Is Inflation Dropping? Tesla Cybercab, Kamala Harris, Meta Orion, Hurricane Milton, Google and more!

I'm Tom Bilyeu. Welcome. We are going to be talking about Kamala Harris making the rounds. I want to talk about her economic policies, Mark Cuban going on on the All-In podcast, and people's response to that's been interesting. Hurricanes are ravaging America, and I'm told that we have a Tesla surprise. Let's hear about it. Drew, as always, welcome. I'm excited, Tom. How you feeling? I'm feeling great. Nice. All right, jumping right into it. I want to get the boring stuff out of the way. Economics. You love inflation. The You're a big inflation guy. I love inflation? That might not be the accurate way to represent my stance, Drew. Uh yes, but it is certainly a topic I think a lot about. It dropped to 2.4 in September, down from a most down from a pandemic high of 9.1 in June 2022. I know a lot of people still see prices up. A lot of people still see their pockets not stretching as much they used to. I know you have this intake on inflation isn't just about rising prices, it's the dollar amount itself. How do you feel about this news that inflation is actually, quote unquote, getting better? Well, so inflation getting better would just be good news all around. Anybody that makes something like that sound like bad news, that that's very problematic. But the thing that I try to get people to understand is that inflation is not rising prices. Rising prices is a result of inflation. Inflation, literally, the reason it is called inflation, boys and girls, is because you're inflating something. So, the question is, what are you inflating and why is it bad? You're inflating the money supply. I want to be very clear about that. Guess what inflates the money supply? Like crazy, debt. Guess what else inflates the money supply? Actually putting fiat currency just by, literally, fiat, by decree, uh into the system to pay for the debt that already was inflationary, and so we are in this horrific cycle where you're just adding money, adding money, adding money to the system. And what that does is it robs buying power. So, boys and girls, when you hear inflation, what you should think in your mind is theft. I've been stolen from if it's actual inflation. If it's rising prices, it's very different. So, I want to be very clear. And I get it. This is nuanced and people the world abhors nuance more than nature abhors a vacuum. But nonetheless, you have to understand the difference between the two. So, prices are going to rise for a whole host of factors, but ultimately, inflation, which is the thing that drives the increase in prices more than anything else, is a separate phenomenon. And if people don't separate those two things, you get all the political mumbo jumbo that we're living through right now. Copy. And just to put a pin in that, the government does not control private interest prices. So, that is a free market problem. Um Well, so hold on because this is exactly what Kamala Harris is talking about. This is the thing that ultimately disqualified her for me as a candidate. Literally until about 2 weeks ago, I wasn't sure which way I was going to vote. Uh I still might cast a protest vote. We'll see. Because I think the vote is going to be so close, it might matter uh from a popular election standpoint. But um I don't think she like a deep and fundamental level, I do not think she understands the drivers of the economy. And you just at a moment where you have the debt that we have and you have the interest payments that we have, uh you cannot have somebody that is fiscally illiterate. So, the DOJ is deciding how to break up Google. I know that monopolies are bad on paper, but can the government figure out how to make a company more viable? Like what does that mean if you had a company and they government wants to break it up? Yeah, so this is interesting. So, the the government when it is doing its job well is making sure that the health of the industry is there. And what happens with a monopoly is like so right now, we are fighting with the fact that AT&T has a monopoly over the internet in my house. And for whatever reason, even Starlink doesn't work here. So, now I'm in a position where it it is to the point where a very stable member of our team, who we both know, was threat He said, "At at the risk of your job, are you actually going to show up at this time?" And they have put us off so many times. It's something like 6 months where they will give us a day and a time, and then they just won't show up. It's absolutely outrageous. So, that's what happens when you have a monopoly. And so, the customer ends up suffering. And so, what the government is saying is, "Hey, we're going to protect the consumer." Now, governments I I'll even grant them that governments have the best interests of their people at heart. The problem is the these are incredibly complicated systems, and governments are far more likely to do harm most of the time than good when they think from the top down they can control this. Now, I'm not a libertarian. I do think we want government, but you need a constraining force. So, the government right now is trying to be a constraining force against Google getting too monopolistic. I think we should very slow to encourage the DOJ to do this. But, upon seeing all the evidence and really weighing in and being very slow to do this, yes, you do want them to uh protect the the the customer at the end of the day. But, I think they should be very slow. Now, I'm not in the weeds on the Google situation. Um so, I can only give you at a high level. Uh when you start seeing a rash of these anti-monopolistic suits go up, my spidey senses go off. But, we haven't like it's not been crazy. Where I get worried is how much of the M&A that they're um they're really putting a cold blanket on all of that. And so, where M&A should be taking 90 days, 120 days, you're now talking 2, 3 years. And you just the the burden that that puts on companies I think is terrifying. You want companies to be able to go, "Hey, we've stalled out. We want to go get a strategic acquire here to continue to grow." It's good for the stock market. It can be good for that company. And so, right now, that's where I have a bigger problem is if Google were trying to make an acquisition and they're throwing cold water on that because they've been doing that over and over and over, I think that's a huge mistake. But, whether Google really is just through um owning