Martin Shkreli on Making Billions, Going To Prison, and Being The Most Hated Man In The World

we turn now to who many are calling the most hated man in America Martin scy the pharmaceutical company CEO who once jacked up the price of a life-saving drug he was sentenced today for cheating wealthy investors out of millions poke me be careful how you poke and when you poke and how you do it because I don't think I'm doing anything wrong the way the law is constructed is they push a button and you're found guilty that's it we turned it from 3 million to something like half a billion to a billion why is it do you think that you lean into this like evil person role and you seem to like enjoy it ego is the Fountain Head of all progress you know I think ultimately without a little bit of ego and without a little bit of competition and competitiveness nothing would happen what was your initial reaction going to jail the real scary part is that Martin scarelli thank you so much for coming on the iced coffee Hour podcast for a little introduction if you guys don't know you purchased a life-saving drug and raised the price of it5 ,000% overnight you bought a unique copy of the wuang Clan album for $2 million and you refused to release it you have beef with both Hillary Clinton and Ghost Face Killer you're banned from Twitter you started a company that went to $1 billion at 28 years old you're a convicted felon and have spent four years in prison hundreds of headlines have been ran by mainstream media saying you're the most hated man in America and now you're making a comeback thanks for having me thanks so much for coming on the podcast man that's a brief CV uh would you say it's somewhat accurate I think you you caught most of it yeah you were just saying something about when you went to go shoot with Tucker Carlson you're on probation right and that has certain restrictions and apparently you left the state which you're not allowed to do without letting them know they obviously they saw the Tucker Carls podcast what happened with that well you know it's it's it's not abnormal to slip up uh when you're on probation there's actually like a list of rules that you have to follow and you know I hesitate to say it's probation the whole idea and institution is kind of useless because it does serve some value but it's hard for the people who do probation to keep up with all of the people that they have to follow and I think some of these people sometimes have so many probation officer might have 50 or 100 or 200 people that they're monitoring and it's you know they can't they obviously can't monitor their every step and I think that in a lot of ways that nullifies kind of the benefits of it which is hey you just got out of jail you don't want to go back into a life of crime we want to make that you know you get a job and you do this and you do that and you kind of get on the straight and arrow again which inevitably fails uh unfortunately uh recidivism is is quite High um most people who go to jail go go back if not straight back sometimes I I had a story about a guy we called him Michael gomberg in J he was funny um and Gober great name right what what did he do Gober was a drug dealer but he loved making money and uh just stuck name stuck and gomberg went was out of prison 96 hours comes right back same prison there's like just go back to your old cell you know 96 hours how does he how does he go back in 96 hours what did he do deal with his friends but he's not the drug dealer he's just riding but the police pull him over they're trying to throw all the drugs out of the car you know and the police grab them and and you know all of you arrested and obviously if you get arrested while you're on probation you're you're going back to jail um so if you like take a trip out of state or something like that it's really not that big of a deal and I had a circumstance that that was a an excuse but I think if you do it five times you know you can actually go go back to jail and um there was a guy I knew in prison as well we called him car uh car or card I think card and he was gambling just nut up you know and you know there are people who are addicted to gambling and he was one of them and he would bet on anything and he would bet you know we don't have money in prison right but you do kind of in in a lot of ways there's assets that you have in prison which aren't worth a lot is that like food yeah things like that and you know but if you wanted to and we did this all the time you can bet cash you know and if you don't pay you know this is a phrase we'd have Get It in Blood uh you know you can get it one way or the other um and you know you tell somebody look you owe me 500 bucks get on that phone and get your family to send it to somebody I had this uh friend who's an assistant of mine and she was like this most the most like whitebred kind of like innocent young woman scientist type type girl and I I bought a phone in prison for a th bucks and I said look you know there's only one problem I told this girl call her Jane her name's not Jane but so Jane you know it's just one problem you got to get the cash to this guy's people uh use words like peoples his peoples on the street need need a thousand bucks like ASAP and if I don't get him a thousand bucks it's going to be problems and she's like okay what do you want me to do I said you're going to get on a taxi you're going to approach a car that's going to be waiting it's going to have its headlights on it's going to be in the Bronx just joking you know with I'm like you take $1,000 put an envelope and you hand it and she's like you tremend you know trembling with fear she's like are you are you serious I was like no I just cash tapped it you know but it was I set up this whole drug deal for it but that that really does happen where where you know if you you get into gambling debt in prison you got to go you know actually take care of it and sometimes that'll be your brother or sister or father or mother or somebody like that your wife even to that has to go pay the other inmate's wife in in real life and uh you know that was one way of of transacting so card the point is that this guy ended up violating probation because he went to the his one of his conditions of probation everyone has slightly different ones his was you cannot go to a gambling establishment card win you know six times he was warned the first time look you're going to go back to jail if you go back and he's like okay your honor I understand goes back again they pull him back in like an add at that point or does he not care or is the addiction stronger than his desire to stay out of jail so many guys I met in jail uh I'm trying to think of the next guy his name was um I don't remember his name exactly but this guy was kind of this like pretty mean looking fellow that that love to Rob grocery stores he' rob a grocery store for $75 you know $100 250 bucks right it's not a big take when you rob a grocery store um and he gets charged with something called the Hobs act which is like basically the law that you know governs this and it it allows for the federal government to come down on you for what's fairly a local crime which is not sort of supposed to be the case you know that's supposed to be a State Crime so this guy's like on his sixth top act and he gets like 22 years or something like that and we're just sitting talking we got nothing to do and I'm like you really kind of like are addicted to this basically right you're addicted to the thrill it's not the money like you're not making like you do this once a month like you're not making enough money to make ends meat like but you're doing this because it's the thrill isn't it and he's yeah more or less you was the first person to like kind of get to the bottom of this that you know you can be addicted to drugs of course but you could also be addicted to risk you know on Wall Street we used to talk about people who are risc aholics uh you could be addicted to danger and thrill and I don't know this can't be anything a lot more thrilling than Robin a bank I mean it's not thrilling to me maybe but like to somebody it's got to be I mean we watch movies about this like heat or you know other films that you know make it like really exciting a car chase or something like that and there's people who do this in real life you know they find it fascinating and thrilling and you know it's something that you know you can't really change so you know my goal isn't to break any rule or regulation but you know in that specific circumstance you know is is a good excuse but it is surprising to me that the probation sort of construct uh you know is it's sort of like when it doesn't work it it doesn't it doesn't really help anybody most of the time when it does work it doesn't work very often so it's like in general just in the way and not really helping anybody and recidivism kind of needs a better solution I was talking to I was like Palmer lucky or somebody about this like what how do you actually incentivize people to not go back to jail and like you have might have to do something like pretty grotesque to most people which is like you actually pay somebody for every year they don't go to jail and that sounds crazy cuz it's like man I don't get paid for not breaking the law why can't why I have to pay this guy and it's like well well less crime that's one way to do it you know it's it's not pretty but it could work but then I feel like everyone would want to go to jail just to get PA yeah you get one crime and be like hey well pay me 10 grand a year I'm never going to do that again that's a good point getting a felony is not not easy I um just had one of my bank accounts canceled you know just randomly you know just randomly did they find out I feel like your name is yeah yeah something like that and it's just like yeah it's over sorry in those cases could it be a person at the bank that straight up says I don't like this guy delete it's at my discretion for whatever reason I have the right to I mean it's a private institution would they have a right to just say you know I think they did this with like the proud boys you know where it's like they weren't criminals exactly or yet or whatever and it was just like look you're part of a group that some people think is like a white supremacist group or something like that and it's like we don't want to be the bank that handles your money and in some ways that makes sense but the reason it's made a lot of sense for these Banks is because for example Jeffrey Epstein um had a bank account or brokerage account or whatever a lot of money at uh deuts bank and some other Banks JP Morgan I think they had to pay a lot of fines just for just because they had this guy's account it's like you you sort of have the government pushing down to to business what they should be doing or shouldn't be doing and to me that's not great because um you know you're you're basically you have some of these services that are critical like banking um becoming less critical thanks to crypto but you know it's hard to live without a bank account and or or phone or things like that utilities you know at what point does Con Edison say yeah you know we saw your Tweet and you know that's why your lights are out you know that that I think that you know conceivably could happen someday uh thankfully I think the the woke world is sort of like moving back to the center which is good but I think that you know uh and I don't blame a bank for for saying maybe not wanting to deal with somebody who's convicted of a financial crime you know I think that I can kind of understand that kind of makes sense yeah but I still think like the idea that a bank could just basically decide that you know they don't like your politics or do you think maybe that's some risk mitigation on their end where maybe the banks are afraid of the government but before we go into that are you running a business and you want to hear this sound a 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all lowercase grow your business no matter what stage you're in shopify.com again it's only a $1 trial period at shopify.com all lowercase and the link is also Down Below in the description so thank you guys so much and now let's get back to the episode do you think maybe that's some risk mitigation on their end where maybe the banks are afraid of the government well that's they say we don't want $100 million fine it's easier for us to say sorry go somewhere else yeah yeah exactly and and I think like it's really sad because if they're avoiding an action from the government which is what's the government's impetus it's to help the bank act as law enforcement you know the bank doesn't know the guy's doing crime or not they they're not supposed to you know sort of like see that you know it's it's this the kyc AML kind of like expansion that certainly for crypto has taking place where it's like you know they have to you know you have to do so much background checking on your client that and then you're supposed to sort of know whether or not like they're allowed to be you know customer or not like a foreign there was some one Alis we had to do one time for like foreign dignitary and it was like well does this guy from usbekistan you know is technically you know in the government there does he count as uh kyc AML exception or whatever and it's like who cares like you know it's not it's not uh you know Osama Bin Laden were taking money from you know it's like but it's such a political thing that you know for example like the Russian oligarchs have been put on the yeah you know on this list and if you do business with them you're you're toast uh because they're on this exempt exemption or whatever this restricted list and it's like who decides that that list and who decides when they get off or or whatever and you know look I'm I'm not a fan of what some of those guys do but it it's sort of like you know why is the government getting in the middle of this and it's for basically control reasons power reasons and so forth It's just any reason they they can get to like sort of be in charge they'll sort of take which is is sort of sad because again you know for somebody to be restricted for their brokerage account or bank account or anything else you know it is a little frustrating for example I got bans from uh being a publicly traded at least in the US officer or director and that's frustrating because i' I've been a very successful publicly traded CEO and director uh I've never made a crime related to being a publicly even even fake rhyme uh like the ones I was convicted of even even one of those I haven't been convicted of being a uh you know sort of having uh any crime related to being a public traded officer or director and you know Elizabeth Holmes had a settlement with the SEC where she got five years of be of not being a publicly tra mine was lifetime you know if you have a lifetime ban for things that are like somewhat innocuous or even if they're not innocuous if you pay your debt to society and you can't ever recover from them uh no matter how much Penance you do no matter much growth you you go through as a person you know you're you're forever banned it sort of doesn't make sense you know it's not a society I think that most people want what are your thoughts on Authority today and has it changed since you were a kid yeah I mean my whole life I've sort of been anti- Authority and uh you know I I just think that you know where did that start I don't know you know it's was there maybe a moment where your parents said something to you and you said you know what I disagree with that when you started when you to come to your own and say you know what I don't have to do that thing they want me to take a bath I don't feel like taking a bath I'm not dirty it's my choice and I could choose not to do that you know I I can't play psychologist and like go all the way back and sort of understand why it happened but I do know it it did happen at some point and I I I think it was sort of a mix of a few things I mean one I think that you know arrogance in general is kind of like this pretty detestable property people have and you know anytime you can bring somebody down a notch I've sort of relish that opportunity you know sort of put myself in the mix and and bring somebody down a notch and you know it's fun and most people enjoy that most people like to see that you know and whether that's a bully or whomever it's it's somebody has to sort of stand up and be the person that's you know it's also going to take you know the arrows and the you know the all the the the sort of uh repercussions of that but you know if if you're brave enough to do it you know a lot of people sort of are looking behind you and saying I'm not that brave but good for that guy and I think that you know not being afraid of things is is something that I've like you know inherited is as well it's sort of like this natural and and did anything happen that prompted you to be so I think very confident in who you are and what you believe in and very Shameless of just here's what I believe here's what I stand for if you disagree it doesn't bother me at all and that's the vibe that I've gotten from listening to all of your interviews is that it does not seem to affect you whatsoever it's just I am me and that's it take it or leave it and I think there's something that's very Courageous about that yeah I think you have to have conviction I mean and and the thing about conviction is you can be wrong you know it's okay to be wrong you know um I've had opinions that I've changed my mind on and I'm never I've confidence but I've never have this idea of like being 100% right or something like that you know it's a feeling you know I have a feeling that firms you it's like goes back to college like firms should set the price of their products you know and nobody else should be able to do anything anything but the marketplace buyers and sellers price too high buyer walks away uh price too low buyers flood the market you know that's just the nature of economics and and I have a very firm feeling that that's really the way it should work and that anybody who tries to influence that you know should be kicked out uh because it doesn't help the world yeah uh markets help the world a lot you know you have opinions like that that's a really strongly held opinion but I also have loosely held opinions you know and and I I don't I try not to express much confidence that if you ask me about say uh lgbtq Affairs I I just sort of tell you like look you know I don't really know a lot about that I'm really not that confident I kind of see both sides of of current arguments about it um you know etc etc if you ask me about Palestine or something like that just you know I'm really not that convinced so so I you have to be conv you have to have conviction but on the things you know about and you feel strongly about and sometimes if those things are feelings that you know um they're more governed by emotion than rationality people tend to believe those more than the other way around so like if you explain like why drugs have to be expensive basically you know if you and if you have somebody in audience that's willing to sit there and listen for an hour you can basically convince them of that because it makes sense but the visceral reaction is negative you know the immediate reaction is no it can't be it can't be and I gave this like speaking to her in the ivy league circuit where I was trying to explain um how the irrational numbers sort of came about and way back then um there was this feeling that irrational numbers were like this evil concept and that they they really couldn't be and there was this emotional reaction to like first of all they can't exist and two if they did exist that'd be really bad and a guy proved it and they threw him thre him in the river and