, I think matters a lot. I think that's why, you know, all this stuff on Substack is really motivating to me. I just think it's a, those things existing are part of the answer,

are part of the way to unwind the insanity. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think that having a mainstream platform, which is Substack is becoming a mainstream platform, that does have that foundation of not only attracting these people that have these ideas and giving them this large platform to express themselves on, it's going to bring more people into those ideas. More people are going to express those ideas and think about these things and then recognize

that, oh, there are pressures to get people to censor themselves and pressures that get people to not discuss certain topics. And there is a solution and there's a portal that you can gravitate towards that will allow free expression, free thought, and people you disagree with and agree with. And you can also pen those disagreements. You can write about things. They can interact with each other. They could talk about their disagreements to each other in a way that's interesting and learn something yeah sub stack has comments right as comments and what is that like like do

you guys censor the comments do the are the author is allowed to censor the comments can they block people from commenting yeah the comments are surprisingly good one of the things you have the option, you can turn the comments on for anybody, or you can turn the comments on only for paying subscribers if you're the writer. And once you limit it to paying subscribers, it's amazing how much more civil and interesting it gets when it's like the people that are here for this thing and care about this thing. Our stance on it is like, look, this is the author's house. this is the writer's house they can set the most draconian moderation policy they want and it's it's their place they can

enforce it they can kick people off they can like you know it's it's their space and so you can run a sub stack where you're like look in the comments anything goes we're talking about everything or you can run it super strict as the writer. That's kind of your domain. And that works really well because it means as a reader, you have a choice of different, like you can go be a part of a community that's really strict or go be a part of a community

that's really permissive. And you like either of those can work and different people want different things from it. The thing that I love to see the most is when somebody launches their paid thing and I go in the comments and people that are in there being like, I disagree with you about almost everything. I think you're wrong about this. I think you're crazy about this. somebody launches their paid thing and I go in the comments and people that are in there being like,

I disagree with you about almost everything. I think you're wrong about this. I think you're crazy about this. But I actually like reading you. I like getting this perspective. I value hearing from you, even though I think you're nuts. I think that's important. I think it's important to absorb people's perspectives that you don't agree with. There's a lot of people that I either listen to their podcast or I watch their YouTube videos and I read their stuff and I don't agree with them. But I want to know how that mindset works. Particularly, I found that during Roe v. Wade, during these discussions.

I'm very interested in the people that think that this is a good thing, that when limiting abortion rights is a good thing. And I want to hear their perspective. It's often religious, and it's often that they share this idea that life begins at conception, the very moment of conception. And then some of those people are actually against contraceptives, which is wild. And, I mean, do you guys hate sex?

You want every time you have sex to be making a kid? It's, I want to know what their mindset is. I want to know how they think. And I think that helps you. It also helps you formulate your arguments against that because so many people that are commenting on things that do exist in an echo chamber, you see the short-sighted nature of the way they formulate their perspectives, that they think that everyone agrees with them. And this is one of the things that I think a lot of the people in the blue states encountered when Trump was running for president.

They thought there's no fucking way that guy's going to win. Everyone I know hates him. The world hates him. It's not going to happen. But you don't drive through South Dakota. You're not going to the flyover states, as it were, and checking out the rest of the country. There's a lot of people that don't think the way you think. And people think very differently when they live in high population urban areas versus rural areas.

Yeah. And if you insulated yourself from all the arguments for the things you disagree with, it just makes you ineffective. Like you can't be ineffective. You can't persuade people. You can't make the case. And you become blind, as you say, to even the reality on the ground of the fact that there are people that feel something different than what I feel. Yeah. And I'm, I'm also interested in perspectives of people that are fucking totally wrong and out of their mind. Like that's why I was so closely following all this QAnon stuff. You know, did you watch into the storm, the HBO documentary on QAnon? I did not. It's a must watch. It's a must watch. It is fucking wild to see how many people bought into that shit wholesale and who these

people were. And who was the guy that we had on who was the director of that documentary? Do you remember? Did a fantastic job with it because it was a multiple part series and you got to see what was happening like years in advance and then leading up to January 6th. It's like the thing played out the best possible way it could have played out to make that documentary because he got these people at the very beginning stages of this whole QAnon thing.