so much of the world becoming a problematic monopoly, I'd have to look closer at it. Copy. And do you think this is something that happened a bit too late with the rise of ChatGPT, TikTok, a lot of other quote-unquote search engines are out there? People are getting their information from different places. I mean, that's a really good question. This is why I always hesitate to get behind um the government stepping in and doing this. Just today, uh I had a weird notice pop up on my screen. And instead of going to Google, which I would have done literally for the last 20-plus years, I just went to ChatGPT and was like, "Hey, this popped up. What do I do?" And I thought, "Woof, if I'm going there just for information, I'm not even um it's not something where I wanted to write something for me or create something. I'm just like, "Hey, bro. Like, huh? I have a feeling you're going to know the answer to this." And its answer was so compelling and so concise, and it didn't make me go dig, right? Cuz a lot of times they'll send you a to a webpage, and you have to figure out where on the webpage it is. It was just like, "Yo, this is what it means." And the answer was so bang on um that I thought, "Woof, things are about to change in a in a massive way." So, again, this is why you want a very light touch government. You want to make sure that as much of this is left to the free market as humanly possible. You want to be able to point very specifically to a problem that doesn't that isn't already in the middle of a transition. So, I think to your point about search, search is in the middle of a transition right now. And so, I know that Google owns YouTube, but whether that's going out to YouTube, whether that's going out to all the different AIs, whether that's going out to X, like there there is a diffusion of that happening right now as we transition into social media, and as we transition into AI. And I think AI will literally obliterate what search is today. I think you're literally going to have that friend around your neck or something like that that you just have interaction with all the time from the time that you're a kid. It will remember you and the things you care about. And so now, that search has so much context that it's like, "Oh Tom, don't worry. I know um in context what that warning on your particular screen means because I know what you've been up to." Copy. And honestly, that's the future that we want, so I'm I'm Well, now privacy people in the feed are going ballistic because it so everything is about tension. If you want to understand the way that I view the world, it it really is tension between two things because everything is a trade-off. There there is no utopia. So, it's you will get bitten in the ass by the fact that you're being monitored all the time. And you're going to have to all of us are going to have to answer the question, is it worth it? Is it worth the trade-off of having somebody that knows me better than myself that reads all my emails, understands all the context, knows where I'm supposed to be at a given time, and warns me and all that. But you really are going to trade something. And if the government is able to dip into that background, bro, it it the surveillance state is going to get scary. It's very, very interesting. Very, very interesting. As you stated earlier, Kamala did her rounds from the Call Her Daddy to 60 Minutes edit. We'll get into that. Um Mark Cuban on the All-In podcast. What's your general reaction to this new political landscape? Cuz I'm so used to seeing two old guys argue on CNN for 2 hours. So, seeing people on podcast, laughing and and joking with hosts, it it feels a bit different. I think it's a better thing, but I I kind of want your perspective. thing because you're getting longer answers, but the reality is watching this latest round with Kamala Harris. Uh and you see it a lot with Trump as well. This this is very much on both sides. You want a confrontational interview. Again, friction. Friction is the answer. And if you're going on and obviously Trump and Harris are both going to pick the places that they think are going to be friendliest, that are going to be kindest. And so, yes, it's better than like these quick sound bites, but honestly, I would rather a 12-minute interview with an antagonistic journalist who is sincere, so not somebody who's just sort of anti that person. Like, you want somebody who is in good faith saying, "Hey, I just want to understand exactly where you stand." And because politicians are so good, you become a politician because you were the master of the frame. And if I can shout out Harris, she has done a phenomenal job, man. A phenomenal job. Four years ago, she was horrific on the debate stage. Absolutely horrific. And seeing her now be able to do all the political maneuvering, which I despise, but it is the game. It's a skill. And she's gotten very good at it. So, anyway, as a long-form person, I want to see people go on the long-form shows, but I want to see them embrace that friction. But this really is a game of of controlling the narrative. And so, I don't know that podcasting will solve the problem. And this is I think this is probably a once journalism broke down and it became an advertising model, and now they had to do things to appease advertisers to drive clicks, uh we may have broken something fundamental. And podcasting won't get us back to that if people don't go on shows that could possib- not not only could possibly be antagonistic, they should be fair, they should be journalistic, but they should 100% try to actually get to what you understand or or to understand your views. And I think everybody rightfully criticizes Kamala Harris for that. It's like, "What what do you actually believe?" And love Trump or hate him, and actually, I really don't like the bombast. That makes me very uneasy on a world stage. It's obviously divisive internally as as But you know what he thinks. Like, he just comes out and says it. Sometimes, like to a like the eyebrows like going back not long past my forehead into the neighbor's backyard kind of thing. But, at least that feels unscripted. I'm with you. I thought it was going to solve the issue cuz I seen the 60 minutes edit where the unedited version there's a lot of ums. I think as she's kind of dodging a question. And then the re-edited version, she seems decisive and answers the question in 5 seconds. So, we can see that the mainstream media is kind of getting exposed whether