#445: Nicole Arbour on Creating Viral Content

Nicole Arbour is a comedian and digital renegade that has racked up more than 1 billion video views online. She is constantly reinventing the game, both for herself and for your favorite brands. In this conversation, we discuss how Nicole has built her audience, where she makes the most money, how to create a viral video, how comedy has helped her, and the importance of freedom of speech. ======================= Smart investors know being early is critical to success in crypto. CoinList is where early adopters invest in, earn, and trade the best new crypto assets before they list on other exchanges. Try CoinList Pro and be first to trade on network launch. Sign up via coinlist.co/pomp and earn $10 in BTC after you trade $100. ======================= Crypto.com is the only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. Download and earn $50 USD using my code ‘pomp2020’, or use the link https://platinum.crypto.com/r/pomp2020 when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 90,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Nicole Arbor is a comedian and digital renegade that has racked up more than 1 billion video views online. She's constantly reinventing the game, both for herself and for your favorite brands. In this conversation, we discuss how Nicole has built her audience, where she makes the most money, how to create a viral video, how comedy has helped her, and the importance of freedom of speech. I really enjoyed this conversation with Nicole, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors.

• 0:41Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:25Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I break down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. Alright, let's get into this episode with Nicole. I hope you guys enjoy this one. Anthony Pompliano.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  Is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:51Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I have Nicole here with me. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:57Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's just jump right into your background. Somehow, people know you as a comedian and like 10 other things. What do you do every day? And what is your background?

• 3:06Speaker 02

  Well, I am a comedian. That's my main thing that everybody knows about me. People call me a digital renegade, and I kind of ran with it.

• 3:13Anthony Pompliano?

  What does that mean?

• 3:14Speaker 02

  That means I can make shit go viral. It means I like to tinker with products and work on dev teams and beta teams in advance to make sure shit goes viral. Yeah, I'm a nerd when it comes to all things digital and absolutely love it. Analytics, kind of like get me all tingly.

• 3:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, before you became a digital renegade, what were you doing?

• 3:37Speaker 02

  Comedy. It was, so yeah, I was just straight up comedy, except I was working in marketing a bunch too, because I was hired as a comic years ago for a Molson Canadian giant campaign, and I was the host of this cross-Canada tour. I went into their marketing meeting with the president of the whole company and everyone on their marketing team. They told me what I had to say in the commercial and what was going to go on, and I didn't know I wasn't supposed to tell them it sucks.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  And I was just like, no, this is really bad. You guys sound like a bunch of late 40s people trying to sound like you're in college. The terminology you're using, the lingo is like four years old. I'm not saying any of this, you're going to kill my brand. And there was like... What would you do? And I told them and then it went viral before viral was viral. And then that campaign led to a campaign with Virgin Mobile, helping launch it in Canada, led to working with Nike and Unilever and Axe products, helping launch them. And I was just a comic that ended up good at marketing.

• 4:37Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So how much of the experience and knowledge of being a comic and people forget like that is a skill and that is something that you can kind of hone your craft with is dependent or is necessary to understand how the internet works and how to make content go viral? Like, does that experience help? Or is that just kind of a coincidence that you have the comedic experience and also understand how to make things go viral?

• 5:01Speaker 02

  It's 100% together. It's timing. It's eliciting emotion from people. The emotion doesn't always have to be laughing, but you have to get an emotion from someone. And fear seems to be doing very well these days. Not a fan of it, but it's doing well. But yeah, it's, it's super helps because I've learned comedy performance and writing. I've learned, you know, kind of how to influence people. And that's really what I think it comes down to. And telling the truth, comics tell the truth a lot and people, people like that now.

• 5:26Anthony Pompliano?

  It's literally the only reason why I like having comedians come on here is because the comedians are allowed to say the truth and no one gets mad because they're told that you're supposed to laugh at the end.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Oh, no, they get mad. Yeah. They've tried to cancel me like 12 times now. It's just, yeah.