Oh, like while they were not that crazy? Well, he got it where the people were writing it. He've isolated the original writer, who was the original person pretending to be Q, and then the new people that took over, and how it was impossible

that anybody else could even be posting. It was this guy that was running 4chan at the time. It's, um, but it's interesting to see how people, they find in these narratives and these things, these ideologies, they find community and they find purpose. And then they feel like they have a good fight and I think that's a big part of human nature is that people always believe that there's something to fight against and when there's some obscure information or some hidden information it becomes insanely compelling and people that don't have a very rigid thought process in terms of like objectively

analyzing their own motivations and their own thoughts and what is the source of this information that they're basing their opinions on those people like get sucked into these things very easily and you see it become their whole identity and that's a really fascinating part of this documentary series is you get to see the people that realize at the end they've been duped. And that they've wasted years and years of their life on fucking nonsense. Community and purpose. Like those are like two of the most important things to people. Yeah. two of the most important things to people.

Yeah. And if you don't have those things, if you're in a place where you have no community, where you have no purpose, I think it's kind of easy to see why that's seductive, why you might just like push down your doubts and find a way to believe, to be on the inside. Maybe even like at the start, you're just like, I don't know about this,

but like I wish I had friends to hang out with. Well, it's a similar influence of audience capture right they're similar in a way is that we all we all are influenced by the people around us we're not I mean we are individuals sure but we are all tied in we are all a part of a group of other human beings and that's a critical Aspect of human nature is that we do need the love and support of other people and if we can get it from one way Or get it for that. I mean that's like Stockholm syndrome people get it from their fucking captors Do you think the people that start these things do it? Cynically, or do you think they believe in it? I?

Think both I think some people started cynically and some people believe in it. Some people create things because they think ultimately the end justifies the means. And I think that was one of the arguments that one of these guys in this QAnon documentary seemed to be kind of like, seemed to be making. But I think sometimes people people they just get sucked in and then that seems to be the way they live their life now you just get captured by momentum and then next thing you know you're at a fucking rally with a holding up a sign and if only they subscribed to enough substacks they would break out of this and scales would fall from their eyes.

Ultimately, I think this is going to sound very bizarre, but I think the solution is going to be some sort of a technological intervention that's, that allows us to read minds. To read minds. Yeah. And I don't think that's that far off. I think our, but what are we doing when we're communicating, right? You're saying words, I'm saying words. I'm trying to find out how you think. You're trying to find out, and we're getting a sense of it, but maybe it's hampered by vocabulary,

and maybe it's hampered by our own individual biases. But we're trying to find out how the other person thinks and what they think. But we don't really know. Like there's a lot of people that are like political grifters and we just assume they're political grifters. We hear them talk. We don't buy them. They're full of shit, but they're saying things that's going to excite a certain amount of people. Wouldn't it be great if you could actually see the cynicism inside that person's mind. You could see the bullshit. You could see the deception. I mean, it would radically eliminate all the grifters. It would radically eliminate

all the people that are just playing people and trying to make money. And we would get to see what is the process of the mind? Like what is going on in your head that's making you say the things you're saying, do the things you're doing? What are your real motivations versus what you're espousing? I think that's what's going to happen. And I think that's going to happen soon. I think that's going to happen inside of 30 years. Inside of 30 years is going to be some sort of a radical breakthrough technology that allows people to truly communicate without words. And that's Elon's goal for one of the goals for Neuralink.

It's one of the things he said. He said, you're going to be able to communicate without words. Would that be great or would that be terrible? It's all great. I don't know. The thing where you can tell if someone's lying, basically. If you're a grifter, we can tell that you're a grifter. We have a machine that can tell if you're lying, tell what's going on inside.

The last place you actually still have privacy is in your own skull. No, it's going to be a problem. Well, I think in general, that's where things are headed to is a lack of privacy. I think in general. What are the Chinese going to do with that? Well, yeah. Maybe it's going to work good because you're going to be able to clearly see what all the dictators are up to. All the dictators are going to be able to see what they're up to.

All the people that work for them are going to be able to see they despise them secretly and are terrified that they're going to take over and are plotting against these people. But probably they don't have to use it or they have some other version that can fake it or something. My hope is that it's going to be like the internet. Is that they're going to release it not knowing what kind of a radical change it's going to bring about and then before they do it's too late. If the government knew in 1980 whatever what the internet was going to be in 2022 for sure they would have shut it down. They would have said, let's limit this to universities so that they can exchange data

and scientific studies and things along those lines. But let's not have this for the general public. Let's not have TikTok. Let's not have YouTube video. That's understandable. Yeah. Well, we read the TikTok terms of, my daughter came up to me today. Understandable. Yeah. Well, we read the TikTok terms. My daughter came up to me today. She said her friend at school was mad at me because her mom watched a video of me reading the terms of service for TikTok.