it's this or the Joe Rogan clip that MSNBC modified a couple months ago. So, we already see this happening. But, I'm now realizing it even on the independent stage. And I'm going to talk about Cuban on the All-In podcast where he's even saying like he's even getting caught like he's just playing the game. She's doing what she's supposed to do. And you thought that on the independent side you would at least be honest. But, we're even all we're already seeing those chinks in the armor on the independent side as well. Okay. So, there's two things there. There's is independent media going to be the solve? And again, I think it's a way better format. So, love that. But, the candidates have to go on ones where people are going to push them. They've got to be willing to do that. But, it's risky. And so, now you're into the kayfabe of it all. And this is something that really bothers me. And I really stare into the abyss of as somebody who is trying to use first principles thinking. Like, I literally that is my life you well know as we work together. It really is how I navigate the world. Everything that we do in business. Everything that I do in my personal life, my marriage all of it is governed by first thinking. But, at the same time I understand that it is very easy to manipulate people. And if that didn't make me feel sinister on the inside, I would do it because it's so effective. And so, this is what Cuban was talking about. And look, I think Cuban's amazing, man. And I'm actually really blown away by what he's doing with Cost Plus Drugs. So, as with all things mixed bag. So, where I think he has landed is he kept talking about low information voters. There's high information voters. I actually don't think he said low information. There's high information voters. And he was like, "Basically, you have to ignore them. Anybody that's going to listen to a long-form podcast is going to parcel this stuff out, that's going to go and do research. You have to worry about those cuz most people don't fit into that category." And so, I'm going to ask this question in a really blunt manner. What do you do about dumb voters? That's the game. So, I want to strip away and look, I get it. I'm going to be clipped out of context. I want everyone to understand I'm perfectly willing to accept that I may be in the dumb voter camp. But that is the game. The game is what do you do about the fact that you have people that are not going to think through these issues. Even if they're willing to, they're not going to. And then there are some people that legitimately cannot think through these issues, but they can vote. And so, what do you do about the dumb voter problem? And right now, everybody lies. They control the frame and they don't tell you what they really think. I mean, you can see them dancing around it. They don't tell you what they really think and they do this incredibly effective thing where they reframe what they really want to talk about instead of answering your question directly. And it it will always be. I'm never going to be able to change it. All I can do is be sort of one little thing over here. Um but it works and people will always do what works. And people have to understand that what's happening is people are exploiting the fact that many people do not have the intellectual horsepower to think through this stuff, perhaps myself included. And many people, even if they have the horsepower, they're not going to allocate the time. And the whole game is predicated on that. That's so dark, man. Like that really freaks me out. And the more that I get into this and the more that I accept the mantle of being somebody who is an independent uh voice in a space where people are going to use my content in order to navigate the world, you start thinking, "Okay, do I give them a nuanced position?" Because if I do, it's not going to perform as well. Like I can see behind your eyes right now, you're already editing me cuz you know that I've been talking too long. But that really is troubling. But is there a responsibility there that somebody has to be the the straight guy in the room like I understand that there's dumb voters and I understand that some people will get their political advice from their favorite celebrity, but where where does that mantle fall? Who's the one that says, "Hey guys, you should actually be educated. Hey guys, these are the actual issues we should voting for." It's not going to matter. It's not going to matter. I don't even think that exists right now. Dude, it it wouldn't matter. Hey everybody, you need to get educated. You need to think through these problems. There, I've said it. But it it really won't matter. No one is going to do it that wasn't already going to do it. And the reason is this stuff is obscenely complex. These are incredibly complicated systems. But the problem is it really does matter. So the idea that I keep coming back to, so my life philosophy boys and girls, we are all automata, that free will is an illusion, but despite that, Drew, despite that, we respond to ideas. And so now it's like I have the chills. We have to accept, even if you'll join me in believing that we're all automata, we're still going to respond to the ideas that get that get put before us. So the ideas then really matter. And a whole part of this complicated thing is that we all have these um internal values that we steer by. We do things that we want to um I for one value integrity. So if I say something that I'm going to live up to what I say, that I'm not going to present one face and then be a different way. Literally, I can feel my brain scanning right now to make sure that what I'm saying is true, to determine how I should feel about myself when I'm by myself. Okay, but everybody has different values. And so this is like that mid curve thing where people are over here are just like lie to everybody. And then the midwits like me are like, "No, don't. Like say the truth. Nuance matters." And then you get back over here and it's like, "Eh, just light everybody because it's what works." Dark, man. Dark, dude. Dark. It's so dark. And so look, I'm only ever going to be one pebble and so I might as well be the the best pebble I can. I don't know why I'm calling it a pebble, but I you're you're a grain of sand on a gigantic beach and people are going to encounter all the grains of sand and they're going to make their own decision. Um It's dark. Man. Polymarket, for those that don't know, that's the betting market on