• 5:41Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's just talk about it. You did this fat shaming or like Dear Fat People video. What was going on there? What happened? By the way, that video, that video has 15 million views on YouTube.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  It has over 100 million views.

• 5:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Over 100 million. Okay. Walk us through that whole thing.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. I just, I had been disabled for most of my twenties after a car accident. And I set out to basically make all the videos that I wanted to make, say all the things I wanted to say before I was dead. And I was like, I'm gonna say these things because they need to be said. I've been in bed for all these years. If I was gonna die tomorrow, what do I want the world to know? And seeing people harm themselves every fricking day is ridiculous, especially when we pretend we care about people, but then we let them kill themselves slowly in front of us. It's ridiculous. So I just made that video and I'm like, here's the truth. You're killing yourself and just made it funny. And at the end, I edited out a little part where I said, as someone who's been disabled for this many years and couldn't walk.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  And I, all I wanted was a healthy body. I took it out at the last second because I knew that wouldn't make it go viral. They had to hate me. I had to let them hate me. So I did. And then, uh, every day I get hundreds of messages still from people that, uh, that videos helped them lose ridiculous amounts of weight. It was the verbal bitch slap that they needed and that's exactly what I wanted.

• 6:59Anthony Pompliano?

  So where's the line in terms of, there's this like political correct, uh, world that exists and everyone, you know, has their own opinion as to what you're supposed to do. And they want to tell you what to do and, and basically force their, uh, views of the world onto you versus like the old school mentality of just like tough love. Right? And I always like to talk about like, most people, if you talk to them, they'll tell you a story about their mother or their father who like, at some point in their life, like intervened in a very serious way. And some people, it was like, my parents like spanked me all the way to like, my dad was like, we don't do that here. Right? And so like somewhere in between like tough love ended up having a positive impact. That seems to not be so popular now. So like, how do you think about the balance between those two things and what can be said and what can't be?

• 7:40Speaker 02

  I feel like with the, the lowering of tough love, the rise of lying has, it has been completely, you know, together. So I think being politically correct is just lying with a bow. It's not what you really think. It's not what you really believe. You're saying it because you think it'll make you popular and you're a liar. And I was brought up being called out constantly by family members, by whoever. We were just funny and tough love is all I knew. And without it, without tough love is honesty. That's all it is. Without that, world's full of shit. So what's the point? We can't let people tell us to stop being honest because it's not popular. That's really messed up.

• 8:19Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know a single comedian who doesn't have this like pursuit of ruthless honesty. And that's what ultimately leads to all of the emotional, uh, reactions, right?

• 8:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. A hundred percent. Like, look at my wall of my favorite people. They just, they all tell the truth. My wall of heroes. I love them. I get shoulders staring at me, making sure I do shit, right?

• 8:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Some of those aren't people. They're inanimate objects, but they still tell the truth.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Barbie is not inanimate. She taught me I could be anything I want to be. She, she was an astronaut and a teacher and she was a lawyer and it was the Barbie dream house, not the Ken dream house. She had her shit together and she looks hot. So what else?

• 8:57Anthony Pompliano?

  How did you get a billion views on the internet? Like, what is the secret? Or when people come to you and they're like, hey, I want to be a content creator. I want to make things go viral. Where do they start? And I'm not talking about like the actual like secret sauce of each individual video for client or stuff like that, but just like from a holistic standpoint, what are the keys to that that you think you understand that other people are just missing?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Stop acting. Everyone can see through your shit. It's weird. The, the, hey, guys, blah, blah, blah. Like, if that's not how you talk, why are you doing that now? Why do you think you're going to stand out when you're trying to act like everybody else? It's just dumb. And I see it with brands too. Brands are constantly playing it safe, constantly worried about what are they going to say? What's my competition going to say? It's like, why do you care? And, you know, it's just like athletes swing to hit it out of the park or why are you playing? And people have to be ready for that. And you have to be ready. If you're going to make a viral video, people are going to love it and they're going to hate it. And if you can't do both of those, then you're in the wrong business.