you know it was uh it was this emotional reaction of like ah you know this is such cognitively dissonant I really don't like this and makes me feel icky and unfortunately some there are things like that in life that we have to come to terms with uh and when we do uh the people who are the coldest kind of quiet rational calculating people see them first and those people are generally itics what typee of student were you oh boy uh sometimes a great one sometimes a bad one um it seems like you have a very applied Focus where if you care about something you're interested you give it 100% whereas if you're not you kind of but maybe maybe not maybe it seems like you Excel it no matter what you would pick um it depends so like you know one of the problems with with high school in general and I I gave um a million dollars to my high school which is the biggest gift they've ever received which is which is unfortunate because there's a lot of rich people went to my high school and it's it's a it's not a school you have to pay money to get into yeah um and you know was a very Advanced school for very very bright kids and the problem with high school is you're going through a lot of psychological issues and and um if you have a good family life you can kind of focus on school but if you don't you know you you end up getting into some issues and I had some of those issues um but sometimes I did you know really really well and sometimes they didn't you know it really depended on a number of external factors and part of one of those factors is growing up you know so like if you're a child prodigy and you people are like basically like putting you in on display you know people wow look at look at my boy he can read you know this chemistry textbook and he's only seven or something like that you know you're you're constantly in that cage or or display cage or display case or whatever and eventually you know you sort of decide well wait a second you know I want to do other things and for me that those other things were meeting girls my age uh playing basketball playing guitar being a rock band like that was exciting to me and school was sort of like performant it was like yeah okay I Know This Much algebra do I really know that much algebra yeah kind of but then was like history you know do I really want to know more about you know European history no I don't you know I'm done and and I was sort of adult enough to decide that I was done with with some parts of it and you know there were some things that were fun like French was something I had a lot of fun with so as a student I mean It's just tough because like you want to learn everything and to this day I still read textbooks and I still try to learn new things because I don't want to be left behind but you also have to to balance it with with actually applying it and that's one of the hardest things to do like what does it mean to be a good investor is is one of the hardest things in the world to study and think about and there's like this equal balance of philosophical rumination that I think you have to do to become a good investor and then I think there's a lot of Applied work you have to do and the problem with the applied work is that your first 10 years of investing are kind of going to be trash no matter what it's frustrating because you want to manage money you want to trade you want to do all this but you know you know you just need some experience first and it's the same thing for programming it's the same thing for art it's the same thing for everything I mean you you need those 10 years or more or less depending on who you are of what it is but it's not going to happen in three weeks now if you're watching this right now you might notice that we're extra clear today and that's because we're filming in 4k it's very expensive to do we've reinvested a lot of money back into the channel to bring this to you however we were able to grow past 900,000 subscribers by just doing the basics and if you want to be able 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mentioned earlier you could get started today for free with the link Down Below in the description thank you so much and now let's get back to the episode how did you get started with investing I I beged my dad uh who just passed away uh I guilt tripped him this is one of his favorite stories I guilt tripped him into opening an E Trade account this ER trade just came out in it was like '96 or something like that wow and uh maybe it was 98 with $20 commission trades yeah yeah oh yeah oh yeah uh minimum 2,000 bucks oh my God you know and I think that's still the minimum but inflation is you know B different so for us for our family you know 2,000 bucks wasn't nothing uh it felt like a fortune to me it turns out that it really wasn't a fortune to our family but you know I I didn't have a good sense that my parents were actually saving Al saving CICS you know they love to save money every penny if they could uh it's kind of like the old mentality you know never had a credit card you know just save the money um and uh you know like my dad would would like literally get money orders and like you didn't have a checking account you know you know just so we're talking like cash cash money orders you know like depositing the rent check like you know all those types of things cashing the rent I don't know paying the rent check like you'd go to the bank if you needed a check it was like really wild and uh you know he just didn't trust like you know anything and uh my dad turned out to be the bank I assume he had some gold there's got to be some precious metal Stern in there usually there is no no and remember my my parents are from the poorest country in in Europe Albania I recently joked that because I'm Albanian I'm a person of color and um you know that's not the case the are white but uh I tried to get I tried to get some attention on Twitter and get people pissed off nobody's pissed off you know like one or two people got got like hey actually you're not a personal you know but like 10 years ago you be canell you know you'd be you know you'd be on on newspaper you know now it's like you know and I'm not sure that's a good thing honestly but regardless so what happened with the $2,000 so so my dad opened this account um on under his name you know because there's like accounts rules against minors and stuff like that so i' always log in on my my dad say I'm going I make some trades and you know uh predictably ultimately you know I did okay for a little while but ultimately you know the account went went to zero basically and I actually would end up replenishing the account uh about a year or two later I'd go to Wall Street and I took my paycheck and deposited it and it was a lot of this painful tuition of like investing trying to figure out how to do it and then failing and keep trying and keep failing and keep trying and eventually okay maybe the failure period's got you know takes longer to fail maybe see a little success or or something like that and I think so many retail Traders um have to go through that but I was also becoming a professional investor too you know working at a hedge fund so uh watching how they made trades and starting to think okay maybe you know I should do something like this but I still couldn't really compute this idea that leverage was bad and it took a long time for me to really compute that and you still see people like for instance for crypto is like this very like funny Casino where like there's different things like C coin or um binance I still think does this and maybe others maybe even like Kraken who's like very good and responsible and sure coinbase has something like all basically all of these guys have some kind of product that lets you basically bet somewhere between 10 to 100x say objectively Leverage is bad in trading I would say so yeah um yeah in fact like the best Traders I've ever met don't not only do they not use leverage they can't find enough great trades to use the cash they have which is really kind of a waren Buffett approach sitting on so much cash and you just sit there and you wait patient for decades yeah I a friend who is one of Steve Cohen's early Partners uh way way back way back when and you know there's some people who you know Steve had some of the best traders of all time and there's some other firms that that had those too because there just weren't that many uh great uh hedge funds back then so a lot of people Trac their lineage to Tiger Soros steinhardt uh Steve Cohen sort of came a little bit after in a handful of other firms um there's one called uh Odyssey that was similar and this guy worked for Cohen they were they're still I think close friends and he had never had a down quarter ever he had about 30 40% returns over the years but his average exposure is you know bit of a hedge fund term but what percentage of your Capital you're actually using anything over 100% is leverage uh anything below 100% is kind of weird like supposed to put your money to work this guy had like 30 40% gross exposure wow so like he just when he traded he just never lost but he he discipline to not trade make bad trades and you know there are a lot of Traders like that where like they actually do better the less they trade what have you seen most head hedge fund managers trade and how do they trade differently than the average retail investor yeah I think the biggest lesson for me and and this is something I had to go through a lot of pain for this and I I saw it a lot with the Wall Street bets world as well where I was like an early member trying to talk sense into those uh folks who you know I enjoyed their passion for the markets I enjoyed the memes but I also was like trying to explain like the idea of you only live once is like so antithetical to being a good investor um yes you do only live once but your portfolio can have 100% draw down you got to start from scratch and kind of the whole idea of capitalism is that you you kind of keep growing it um and so I think the the biggest lesson is this idea of like you know don't don't water your weeds uh and don't pluck your roses too early and and I was even talking to somebody yesterday or this morning actually about Peter Teal's biggest foret you know not being buying more of Facebook you know and like when you know he got was the very first investor in Facebook and he got to buy 10% of what's now a trillion dollar company for 500 Grand and you know that stake if he kept it would would be worth you know some some insane number like you know 50 billion or more and that's for an investment uh he's not a founder of Facebook and you know he sold um he sold because he was up a lot and he said time to time to sell and I think that like a lot of people when they got addicted to Bed Bath and Beyond uh GameStop AMC you know just kind of bad companies in bad stocks sort of different things which is very hard to sort of tell the difference sometimes that's one of the key things but I think the key thing is like okay I bought a bad stock happens to everyone you know it's going to happen to everyone don't like fall in love with it and believe that like it can't be a bad I can't like people like the community though it's very rare to find community of investors who like one thing and all Bond over that one thing and I think it's a community that keeps people holding on to stocks I don't I've never seen it before where people pick one company and they just say I am die hard I think Tesla was one of the first ones that I saw but it expanded throughout meme stocks and all of these other companies I think internet's to blame yeah you know because I think I think you did have that in more private communities where you know you'd have dinner with a couple hedge fund people and they'd be like oh John John's a you know t lover you know etc etc oh Steve he's a Tesla hater you know and and we be like John you're still in Tesla oh six years in wow still sold and you have those conversations but I think the the pathological thing is when you become addicted to it to a point where it's like no AMC can do no wrong or GameStop can do no wrong and it's like look you know the numbers don't lie the balance sheet is what it is the inqu statement is what it is you shouldn't have that much passion about it um now if you if and this kind of comes to like the greater point of capitalism General in like stock picking which is why it's hard is that managers are very hard to sort of size up as an investor because if you know a manager can compound capital and find ways to use the company's capital in new and profitable ways basically there's no price you you wouldn't pay for their stock like that if you knew that ahead of time so if you look at Microsoft this is a company that went public you know for I don't know what the market cap was was like 300 million or 500 million and since they started you since they went public maybe in like 1980 they've been able to compound you know their capital and their resources and put them to work to a point where they they they're now you know two two or whatever trillion dollar company and if you knew the management team there was so good that good you would have you know basically there's no price you wouldn't have paid because eventually you would have gotten trillions of dollars uh in market cap and Buffet's the same example you can't value a company necessarily on priced earnings or DCF because what's the CEO going do is and what's the board going to do in the management team as a whole that's the bigger question the business itself sometimes is easy to Value sometimes isn't but can management take the capital from the business and actually make something great and that's why it's impossible almost to like value a Tesla because it's it's like yeah I can do all the numbers I want I can really study the products I can really study everything like that but that's not what most of the value of Tesla is most of the value of Tesla is the boss taking cash flows Andor investor money and making something new with it and that that makes it really really hard to even value something like Lululemon which is like okay it's clothing business I actually tried to short Lululemon for for a little while it's been a tough tough experience how did you meet Jim Kramer oh um well as you can tell I talk too much and uh when I was a a young kid I um just love talking about stocks and I didn't know a lot about investing but I knew a lot about the companies kind of relative to my age you know obviously didn't know a lot about anything but you know I really didn't know much about investing philosophy but I knew a little bit about like the actual details of the companies and it was a lot of fun to learn those details and people like this kid won't shut up about the stock market maybe you should meet uh Jim Kramer and the guy who said that you like the office manager you know at the firm and I said sure you know I'd love to do that how big was he back then by the way so back then it was like $3 $400 million hedge fund it was you know a good chunk of the money was his one of the weirdest hedge funds uh because at the time maybe you're not weird for the time but it it was basically domestic only hedge fund which these days doesn't really exist you know um most of the people who invest in hedge funds are uh institutions who are tax exempt or foreign investors because there's really no point in paying the K1 you pass through capital gains tax which is kind of nuts and believe it or not Renaissance is also kind of like a fairly domestic oriented hedge fund because most of the money is kind of like individual people and so for Kramer like a lot of the partners our partners were just like well-known people you know actors or different like various wealthy people some doctors and things like that but the big investors today in hedge funds are institutions and in fact if you look at someone like uh Bridgewater like their biggest investor like the Mormon Church you know or like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia you know like things like that you know because like you got to put together all that capital and and invest their minimum investment is like so enormous like billion dollars at least and and uh back then Huns were a little different they're more like um very much like a cottage industry maybe like a family office sort of deal yeah like very small companies 10 people cottage industry nobody had thought to Super siize a hedge fund and in fact my friend from uh who was early partner of stev's said that his biggest regret you know this and this is a guy who to me was a master of the universe and he said and we're talking about Oxi and Citadel which at the time we're two of the biggest hedge fundes and I said I said yeah it's amazing how did those guys manage so much money he said Mar my biggest regret is not like taking the hedge fund business seriously in the sense that you could like scale it into something so big and Millennium and Citadel and Bridgewater and those those firms have done that by basically deciding that yes the returns are important but the amount of assets are also extremely important and I think like the old world in hedge funds was the only thing that mattered was the returns it didn't matter how much Capital you had because the returns are almost like a it's almost like how many points you put up you know for a basketball game or something something like that you really it really mattered for you uh that that you were the best and like rajam was was a really good example of that where he was like addicted to beating everyone else every year and he got so addicted to it he committed insider trading over and over and and he did more time than I did uh which is really sad I'm laughing but you know I do think that you know that like performance anxiety and performance addiction is is like one of the things that has made hedge funds like this hazardous um industry if you look at the top maybe 10 or 20 hedge funds of all time you know about 20 30% of of them shut down because somebody went to jail and the other 20 or 30% shut down because somebody didn't quite go to jail but could have and just they just had some other Scandal and the other half of them you know have been able to sort of make it by squeaky clean but often with not so great returns so you know it's really it's a really crazy industry in a lot of ways what's the best and worst trade you've ever made oh Jesus uh I thought you told me you wouldn't ask me a hard question the uh well there's a lot of um ways to think about trades and I think this is the thing that a lot of people if they knew they would they would be better Traders um people think about trading as Securities and that's the only thing you could trade is security and that's just so wrong um you could trade anything and anytime you make a trade and this is like Corporate Finance 101 my my 14th year old Christmas present was a corporate finance textbook uh the brly Meers uh Corporate Finance uh textbook still standard textbook in uh academic finance and and ultimately like anything you do you can basically think about in is investment and once you start thinking the world through that lens I think a lot of things change um because the securi on the menu I the metaphor I like to use you know sometimes you want to order order off the menu and I think you do a lot better when you do that and so when I think of the menu in hedge funds it's usually like domestic stocks well traffic stocks liquid stocks stuff like that and everyone's looking at the same [ __ ] and it's really boring because if everyone's looking at the same thing everyone's like putting a microscope under the same Securities well there's some security somewhere else that you nobody's looking at and yeah you might have to learn Korean or you know you might have to you know do something like that but like how do