the election. There are people who sports bet and there's people who bet who's going to win the debate, who's going to win the swing state, etc. The Polymarket has tipped in Trump's favor. What's your gut telling you about who's actually going to win this election? Trust the Polymarket. And the problem is the Polymarket's going to go back and forth. So the reality is that um what does my gut say? My gut says that my gut says that I don't know. That that's the honest answer. So I will give you that uh because I probably have a negativity bias and because I am so scared of her um fiscal policies that my default is like, "Oh my god, she's going to win." Um but that comes from a place of, "Okay, you can trust me to be selfish. You can trust everyone to be selfish. I sell to the middle class. I make entertainment. So forget what you guys know me for on YouTube. That is not what I think of as myself. What I think of as myself is what we're doing on the entertainment side. I make a video game. Um I think a lot about that. And so there just aren't enough rich 11-to-15-year-old kids for me to make that my market. So I care deeply about who do I think is actually going to build a thriving middle class. Now, I frame it that way only so that people understand. Like even if you just trust me to be cynical and selfish, you can still trust that I actually care about the middle class. Um but I also just care about people in general. So, my North Star is human flourishing for as many people as possible. That just means from a math equation, it's the middle class. That I mean, that's that's who you have to care about. Um and then history teaches me that the middle class literally and the lower class, they will murder the upper class if there is not and I I don't mean that figuratively. I mean, they actually come and decapitate you. Eat the rich. Uh correct. If you don't make sure that the policies are good for them. So, uh to me, I'm looking at this going who's going to be better for the middle class. And unfortunately, the narrow-ass margin is probably because eh they're both going to spend so crazy and what you really need is somebody to rein in the deficit. That's the actual answer. Neither of them are going to do it. Uh but in Trump's 4 years, inflation was lower than Biden's. He's better on the border. That's the That's how I'm coming at this problem. I think that people will be a little better under Trump than Harris. I don't know. The I I don't really trust betting platforms cuz like you said, they shuffle culture. So, if the Call Her Daddy interview did 2 billion views, I feel like that number would have flipped immediately. It might flip eight more times before we get to the election, so. But 7-point like a 7% difference is significant. We're used to We're used to the 2 to 3%, you know, margin of error kind of leads, but this seems like it's a bit different. The culture The tides of culture may be changing. Um quick pause. I so wish I knew what people were picking up on. What is it that's happening? Is it that finally there's that groundswell of we don't know her? Is it she's really bounced back and forth? Is it that um what Trump is doing in the swing states from an advertising campaign is actually working? In California, we don't even hear about this stuff, man. Because here, it's like we are voting for Harris. Like it is simple as every California electoral vote is going to Harris. You can pretty much guarantee it. Uh so, but I hear that what he's doing, like he's really on the offensive. So, it's a it's a mix from the Super Friends of Elon Musk, RFK, Tulsi Gabbard. All these people that are kind of gathered around him. I think the fact that he was on a podcast from Flagrant to Dave Ramsey to Logan Paul where those are three different demographics and three different locations across the US. Um so, I do say that Trump from a campaigning standpoint is doing something unique and new and that kind of might be breaking the mold a little bit where the internet is now starting to rally in a way that we didn't expect. It was like, "Oh, yeah, the young people like Trump like Democrats, period. They Tik Tok, that's all we need to do. We're good." Whereas I think Trump is going to these independent media pockets that we kind of loop in as the internet or oh, those are those Rogan bros. We don't need to ignore them, but there are a lot of people in that pocket. There are a lot of people in that swell and with all these people that loved RFK that are sad that he dropped out, they're now migrating over there. People hate what's happening in the wars. We have somebody that was endorsed by Dick Cheney, which I feel like isn't the flex that the Democrats think it is. So, it it's it's it's getting really, really weird and and I think that's where the the the brain is breaking. Um but I'm with you. I can't call it. Uh it's it's up in the air. Yeah, and it'll bounce back and forth even though we have less than a month. It's crazy. Bananas. You want to get freaked out? From the time that we're recording this, it is less than 3 weeks till we relaunch our Christmas video game. That's how close we are to the season, man. Bananas. Bananas. It goes fast. It just freaked me out. Oh my god. Do your Christmas shopping early, guys. Meta just released their Orion headset. I feel like it's what Google Glass wanted to be. It's what Apple Vision Pro Quest is gathering to, like all these different technologies. It seems like Meta hit it out the park. What do you think? Yeah, I think people should go on X right now and plant your flag and say whether this is ridiculous or whether you think this is going to be something. It is and look, I'm obviously making a bet with my own credibility, but I'm telling you right now this is the future for sure. They're like people are like, "Nah, it's not going to be the form factor." I think it was Chamath Palihapitiya that said, "It won't be the glasses form factor." What? Obviously, it's going to be something on your eyes. So, if it isn't glasses, it's going to be contact lenses? I mean, it is going to be around your eyes. We navigate the world with our eyes. Period, full stop, end of story. So, whatever's going to happen is going to have a form factor that is around your eyes. And making it small, making it something that people are already used to, 100% and I will see people make comments where I'm like, "What world do you live in? Why do we need this? Why do w- What? Dude, imagine someone walking up to you and you're