• 9:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, it's almost like the controversial nature of it, right? The fact that some people do love it, some people do hate it. That, especially on social media, drives more engagement, which drives more virality. And you almost have to be willing to have the downside in order to get the upside.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Sometimes, like, it doesn't have to be a negative video to go viral. It can be happy. I had one go viral that it was me and an old lady unboxing sex toys for Adam and Eve Sex Toy Company. I was told you can't make a sex toy video. Like, that's like the only thing that you can't make it go viral. It's not going to happen. It's going to get flagged and taken down. I'm like, not if I get a sweet 87 year old Jewish lady to do an unboxing with me.

• 10:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you know her beforehand?

• 10:40Speaker 02

  I had met her once. Yeah, it was my friend's mom and

• 10:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so you got your friend's mom to do a sex toy unboxing video with you? And what, what, do you just like text her and like, hey, I have an idea? Or like, how does that come about?

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I told her we're gonna do an unboxing video. It's gonna be a lot of fun and she came over and sat on my couch with me and I didn't tell her what was in the box. And that's it. And then we just went through, shot the whole thing. And at first she was a lot of like, oh, oh, oh my. And then eventually she's like grabbing at the toy. She's like, what's this one do? Like, she asked if she could take a couple of things home. Yeah, but she doesn't like, like the thong bodysuit. She's not into that. Yeah. When I, there was like a magic wand that came out in the one box and I put it on her back at one point. She's like, uh, vile. Yeah, it was great.

• 11:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 11:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I can only imagine an 87 year old will be going through this. I'm like, all the things going on in her head that she doesn't say out loud. But then there is this element of like older people kind of just don't care anymore. So they just say what they want to say.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the, oh, they're the best. They're the best.

• 11:47Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So one, being honest, what else in terms of like standing out on the internet, going viral, creating content that people actually care about?

• 11:54Speaker 02

  It's the same as comedy. You have to have, have an angle. What is it you think about this thing? So it's like water. Do you love it? Do you hate it? Do we need more of it? Do we need less? If you're not saying anything, then be quiet or find, find a reason to speak. It shouldn't just be content for the sake of content. It should be content because you have something to say or a message to convey. And when you go from there, what is the message? And you make sure you hit that over and over. That's step two.

• 12:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And so how does that balance with, you know, there's some people who just say like, hey, it's the consistency of content. You have to constantly crank out content. There's a lot of people who don't have an idea every day or every week. How do you balance those two things between like, only do it if it's high quality? You have something to say with the need for consistency to remain relevant and it kind of keep growing the audiences and things like that?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  I disagree with the you have to be posting every single day, something every day. Those people that are doing that are creating content because they're repurposing talks that they're doing, the repurposing Zoom calls that should be meetings. That is actual high-quality content. People who are just posting for the sake of posting, you can see it and it's trash. And it's like if you're feeding your audience trash most of the time, they're not even going to pay attention when you're posting something quality. So I think you end up losing more people than keeping them that way.

• 13:09Anthony Pompliano?

  What platforms do you focus on now? Is it YouTube? Are there other platforms that you think are worth spending more time on than others?

• 13:16Speaker 02

  YouTube, I stopped posting regularly on a couple of years ago. I was one of the first people on the Facebook monetization program and it slaughtered. It was a good time. So I was Facebook strong for a while. Now I'm mostly on Instagram and I am monetized on there, same as YouTube, which is sweet. So I like Instagram. Parler right now is crushing. The reach on Parler is, I posted the same video on Parler, got, no, same video on Instagram, 200,000 views with my audience of 1.3 million. Exact same video got 1.6 million views on Parler. And I was like, there we go.

• 13:51Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the size of your audience on Parler?

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Around 61,000 right now. I just started.

• 13:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And is Parler got some of the same algorithmic advantages that like, let's say TikTok has, where anyone can kind of build an audience quickly and get distribution? Or is it much more aligned to Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, something like that?