And then she made him delete TikTok off his phone. Because TikTok, I don't know if you know this, but not only does it have access to all your keystrokes, it has access to your microphone, has access to all computers that you use, even if you don't have TikTok on them. So if you are using TikTok on your phone and you're also using a laptop or you don't have TikTok, TikTok can access your laptop. What the fuck? I mean, it's basically a Chinese data stealing application that's insanely addictive it's the most addictive it's really brilliant in terms of like a trojan horse the strategy of like getting people to give up all their data birth dates phone numbers emails everything everything you type to people it's fucking wildly invasive and that's something that came about because of our desire to be entertained constantly.

They tricked us. They figured out what's the best way to suck people in, make the most addictive app and also make it the most, have the most thievery, the most data stealing. That's the scariest part about it though. It's not the, I don't think it's the data. I don't think it's like, oh, they know what I typed in my keystrokes. You're talking before about the importance of discipline, the importance of self-control. To some extent, the way you exert discipline on yourself is who you are, right? That's your, the extent that you control who you are and what's in your mind. Yeah. That's a big piece of it.

For sure. And the end game, like the thing that TikTok is the perfect realization of that everything's been leading up to and the other social media companies are having to like follow along is kind of like getting inside of that loop.

It's taking away every choice you make until it's kind of just like more. More. More. More. And it's make until it's kind of just like more, more, more, more. And it's like it's inside the loop where you even think about what you want. And that's like to me that's scarier than, oh, they know what's on my laptop or something. Although I'm not saying that's good. But like it is mind control. Yes.

It is mind control. That is scary. But the scary thing is they're using that mind control. Yes. It is mind control. That is scary. But the scary thing is they're using that mind control to steal data. And they're not just controlling your mind by keeping you occupied. But they're also stealing intellectual property. Like if you're at home writing software on a computer and you have TikTok on your phone and you're accessing both things, they at least theoretically have access to all that data, all that stuff that you're writing. I don't think they can. The terms of service might say that, but there's something wrong if your laptop is sending them your data.

Yeah, but that doesn't mean they're not doing it. One of the reasons why they got rid of Huawei is they found out there was a third party access and that they're selling routers and network components that will literally open up a door to people to siphon off information. Why wouldn't they do that with everything if they could? I think they would. If it says that in terms of service and if there is some sort of way that that can be acquired, that they can.

Like it said, they have access to the data that's not on the fucking phone. If you're using a different computer and the same person's using it, they have access to that. Seems like a lot. It is a lot. But, I mean, that's also the reason why people are not calling for Twitter to be removed, but they are calling for TikTok to be removed because they are concerned about this. My thing about mind reading and about mind reading technology is the hope is that whatever groundbreaking technological intervention gets introduced, Whatever groundbreaking technological intervention gets introduced that they don't realize what the ultimate potential that it carries and they let it in and then it runs rampant like the Internet is done. interface with ideas and changes our understanding of other people and their thoughts and highlights

the value of honesty and integrity and meaning what you say and saying what you mean and doing things that are ultimately beneficial like beneficial in terms of like people read your work because it's beneficial to them it it's fascinating. People enjoy your art because they get something out of it. But it would, in some ways, it would be a real problem because it would eliminate all privacy. Which is where I think everything's going. Dark Mirror episode or something, more than a happy future to me.

I don't know, man. I mean, maybe that's what ancient man would say about most of society. About everything we do. Yeah. I mean, I think it's all going in a general direction, whether you like it or not. It's going into this direction where access to information becomes easier and easier

and more prevalent and more people know more about you now than have ever known about you before. And that doesn't seem to be slowing down. That seems to be a general direction that all this technology moves to. It moves to easier access to information. And there's many bottlenecks. And, you know, some of the bottlenecks, I mean, money's a bottleneck, right?