like, "Oh god, I recognize their face." and it just whispers, "The last time you saw this person was this, this is their name." That's better. You literally just got smarter. Or imagine looking at that building, "What is that building?" Well, I'm glad you asked. And like in The Terminator, it will pop up, you'll know exactly what it is. Have you guys not played video games where it sees something you don't and it locks on and it's like, "Yo, this person that's 100 yd from you, you know who they are." and this is where you know them from and all that. It's like, "Guys, if like me, you have ever thought to yourself, "I wish I were a little smarter." guess what happens when you put the glasses on. You get a little bit smarter. This is nuts to me that people are like, "Well, I don't know if this is really going to happen." The only question is, how quickly will they be able to get it to the point where it's light enough on your face that you can wear it all day, that it's not melting your brain and that it's affordable. Because right now, the prototype's like $10,000 a unit. That's to make. So, then they're going to sell for 20,000? I mean, so they obviously have to get the form factor changed so that they can afford to mass produce this stuff. But I mean, is that 5 years away? It's not a lot more than that. So, dude, if they were available right now, I would buy one. For sure, without question. Now, they look a little silly, you look like Eugene Levy, but man, to literally take that next step forward with non-invasive cyborg abilities, uh yes, please. Like, imagine for a second, dude, it's like, do these people not play video games? You could they could make it such that you could do an infrared overlay. I mean, there's all kinds of stuff that you could do. Dude, this is all available right now. These technologies are available today. And you could read the world in infrared, you could do night vision. I mean, look, I'm obviously now throwing the prices into the stratosphere, but getting people to understand that you navigate the world through your eyes and your ears, it will do both. It It's just absurd to think that this isn't on the path to being one of the most transformative technologies uh in a long time. It It will be eclipsed by AI. AI will be a more important, but AI will be integrated into it. AI will help you read the world. It's crazy. And that's where I think the technology is going there. You can't put it back in the bottle. And I was actually surprised that it took them this long. I know Snap came with their partnership with the Ray-Ban of just like, you can photo anything, but I think this form factor actually makes more sense. Especially in the business context, I seen that he was in a meeting and a text message popped up and he was talking to his wife in the middle So those things that's like, yes, that would be convenient. But I don't know, is this like do we need do we need this? Yes, man. All of the things that you just listed are all the dumb things that I will tell people turn them off. You don't want to be in a conversation with somebody and have a text message pop up. That's ass. I don't want to talk to you when you're like texting with your wife and [ __ ] It's like, stop. I want to be with you when I'm with you, but when you're engaging with the world and it's reading things, Got you. like, okay, let's give a crazy example. The AI, uh let's say that you're on the spectrum, and the AI's like, I got you. And it's like, no, no, no, they just made a micro-expression. I suggest that you ask the question, "Hey, is everything okay? Did I just say something that bothered you?" "Hey, is everything okay? Did I just say something?" Well, I'm glad you asked. Right? I mean, it dude, there are going to be some people that reject it. I get it. There're going to be There will be a new Puritan movement where the purity is about the rejection of technology. I fully understand that. I'm not even mad at them. Because I get it. There This is going to be a trade-off. Yeah. But just like you can have an unhealthy relationship with food or you can eat to not only survive but thrive, it will be the same with technology. If you use it to be constantly distracted, to indulge in pornography or whatever, then yeah, it it will be worse. It will have moved you backwards. But if you have a healthy relationship with it, then it's going to be extraordinary, man. Yeah. Like if if we did a podcast just on this, I could spend 2 hours just walking you through all the things I've already thought of. And the odds that I've thought of half of a percent of the things that it will do are virtually zero. So, um phones have made some people's lives worse, but not mine. So, this becomes a question of what is your relationship with it. It's a very good point. Very good point. Are you ready for your Tesla surprise? Let's do it. I want to hear about it. So, Tesla is set to announce tonight the Cybercab. It is their response to Waymo, Google's uh self-driving taxi service. So, this is supposed to go live. They're literally doing it at the Warner Brothers Theater in Hollywood. What are your first thoughts? Uh obviously. Like this is the way. It'll just be a competition between all these different car companies. None of us are ever going to drive. I understand that's going to traumatize a lot of people that love driving. And cool, hey, go do it as a you know, a hobby. I love that. But the reality is for me, being in a car that I'm not driving is like teleporting cuz I can just put my head down and get work done, do whatever I want to do. Like I don't understand people um for whom they would rather do the act of driving, especially cuz I live in LA, so the terrible. It's not like the wind is blowing through your hair. Uh you're stuck in traffic. Um so for me, just being able to learn, that's what I'm normally doing, or I'm just getting work done, it is utterly transformative. So now we all get that time back, but also it will be so much safer. It will be orders of magnitude safer. All the cars will be able to pod up. They will understand what each of them are doing as regulations begin to get passed that force them to communicate with each other uh and say, you know, up, we've detected a a car is moving erratically or whatever, it's probably this side or the other. Um and then you might be able to have all if if enough cars send back a kill signal, then it shuts the vehicle down or something like that. I mean, just Guys, these are the the things