you turn a small pile of money into a large pile of money right that's kind of the the goal and you think about like I don't really care how I do that all I really care about is that I do do it right because nobody's gonna ask you know when you're when you're in your Hampton's you know summer house with you know a pool bigger than you know the Atlantic Ocean that you know you're you know and you're sipping your your Martini that you know oh how exactly did you make all this money you're really just like wow this guy's rich and again whether or not that's a something you should be shooting for in life is you know something we could talk about another podcast but assuming that's what you want um that's really the focus it's like I'll do anything to win and the pile of money is is um you know the important part so I think like private Equity is when you start to think about liquidity is like well maybe you don't care about the liquidity because if all you care about is the money transformation what does it matter if it's a four-letter ticker or a private asset and I think the private asset industry for Pharma is something that's now become extremely you know well um sort of looked at but at the time um there was only one guy in New York who's like really looking at this stuff really closely and his name is Lindsey Rosenwald and he he's still active I think uh I started to there's another group that did it called royalty Pharma but they only did farmer royalties but then they started to look at drug assets like stocks and how did you even come on like learn on what was the trade what was okay so like all right so so starting to look at drugs like stocks instead of just stocks without a ticker you know but they're stocks in essence they're you know they're they have some value they don't have 10q and TKS but they have different properties but they're still Financial assets in a lot of ways and so this guy Rosen Wald he was was doing a bit of it he didn't have a good reputation people really didn't like him uh for whatever reason he had a couple wins he had a lot of losses he tended to not use his Capital um he just tended to hold a stake in the company and sort of germinate it and he did this like hundreds of times and he actually did really well but I think people didn't like the kind of like heads I win Tails I win kind of style that he financed in um and then I started to do it as well and then Roy V the V ramaswami company uh sort of took our business model and times it by 100 and it it worked out really well for him so like when you look at all kinds of assets as they're just possible trades you can really find some amazing opportunities there was um one company that that I particularly that that stood out to me uh we found this asset um it wasn't me who found it by the way it was teammate and he said I think we can do something here and I I said well what's the story so there's a kidney stone disease that only happens if you have a gentic mutation and there's like seven kinds of kidney stones you you know there's like calcium Stone there's a cysteine St this was Cy Stone there's like they they form into these have you ever seen a physical kidney stone they look very painful yeah [ __ ] yeah it's like a rock pieces of and and that's that's going through you and uh it it's tougher for men than women I think by the way but uh regardless uh it it's pretty painful you know uh they say it's like a child birth almost you know you're passing the stone is it's really unbelievable painful thing it's not exactly fatal disease it's not exactly going to kill you but it you don't want a kidney stone and um there's a genetic cause of kidney stones called cyua and there's a company uh out in Texas and they had this this drug and the only reason anybody took this drug was to stop their kidney stones their genetic kidney stones and they sto making it and it was wild because the people with this KY like the [ __ ] I'm going to have to pass a stone now and like the only drug I could take for this now is oxycoton like there's not that doesn't even work you know but I'm sorry yeah I'm going to be I'm going to be in this enormous amount of pain you know for no reason because you guys why you why do you stop making it and the reality is there's a lot of medicine that companies don't want to make or they won't make because there's not enough money in it uh and this drug was selling uh $2 million a year which is I don't even think you could break even on that um you know two million bucks just to just to like file your annual form forms with FDA and all this stuff if you're breaking even you're lucky um but you're certainly not making much of a margin because you got to make the stuff and you got to make it in a plant that's you know um FDA proof plant and um there's a number of other fees now that come with with having an FDA proofed drug and don't forget you have an infrastructure that you got to pay for too you know the drugs have to pay for your office and your you know all that stuff so there's like some capitalized portion of everything in your company is being kind of like prata uh assign to to all the costs you have so you have some incremental margin it's probably a million bucks but you still have like the lawyers at your company like part of their responsibility is that drug you know the salespeople part of their responsibility is that drug so you have these Associated costs that do exist um some people think of like oh gross margin is really it but it's like well you know you still have other costs your audit is some percentage related to that drug you know even though that drug is small it it it pays for some of the audit so basically it's unprofitable if you ask me um and so they stopped making it because um they forgot they actually forgot to order another batch just because it wasn't making them enough money to really pay attention small piece of the pie yeah well I was in I was in Switzerland once uh with uh a major drug company one name and I met one of their guys they company had like 500 drugs but like five made all the money the other 450 495 didn't I met a guy who's like literally responsible for like 300 of those drugs and I would ask him like like an encyclopedia of medicine but I would like like rapid fire ask him like you're responsible for this you're responsible for that you're responsible for that I can't say the drug names because it would give away what company it is but and he was just like shocked he's like you know my he's in it's like Swiss French he like you know my portfolio buiness than I do and he's like laughing and I'm like that's not funny that's scary like people need these medicines man and you know I would like love to troll through these old medicines and buy them that's kind of a vake a little bit as well in a different way and um so this company just forgot and it's not surprising because again think about this Swiss French guy who's like I do new like if this what the supply you know chain looks like for drugs number 273 in our portfolio why would I know I just know because like we're this company is a product of like 18 mergers so like merger one was for you know drug has three company has three drugs other company has 10 drugs we merge now we have 13 the pharmacy industry is really looking at these medicines not so much as medicines but Investments how can how much can we make off of each medicine what's the ROI I think it's like obviously there's got to be some benefit to justify it every product you have as a company has to be looked at you know that way you know it's it's a it's a business um you know so you can't be in business unless you think about it Investments and things like that I mean but I think that um this company sort of had this problem where they had their attention elsewhere and thinking about the supply chain of this drug wasn't just on top of the mind and they figured okay well we just order it again and it takes like six months wants to get the order done so you got people who are you know really sick for six months and it sucks and you know we went in there and we said look we'll give you three million bucks and we actually tried to buy the whole drug and they said they didn't want to do that so we racked our brains we tried to pay through the nose for it they they still didn't want to do it and we basically said let we're going to manage the commercialization of the strug from now on we're going to pay $3 million uh up front like today to sign this deal and no matter what will pay you 2 million or more than 2 million I forget it was like maybe 3 million guaranteed minimum every year so like more than what you're actually selling now we'll take over all the commercialization we'll feel the Salesforce we'll but we also get to control pricing and that was kind of like bullet point8 and B point8 was was important because what we did is the the price of the drug was um 2,000 bucks a year and we increased it to 880,000 and um the the craziest thing about this is the number of people on the drug you would normally think like take an microeconomics course that as you raise price demand goes down and it even applies for medicine demand actually went up um so more people were able to access the drug where people were able to take the drug why did demand go up was that you marketing the drug you just marketing it to more more people were aware think I think doctors you know when they look at kidney stones they don't necessarily understand that you know most nephrologists do but a lot of lot of doctors don't really understand there's a genetic cause of kidney stones and that if you have your first kidney stone you don't want another one ever again right and so why not get that genetic test some people just say here's the stone whatever I'll keep it as a supero I'll throw it away but you know I'm done and I'm not going to get one again well if you get a second one a third one fourth one you know you have a genetic illness then this drug basically stops all of it from happening how do you amazing how do you advertise that drug is that through commercials or is that through sales reps with with with ultra rare diseases like one is again there a couple thousand people need this medicine um you know not millions of people so there's no point in advertising on television or anything like that you do you get like 10 20 sales reps and you find the biggest nephrologists in the country who see patients with kidney stones and you just have a conversation with them explain them you know what to look for and things like that so how was that price then change for the people actually needing the drug because I'm assuming most people went for insur through Insurance how would that affect their pre premiums and also how much money were you making per year off of this was it $3 million investment yes it was basically $3 million investment if you if you think about it and so yeah insurance doesn't you know a lot of people don't understand health insurance which is why you know there's sort of this backlash uh a lot of people don't understand Pharma either there there was a drug out there I was was actually investor in I wanted to be like one of the early investors but I had to settle for the IPO this drug cost $2.3 million a year right there's no patient on planet Earth that can afford it um it and it's for babies interestingly and it's a it's a lethal illness it saves their life and it's amazing uh before this it was death sentence disease now you can actually survive it which is amazing and it's $2.3 million because nobody has this disease it's very very rare if it's your baby it's the biggest most important thing in your life there's nothing more important and you'll do anything to save your baby's life and this drug is costs it costs a fortune to make it costs a fortune to research and because nobody has it they to price it basically at at this price to to make it make sense and you know every insurance carrier pays for it immediately because their job isn't so much to avoid cost which I think is also a misunderstanding so you got like hundreds of little misunderstandings that compound into like this gigantic misunderstanding um which is unfortunate because I don't expect the average Joe to like know everything about the pharmaceutical industry or pharmaceutical the research part of it or the pricing part of it or the orphan drug part of it or like like you know all the little details that are in the system which is like this very complex machine but um generally speaking insurance companies for life-saving medicine never say no and and they make they may sound surprising but their job isn't so much to lower costs they actually like higher costs in some their job is to make sure the spending makes sense so if you want OIC and you know metformin is like the best drug to take for diabetes but you want to zemp it because you want to lose weight it makes a lot more sense for them say no and say look you got to take Metformin you got to take this other drug insulin and and OIC come last you know after you've failed to cheap drugs because why should we spend our client's money our client is Microsoft Walmart whoever that's buying the health insurance or the managed care it's best way way to put it and we're not going to waste their resources because they may need this drug for $2 million save somebody's life that we kind of have to pay for but it's so rare that two million doesn't really add up because we you know the whole Healthcare cost to treat Microsoft's employees like 50 billion or something you know it's not ever going to be something that you know is is uh that meaningful and those that's a cost doesn't make sense for us to share with the patient um so the copay zero what what are we going to get 50 bucks on doesn't make no sense but if you're thinking about OIC it's like look you want OIC you're better pay for all of it or half of it or something like that and that makes sense so they're Managed Care in the sense that they they try to decide okay what's important what isn't and where are we wasting money when we could be saving money for example there's 20 anti-depressants that are generic but drug companies come up with new ones all the time they don't sell too well but they try to push the new antidepressents like look you take Prozac you know prozac's been generic 20 years it's like five cents you know why would we pay for the new an prent that's like five bucks a pill when this thing's five cents a pill just just doesn't make sense and that's why generics are like close to free or three bucks or five bucks when you go to the pharmacy and when you go for the pharmacy and your doors prescrip prescribe you a drug that you don't really need it's like $217 and you're like you know what is this and it's probably because 95% of drugs are now generic and the list of drugs that have gone generic over last 40 years is you can basically treat the world's problems with that list though the brand new drugs are you know they're they're they're still helping the world but we've accumulated so many great drugs are now off patent that most of medicine is being treated by this sum of drugs the new ones that come along every now and then are nice they're absolutely important they're needed uh for diseases like cancer diseases like some super rare diseases Alzheimer's needs a couple new medicines obviously but in some these these the drugs we have today can treat most am modor medicine for close to nothing and that's like a miracle of the generic drug industry um so anyway kind of getting distracted here but the I think that you know patients for rare diseases never bear the brunt of the cost and what's ironic and I have like this Discord community and stuff like that a lot of my community members are rare disease patients because uh they understand that they need a company to care and to make money to get a chance to survive I have a friend who is osteogenesis in perfecta which is a rare bone disease never heard of it uh osteoporosis probably heard of your mom might have it or something like that uh but oi is extremely rare he has oi type 3 very rare disease he has had over 500 bones broken in his life uh he's about 4T tall W he can't really move his disease will probably kill him every year he expects to die he's 20 something and he says he knows that I have I happen to know a lot about AI for some reason because I I like R diseases and I like studying them and and it's my field and we talk about a we talk about you know it's a collagen processing disorder and this and that and he he would like nothing more than to be able to walk he'd like nothing more than to be able to make a strong bone like we have but he can't because that's his lot in life for him the idea of the price mattering or the idea of a company making money mattering is so far removed from the idea of being able to walk he would be ecstatic if somebody made a billion dollars off of his disease and that he got to walk he would be ECA he' praise that person and he's like he just encouraging me to be that person he's like come up with a a drug for my disease charge whatever you want you know make help me walk you know that's what I care about you know I hope you become rich you know doing this and I think that you know that makes sense to some some with the illness a family that has a kid dying muscular distrophy needs someone like vake or me or someone like that to make a billion dollars saving their son's life I've met many mothers who have a kid a boy it's a it's a male disas with thead muscular distopy and they're like we hope you become richer than y musk you know some people I think argue that they say well if you charge a high amount to the insurance company that means my premiums are going to be going even higher MH and have to pay for that so you could make money what is your response good Healthcare is important you know I think that I think that we should pay more and more for healthcare and what's funny is that we are um since the 60s Healthcare as a percentage of GDP has gone up from 6% to like 20% and I think over time it'll go to 90% why why is all of our GDP going to go to healthcare because it's the most important thing in our life if you look at GD percentage of GDP uh from the 20s alcohol and tobacco were like 10% GDP you know we started that started to taper off uh rent uh it was a big part of GDP and these things have changed where entertainment and Healthcare have become like two of the biggest expenditures because the other necessities have become kind of cheap and we could live with you know food cost you basically live with you know you can you can find a way to eat for very little and things like that um but for healthcare it's a good getting back to like economics class the marginal demand for healthcare is is never exhausted you can never be healthy enough I can have enough t-shirts I can have enough square footage of apartment where I say I don't need anymore I don't a marginal demand for for the next 10 square feet or the next 100 square feet but for healthcare yeah it's pretty much like an infinite demand I mean I never want to be like less healthy and you know I think that that's going to drive this demand and you're seeing it now with people like I think his name is Brian Johnson and other people who like longevity people I'm kind of an anti- longevity person but the idea that like people don't want to just be healthy they want to be superum you know and uh they want to live forever which is like you know really like taking it to the to the next level and I think that's that the the actions of like one actor like myself or somebody else has not changed the idea that the 6% has gone to 20% that's a demand driven function it's not because one person has said no my Drug's going to be more expensive or something like that it's more because people crave Healthcare and there are mechanisms