What is money? It's basically there's numbers somewhere. There's numbers at a if everyone has access to information i mean that's the ultimate scary thing the ultimate communism is everyone has equal access to money because money is just numbers you own nothing and you're happy you own nothing and you're happy you're on nothing and you'll eat the bugs. Have you been following the AI stuff at all? Yeah. That's the stuff that I would bet on

as like the biggest technological advance that's happening in my lifetime right now that winds up 10 years from now. General AI. Yeah, sentient general AI is terrifying. And the whole, like the path there, even if you like, yes, general sentient malevolent AI, maybe it kills the world. That's, that's scary. But even just on the way there, like the

implications of machines that can think more and more like people talk about not being able to understand the implications of a technology that's moving ridiculously quickly. That one is, that one is crazy. I think it is. It's crazy crazy And that that's another one that you have to wonder like will we even know if it is sentient? When when will we know will we know as it's happening? Well, we know a decade later like why would it even announce itself to us like what motivation will it have? It will have no motivation in terms of emotions, no motivation in terms of the general human reward systems that we have for our desire to accumulate resources and love for the community and all that. That's not going to have any of those. There'll be no audience capture with AI. It'd be dependent entirely upon how it's

programmed. But then if you give it the ability to be sentient, then it has the ability to reprogram itself. Then it has the ability to write better programs. Then it has the ability to create far more sophisticated AI. And then physical manifestations of that AI, meaning artificial beings that are sentient. And I think the only way to mitigate that, well I don't know the only way,

but one of the ways to mitigate that is to become cyborgs, is to become a part of it. And this is what I'm saying with mind reading software or mind reading technology and Neuralink, where you're going to radically increase your access to information and your ability to access information. It's going in this sort of general direction.

And my concern is that we're obsolete. My concern is that the physical body, the human monkey body that we all enjoy and that creates such beautiful poetry and art and music and all these different things because of our emotions and our feelings and all that stuff's going to be obsolete. But then what's the purpose of living? We have to decide. Is the purpose of living to just swim about in a sea of emotions and life experiences? Or is there some greater purpose that we will embrace once we become deeply intertwined with this cybernetic organism? We're fucked.

It's heady stuff. Yeah, it is. We're fucked. We're fucked. This thing that we have, this fleshy thing is fucked. This thing is riding horses and fucking sending Morse code. That's what I think. I think it's almost obsolete.

That's interesting. In some ways, we're already cyborgs, right? Sure. The fact that you have a phone wired into the whole, this is why this stuff matters so much. Sure. The TikTok wouldn't matter if it wasn't already kind of a brain implant that you just interface in a slower way through your eyes and fingers. Sure. And, you know, more simple technology that doesn't involve electronics like glasses.

Some people need glasses to get around the world. You know, some people need wheelchairs. I mean, there's a lot of things that we all agree are better because they've helped people live lives without limitations that normally would have had them. And so we integrate those. And then there's going to come a point in time where that integration means something that enhances the way your brain interfaces with other people. If we're going to live in a world, so imagine if we're in a world where you had a brain chip and Jamie had a brain chip and everyone out in the office had a brain chip, but I didn't. Because I'm like, I don't even need an email, bro.

I don't even watch TV. I just fucking chop wood. We'd be talking trash about you. Yeah. You have no idea. Just a moron. Yeah. You'd be going back and forth about what a monkey I am, that I'm still trapped in this stupid cellular reproducing body.

Yeah. We're going there. Substack's helping. Could be good, though. Well. Could go well. It could be good if we think that, if you think of some ultimately sophisticated civilization that eliminates war and no longer does anything that pollutes the environment and everything it does, it does with a greater comprehensive understanding of all the

effects that could happen to those things. Yes. But then what are we? You know, I think we have so much pride and so much attachment to being a biological human being that anything that takes us away from that we're going to think of as being a negative. But there's a solution to that now, which is that we die. We have a finite lifespan. And so if you and I don't want to become cyborgs, but we figured out how to make cyborgs before we figured out how to extend people's lives won't matter because the old generation will decide they don't need email and then they'll die off and there'll be a new generation that thinks some other way.

Yeah. But that, I mean, talk about like longing for the old days. Once you get the first chips in your brain and you read everyone's mind you just gonna man wasn't it great when I just know access to people's minds like glasses are good we're glad we have glasses sure sure clothing that's nice closing is definitely better than freezing to death I just think we could look at it like bad or good really you know we could look I mean we definitely should we definitely could look at it like bad or good. We really, you know, we could look, I mean, we definitely should. We definitely should look at the pitfalls, definitely look at the traps.