you can think of quickly off the top of your head. Like it's it's just going to be so much better. Now, where people begin to push back is, bro, I want the autonomy. Cool, I hear you, and I think that there is a very reasonable debate. Um I think you're probably in like 10 years, you're probably going to have a hard time getting insurance, but that's the only side of this where I'm like, yeah, I'm empathetic to that. There are people that just But those are the things that I want to do, and I want to make sure that they have that space. Uh but for safety reasons, that being relegated to a track or to given spaces, personally, I'm here for that. So It immediately reminded me of like horseback riding and how everybody used to own a horse and everybody used to ride. And now there are people who still ride horses, but they're in these remote specific areas where everybody else drives. Yeah, and I'm sure that that was legitimately traumatizing to a subgroup of people, and I get it. Everything's a trade-off. I'm a car guy though, so that makes me sad. But we'll see what's I trust Elon Musk though. Everybody loves a Tesla. So I'm curious to see how he his take on the Cybertruck versus the Waymos and all these other ones, so should be interesting. As a video game developer, Concordia is Sony's horrific uh latest project that rumored to lose over 400 million dollars. Game dev to game dev, what's the eulogy? I just want You understand this more than a lot of other people, so I just thought you should give this kind of eulogy to Sony. Sony, if I may. Can we please have your assets? Uh here is Here's the reality of the entertainment industry, and I am trying I'm I'm running a test to see if there's a way to buck that because you see this in movies, and for me video games is a way to escape this. So, what happens in a movie is you get one shot to get people excited behind it. Now, every now and then something will then go to streaming or video back in the day, and it would get a cult audience. So, for example, Shawshank Redemption absolutely tanked at the box office. Right. I did not know that one. And it has gone on to be considered the greatest film of all time. It It is a truly extraordinary film that now a lot of people have seen, but at the time it was just an abject failure. And so, you see that a lot, and it's done. And so, now whatever's going to happen's going to happen, and no one's going to put marketing dollars into it or anything like that. But I think the world has changed. So, here's what I'm betting on. If I can build a gaming community, and by the way, if you're into video games and empowerment, join me 6:30 a.m. Pacific time most days where I stream uh playing Fortnite and Project Heisen, our game. Um if I can build an audience that's around that idea, right? They want to be there for empowering ideas and video games at the same time. Now, I can build the game in public, and it will ebb and flow, and there'll be times just like our YouTube channel where we're way up, and then there's times where the channel comes back down, and we reinvent, and we try new things. And so, you just get this like constant rock, and we built this incredible business around it. I think video games, unlike a film, which really because it's static, it is what it is, and so people don't like it, you're done. So, if you spent $200 million making a movie and another $200 million marketing it, and people don't like it, that's it. There's no going back and redoing it. A game isn't like that. A game you can reinvent, you can try, you can create new mechanics. So, Fortnite, one of the biggest games on planet Earth, Originally was like the same where you're killing zombies and all the stuff and they were like reinventing it constantly. They had like redone the art style three times. They'd redone the core mechanics a bunch and they were like, "Oh god, do we release this?" And then right as they're releasing it, they see that PUBG is just crushing it with this new thing called a Battle Royale. So as an afterthought, someone inside the team was like, "Give us a small budget and let us take all these assets, all the stuff that we've built because it's a video game." People that don't understand how this works, all of that stuff can be tweaked a little bit and then the outcomes are wildly different. So basically what you've done is create call it physics. It's pretty close to what you're doing. How big is a jump? How far is a jump? What is it like when you slide? How does the gun react? All that stuff. It It's an insane amount of work. But once you set all that up, then you can make minor tweaks like, "Hey, instead of one person goes in and fights a bunch of the zombies, what if using all the same mechanics, we drop in a hundred of the players and have them kill each other?" All the same physics, all the same maps. Ah. And all of a sudden you have a totally different game and it ends up taking off and becoming one of the biggest video games of all time. But the zombie killing part is still out. It's still available. Virtually nobody plays it, but it's the same underlying game. So you had a game that took, let's say, five or six years to develop and at the last minute they switched it up. And that switch up ended up creating a totally different game. So when I see Sony go, "Nah, [ __ ] it." and they turn it off, I'm just like, "What are you doing? Go in there, figure out with all these assets, what other thing could we do?" Because what they're looking at is the cost of the servers to run this, the marketing team, all that. Nah, we just don't want to deal with it. So as an indie dev, legitimately, if companies like that would put their assets up for sale, oh god, please. Like that's the part of all this that is so expensive and takes so much time. Of course they won't because they would look like a fool if I can take those assets and do something with it. So so rather just spike it. It It is It is devastating from the outside. It's the very thing I'm hoping to avoid. If the first iteration of our game the first iteration of our game did fail, and so we reinvented it, and we reinvented it again, and now we're on what we call phase three. Phase three starting to get some traction, but phase three was never meant to be where we stop. Well, phase four or five six seven eight, and I just plan to keep keep costs as low as I can and keep going until I find that thing that boom that clicks because we've done the hard and expensive part. So, anyway, for