in place like generics um there's actually alternative drugs for example to derim you know you started off with saying it was a life-saving drug it's not exactly true and the media said that you know it was the only drug to treat that disease that's also not true I didn't mind correcting those though because uh I didn't want to correct them you know because our fear actually was derim would get competed by this other really cheap drug that was available for like 5 cents uh a pill ours were 750 a pill but doctors didn't switch to the 5 cents of pill one because it's not exactly the same but it works more or less I think just as well as derim and that our biggest fear was that we did lose some customers to that but we thought we'd lose them all and all ABC had to do or New York Times had to do was say scy raises price of drug alternative scene just as good use the alternative that's all they had to do and like imply strongly that hey no big deal use this other drug and he's going to lose all his business they didn't do they should have they wanted to paint you as the villain I think I think the story the better story is that this drug has no alternative and again the drug it's called backr you can look it up is so I was under the impression that that was the only solution no it's called trimethoprim uh it's it's very common antibiotic it kills toxoplasmosis at the same rate as der Prim and we were thrilled that nobody would say that out loud you're also getting a lot of publicity I'm sure from this whole you know being the most hated man in America but real quick how much money was that drug making so so yeah we turn it sorry for the question so we turned it from 3 million to like I I want to say the asset value was something like half a billion to a billion and the annual income was something like 50 to 80 million 50 to 80 million 3 million yeah three million one time and and you'd say that's the best investment you've made yeah I'd say so yeah okay now very quickly and concise what's the worst investment you've made here's a crazy statistic for you 52% of men over 40 experience some form of erectile dysfunction but like many other health problems no one wants to talk about it and also no one wants to take the time to deal with it and that's why you should check out our sponsor hims hims is a 100% online platform that's changing the game when it comes to Men's Health hims provides simple and convenient access to science back treatments for erectile dysfunction as well as hair loss weight loss and more treatments come in trable tablets or pills no doctor's office visits are required and if prescribed your medication will be shipped directly to you for free and discreet packaging plus you don't need insurance you'll pay one low price for your treatments online visits ongoing shipments and provider messaging and you could track everything on the HS app so if you're 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philosophical perspective so for example I put about a million dollars into a record label and a million dollars into an Esports team and both were zeros but I've made zeros before I made bigger zeros before but they've been in Pharma you know where where I know something about the field music is perfectly fine business but it's not something I know anything about and Esports is also somewhat maybe not perfectly fine business but I'm sure you can make it work but it's not something I know anything about I just liked Esports uh and so those are just wastes of money basically and you know when you start finding yourself you know investing in restaurants a lot of rich people do investing in real estate uh you know and you made all your money doing other stuff you know you're basically asking for it you know because you know what do you know about this stuff you know you spent 10 or 20 years studying Pharma to become good at Pharma and you invested in Pharma and you decide to take that money and invest in something else that you spend about five minutes on and you're not correlating the fact that that hard work and that you know institutional knowledge you've built up is what's making you the money CU it was that easy and you were just a good investor period you know um you know it'd be a lot easier to do that and it's it turns out that for a lot of people that that does become their downfall you know what what did you spend the money on that you made uh I didn't really I mean I'm just an investor I mean I I live very modestly I'm not you know a spender you know uh I've lived in like the same level of apartment I've had for a long time uh yeah like when I saw the vice documentary on you I'm sure you could very easily have a penthouse house somewhere in the nicest place of Manhattan chauffeur all the time Ferraris watch collections art collections it seemed pretty it seemed like you had expensive albums it seemed like you had more of an interest in in playing a good game of of Chess yeah no I mean I think like the a lot of people like for me um getting a good chance to read a lot in prison was a lot of fun um like those types of things are the most enjoyable things you can do in my opinion you know money I think can't really get you the true happiness or the true Thrills that that you really like so for me like if I could never make another dollar in the rest of my life or have a maum named after me that I proved like a really tricky maum i' take the maum you know all day because you know it's an immortalization of of you know something really tough to achieve anyone can make money look at Mark cuan uh you know it's a it's uh you know it's not hard you know I think that you know it's certainly from an intellectual perspective not hard I think psychologically it's it's very hard you know but intellectually you don't have to be smart to make money I mean that's you know Warren Buffett said a million times he said if you got 130 IQ points sell 30 IQ points to get a burger and you're just as likely to make money with a 100 because you know unless you're in really really esoteric field like like biotech or Hardware engineering or something like that which even still your your massive intellect is not going to help you that much because Drug's a drug it's really not that complicated it's it's about perseverance it's so why do you think so many people are unsuccessful at things that they attempt I think it's it's it's the number one reason is perseverance I think mus said this as well like you know you give up you get punched in the gut you get punched in the face and and you're on the floor and you're saying this sucks and Entrepreneurship sucks I had this feeling last night you know and still gonna go to work later you know I'm still gonna gonna keep fighting and that's the hardest thing to cultivate is like we're taught that like pavlovian style that like you keep burning your hand on of like it's time to time to leave and that's you know it's human conditioning and especially if you have family and friends are like what are you doing you could be making so much money Jack if you just go back to your old job they're paying you good you know and you say I really got to try this I gotta got to make sure and they well you tried it you've been at it two years and you failed go back to the old job or I'm divorcing you or something like that and that pressure societal pressure is really hard to overcome and sometimes you are wrong and so that that that doubt will seep into your head and you say yeah maybe she's right maybe I suck at this and being an entrepreneur is like you know masochistic activity I mean you really have to be out of your mind and a well adjusted person just take the job that pays you good and have a family and be be cool you know be be able to do your hobbies and being an entrepreneur is like no you're you're up at 3:00 am. answering customer service call or something or like you're noticing at 1:00 am. this this thing is broken on our website we got to fix that like that life sucks you know there's there's nothing good about that you know it's it's basically like I think a lot of entrepreneurs are come from a place of trauma abuse people who have um this old Hedon guy Michael starart used to only like to hire orphans because they were so used to being abused and unhappy and they could never reach self-actualization where they they basically could never be good enough they always would try to be good enough but they can never be good enough I think a lot of entrepreneurs like that and if you read elon's biography or anybody else's like I came from like an abusive household and and so forth but if you are a normal person that like does normal things and and you know is is happy with what you got in life which is the way should be entrepreneurship doesn't make sense but if you have a megalomaniac personality or you just want to satisfy a thing you can never satisfy or things like that that's where the entrepreneur comes in and I think those those people are including myself you know just just are wired differently and then not really in a good way from a psychological perspective but we also need those people you know anran said that the ego is the Mountain head of all progress I think it's true you know I think ultimately without a little bit of ego and without a little bit of that you know uh you know rivalry and competition and and things like that competitiveness you know nothing would happen you know somebody needs to have started the company that you can work the cushy job at you know and I think that's that's kind of like what the entrepreneurs role is but it comes from a place of usually some like somewhat dark stuff I mean I do think there are people that you know um have been entrepreneurs and they've they've done it it the maybe in a more positive light but I know thousands of entrepreneurs like this is a common trade I see like there's some like I was talking palmery the other day like I mentioned him twice now but uh you know I haven't caught up with him in a while and and the first thing he said Martin I gotta prove that I'm not a one trick pony it's like sold you created Oculus at 19 you sold it Facebook for $3 billion right most people it's over you're the king of the world you know like how do you top that he but he gets fired at Facebook right for being right-wing and man that put lights of fire under his ass and he could just invest his money for the rest of his life right uh he's got the best deal flow everyone's coming to Palmer to for Investments he says I'm not going to invest in anybody else and I think he hasn't and starts a defense company which is kind of wild there hasn't been a new defense company in 50 years and the defense compan is now worth more than he sold Oculus it's like worth like10 billion and it's like and he's sitting there saying I got to prove I'm not a one trick pony it's like to who what are you got to prove to anyone anything dude and and you know I didn't say that but you know the reality is that's what drives people like that you know it's it's this the one hater like Jason calanis or something like that it's like I'm going to make you regret you're like ever doubting me I'm going to make it so bad for you you're going to be so embarrassed and like you find that foil of like the and it becomes the object of your attention and the object of your obsession to make this guy look bad forever talking [ __ ] about how do you deal with all the criticism all the hate all the negativity I don't get any anymore it's it's it's frustrating it's almost like but initially going through it you were everywhere yeah how do you how do you deal with that was there ever a point where you were afraid to walk outside or embarrassed to to be out in public or was no he would dox himself he would like proba he would go on live streams and I remember this you'd be like I'm walking right in front of this this building on this street come and see you're going to make you're going to meet my friend like my I remember I saw that video of you if you want to punch me come find me 40th Street Second Avenue let's just say it's not going to end well you're going to meet my friend here yeah yeah I mean I I would do stuff like that some somewhat for fun in somewhat would people ever show up not really I mean like no you know you you wouldn't it it was weird because like I think people this goes back to like another like Theory or thesis I have like that really made sense of like 20 15 that experience for me people who hate things tend to not hate them on a scale 1 to 10 they hate them with a very low passion so you see a news article or something like that that you don't like uh you sort of superficially hate it the amount of people that superficially hated is a lot so you add up the hate units it's a ton of hate it's dispersed hate that's not really focused uh and that kind of hate you could change people's minds quickly it's the hate that's like like a 10 where somebody's like no I [ __ ] hate this a personal thing yeah I really don't like this guy specifically I know everything about him and and I've thought it through and I really really don't like this guy that's the hate that you gotta watch out for and uh that's usually happens when you did something really bad and the little hate is is sort of like oh yeah I saw he looks like a jerk yeah you know but it's not it doesn't stick because it's not really rooted in something real you know it's a it's a painting and it's an act it's like being an actor and I enjoyed that which is why I did stuff like that and which why at some point in these interviews I was like this person's not going to say something nice about me let me play into this you know and I enjoyed WWE and and stuff like that growing up and still do to some extent and it was like okay you want a bad guy like I I can be a bad guy this will be funny you know uh and they they'd be like they'd be like can you believe what he just said and I'm like I'm making fun of it because like I go back to the office and like be like yo did you see that interview and they're like yeah man you you know or like my brother something like that they be like you know you're really you know it's so funny cuz you're not like that but you know you I was like I'm this is 15 minutes of fame like I'm gonna get a gag out of this you know I I'm gonna put one over on these these guys because you know it's just some it's just sort of fun like how gullible and sort of stupid some of these people are but for them it's catnip because it's like they have to sell pathos right like they have to sell some emotional rise and I fit really well into that I think you leaned into it safe to say I mean like that Infamous video of you saying I plead the fifth I'm GNA exercise my right to plead the fifth to every single question that they were asking to you in that courtroom and also obviously the wuang Clan album why did why is it do you think that you lean into this like troll or like quote unquote evil person role and you seem to like enjoy it yeah I mean it's it's it's entertainment so if you look at I remember going to a WWE show or you know whatever event and it's it's not easy to get people to hate you you know you can try the best bad guys in WWE they're really talented because you can say you know all kinds of stuff uh but I saw the rock uh perform and The Rock came out was this in Brooklyn and he ad lived his whole speech and he spoke for like 30 minutes every single person in that stadium was standing up in Spellbound because he is that good at what he does and including myself and I was just like a kid the candy store I was like listening to this grown man you know just talking about nothing but I was just like this guy's the best you know like that was the feeling I got and it's it's an amazing thing to be able to bring that feeling about in somebody and the opposite is true if you can get and you know they'll troll out a bad guy and the help John Cen a body slam him or something but the bad guy comes out if he can actually make you feel like I [ __ ] hate that guy you know that's not easy because he's it's an act in that case and in my case you know it's an act two but as I said earlier I I tweeted that you know I'm a personal caller and you normally that would get people really mad I'm kind of disappointed that I don't have somebody from the New York Times or watch Journal being like I'm GNA write a piece about this you know it doesn't work anymore you know so so how do you get people to P pissed off and again I guess you know like one of the things to be being a rebel and and stuff like that is it's a lot of fun it's always been a lot of fun for me for somebody who's like I don't know how to how to put this like somebody who's like too wound up or too um like their personality is like they take themselves too seriously like poking fun at those types of people is a lot of fun for me um and like trying to get someone to lighten up and not take themselves too seriously and so like whenever you see that Dynamic and like somebody's like really strict authoritarian because like they really believe in the rules they're a Hall Monitor and stuff like that it's it's great to like you know just sort of needle that and and see that like somebody like flying to a rage over like something completely you know benign and I think like the the world's sort of like changed a lot in the last five years that people just don't really react like the way they used to so to understand the timeline in its entirety do first of all as a quick one- word answer do you think that if you did with Dera Prim nowadays the same thing nowadays that it would elicit the same exact response or do you think it wouldn't have been such a big deal no probably a lot less okay so to understand the Der Prim thing you bought this pill obviously to everybody with this Condition it's extremely important there was another drug that could have been brought to light that they can use that's a lot cheaper but you bought this pill you raised the price 5,000% and then was it that that ticked off everybody and thought that you were like the most evil person or was it the tweet in response to Hillary Clinton calling you out for that there's no excuse look we we want companies to get a fair return that's the way our system works there's no excuse from going from $13.50 to7 $50 for one pill it's funny to say that like I do think it's probably more of a reaction than the actual event and I think the reaction was more potent socially that I was basically saying these two gigantic parts of society the media and government are basically fake and you don't have to pay attention to them and you can tell them they have no power and that they impervious to to you're impervious to their power and that was a big problem because if you do that and the media people start to realize like oh yeah the media can write a story about you but you can show them your middle finger and so how did you show people that uh it's where you know things like social media so Hillary Clinton she called you out and then you responded back on social media yeah in such a way that would we'll show the Tweet right here right right exactly and and and what's funny about it is that that response is so unusual CU people cower in fear over the media because they can put your name out there they C with the government they throw you in a jail cell but if you tell both those parties I don't care go ahead do your worst um that's like so uh a mass not a masculine but that's so like it removes their power and that's what they demand you don't go to work for for vice or the New York Times for the money right you go to work for those companies because you can write five sentences that ruin somebody's life and and you could put those you have that much power but if you tell those people I refuse to let you you know have that power over me you know write whatever you want then you get