But I think objectively, we have to look at it in terms of what is, what are the human animals up to? Well, what the human animals are up to is creating better and better technology every fucking year, without doubt. They might make mistakes. They might do this, they might pollute the environment, they might cause war, they might do terrible things to each other, but they're ultimately, collectively, over the seven plus billion people, they're making better and better technology every year, and that seems to be the most radical thing that they do if you looked at the human organism if you looked at us as a

completely alien thing if you existed on another planet with a completely different way of life and you said what are those fucking monkeys up to what are they doing over there well they're making technology they constantly are making technology and I think that even capitalism, materialism rather, I think even materialism, it seems to be baked into us, right? People love things and they love better things and they're obsessed with better. Like I have an iPhone 13 here. This thing's perfect. I don't need a better one, but I'm going to get one.

A new one comes out. I heard the camera's better. It's slightly better. It's got a brain chip. You're going to need it. Yeah. The battery lasts longer. I can be entertained more.

I mean, those things, our desire for materialism is fueling this creation of technology. That's ultimately what it does. Whether we're aware of it overall, when you want, you know, look at my new car. Look at this thing. My house is all solar now and all these different things, this desire to keep up with the Joneses and materialism is like, I mean, it exists in most cultures and most people. that helps fuel technology because there's a market for it, so people create it because they want more stuff. So they create better stuff so that they make sure that their products are valuable and desirable, and in doing so, it fuels innovation.

And ultimately, I think that's lost on a lot of people, is that this is what our, as a human organism, This is what our, as a human organism, we seem to be creating new technology without stop. And it's got to go somewhere. Like, what is the end point? What's the event horizon of technology? Well, it's some radical change in the way we live and experience each other. It's either that or extinction or extinction. Yeah, I don't think

Yeah, I think Extinction is gonna come. I mean it could come from us We certainly could have some evil dictator decides to fucking hit the switch and we blow each other up But it also can come from space it can come from asteroid impacts. It can come from super volcanoes from within. It can come from radical climate change. It's like, how do we get enough technology to fend off the asteroids and be sane enough about it that we don't use it to kill ourselves? Because you can't stop it. You're not going to stop if this is the thing that everyone's doing.

There's no pause button. There's no turn back the clock. I don't think there's like pause button. I don't think there's a pause button. I don't think there's anything that's going to get people to stop creating better technology. So all you can do then is hope to like bend it the right way. Hope to bend it the right way or have the ability to understand and just let it happen. That this is a part of a process that's beyond all of us and may be the purpose of human beings in the first place. I've always equated us to the electronic caterpillar that is creating the cocoon and doesn't even

know why it's doing it to build a butterfly. It doesn't know why it's doing it. It just keeps doing it. And then one day this new life form emerges from it, but that is a natural course of progression. And that has been improgrammed or that's been, if you had a chance to see the end result and see, go all the way back from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms to the ultimate form of whatever biological cyborg we're going to be. This is just how it works. And this is how it works on other planets as well.

This is how it works whenever you have a long period of time without cataclysmic disasters or wars, and you do allow these thinking creatures to develop better and better things. I like humanity, though. I think we should be part of the butterfly. I don't think we should be discarded while the robots go on to conquer the galaxy. That's a lot of the things that the monkeys said when they were throwing shit at each other. Like, I like trees. I like living in trees.

I don't want a house. I don't want a car. But we're still the monkeys, right? Yeah. Those monkeys are us. But we're way different, right? Sometimes. Sometimes. But, I mean, at least physically. the monkeys right yeah that those monkeys are us but we're way different right sometimes sometimes but i mean at least physically we're way different in our reality in terms of our day-to-day life is

way way different unrecognizable to people that lived hundreds of years ago and the rate of change over a long scale is only increasing if you could get isaac newton and bring him into this podcast studio that dude would be fucking blown away you You know, if Jamie could just pull up information. You know how much that would freak him out? That we'd say, Jamie, what happened in 1876 that caused these people to do this? And then, bam, we'd pull it up. He would be like, what?