• 14:09Speaker 02

  I think it's a mashup of all of it right now. I haven't seen that it's easy to be discovered on Parler, but what I am seeing is that the reach, if I have 61,000 people following me, this is going to go to 61,000 people. So if I'm making something good, they're going to share it and then it's going to get to all their people. So it's that ability, they're not hindering anyone's reach right now, it's just sweet.

• 14:29Anthony Pompliano?

  When you create content, how much of it is like, I'm going to create a video to go on Parler, I'm going to create a video to go on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or wherever, versus I'm going to create a great video and then I'm going to cut it into different formats for these various platforms?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  I just make it and then post it everywhere. Yep.

• 14:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. How do you monetize in terms of not, like, take out the consulting and the brand work stuff, but for you personally, if you were just a creator, how do you monetize and where have you seen kind of the greatest growth in that monetization of the last couple of years?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Brand deals. So you know, finding partners that work for your brand and doing package deals. So I'm going to do this many videos with you or this many posts with you. Obviously monetizing just your views on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all the regular stuff like that. But I see brand partnerships as my favorite way to do it. Yeah.

• 15:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And so you keep mentioning like Instagram monetization. Explain to people what exactly you're monetizing there and how that works.

• 15:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the exact same as YouTube. So if you get a big enough following and they like your content, Instagram will come to you and say you're approved for a monetization program. And it's the exact same as YouTube. I'm getting paid for views and watch time, exact same way that I went on Facebook.

• 15:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And are they running ads in front of your videos or they're just paying you for the content basically? And then they're figuring out other ways to monetize because people are staying on the platform?

• 15:50Speaker 02

  I've seen both. So I've seen some ads coming and I kind of think a few more ads went into my feed. They didn't specify that with me. I just realized that all of a sudden I'm monetized and money's coming in, not mad at it. Yeah.

• 16:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And when you think of when you were monetizing on YouTube versus Instagram now, was it pretty equal in terms of CPM rates and kind of the size of the audiences? Or do you see a pretty big difference?

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Huge difference. Facebook and you know, byproduct of Instagram, bigger reach, bigger dollars, higher CPM, everything there has been bigger for me during the last five years. And YouTube, of course, their algorithm crushes adult content a lot or comedic content. Yeah, I've just seen a way better return on Facebook.

• 16:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so when you create a video for Facebook or Instagram, talk us through like, what exactly goes into that video? Are you cutting these into, you know, one, two minute videos? Are these more like 10, 20 minute videos? And then the different styles? Are you just basically sitting down and recording it? Or are you going back and like almost doing like the vlog style cut where there's just cut after cut after cut in the video?

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Okay, it's different every time. So for example, two days ago, I had my camera people come over and I was like, I'm gonna shoot something. I was like, I'm gonna buy a gingerbread house. Alright, oh, I have this like 50s outfit. I'm gonna put that on. Okay, we're gonna do a kitchen thing. Roll your camera. That's it. That's all we did. I said, shoot. We shot for 15 minutes. It was, you know, a tutorial on how to make a gingerbread small business. And I think it's at like half a million views so far, which is great in today. And I just shot it. I just improbed and just shot. And it is what it is. If I have a very specific message, I'll sit down and, you know, shoot probably like 45 minutes. I have to tighten it up because I don't want to edit all that after anymore. And then just edit from there.

• 17:40Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And one of the biggest questions I always get from people is, when you're successful on the platforms with content and monetization, how big is the team? And team can be what you think of as like, direct employees that you have, or it could even be contractors and kind of people you'll pull in for a video like that.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I got a one billion views with just my iPhone and my MacBook and a single ring light that cost me $200. So every time people are like, oh, I don't have a team. I'm like, yeah, I was physically disabled on disability, shooting videos like this, and then ended up on the view. So enough with your excuses. Anyways, now it's easier for me to have a video person come in. So that's like, I like to keep it small. One video person, I already have the lights, and then hair and makeup person. The end. Sometimes I'll tag in an editor for a first sweep, but I always do the comedy stuff. And then, yeah, keep it tight. You don't need a billion people.