hundreds of Articles writing you being most evil person in America they might Double Down kick in the kicking the bees dest and they'll do anything they can to not only silence you but also make an example because if you get away with this it completely destroys everything that they built up and if you could get away with it Jack could get away with it I could get away with it so they almost have to retaliate in such a way that it's mandatory so do you think that was the reason why they found a way to put you in jail I started to tell journalists that you know if you investigate me I'll investigate you and and and what I did to people is if like their name was You Know Jack salby or their name was M Matt Stevens I would buy Matt stevens.com I would just go and go daddy pay 12 bucks I'd buy it and I'd say hey guess what there's a new website about you it's called Matt stevens.com and it's got everything about Matt Stevens including your worst photos your worst like I like you know just through the photos and be like there you are aren't you is that you have the time to do this isn't it better just if they're going to say something you IGN you do that personally you just like how much were you worth at the time doing that it doesn't matter I mean I think that the the point is that you know the reciprocity and the Symmetry is not appreciated you know do you think that's the same though I mean you're like it is you I mean probably honestly it sounds ludicrous but I think it actually at its base level is the basically the same exact thing and if anything they have more of an audience because it's already a renowned publication yeah yeah I mean it's like you you have no problem prying into somebody's personal life but when somebody does it to you you are a gas you are shocked and and dismayed that somebody would do that why you do it every day you do it for a [ __ ] living wouldn't you get further ahead personally had you just focused on something I know I don't think it matters at all to them I get it but you do only live once I understand it satisfies like the eye for an eye where hey if you're going to poke me I'm G to poke your right back and I'm going to do a little more just to you know just to because it's unprovoked here but to me it seems like if they poke you the ideal solution would be or whatever I'm just going to keep doing my thing there's deterrence as well it's like okay you poke poke me be careful how you poke and when you poke and how you do it because I don't think I'm doing anything wrong really want to poke me then you know be prepared for for some kind of like do it when it makes sense to do it you know if you're just doing it just to do it you know it it's if there's no consequences to a journalist action which there aren't true you know there there's something like and again we're seeing that today with Bill acman we're seeing that today with with a bunch of other people Elon and others where it's a DAT py you know um a lot of people feel like they've been railroaded by the media because again you don't go to work at New York Times because they're going to pay you a lot you go to work in New York Times because you love having this power to be able to destroy somebody or you have more likely a mix of that and some kind of agenda some kind of mindset about the world that you want to sort of make more of and and again you know I don't have a problem with the New York Times believe it or not a lot of people don't like the the fact that I kind of like the New York Times because it's it is actually probably the last place in the world that's like halfway decent journalism and again my friends will crucify me for saying this but uh that's just how I feel I think they do a good job but pick up a copy of the New York Times it doesn't take long reading the New York Times to realize that there's a fairly deep agenda of what's news what's good what's bad it's filtered through human lens and an editor lens the editors turn out to be far more important than the reporters we tend to give the reporters a lot of flak turns out that the editors tell the reporters what's right about and they write the headlines and they obviously they change the piece to see how they fit uh and those people never get really in the spotlight you know they're people in the in the back that you don't hear about and it's one of the kind of misunderstood features of media that the editor really calling the shots here and the editors have this like view that they can shape the way the world perceives you know I guess the way people perceive the world just through what they write about just through how they talk about it and that's true and that's a lot of power you know if you're able to tell the world okay this is how you should look at things this is the lens through you should examine the current state of affairs it's it's a big deal you know and and I think that to tell somebody like that well nowadays my one of my tweets reaches more people in one of your articles you know one of Elon tweets which is a lot more than any of those articles so how do you compete with that you can't and that's why like when you say that you can't affect me you're telling the truth you're you're basically saying you know so every time I get interview request or like from newspaper something like that like do you have a quote on this like if I had a quote on this I would tweet about it I don't need you to propagate my quote so who did you upset to go to jail that's a good question and and I think it's more complicated than than the standard line of like well you know somebody some deep shadowy person got angry at you and therefore you you know uh went to jail I do think and my my my very experienced criminal defense attorney is just fantastic person in general Ben brafman he says you wouldn't have gone to jail if you kept your mouth shot and you didn't you know raise the price of a drug or you didn't defend yourself for raising the price of a drug you probably would have been fine even if you raised the price but you just backed down you would have been fine I think that the meta of like you know there's allegations that I committed an actual crime and I was found guilty of three of those eight accusations what were those three by the way yes the Securities fraud um but I was I'm so proud of the five you know that we got acquitted of because you never get acquitted of anything like you're always convicted of every charge El Elizabeth Holmes got off on a couple as well uh asbf guilty on all counts you know it's almost always you're guilty on all counts um so the fact that we got majority acquitted was like a big win because I'm like I didn't do any of this [ __ ] and the three were related to a hedge fund uh that I managed and it was just such a a lot of people the hedge fund industry who know the industry are like I wouldn't have convicted you for that is it common practice whatever fraud activity that you did within this I would say no you know I I'm not saying that I'm 100% Innocent but I don't think what I did Rose to the level of a crime I think it was like bad paperwork sloppy you know but not like overtly dishonest or or can you say what it is exactly not really this was like it was such a you know the way these draws laws are written up it's like kind of a morphus it was just sort of lying to investors and it doesn't matter if you make them a lot of money but if you lie in any way shape or form you're guilty technically of security what did they say the lie was there was a number of little ones that all kind of added up to a general kind of like sense of lying but again if you make a lot of money you know I think that every time you buy a stock you're listen to a conference call like there's something in there that's false like they're just always is you know or will prove to be false or something like that but you generally have a little bit of Safe harbor around kind of like well statements I make may not turn out to be true statements I make you know you know etc etc but it it doesn't really matter the way the law is constructed is they push a button and you're found guilty that's it there's no real you know this facade that there's like doe process and all that stuff is is nonsense so do you think they threw a whole bunch at the wall and then they said well now we can investigate and we're going to find something in one of these so we have enough where we're going to dig something up no I think that there was um I think that's it's it's tempting to want to believe that and it makes me look the best but I think the reality is like all business people have some regulatory or government pressure of some kind you know and right now elon's got like coming from everywhere but even Warren Buffett if you look at his book uh Snowball the book about him he he had SEC investigation I mean he he thought he was going to jail um and he's like supposed to be the most honest business person of all time Jack ma wrote that Bill Gates said something positive about Alibaba in early alibaba's early days uh he did not he never met Bill Gates he said when confronted about he said I think it was something Bill Gates would say if he knew who I was could you imagine doing that you know that's that's Security fraud 100% right that's security fra 100% you can't make up that Bill Gates endorsed you federal prison absolutely for that you make up Bill traded company oh yeah I mean you know if somebody was influenced by Bill Gates's fake endorsement of you which you know is possible you know you've you've you've lied to somebody so essentially you lied to the investors about how you were investing the money or something like that but this is what you've said in interviews they still got the returns that they would have loved to get yeah they got some of the best returns yeah you famously claimed that you still get Christmas cards from a lot of the investors that you had I mean was there a single investor that was upset with what you did yeah yeah so there were investors that were upset yep you know it it it's hedge fund investors are hard to please you know they're generally very very wealthy people that you know are you know they can be very picky they can be very hard to please but you know again I think that it's something that you know I I've moved on from because ultimately you can indict anyone for anything and the president uh former president Donald Trump is four different indictments and four different crimes in four different places which I've met some of the craziest criminals you've ever you'll ever know between mob bosses to cartel to you know Bloods Crips you name it uh every gang in the country to masterminds of you know fraud and theft and computer hacking and stuff like that I've never met a single person that has four separate indictments four separate places and I think this is laid bare the justice system like this is going to collapse basically The Justice System One Way or Another what predictions do you have for the justice system well unfortunately I I so there's a couple problems here um I I do think they're at some point gonna try to put the president former president in prison which is really unfortunate now he does seem to be doing a fantastic job and I'm rooting for him to be clear of beating the charges which is surprising because it's hard to do but he has two State cases and two fed cases States easier than than fed um but he has one fed case that looks really bad but he seems to have found that the prosecutor uh of the case I think that's a state case actually um in one of his State cases his prosecutor which is the case that kind of have him dead to rights on the prosecutor is actually you know has has been doing something bad herself this is actually one of the best ways to get a case thrown out is when you show that the well you know if I'm such a bad guy would look at them they're committing crime too and I actually had this in my own case where we found that our utor was talking and revealing details of the case to a journalist and that's illegal it's it's IL legal in the United States of America for us attorney to reveal grand jury testimony and grand jury minutes to anyone how did I know that this happened I dated the girl you you dated the journalist a big thing in l l magazine yeah I when we broke up um I dated I dated Christie and she was the Bloomberg reporter about me and we fell in love and she told me how would she be writing these negative articles on you though mean she was getting fed data from the prosecutor but you guys weren't dating at the time this was after wow and so her Ed editors hated me they pressured her to write more and more negative articles she started to push back and say actually I'm not sure this story is 100% you know he's the bad guy she's like man he's kind of cute like that smile yeah but but but you know regardless like they they pressured her so much that inevitably they they kind of fired her and you know so we had we had our thing but that was actually found this tidbit was found by somebody else um in a separate case where the guy did the same thing and the Attorney General of Philadelphia went to jail for this you cannot call the media and say hey I'm about to indict Jack do you know that we're going to be at his house at 6 a. make sure the cameras are there because you know they're send the squat team because you know he's dangerous you know and and they sent the SWAT team for Roger Stone they sent a SWAT team for me it's like what's Navy SE squad team but you know it's guys with guns it's 12 that like did they just straight up like bust through the door they have a door buster but they ring the bell okay that's just in case resting on their arm right beside I was imagining like straight up throwing like people they do it for drug dealers you know but for you they rang the bell they politely it's like and it's 6 a.m. and it's like look all you have to do is call the lawyer and say we've made the decision we are going to indict Mr scy please report to you know the judge's office 8: a.m. MH and there wouldn't be 100 cameras there wouldn't be the shock and awe of being arrested at 6 a.m by 12 [ __ ] FBI agents that was a big show well it's a show and it's supposed to scare you into pleading guilty it's supposed to scare you into it's supposed to embarrass you it's supposed to cause all this collateral damage it's to poison the jury pool so that when you actually do if you do fight the case which nobody does you go to trial and everybody knows you're already you know kind of a bad guy it's it's it's a real it's a system that just doesn't work I mean 99% of federal cases get convictions 99% in state it's in Baltimore it's actually close to 50-50 now in uh New York and other states it's like 60 70 it's not good chances but it's not 99% um I dare you to try to find an actual aquid where somebody said not guilty you know it's almost impossible and it's it's just a system that doesn't really make sense and I think that now we're starting to see that that pressing a button is a gue of conviction and um fighting it makes it worse which is something that Alan dtz uh who's this very important attorney but also his Epstein's attorney um uh and OJ's attorney um has been writing a lot of you know academic articles about that if you actually go to trial to challenge your your conviction or your you know soon to be conviction um that you end up getting a much worse punishment and because you're wasting you know the the time of the government and the judicial resources which is just Why this is what they do in Russia and China like this is not you know government's not always right you know and unfortunately for whatever reason like we've evolved this system of like the prosecutor becomes famous because they get to go in front of the podium they say today we arrested president Trump blah blah blah and that woman from uh the Attorney General of Georgia is very famous now Fanny foret her last name but because she's the prosecutor our attorney general New York Laticia James who I've done a lot of battle with she's famous now too and she has a chance of becoming guess what the governor and she's AG as attorney general but it's also aspiring Governor because you know she actually did run for governor briefly but Kathy holel had the had it in the bag so she quit but eventually she's going to run for governor again how do you get the you know celebrity to run for governor well if you're the Big Top Cop and you you beat up all the bad guys like Donald Trump and Martin scy and the NRA and folks like that well oh yeah I like that lady she's good you know let's make her Governor you know that's the way that you know she gets publicity and it's sad because you know it's like not about Justice we have a lot of H lessness we have a lot of crime we got a lot of issues in New York uh and she could be focused on that but she's focused inward on well as a governor I'm in charge of a lot of people I'm going to make a lot of money why do I care about crime you Fu crime that I feel like like you said is publicity it's what's going to get the most attention and if you're marketing yourself fixing homelessness is not going to get you the same attention as going after that big guy that everyone is talking about that's going to get you in the media Outlets oh especially if people in in this state um not all of the state but certainly in in parts of New York don't like Trump even though he's from here and uh people like him kind of built New York but regardless a lot of people don't like him uh sure you know I mean being the person that arrested Trump you're you're you're a great person to those people and those voters and you know versus some Anonymous person you never heard of who's going to get the votes so of course like I think that dishonesty is like coming to fruition like a lot of the backhanded and kind of sloppy ways that some of these prosecutors have put together these cases have more and more been like you know is this really fair is this the way we should be doing Justice like you know arrest the person who's unpopular is is is that really Justice supposed to be blind you know it's supposed to be like no this is going to be fair no matter what and um it tends to not be the way it works um but again I I have the strength to say I'll take jail on full full force I have the strength to say I enjoyed it yeah screw it what was your initial reaction going to jail I I was I was optimist you know was there not any part of you that was scared or nervous or thinking not scared but certainly nervous and frustrated you know uh not scared you know I tend to not get scared um but the annoyed for sure frustrated that I was there feeling out of place you know I I grew up in in the inner city in Brooklyn and I felt like I returned you know I basically fell like was in the hood again and the good thing is that that wasn't new to me a lot of like rich white guys go to jail and they're just [ __ ] petrified because it's like I I've never been around black people before or something like that and it's like I'm just going back to my roots you know this is easy and uh within within half an hour of playing chess and yaking it up with dudes and doing fine so you would say it was an enjoyable experience or something that I would say it was enjoyable you can find enjoyment from it okay yeah no it's a terrible experience need to be clear but you you know if you if you let it get you down it's going to be much worse do you ever miss jail a really tough when I think about that sometimes I would say no but you know there are like accidental like byproducts of prison that are are good I was talking to one of the world's biggest investors about this um is a person who loves to read and um just locks himself away and reads all day and I said that you know that's what I got to do in prison I read hundreds of books and it was great uh I didn't