You could just immediately leave and go read Wikipedia for six hours. Oh, yeah, forever. And they'd be like, wait a minute. Who's editing this? Anyone? Oh, my goodness goodness internet obsessives isaac could you imagine if you get benjamin franklin to read twitter and be like what in the

fuck get martin luther shit posting right he probably would be shit posting too and you really think about where you know ancient cultures and ancient civilizations the way they distributed knowledge the way they held discussions It's sort of similar to what we would do if we didn't have all this stuff like the physical body Is very it's very similar to the physical body of humans that live thousands of years ago Not much change at all, but the world has changed of years ago not much change at all but the world has changed radically and i think the only way that that goes is that we become a part of it i think that's right and it's there's like a loop where the culture we have influences the technology we build and the technology we build inexorably shapes the culture that we have yeah and so

there's this like back and forth at each stage it's like at ever increasing pace the the things we choose to make then shape who we are um which again you know my obsession is like the way that that we use that technology to shape the culture, shape what we think, shape who we are, just matters a lot. Doing like a, you know, yes, technology is increasing very quickly. It's unstoppable, but I don't think it's predetermined. I don't think there's one version of the future that is destined to come about no matter what we do. I think there's like a wide range of what's possible

all the way from extinction or things you can imagine that are worse than extinction, all the way to things that we can't conceive of that are some version of your butterfly. And which of those things we end up at depends. I think sometimes it even depends. It could depend on individuals. It could depend on one person. It could depend on a guest you have on your podcast, something that you say. Or it could be the one person who's working on the first AI or the first brain chip. Some flip they make about how that thing works could be the butterfly that flaps its wings that shapes humans' expansion into the universe or not. That stuff's wild. It is wild. And I think that's one of the reasons why I think that free speech platforms like Substack are so important because it changes the access to perspectives.

because it changes the access to perspectives. And ultimately, that's what a lot of us are, is like a sponge for perspectives. We get a better understanding of our own thought process by examining other people's thought processes, and we get a better understanding of the world around us by seeing how other people view it and analyze it. And they have to be able to do that freely. They have to be able to do that honestly. They have to be able to do that without any sort of oversight or any sort of, you know,

any people that don't want certain perspectives broadcast because those perspectives would somehow or another hinder what their ideology is or change what they're trying to accomplish. Yeah. Yeah, I think the freedom is a key ingredient. And then the other thing we've been talking about is like the way that the games you play shape who you become, right? The audience capture, positive or negative. right the audience cap audience capture positive or negative the way that the you know the the way that the technology works shapes what your perspective becomes it shapes what feedback

you get it shapes what helps you win helps you become the best version of yourself and so it's not just about preventing the negative it's not just about preventing the evil of censorship that can shut things down but it's about enabling the good thing right it's it's it's not it's not just the matter of like turnout censorship and great things will happen you need to like create some positive force you need to create some a way for the energy of good things to to make it into the world um and the you know even just simple things like i get an email newsletter and i pay you money for it and then a bunch of people like it and then that thing lets me quit my job. And now I can focus on doing this thing that shapes the culture instead of worrying about

how I'm going to put food on the table tomorrow. Or, you know, it's making me rich and I can say what I want and, you know, all that stuff, I think that stuff ripples. And you can't predict it. I'm not sitting here being like, I'm a genius and I'm going to shape the world with my ideas. I'm just a believer that the people who make these ideas have the power to shape the world. And if we give them the tools, if we give them the power in the right way, that can have profound, positive, cascading consequences, even if we don't know exactly what those are. Yeah. And I think you're also encouraging other

people to think, you know, by giving people a platform where they're not censored, you know, the censorship is not the issue. The issue is the ability to distribute information honestly and accurately. Now, the censorship is the problem because it comes in and it stops that from happening. The beautiful thing is the ideas. The beautiful thing is how those interact with other people's ideas. And now people who are reading some of these articles on Substack, people who are listening to some of these people talk, it influences them and maybe makes them create something, maybe inspires them to have thoughts that perhaps they wouldn't have had without reading these things and interacting with these ideas. And that's the history of human beings. We get better by understanding each other better,

better by understanding each other better, by communicating with each other better, by having these discussions, by reading, by interacting with ideas. And those ideas help us form our view of the world. And as soon as that stops, as soon as you put a halt to that, you put a wall up there, it fucks the whole process up. Our view of the world and our view of the future. It fucks the whole process up. Our view of the world and our view of the future. It's amazing how much of the technology we build is shaped by the science fiction that people read and watched as a kid. Of the shared dreams that we had of what the future could be like. And which of those resonated, which of those inspired, which of those caused somebody to want to make that real. Like we make this stuff, you know, we make this stuff in art sometimes

and in writing and in fiction and in thought before it makes it to technology. And dreaming that stuff together, I don't know, it matters. It does matter. And it's exciting. It's also one of the things that people enjoy deeply. They enjoy deeply listening to other people think or reading the things that people have thought about and wrote about because it inspires their own thoughts. And that's a critical part of being a human being. No one's intelligent in a vacuum.