companies big as Sony, they can afford to do it, but I really think if indie game devs adopt the live update, which most of them don't, but if you adopt a live update strategy, I think you've got a shot at something that could live forever as you leverage everything that you've built over and over and over and over until you find that thing that hits. 100% and you kind of nailed it on the head cuz they had big wins in the past. They have the Sony IP. There's all these other and just them being a studio to your point, it's like the Joker movie. We shot it to musical. Nobody likes it. Uh we're stuck. We can't do anything. We're to game. You now you have a library of content, library assets, all these devs, and it's just like sorry guys, like let's start all over now and just It's bananas. $400 million Oh, man, crazy. Yep. Um okay, after 220 confirmed deaths after Hurricane Helen, Hurricane Milton just made landfall in Florida. It's now traveling through. Some estimates have up to 9 ft of water. Is this like a climate change problem? Like 9 ft of water is crazy to me. And I'm from Jersey. I've been through Sandy. I like we had bad power outages and a couple broken trees, but like 9 ft of water, like that's It's It's not real. It doesn't It's crazy. 9 ft of water is legitimately crazy. So, the baseline that I would want people to accept is that the climate is always changing. It has been changing since the time of the dinosaurs, and I'm sure long before that. Uh but when you drill into the ice cores, you realize we've had way more extreme weather than we're having now. But, that doesn't make it fun to deal with. That's very true. So there is a huge cost to um infrastructure. There's a huge cost to human life, the knock-on to insurance and all that stuff. It's it's a pain to deal with. But on a long enough timeline, uh 1,000% you are going to be dealing with climate change basically no matter what you do. Good luck overcoming the forces of nature. On a long enough timeline with AI, might we finally grapple with this? Maybe. But my takeaway right now is if you look at a graph of the temperatures from the time that, you know, the dinosaurs were here, it's like way up here. We are way the hell down here now. Um however, you see this like not vertical, but woo. It is like a line that does not look natural. So I think that Elon summed it up best when he was like, "Hey kids, maybe running an experiment of what happens if we pump a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. Maybe that's a stupid test to run." So I would agree and I think that we want to find ways to eliminate however much of the um climate change that we're experiencing now has to do with us. Um that we want to mitigate that as much as we can without disrupting uh economic growth, without disrupting the countries that are still trying to climb their way out of poverty. It does feel very much like the current strategies of it's got to happen right now, like no matter what. And that to me is crazy. If you are not optimizing for human flourishing now and in the future, Mhm. then you've got a problem. And right now I feel like people like, "Hey, forget everybody that's alive right now. Uh let's just think about what's happening in the future." And also, this is where I'm going to get up on a nuclear soapbox. Bro, if you're not doing nuclear, like don't talk to me about some of the other um draconian solutions that you want to put in place. Focus on how do we make that as safe as humanly possible, how do we get those back online, if we put the ingenuity into it, I think that we could get a ton out of it, and then also other things. But doing it in a sensible way where governments have time to keep up with it, that we're making sure that we're not damaging the economy, that we're not making things worse because very much you can have a cure that's worse than the malady. So, I think that we have to tread very carefully here, be thoughtful, want that friction, don't just try to shut down the side that's like, "Hey, I think you guys might be being a little extreme here." Don't try to shut that side down. Accept that that the people that are alive now today, the people that are trying to climb out of poverty using energy today, they matter just as much as the people that we want to protect in the future. And so, we've got to say, "Okay, cool. I want that friction. I want to be held in check." Like, I don't want just capitalists being able to dump things in the water and like pump everything into the atmosphere. I want them to have a check. So, it's like you want that friction between the two sides to find the best way forward. And once people understand that the friction is the thing that sharpens your thinking, nobody there nobody has the the first idea and that's the best idea. Even Einstein ended up having to revise his own philosophies, right? You put it out into the world, you test it experimentally, you see what's actually working, what's not. That sharpens your thinking when you're not afraid to be wrong, and then you can actually get to a good answer. But right now when it becomes this cudgel where it's a moral thing and anybody that's like, "Uh, I'm not so sure about that. I think that there are trade-offs and we need to really be thoughtful." And they get silenced, deplatformed, whatever. Like literally just by talking about this, we're probably going to get a thing at the bottom of the episode. So, keep your eyes peeled for that, uh, and that I think is dangerous. You need to want debate. There's something about that with energy costs because I do think your point is valid. Nuclear can greatly reduce that. Um, I think Elon talked about half a couple acres of solar panels using the sun can power half of the United States. So, it seems like we have these technologies one available to us in relatively cheap, quote and quote, that we can get away from our dependencies of traditional fossil fuels. But, at the same time, we're not pursuing that, but we also want to make other people not pursue other. And so, to your point, it's like we're we're trying to push us in one direction, but not too fast, but we're also not going backwards. Not too So, it's like they want us to be stuck in the middle almost. It's very confusing. I think there might be something else happening where uh this Okay, now we're into complicated territory. So, uh my conspiratorial brain starts kicking in, and I don't have a strong conspiratorial mind. So, when it gets triggered, there's