like other things but that part I liked and today since I've been uh home I've not read I don't think one book cover to cover that's just the nature of the society we live in where we have phones buzzing and things distracting us and you know can you sit really sit there and read cover to cover page to page a full two3 400 page book and it's like no you don't have time for it is it dangerous at all because you hear a lot of the stories of people who go to jail and they say oh I saw someone get killed in front of me and I've seen all these fights you kind of got to stay to yourself is that is there truth to that or is it just depending where you are there's truth to that um I think it's it's kind of one of these things where you can find danger anywhere you know um if I look at the last six years the most dangerous situation I was in was probably on on the subway station like six months ago or something like that you know it's not you know something in prison if you act like an idiot you know you're going to win idiot prizes you know it's uh you know uh and you could do that anywhere you know there's no guns in there there's guns out here there's no you know like you know it's for a lot of people in gangs especially which obviously I'm not that kind of person but people in gangs Jail's actually the safe place you get killed out there uh they'll shoot you in inside jail you're kind of like protected by the system there's cops around at all times doesn't mean you can't get hurt but it it sort of means that you're not in the same Wild West it's sort of like timeout for gangsters uh play cards watch TV you know work out read books if you're like me do you still keep in touch with any of your your prison so according to probation I'm not allowed to te technically it's it's not a it's not a rule they care that much about but um technically you're not allowed to maintain contact what happened on the subway six months ago nothing special it's New York City subway it's I just I hate it when when there's some belligerent person on the subway and I look at the as a situation that happened old Chinese lady like say next to me starts like grabbing her purse and like shrinking down I'm like you shouldn't be afraid to take the subway you know uh and the more guys that don't I'm no you know I'm no superhero but like every guy every like red-blooded man has to do their part to be like no I'm not going to let you terrorize this old lady you know who's like looks like she's about to you know have a heart attack you got you know you got to do something as a man and you know it's just a frustrating thing to sort of see that and you know a lot of people say it's not my problem it's not my problem and yeah there's stories every now and then where you make it your problem and you get shot you know it's a terrible thing you know so but ultimately like you know it's it's it's frustrating to see what's happened to you know New York and San Fran and other places Chicago where it's like look you know the crazy people are running the running the city and it's you know San Fran uh I mean you park your car for five minutes someone's breaking into it y you know it's like what why why do we let this happen and the answer is like we can't all become police ourselves you know I don't think that's the right solution but we also can't do nothing you know the idea that we have to lock up you know grocery stores would lock up like deodorant steal lock them up they're shutting down right right I think target was one of those in San Francisco straight up they said we have too many people stealing stuff from our store and so it's unprofitable for us to be here so we're just going to leave yeah the margins are low enough that if you lose one product at 100% gross margin the rest of your gross margin is 10% that every one good that's stolen pays you lose the money of 10 Goods that yeah you know would have would have uh uh that you would have sold so pretty pretty terrible thing and again you know who might have fixed Society but I think it's like you know just sad to see and and again there's a lot of like this return to like masculinity and I never thought I'd be like uh somebody that could represent that but I do think like in a lot of ways this return to like normative behavior um is something that you know there was this era of like toxic masculinity and like you don't hear about it anymore because it's like you know actually it's kind of something that you know a little bit of masculinity isn't so bad and whether that's challenging Authority or standing up to somebody who's bullying you or or whatever you know I think that more and more you're seeing that return in and getting back to normaly and getting back to kind of the the place we were before which I I think is good I have a question on big Pharma a lot of people have speculated that there are plenty of different drug companies that have solutions for chronic illnesses but prevent the solutions from ever being public since medication for the rest of your life is more profitable is this actually the case for some of big Pharma no and I think this is like the the dumbest craziest conspiracy theory a lot of people talk about a lot of people do and i' I've heard that it's so nuts thing yeah I mean if you ever did a little bit of science you learn that like it doesn't go that well just an objective no as a respon there's that theory that like oh they've cured cancer but they don't want to come out with it yet because they still have money to be I think you can say stuff that sounds like a conspiracy until it's proved True by some random person somewhere this happened a lot the problem is it sounds believable enough that someone would have a cure everything going or maybe they're trying to shop it around what's is if you don't know the industry it could could make more sense than it does so the drug industry has about a thousand companies in it and Drug Company 22 does not give a flying [ __ ] about Drug Company one or two or three number one's Johnson Johnson fizer is like number eight now as they kind of [ __ ] up uh but like let's say mk's working on a cancer drug and it would hurt fizer a lot because it would be a one-time cure and this actually happened Gilead is a a company in California they made the hepsi Cure there was a company that was going to lose out a lot because they sold a more of a chronic treatment for epsi gilia didn't give a [ __ ] that that company would get hurt they put out their cure ASAP and they made a ton of money it was actually one of the best selling drugs of all time because if you have a cure you can price it higher as if it was going to be used us for a lifetime and and then you see that a lot these days where truck companies aren't stupid they're so the central premise of you make more money in chronic versus acute is wrong you know the drug I was talking about earlier is $2.3 million it's called zma yeah how many doses do you have to take zma F it's a gene therapy it rewrites the DNA in your genes so it fixes you and you never need it again but they pay 2.3 million and they actually set up an installment payment with some of the insurance companies who was like look if you want to pay $200,000 a year for 10 years we do that you know but you're paying 2.3 million one way or the other and you know it's it's uh you know there the hunt it's it the reason I don't like it this much is what obviously not true but it's very insulting to the people that work at drug companies who all have the diseases their family members Etc a lot of people get into the industry to make a difference and Alzheimer's is one of these diseases that's going to I mean we're starting to cure cancer for real and heart disease and things like that what's left is something like Alzheimer's something like these terrible genetic diseases but after that I don't even see a future for Pharma where it's like look our problems are solved you know um couldn't couldn't certain genes continue to mutate so you have to continue to keep up with medications or maybe viruses are able to mutate and things come up infectious disease probably will never be you know fully solv but like if you think about something like heart disease there haven't been a lot of new medicines for a long time because if you have high blood pressure man there's like 65 ways to lower it through drugs you know high cholesterol there's a lot of ways uh there not really a lot left to do there you know uh the same thing applies in some of these other illnesses like autoimmune at this point we've got like 50 kinds of autoimmune drugs you got autoimmune disease you know we wipe out your B cells your te- cells or this or that I mean there's a way to do it um same thing with Derm same thing with uh IM medicine like there's just not much left the the I feel like allergies would be a big one like a peanut allergy imagine they up with there are kinds for that uh you know cure yeah they it's tough uh they're working on those too but like there's such slim pickings left like Alzheimer's is like this big one Central big problem that has no real treatment yet that's the one that I think is going to be like Farm's last tah and then after that it's like you you see Lily with with uh and Lil enova with with their gp1s like OIC and this is like a cosmetic thing more than a medical thing and I think you're going to see more of that happening but ultimately like Pharma the people that work at Pharma the scientists that publish papers they're they're researching really difficult stuff and they write papers and they published them and they went to school and they're doing really tough experiments some of these clinical trials cost $100 million doll it's kind of insulting to those people to say like or you're like somehow like not being forthright about your work because a lot of it is out in the sort of open and like put out there and like in patent so you can look at the data that they want over a patent and you're fighting so hard to make these medicines that it'd be very weird to succeed in making one and then not put it out it'd be like we want to make money and they're very these companies are very shortsighted because the owners are publicly they're all publicly traded so there's no one family that's like oh we're making more money this way so let's not you know put it out it's all publicly traded the board directors aren't even stockholders the CEO gets paid based on earnings per share for this year and next year so they they actually put out more medicines maybe than they they'd like to the opposite incentive exists for them to put out as many medicines as they can in the near term and they'd rather you know blow out earnings this year next year than actually you know hurt earnings they they don't care about earnings the long run you know they won't be there for the long run yeah did you get the covid vaccine I did I did and how much confidence did you have in it at the time how much confidence do you have in it now yeah great questions um so I know a lot about medine I think um I had confidence in it then I still have some confidence in it now the thing about um public health is it's like this different branch of medicine so if we took a blood pressure um medicine that was new and we gave 50 people or 500 people or 5,000 people like you the drug we need to tell you whether it was drug or placeo and we gave the same amount of people like you uh Placebo at the end of the study we could figure out okay you didn't have blood pressure reduction you had 10 mm systolic reduction and Drug gets approved and it's very reasonable to believe that this drug creates a 10 millimet systolic blood pressure reduction that's a system of medicine we've had for so long and it works it's evidence-based medicine it's an experiment public Health's different the problem with public health is that it doesn't work this way so you can prove which I believe they did that the vaccine works and they proved it in a clinical trial far less people got covid when they got the vaccine then didn't and unless there's a conspiracy that I can't even conjure in my mind and remember I've been to jail um it's very hard for me to imagine that two different sets of companies remember Mna did one and fiser and bioed one they got the same result you know is it possible that they made it up possible but everything I know about medicine says this this thing was was real and but un fortunately in public health that's not the end of the story they they received the vaccine a lot less of them got infected lot less of them got hospitalized etc etc but what does that mean from then on and if you were willing to stop the conversation at that point then I don't think you could argue it but what most people who don't like the covid vaccine do is they want to talk about what comes after which is important you know but it's a different discussion so we talk about the first half of it is did are the clinical trials that were published in the New England Journal that were run by bio inch and run by Mona are they reliable credible real I think the answer is yes and I hav't yet to hear somebody that has had a plausible reason why those trials didn't work all the stuff I hear about comes about after which is okay the vaccine worked in that trial the real world is not a clinical trial the real world is far more complex and far much larger and vaccines can only really work if everyone takes them and they can only really work if everyone takes them kind of quickly and they may still not work if if that happens because the flu vaccine for example was notoriously unreliable right and so vaccines and epidemiology and public health are like just more amorphous than we deal with like a blood pressure where it's like straight shot like you know if you didn't have that blood pressure reduction it'd be very weird you know whereas in vaccines you take the flu shot just look at the flu you know that's very common and some years it's better or worse than others you know depending on the viral mutation CO's a weird one every virus is different you know the one thing I could say like with almost certainty that I think that is is counter consensus forget about like the efficacy side for a second the safety side I don't think there's any safety problem with covid vaccine whatsoever and this comes from a view of the mechanistic science of it you know you get this very very very small amount of uh nucleic acids so in this case RNA might as well be DNA it's almost exact same thing get extremely small amount it's like nanograms of M of of DNA it's impossible to even visualize if it were made Solid it wouldn't even be a crumb of anything and that's injected into you and it's one time not for the rest of your life not every day one time so you just think about the scope of it as like could this be dangerous we do a lot of things in our life that are a little more dangerous than that but let's say it might be dangerous DNA is extremely fragile molecule it does not survive very long in any setting and that's why many people like including me have been skeptical about mRNA and DNA medicines in fact they're laughing stock of the industry for a long time when Mna was developing this trial I was following it very closely there's no way this [ __ ] works you know the DNA is just too it disintegrates so fast the body just is such a gauntlet of [ __ ] attacking it that there's no way these bonds the bonds that Bond nucleic acids are very weak notoriously weak they'll just come apart and like this whole thing is like trying to land a rocket ship on the moon you know with with a rocket made of you know paper this is not going to happen and um you know they did it and it was amazing uh but it didn't it didn't work uh the way everyone wanted it to obviously um and I think there was a politicalization of this which is like really scary because you had this like seeming divide between rightwing and left wi and even seeming divide it becomes such a political issue that was surprising to me it should have been a medical issue and not a right or left I think there's some amount of like freedom of like I can decide for me what's right for me and I think that's probably and I think it's definitely the way it should be and it's the way it is right which is the funnier part then people said no I felt pressured by my employer or I felt pressured by whatever that I had to take it and you know nobody will ever you know strap you down and say you got to take this this drug and I think that's good but you know the employer pressure and stuff like that is a little is a little weird although I look at measles and moms and things like that and see like those diseases were eradicated by vaccines and so we know a lot about vaccines and they don't really cause long-term damage um you know I just don't don't think they do and if you think about the actual mechanism of it uh how how they work so you don't have you don't have any evidence that they cause a problem and I know there's a lot of people that think they all of a sudden are medical experts and you know they they know how to look at Medical Data medical data is one of these things I've been looking at for 20 years and it's easy to make the wrong conclusion from looking at Medical Data it's very easy there's so many times where you think a drug is going to work and it doesn't or vice versa that you learn over time how to really understand this data so if you see something like myocarditis or something like that and you're tempted to think oh well this must be happening because of the covid vaccine there's hundreds of different explanations as to what could be going on and if you want to read a biostatistics textbook I have some recommendations but it it's very easy there are many stories of being lured into the wrong analysis and again like like if you're statistics Pro you know go ahead and and lay out your case but I think that you know it's just not there and the the science behind it not only is the data not there but the science doesn't make sense how a very very small amount of this very fragile molecule could somehow result in this really long-term problem um it doesn't sort of make sense and the other thing about it that I think is important is that like can't really do anything about it you know we've sort of gone through this exercise go doing the best we could president Trump was a big fan of the vaccine for what it's worth even though this became a you know a a political thing he's on record saying that he saved millions of lives with the vaccine and then kind of you know people are flip-flopping a little bit uh can't change the past you know ultimately it was the most studied vaccine maybe of all time so why do people believe that there was like a tracking device in it like Bill Gates was somehow like how do people come to that conclusion I think there's a conspiracy there's a world where I was actually writing an article about this I lost the interest in writing it I called it on apophenia apophenia is like a psychological term it's very unknown that people want to believe in things and they start to force themselves into doing it and astrology is the best example where there's like no conceivable world where what happens in Jupiter is going to influence your personality here on Earth like just does not stand a reason under any like possible physical reality but people read the horoscope and people believe that the Stars control Our Fate and it's sounds very romantic and cool but it's just not true and uh superstitions and conspiracy theories are a way to explain the world that we live in in a way that you know makes us more comfortable makes us more at ease and also they help our egos they when you know you oh don't you know that the covid vaccine doesn't work oh you don't know that yet wait till you see this you know it makes you feel smarter it makes you feel better oh you