You're not just a genius person who's figured all these things out by yourself. You're not just a genius person who's figured all these things out by yourself. Everybody who knows something in this world learned it from other people. We're all piling on to our greater base of understanding. Isaac Newton said, if I've seen farther, it's because I stood on the shoulders of giants. Yes, perfect. Yes. That is it, all of us. You can't put a bottleneck on that.

You can't stop that. And one of the good things about that is that people recognize it, intelligent people like yourself and other people that have joined your platform and other people that are just very dismayed at what's going on in the world with this idea that censorship for the greater good, that this is somehow or another the answer to this, which has never been the answer to that. It's not. You have to just relearn it every time. Yeah, I guess. A shocking number of those people have been on this podcast. I was looking this up before I came on. I was like, which Substackers have been on Joe Rogan?

And I stopped counting after like 15 or something. It's kind of amazing how many of the best. And I stopped counting after like 15 or something. It's kind of amazing how many of the best, I don't know. I think there's some of the best and most interesting people that wind up on Substack and on this show. It's a cool intersection. Yeah, it is a cool intersection. It's very cool.

I'm so happy that you guys exist. I'm so happy that you guys give those folks a platform. Whenever something like that comes up, I'm really excited because I say, ooh, good, something's emerged. Because you wonder when things clamp down, because there's a brief window where the vice can get tighter and tighter to the point where you can't squeeze anything out of it anymore.

And I worry. I worry about centralized power in terms of one entity that has the ability to disseminate information but decides what is good and what's bad information. Because it just limits our understanding. And our understanding is everything. Our ability to communicate and understand how other people think and feel, it's so critical to our own version of what reality is. Yeah. And as soon as a movement or an intellectual idea or a school of thought loses the ability to hear its critics, to have critics and to hear criticism,

as soon as you get to any idea, any religion, any school of thought or ideology, no matter how good, if it loses its ability to be open to criticism, it inevitably becomes evil, I think, because it loses its rudder. It's sort of like there's nothing tying it to what's true or what's good. And it can kind of like those dynamics of just like everybody's vying for attention and power within the thing can take over unchecked. And so you, you know, these projects, even if you believe in them, you should welcome debate. You should welcome criticism. You should welcome sort of like a thriving marketplace, if only so that your own ideas can become stronger and can win and cannot not succumb to the trap of like, sort of becoming stunted. Where do you ultimately see Substack going? Do you have some sort of a grand goal for Substack? Do you have like a general direction that you see going in? The way that I think about this is I see it as we're creating a true alternative to the attention economy, right?

So you have this world of social media that's like, grab as much of your time in life as possible. And certain things win there. And people are spending more and more of their time there. And some of that is good. I mean, sort of, I think of it's like eating junk food, maybe. It's not the end of the world if you see cute videos of puppies on YouTube and like, that's fine. Like good things can be good. But to your point about discipline becoming the important part of how you decide who you are, you want to have an alternative to that, right? You want to have something, you know,

I'm not going to force people not to use TikTok. I think that would be bad, but you want to have something that's like an alternative. You want to have something that, an alternate way for me to spend, excuse me, my time in my life that I can choose, that's compelling enough,

that's got enough exciting, interesting stuff there that I'm not, you know, it's not like the eat your vegetables only platform. Right. But if I want to like take back control of my mind, of who I'm trusting, how I'm spending my attention, this is this place, this alternate universe on the internet with different laws of physics, where different kinds of stuff wins.

And where when you go there, it's not trying to grab as much of your life as possible. You know, cynically, it's trying to grab as much of your money as possible. But the way that it does that is by finding things that you actually value and making you make the choice as a better version of yourself. I'm going to spend some of my life by subscribing to this person. I'm going to spend some of my money supporting the creation of this piece of culture that matters to me. And I think if we can like we sort of have that now and it's this small thing. There's like a million, million and a half subscribers.