something going on. Um I think that the world, humans, are only understandable when you know that there is some portion of us tied to Nietzsche's idea of will to power. So, all of us have a will to power. And it can be just in our personal life, and this is why home life is so important to so many people. It's a place where, hey, you're going to have it the way that you want it. Um but, when you understand that part of what motivates people is not just, hey, I want the world to be better for the middle class, or I want to make sure that our children's children have clean air to breathe. They also just want a bit of power. And this is why this is part of the what do you do with dumb voters. So, my belief, just to give you my take, you have to let dumb voters vote, and you have to accept that whatever comes comes. Because anything else becomes tyranny. And I get it. All of us are like there are people much smarter than me that are traumatized that I get to vote, or that I get to speak into a camera. Like they're mortified. They're like, what's with this clown? Uh and so, all of us have somebody that has less thoughtfulness or less intellectual horsepower that we're horrified that they get to vote. Uh but, so that we are not silenced, we must leave it open for everybody. And just accept that yeah, human um personalities, intellect, willfulness, all of it is is uh distributed. It's it's a bell curve. And so yeah, it is what it is. And I for one believe you need to embrace that. And you want to put out the best ideas and you want that friction, you want to debate it, argue it, and get as sharp as we can. Uh but you really have to accept that you are so fallible that you should be ultra paranoid of control. Now, this is one no one will ever believe you no matter what you say unless you really like took me to task. But I try to run my company that way. Where there are times where I'll say, "Look, I'm saying this as a CEO and it's just going to be this way cuz we've debated it and you do finally need somebody to make a decision. But I don't trust myself. I don't trust myself to see around every corner. I don't trust myself to be right all the time. Um I think my intellect is limited and I think I need to surround myself with smart people that have my values. On that, I've found if if you have different values or a different aim, that's you're going to implode. But I want people that share my values, that share my vision, but see the world from a different angle. And so they can see things about me that I can't see about myself or they might argue a point, be like, "Yo, that's not the way." And then through that friction, you're able to find a path forward. So, when you understand will to power and you know that most people aren't willing to give it away, um then things start to make sense. These are people that I think are leveraging a crisis. It's a great quote, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Now, when somebody lives by that maxim and they have the will to power, now all of a sudden something like COVID becomes, "Oh, we can gobble up power." And once we have it, we don't have to give it back cuz people acclimate to it very quickly. And so, if you plug that variable in, now all of a sudden I don't trust that people are just trying to do what's right. I think they're using this as an opportunity to get control. And uh top-down control scares the life out of me. No, that that that hits it. That hits it. All right. DC has announced their new Green Lantern, Aaron Paul. He was in that Ridge movie in Netflix. Uh a relatively new actor. If you could be any superhero, who would you be? Ooh. Okay, well, I'll give you the answer that came to mind first. Doctor Manhattan. Now, I'd probably want to think about that more because there was something it ruined all of his relationships and that is the thing that scares me. But, I've always believed if you meet a magic genie and you are allowed to have one wish and one wish only. There's only one wish that makes sense. Through simple thoughts and actions to be able to turn any piece of matter into any other piece of matter. So, for instance, uh if you have a cancerous tumor, make it healthy tissue. I don't want to have to go in and like figure out which things are cancer or not. I just want to be like, "It's not cancer anymore. It's healthy tissue." Uh Doctor Manhattan comes very, very close to that. Um so, that's that's my answer. Part B, is it like that's who you would be or is that your favorite superhero? That's who I would want to be. My favorite superhero is Batman because he doesn't have any superpowers other than uh he trains and researches and that to me is the coolest of the cool. Um so, at Impact Theory in our comic division, we often, you know, in comics you're going to be dealing with superhero e-type of stuff. Uh and one thing we always wanted was a superhero has to earn their powers. So, the I wish, in fact, every night I am tempted to punch myself in the mouth because I did not create My Hero Academia. Uh it's so good, dude. And it's basically about a kid who becomes Superman, but he has to learn how to use the powers and how to build up like his strength and get his body to the point where it can tolerate the powers. It's unbelievable. So, even a story like that where it's like you are just get he ate this guy's hair. It's a terrible origin story. But, anyway, uh he gets the powers and then like finds that the powers are basically destroying him. And he doesn't know how to control it and he can damage himself and be near death and all that stuff. And so it's like, "Hey kid, you've got this power, but now you've got to earn it." Oh man, I love that so much. That's why the Batman mythology speaks to me. Okay, my favorite superhero is Spider-Man cuz he's the only superhero that pays rent. I think that that's important. Nice. He's also funny. He was my favorite as a kid cuz he was funny. All right, everybody, that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining us. If there's any topics that you want to see me cover, make sure you go over to our community post. Leave it there. Let us know. We are paying close attention there. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. If you like this conversation, check out this episode to learn more. The financial cliff that we're rapidly driving off is is pretty terrifying. The you know, it's not just the 35 trillion dollars in debt or the fact that that interest on the debt is now overtaking the budget.