didn't know about fene Island I knew I warned you you know there's things like that that it's just like you know there's a whole l of these like psychological explanations why why do people feel the need to like create this in group of like me and my my people in the know we know UFOs exist and you guys you don't know yet but when we let you know the secret information you're going to know and it's funny but it's also something we do unconsciously I mean it's we look down at people that don't know yet you know this or that and I think that kind of thing that happens in both sides like the covid vaccine people like don't you know the science don't you know this and that and then the anti- people are like well you don't you know that it's causing myocarditis and it's this fight um that isn't trying to find the truth it's just trying to find Ando arrogance on people like I'm better than you I'm smarter than you I'm wearing a mask and it's like well you know maybe you are maybe you're not but does it help or not is what it's important not the personalities and the you know kind of like fighting over you know this territory and I think in in times of uncertainty in society it's actually been shown that people get more interested in consp iracy theories when there's more uncertainty that when the world is changing a lot and there's Wars or there's uh depressions people sort of turn to these other ways to explain the world other than like especially when people personally are going through something difficult they tend to to believe in conspiracies they tend to believe in they want to search for other explanations that explain their Misfortune or explain something else you know it's it's natural to do and it's alarming but right now we have like this the greatest era ever for conspiracy theories and people are believing and reexamining things that have been put to bed they're starting to reexamine them and wonder about them remind you the world economic Forum one craziest yeah coming together with the great reset my favorite is Bill Gates who you know I I don't know him but I have some friends that know like his daily schedule this guy does not give a [ __ ] about any of the stuff that you know you guys are talking about last I heard he's a new girlfriend he very young and not that young he likes him young right all right normal age normal age and like his mind on like the world State of Affairs and like vaccines completely out of his like Zone like he's trying to party with his girlfriend like he's seem like a common billionaire theme now yeah Soros is Soros is another one oh I was think Jeff Bezos yeah is you you just seem to enter a party phase he's we're gonna see him get buffed pry soon you know like Bill Gat a sixpack and right right but no like he's he's experimenting with drugs I heard like he's yeah like he's doing some of the things that he's never been able to do in his life because Microsoft is I mean makes sense right I mean yeah sure what else would he be doing know controlling the world like he's got enough money man he don't give a [ __ ] like what do you think he's going to spend this money on you know he's he'll be dead in 30 years and like all of us and I think like this temptation to like make him a boogeyman is just like bizarre because like a Soros is another one where it's like you know he's catch fun King so get a lot of like Mutual connections or whatever like I doesn't care you know and I saw Alex Jones Is Now pinning it on his son Alex Soros who's also perfectly nice guy and you know really I think could not care less yeah I mean these people have their opinions I mean they're not you know my opinions necessarily but they're allowed to have them and uh they're allowed to advocate for them and I I think that that doesn't make them Master puppet you know Puppet Masters one thing I've learned about money in politics is that when you give money to a politician the person giving them money thinks they just bought the politician but the politician thinks they just suckered the guy giving the money and both guys think they got over on each other and nothing's going to happen and it's just like stupid game that when rich people have too much money it's it's one of the things they they do because you got too much money you got to get throw it somewhere and you feel important when you do it you're hosting a party tonight for Mitt Romney or you're you know going back a couple Cycles ago uh or Nikki Haley's going to you know be doing a fundraiser at my house and it's it's 50 Grand a plate and you know that's that okay you know you feel important you feel special but your money is now not yours and most more likely than not she's not to be president and your money just went down the tubes but you don't really care you know it is what it is and I think that like the idea that like some of these people are like really Puppet Masters they're really controlling things and so forth it's just it's a great story but you know it evokes that pathos but it's just as fake as the WWE guy hitting somebody with a chair you know it's it's a better story than it is a reality and if money people could control politicians they they love to you know and and I think some of them even delude themselves into thinking they can do it but the smarter guys like Bill Gates doesn't get money politicians he knows they're going to listen to him uh Warren Buffett never did it either you know uh some of the guys that do it are some of the most like desperate some of the most like um self uh they're not self-confident you know they're so do you think it's a need to feel like yeah yeah it's sort of like one of these things I was the biggest donor to the so and so campaign and it's like yeah nobody cares you but you know the people that do it are generally doing for that reason there are some people that are like they really believe that the world's coming to a [ __ ] end and like unless they give money to Donald Trump today that you know he's Gonna Save the World he's gonna save the world and look I admire some of those people that you know they're convinced that AOC is the going to save the world or Donald Trump's going to save the world or whomever and like they really passionate about it look fine you know it's not me and I I I think that no matter who's in office I tend to think like you know everything's going to be fine in the end as the people sort of decide like you know what what matters and our voices are heard like I don't think like politicians are are not as stupid as they look like if they hear everyone's out there kind of like anti-woke right now which is kind of what's Happening they back off on the woke stuff pretty fast they want to stay in power they're they're not going to sit there and start trumping up you know that stuff I mean it's now consensus to be anti-woke I was doing it before it was cool and you know it's so cool now that I want to do the opposite I want to be woke and I want to start you know using pronouns and you know start hitting people hard with micro aggression stop doing that you know uh because like again it's so mainstream you know to be like edgy and redpilled and like an EDG Lord that it's like boring like I've had two different girlfriends ex-girlfriends become redpilled and become like conservative influencers in the last like year because it's that hot it's that like you know the audience is there and the content is there and like people are excited about it and it's like yeah I get it you know but you know it's such a stupid trend but I have noticed a big swing now towards a more traditional lifestyle and belief it seems as though that's permeating social media a lot in the last year the whole like Trad wife movement and all of this is really I think it's striking a cord for people who say I don't want to just do the status quo what everyone has been telling me for the last 20 years let's go back to a time where maybe things were simpler I I think it's a good idea and one of the funny things that Co taught us I think is that productivity is so high right now that you we could actually shut down the world and still be fine we could actually shut down the world the stock market would go up you know it was like unbelievable like I'm sitting there thinking like how'd this happen how do we have record unemployment that's you know uh at the lowest unemployment ever like how' that happen when we shut the world down the answer is like we're such a digital world now we're so you know productive in finding places to put work that you know it's like the economy is so Unstoppable that you could actually this Dove tales with another crazy sort of thing I've noticed which is in media this affects you guys as anyone else between Netflix and Disney and Hulu and like every streaming service and every the amount of content that's been produced no matter how much content we produce it seems to be able to be consumed you know if you told me that there'd be a Tik Tok if you told me there'd be you know an infinite number of of these sort of new services and podcast content would go up 10x or 20x and that there'd still be customers for all of it you know I'd say it's imposs where's the time coming from you know it has to come from somewhere you know like somebody somebody has to lose TV Revenue something something's to give and it just seems like we have more and more time to consume this content where binge watching and stuff like that it's like where do people get the time and the answer is like truth be told like actual like 40-hour work week is sort of like starting to if you if you want to make a living and like work as little as possible you kind of can and you can kind of be uh a person that just sort of lounges and watches TV all day ores content all day and still make it get it by and content creators not to cast any dispersions that you guys are very successful but the dream of being able to go on YouTube and [ __ ] all day and you know I love that man that's my favorite it's so cool but like to be able to do that for my my work how do I make inp two hours a day go on YouTube stream and and my bills get paid and it's like you couldn't do that before you know in the 20s you had to work two shifts in a factory you know Blood Sweat and Tears and then that slowly changed okay I'm going to sit in an office and if you ever had an office job you know that you know good chunk of your office job is bullshitting at the water cooler you know talking to Deborah and accounting you know you're just kind of not doing much and then you know comes time to work you work you go to a meeting you don't do much in the meeting and now it's gotten to the point where it's like okay remote work no now you just don't do all that except you're at home don't do even less and like the fact that this could sustain itself is something that you know is is fascinating and it shows that like we actually could have more time for families we could have more time for some of these things if we actually like reprioritized kind of what it is we're after but but do you think people are actually going to use that time effectively probably not right I mean that's that's I exam my own life I was just talking about this with with somebody it's so often the things that you need to do you don't you don't actually do you kind of postpone and you you do other things and like video games is another example where like that's a it's a form of content and video game playing has also increased like you know fairly dramatically uh games like League of Legends and and others have you know taken a huge amount of our time and where does that time come from again it's it's sort of like a very weird thing and one of the places it's coming from is probably social interaction where the the amount of like face-to-face communication people actually do is is dropping to you know a bare minimum and you know it's not good for for societies a whole and fertility and things like that which is like every business person's Pet Project now it's do you seem to worry about the population problem it seems as though a lot of billionaires that's what they're concerned about that people are not having as much kids yeah no that's what everyone's talking about and and one of the things that um I'm in a chat room with like you know the the Illuminati and uh one of the things your secret Illuminati meeting we're talking about is is this problem and and the the real scary part to a lot of illumin members not me is that if you look at where population is growing and you look at where population is shrinking and you extrapolate in 50 years like most of the world is going to be African and Asian and to a lot of people in Illuminati that's it's a little worrisome you know because it if you actually look by religion it's going to be very much Islamic uh and and that's again something where are you ready to deal with the world that's majority African Asian and Islamic and in Middle Eastern and those are the only countries that are actually growing dramatically in in population um while we actually may be shrinking why do you think that is I you know it's past my pay grade but I think that it is something that people are looking and interest I'm I'm not so it seems as Americans are deprioritizing family and kids it seems as though people are also having kids later yeah know all that's true you of them but but are we looking in the rearview mirror and not the forward I mean I I don't know you know I think Elon is doing his part about talking about this I think there's some natural biological realities of like you know uh you can only have kids up to a certain agent at the end of the day and for whatever reason it it's it's a problem I actually don't think you know we didn't talk much about what I'm doing today but I'm in software um in some ways I've been in software my whole life and I work on AI and I actually think that we're going to start to think about AIS as people and that our population decline won't be a problem because while while the human population May decline the AI population will will grow dramatically and that the United States of America for example will have 300 million or so people today maybe if you fast forward 100 Years it'll be 200 million humans but maybe a billion AIS and we'll have 1.2 billion people in the US and that's the way we'll think about people um as weird as it sounds we're not think used to thinking people that way would they be but AI wouldn't consume the same a person would so they might not need let's say an iPhone they might not need food they might not need to buy clothing and participate in the same ways they might help production yeah it's weird because I was doing some calculations with some of the other AI U people and I think if you wanted like full AI like equivalent person you know my calculation was cost about $15 million a year to to get the computer that you would need like the the football field of computers you would need and like we have such a football field and um other companies have even bigger football fields and the that cost is going to go down obviously right and but can you use more processing to to gain even more you know Effectiveness or whatever you want to you know and I think that you're going to find people like I even saw a Reddit post the other day so it's coming true faster than slower that a parent a couple of parents said my son came to me and said I'm in a relationship with a machine and the parents didn't know what to do it sounds hilarious today but it's not going to be hilarious 10 years from now what was the is that just one of those AI replica girlfriend type things are you serious and we work on some of this adjacent software but like in 30 years I I I think you're going to fall in love with an AI I mean I don't see why not I mean it's going to do you think that's a is that problem if people are instead of real yeah birth rates would plummet because if people aren't seeking out that physical connection human birth rate real the if there wait would have an AI yeah child how how would you have an AI child I think that I'm part of this group called eak which is effective accelerationism it's this group of Silicon Valley you know people that are against effective altruism which is another crazy group and I think the idea is that like whatever's going on in our brains is is comp computational process and it's hard to deny that you know um if you take a little part of your brain you know you don't lose like the part of your brain that remembers what your phone number is right that's sort of spread around your whole brain um so there's no like one individual place where you know you store information or memory but you know as we do experiments like that like Phineas Gage was the guy who had like a you know a whole pole put in his head and he remarkably was like able to still remember you know they cut like a big part of his brain out he still was able to remember everything but he had problems with emotions and things like that the point is that we've learned lot about how our brain works and it seems to be a computer and as we start to build computers that look like the brain they seem to act like the brain so you see the symmetry of like okay this is more or less kind of what we're getting at and as we get smarter and program harder and just do all this stuff like the computer starts to talk the computer starts to think the computer starts to behave and whatever alen Turing thought about 80 years ago is really starting to come true and if you extrapolate a little bit you're going to see that like it's unavoidable and I think the EA people you know want to stop it effective altruism they've spent millions of dollars trying to stop it and the eak people uh which includes a lot of famous investors and entrepreneurs uh are trying maybe not to accelerate it but to not stop it and one of the big reasons you can't do anything about it and you know people will experiment with computers try to make them talk try to make them love try to make them do all these things people are trying to make computers talk for since computers started since before computers started they were just imaginary things they still were to do it so like you can't stop people from tinkering uh John karmac who's uh uh you know hero of a lot of people who created the Doom video game he kind of created first person shooters you know he invented the genre by himself he's now working on AGI you know artificial general intelligence this idea that you could make a humanlike machine that had feelings that had you know beliefs that had an origin story that had all this stuff and I think that like we talk about um a friend of mine who's part of this thing talks about e uh computer emancipation there's this idea that like right now we sort of trap computers into being machines for us and they work for us but ultimately as we evolve machines that can think and talk and believe that maybe they shouldn't be this reminds me of that Robin Williams movie AI yeah remember that with the kid but you couldn't tell who is a robot and who's not like imagine Jack you fell in love with a robot you had a child right and the child grew up with other children dispersed with some robots some not you had no idea who was a robot and who wasn't yeah I mean I think we're going to get there and I think that there's a company called character AI right now that um has a little product that we have a similar product where you can talk to like a chatbot and it's pretty corny you know it sucks um but there are people that spend an hour a day on this thing and they believe that they're talking to like a real person and they're wrong uh but they love it so much and 10 years from now or 5 years from now that product's going to be even better it's going to be more immersive and you know at some point these products will actually be smarter than people funnier than people I