But it's like the energy is growing and it's creating things that otherwise couldn't have existed. It's letting people do work that they believe in that otherwise couldn't have existed. I think that thing could actually get quite big. I think it could get big to the point where it rivals or eclipses the size of the other things that are vying for our attention just because it's better. Because the life that I'll lead if I take my mind back is more rewarding than the life that I'll lead. If I, uh, you know, spend all my time every day on Tik TOK. I think people see, I see this with people see this with their parents where it's like they get like Facebook brains and you just look at it and you're like, I don't want to be that if we can create this alternate universe. And so, you know,

it's for writing. I think writing is a lot of the center of intellectual culture. It's where a lot of the, a lot of ideas come from where a lot of these things get hashed out. We've been adding podcasting, we've been adding video, we're adding community features. We'll add some live stuff. Like I think it's sort of like, we want to let people have their own personal media empire and then have this exist in this network of people

that are in conversation with each other, that control their own piece of it and that help each other out, that talk to each other. And that ends up funding a lot of great writing, a lot of great thinking, a lot of great culture that otherwise could not have existed. I also think that the subscription-based model where people are paying for people's stuff, and it's also optional. Some people have their Substack open for free. And there's lots of free stuff.

Yeah, there's a lot of that that's open for free. And I think, and some people have it where you have the option to pay, but it's available for free. So if you choose to support, you're doing it just purely altruistically. You're just deciding that this is something that I feel is beneficial. I want to support it. I want to help. I think that you have skin in the game. I think that there's something to that as well.

Like this is something you pay for. People will hate read things, but they won't hate pay for it. We sometimes joke. They might. They sometimes do. Occasionally you see it. But then sometimes they hate pay for it. I said that to a writer the other day, and he's like, no, I had someone hate pay for me.

He left a comment being like, I paid just so I could leave this comment. You asshole, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, but you know what? Fine. It's a year later. That guy's still reading. There's something here that's worth sticking around for. Well, that's the thing about a lot of the things that people consume is that even if

they hate it, there's something about it that's compelling. You know, maybe they're getting something. Like I said, that I get something out of like reading like hardcore right wing people's perspectives on Roe v. Wade. What am I getting out of that? I don't know people like that. I want to know how they think. I want to know how they think about all sorts of different things.

And I think that having a place where you absolutely can know, even if you don't know exactly what they think, you know what they're writing, what's coming out of their mind. Just get a better understanding. And that's ultimately what we're all trying to do. There's no fucking all-knowing human being. We're trying to get a better understanding. And the only way to do that is to allow people unfettered completely free ability to express themselves

That's what you're doing congratulations cheers to you Thanks All right, we can wrap it up with that. I think we nailed it Awesome. Thank you. Thank you very much for being here. If people want to shit post on your social media What is it? First of all, go to substack.com. Start your own substack. Hit start reading.

Look at all the great things that are on there. That's the most important thing. I have a Twitter, but it's not very good. And how would people find – is there like a site that curates or recommends some great substacks? So if you go to substack.com, you can see some of the top Substacks. And there's a start reading where you can kind of like pick some categories and get some stuff that would be interesting to you. If you find a couple things that are interesting, then you can start to like look through the network.

Like if you find someone you like, you can see what are they recommending, what are the things that are good for them. So I would start either on Substack.com or go get the Substack app in the iPhone app store, which exists now. And the iPhone app store, when you go to that, do you have an Android version as well? There will be soon an Android version. Oh, you don't have an Android version. Very soon. You don't like Android people. I love Android people. The cyborgs, they're great. How come you haven't had an Android version yet?

Small team. We built the iPhone one first. Okay. And the version of it, the application, does the app have the video on it for the podcasters and everything? All that's on there? Sure does. No commercials? No commercials.

That's beautiful. It's pretty nice. That's nice. Okay, so your social media, one more time, yours? Mine, I think I'm CJGBest on Twitter. You don't even know? I love it. I'm pretty sure.

CJGBest. CJGBest, that's me. Okay. And we're at Substack Inc., yeah. Thanks, Chris. I really appreciate it. It was a really great conversation. Likewise. Enjoyed it.

Thank you for doing what you're doing. It really means a lot. Thank you. All right. Enjoyed it. Thank you for doing what you're doing. It really means a lot. Thank you. All right. Bye, everybody.