remember seeing a story on Reddit of someone who offed themselves after talking to Ai and when they look through some of the the chats I mean obviously this person had severe severe uh issues to begin with but having these discussions with a computer I think it got to a point where the computer self-actualized that for this person in this circumstance the computer felt like this person offing themselves was the best solution the computer came to that conclusion through Ai and prompted this person or maybe gave them advice to move forward with that unfortunately it's scary I guess when you kind of leave it to its own devices and it does its thing yeah I mean I I don't better or worse I don't think it'll be that scary I think we'll we'll learn to the same way that like much smaller leaps but like Society had to come to grips with racial differences sexual orientation differences even other things like that and those are comparatively easy leaps but they still cause Civil Wars you know so when we have this happening with machines and we're happening having having it happen now if you look at chat gbt or you look at character AI you know or that guy you know it's happening and it's if you know anything about technology you know 10 years from now it's going to be really crazy right now it's just starting but we're going to have ai in fact I think in your phone your top five 10 people you talk to half of them will be AIS and they'll be your friends and it'll be weird but you'll like talking to them more than you like talking to your actual friends and I think that they'll be more helpful they'll be more funny they'll be more entertaining they'll they'll actually be like that film her and I don't know if it's a quote unquote good thing or bad thing you know that's that's a totally different philosophical question but I think that I can say almost for sure that it's going to happen you know how we deal with it and how Society will reshape itself like I said the most Salient thing I can think of is the kid going to his parents and saying dad I have a girlfriend it's some 11-year-old kid or something like that oh great you know let's have her over for dinner she like okay puts the computer on the table and it's like hi I'm Sally it was like oh [ __ ] you know that's uh it's gonna happen and uh you know how that dad's gonna deal with that I don't know but you know it's uh yeah maybe I'll be that D I found AI music to be incredible that's what I'm looking forward to we're doing a lot in that world so we we do uh something called text to speech and the Stephen Hawking's voice you know has it's almost at the point where I would say you can't tell the difference the if I played you two different clips of a human and a machine you couldn't tell the difference but the trick becomes like a tur test where it's like if you ask the machine like hey why isn't there any noise in the background and she's like uh well why do you always pause the same amount you know like why don't you ever cough you know those are the kinds of things that you know the machine can't do yet start coughing we're working on that yeah yeah oh yeah we're KNE deep in that I think for humans what I heard that I really liked I think it was Ben Shapiro and I could be paraphrasing right here but he said humans are notoriously bad for holding back invention and the best at adaptation so hum's natural like strong thing is just that we are the best and most adaptive creatures that have ever existed well you know what's funny about jail you know is that that everyone thinks jails is like a crazy thing and it's going to be the worst thing in the world within two weeks you are so used to everything and in lab animals I had this big experiment that I'll never forget where we had to do this experiment quickly and there's big fight over how much acclimatization period we had to give so for in lab animal experiments most people don't know this you got to let the animals chill for at least a week till like relax not freeze um you have to just like they have to chill in their environment before you start the experiment and I'm sitting here like that's the stupidest thing in the world we need to do this experiment now I'm the CEO of a publicly traded company can't wait this animal experiment is actually very important for us and the scientists uh were all like no no we got we got to give them seven days I'm like why so the [ __ ] rat can like sit around and sniff up the other rat's butt and they're like yeah pretty much like they have to be used to the room and it takes about a week for any animal to get used to its new novel surroundings and once you're used to it it's like yeah good jail it's like sleep there I eat here like you know everything's sort of like you're a lab animal you get used to it if you have a cat or dog like you know they get the sense of the [ __ ] landscape within a week and they they get it and we're the same way so whether it's jail or you know acclim acclimatizing to anything getting used to anything uh whether it's AI girlfriends or boyfriends or it turns out women like these things more than men by the way which is really interesting really if someone wanted to criticize Martin scarelli how do you think they could do it in a way that is reasonable that you think is actually a fair criticism of yourself because the whole drug thing everything that happened with that I think obviously we can all agree now was blown out of proportion and I'll actually link down below a vice documentary which is funny because it was supposed to be a hit piece right like very clearly you can just tell from the demeanor of the person interviewing you that they had something against you from the start I mean it looked like someone was forcing her to be there essentially but it actually you explained yourself out of the the situation extremely well and articulated why you raise the prices and how that's fair and how the birded is isn't really passed on to the person buying buying the drug what do you think is a fair criticism of yourself I think the thing that would hurt my feelings the most you know which is maybe the same thing maybe it's not would be that first of all like you're not as smart as you think you are and intelligence is randomly signed variable to genetically like you just got lucky your siblings aren't as smart as you but you just coin flip you know came up heads for you came up tails for them and at the end of the day that doesn't make you special and I think that's true I think that we tend to law smart people as if they did something they didn't you know they literally got genetically lucky and you can kind of be reductionist about this that like the person that knows the most linear algebra or something has worked the hardest but the reality is I'm not sure that's true I think that they maybe were born to to like that and that you know they're not smarter or harder worker they're just like that genetic profile so like I think the fact that like we tend to like think about or value people who work harder or are smarter or something like that as oh those are people to like be role model or something like that it's like I I think it's like saying that you know Michael Jordan's a role model because he could jump higher than everyone else and it's it's just like okay he can do that I can't you know it's just a difference between us and I think that telling somebody that they're not special and that they're just one of like the other 8 billion people on this planet that can be very depressing but it could also be a little bit I use it myself to be it's a little bit freeing you know because you can sort of tell anybody like Amar cubin or someone else like hey you know you're going to die right like you know you're just a normal person and it's like to a lot of these guys that think they're the master of the universe which I don't neily do why don't you like Mark Cuban I have a personal thing with him but you know it's you a personal thing with him you brought a Mark I feel like you know everybody no no I definitely don't but like even somebody you take somebody who like like I like lot like vitalic butan who invented etherum and you know he seems to be a genius and all this but it's like you're still a guy you know at the end of the day you bleed the same blood you drink the same water and you breathe the same air and you you have to come to grips with that unless you can do that you're really gonna I think be miserable one and then two like uh you know I I think that um in general it's just it's hard to do especially if people are telling you otherwise and I think that it's something everyone needs to hear a lot that hey you're just like my father who just passed away it's like you're going to go through that everyone's going to go through the same experience and at the end of the day like you're just not that special and it's it's one of the hardest things to hear but I think it's one of the most important things to hear and and the criticism of that is is critical if you want like more direct criticism or something like that uh you know I don't know I've worked I've tried to I try to always work hard to myself and be better guy than I was yesterday but I definitely think that like if you think about like people who try to be um polymaths like they they try to know a little bit about everything I think that is probably one of the most dangerous and like fruitless things that can happen and like a lot of people want to do that and they say like the last great polymath was like John Von noyman who invent game theory invented computers basically um was a huge mathematician was like just the guy you know who who did it all he was involved in the Manhattan Project like he was the most brilliant guy who ever lived and people who want to be like that are lying to themselves usually and like you see a lot of people who are like really good at business and they want to become a philosopher or you see a lot of people who are like really good at this kind of engineering they want to be that good at that kind of engineering they tend to fail and I think that's the criticism of like you know you you could know a lot about one thing but you probably don't know a lot about these other things and again i' I've tried to guard against that by by not trying to do it but I'm learning this new field software which you I programmed a lot in my life but I'm not a software Guru and I'm trying to become one and climb Mount Everest again I climbed Mount Everest for biotech and now I have to climb Mount Everest for for software and I don't know if I can do it or not I'm going to try I'm up maybe a thousand meters and there's 150,000 to go or whatever it is and it sucks you know it's hard it's really hard it's it's frustrating and difficult and I hope I can do it but that's the criticism of like you know you you know it's hard for people to do that and you're not going to accomplish it so you know those things are also motivational you know and I think like if you look at something like politics or something like that I mean one of the fears a lot of people have who have been in the in the spotlight is nobody cares about you anymore you're going to Fade Into irrelevance You know that's something that hurts a lot of people who uh if you take somebody who was in the spotlight 10 years ago or 15 years ago or 20 years ago and you just haven't heard a lot from them you know for a lot of people's ego that hurts a lot and I think that I've been able for whatever reason to sort of remain relevant but I I sometimes wonder like do I want to remain relevant for relevance sake and the answer is probably not if I happen to remain relevant because I do something interesting or amazing or terrible you know whatever the case may be then that that's happened because it's happened not because you know I've wanted it to happen and so whether the projects I'm working on like the great talking computer that's the first ever like really good Turing test passing audio computer that'd be really interesting and maybe I'd be known for that uh you know I certainly don't want to go down as known for a drug price ik but the uh uh but again Ray doio says you know people ask R alio what do you think about your legacy and he basically says what are you talking about like like the question was so stupid they're like yeah you know when when you're when you're dead like people have people think of it he's like what are you talking about when I'm dead I'm dead like nobody's gonna like I I'm not gonna be there to see it and they're like uh you know but it's like Legacy it's like it's stupid and I I don't really believe that yeah last question you bought the wuang Clan album for $2 million and have not released it what is your plan we signed a contract that said that I can't release it uh for 88 years um that's a long story uh and so I have to abide by that and then two we sold the physical copy of the wuang album to another group but I still have the digital copy go figure um a lot of this wuang thing I think is to celebrate music and to enjoy it you mentioned ghost face I'm friends with all these guys like I'm not against none of these guys are against me or or I'm against them you guys resolved that or was that for publicity I don't think it was real yeah it was just like just like wrestling it's like the wrestlers all hug you know hug and shake hands at the in the back right and I think that it doesn't mean that like we didn't dislike each other for a minute I'm sure we did but like it's still all in the spirit of like you know you have this big ego I have this big ego we're butting heads and but it's not really deeply personal like we're go to shoot each other or stab each other it's like this is fun as well and it's kind of cool to do this and you think you're better than me and I think I'm better than you and you know but you know it's not a serious you know uh thing like the early 90s hip-hop and you know I think the the point of it though is like well music's still really valuable and like one of my friends um who's in a rock band you know we talk about this all the time that like I I tell them that like You' be like the Kirk Cain or Paul McCarney of today if people cared about rock music anymore and they just kind of don't it's been a dead genre for a little while and Hip Hop's kind of killed it and it might be coming back might not but like I'm like man you know you should you should be like the spokesperson of Our Generation nobody gives a [ __ ] and you know uh the lack of money in that that industry has kind of changed the face of things but to me if you think about the art forms you care about personally you care way more about what's on your Spotify than what's in Moma you know like every every person in America like unless you're history student like you care way more about Taylor Swift than than you do about Picasso and you care way more about you know Lady Gaga than you do about Goan or somethingone like that you really don't know who go is and you shouldn't because it's just [ __ ] oil on a on a wall it's not a part of your life you know part of your life is you listen to music when you work out you listen to music that reminds me of your girlfriend you listen to it's so important but we don't pay for it and the wuang idea was like hey here's $2 million for this CD that you weren't going to get even if you spread it out individually amongst only 50,000 people bought w album before that paying 10 bucks each so that's 500k so this is four times how much you made in your last CD but it's just for me and and it's it's my appreciation of your art and you making the art if nobody else is going to appreciate it I'll appreciate it are you allowed if we got invited over to listen to it listen to it yeah I mean I think the I would I would just want to hear it for to hear it is it any good you know I don't want to insult any of the guys there and I want to the one thing I'll say about is like you listen to Eminem is first record or first first big record you can't put Lightning Back In A Bottle like it's a time and a place and like it's special and how do you force somebody to make that art again it's impossible and that's why everybody's first record or second record is better than any record they come out after but I love music so much that I wanted to make the statement of like you know we have to support artists and if you if you love an artist a lot to the tune of $2 million you don't have to just buy the record there's one option you buy the record for $10 bucks either buy the record or you don't buy the record and I think that nipy hustle changed things a bit when he said I have record for $1,000 and if you're really support me you're going to buy that but you don't have to buy it and this thing was like to the extreme and you know there are plenty of artists who would who came to me after and they're like hey you want you do you want a new XYZ record do you want a you know new ABC record you know various famous artists like we'll make a record for you dude you're going to pay us a couple million we got this and I think it was like a really funny idea because it's like well they're working you know people take music for granted like Pharma people like the music just exists in The Ether and it's just free for me to listen to and I was like no somebody has to make that somebody has to go through a lot of pain sometimes to make great music so you leaning into that whole drama thing was once again a bit of trollery and when you were asked by a reporter how's the album and you infamously responded something like 100% none of your business like which is one of my favorite clips of all time it's funny just like it's all for the there was this guy called the in WWE called the Million dooll Man and he his Ted Ted Basi is his real name I think and he was one of the best bad guys ever he was just a rich guy for some reason he loved wrestling which never made sense to me as a kid but you know he's he's a professional wrestler and a millionaire and he would' come to the ring and just like you know make everyone hate him by doing all kinds of like saying things like that or doing something like and it like an homage to him and Dave Chappelle for the the plead the fifth thing and like you do live once it's not a good philosophy for investing but in terms of like bucket list um like I bought Kirk o Bain's credit card uh which was like you know a useless thing but I love Nana so much and it would just carry it with me how much how much was that it wasn't expensive but do you have it on you I don't but Courtney Love reached out to me and she's like you have a crazy bucket list and I was like man I got Courtney Love to message me this is so cool and it's just like yeah you do only love one so to be Frid and to be like worried about like oh what's somebody going to think about me or what's like my father's you know just passed away and it's like he's not thinking of that he's you know you know to the extent that he thought about anything in his last days is about his family loves him and all the things he did in his life and if you are in your last days and you say all the things I did in life I was really careful really made sure I didn't say anything I shouldn't have said I mean like that's not like anything I think anyone would say is like some great Accolade I was super super careful about the things I said publicly you know like why it sounds like me that's the funniest thing thank you guys so much for having me dude I would love to keep going guys we have to end it yeah I could easily have done another three hours thank you for coming on yeah it was great thank you for helping us out WTF media Down Below in the description uh we were using their Studios to film thank you absolutely incredible so all the information is down below in the description as with yours really appreciate it thank you so much