• 18:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And so that was gonna be one of my questions is basically, you'll do a lot of the editing in terms of the final product that people see out on a platform. That's basically you've, you know, kind of blessed and before it went out the door, you actually went in, edited it, and made sure it was what you wanted.

• 18:47Speaker 02

  I completely edit myself 99.9% of my content. The odd time, I'll have someone do just the first sweep to take out my ums, ahs, pauses while I'm switching a costume. But everything that goes out, I've edited.

• 18:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so we've, everything we've talked about is like, ad-type monetization or platform-based. Are you doing merchandise, physical products, like anything else in terms of driving monetization while using, trying to figure out how to make money off of the views?

• 19:15Speaker 02

  Uh, next year, I'm doing more of that. But every time I've done merch, it sold out quickly. And I was like, oh, I should put more time into this. But I was busy over here. Um, and then Go Team Academy absolutely crushed, which was sweet. It's, uh, basically my get happy, learn business, get your shit together, get your life together. Uh, partnered with Denial Delgado, that a lot of people know is like the millionaire maker, featured in Forbes and all the magazines. And yeah, we did an academy for people, eight week program, ran it twice and it crushed. It was great. Their lives are just like very different now, so it makes me happy.

• 19:50Anthony Pompliano?

  That's awesome. Uh, I want to switch gears. When you tell the truth, it obviously brings all sorts of controversy and, uh, very polarized audiences. Uh, one of the things that's fascinating to me about you is you were a lifelong Democrat and then hung out with a bunch of Trump people and then became pro-Trump Republican, et cetera. That violates a lot of people's view of like what's allowed in the world.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 20:13Anthony Pompliano?

  That you could change your mind, that's a shocking idea.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk us through kind of your upbringing and kind of political leanings and then kind of what you did to, uh, eventually end up on the other side, uh, of a lot of this political beliefs.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. So I'm from Canada and I've always been a liberal in Canada. Uh, I was part of the parliamentary process kind of stuff in high school. My first main real person job was junior prime minister of Canada, working for the federal government, which was pretty dope. Um, and then by working at our MP and MPP's offices, which is kind of like senators, I realized that most of them are full of shit. And exactly what they say, they live the exact opposite. So instead of taking a scholarship for political science, I decided to be a comedian, which is I thought it was about the same. Um, and then for years, I'm just like, yeah, I'm, I'm a liberal, obviously. I believe in liberal things and, you know, equal rights for gay people and women's, you

• 21:09Speaker 02

  know, choice on their body and all the things I thought were good people choices and these are bad people over here. And then after the last election, um, I've told this story before, but I was speaking right before the last election at USC, two days before the election. And some people from Hillary Clinton's camp came up to me and told me that I'm going to tell the students that I'm voting for Hillary. They didn't ask me, they told me. And I was like, "No, I'm from Canada. I'm here to talk about social media and how it's affecting the election." And when I was onstage, the people I told no to got on the mic and said, "Yeah, you know, Nicole was just backstage saying that she would vote for Hillary if she could."

• 21:48Speaker 02

  And I was just like, "Fuck you guys." Like, no, I didn't say that. And that was like my first little inkling in my head. And then after that, I had run down to Texas where I was just like, "These people are crazy. They have guns everywhere. They got dogs in the office. They believe they got Trump flags. I'm like, these people are nuts, but let's go on a field trip."

• 22:11Anthony Pompliano?

  They're ready to roll. They are ready to roll in Texas.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  They're ready to roll all the time. But while I was in Texas, just at a bar that I was at, I saw someone push a little gay twink. And then one of these huge Texan guys walked up to the dude who did it and grabbed him. And he's like, "We don't do that around here," and pushed him. And he was like, "You okay, little lady?" Sir, ma'am? It was like the funniest shit I'd ever seen. And I was like, "Oh, okay. So they're not all homophobic, crazy people that just want to shoot everyone. Predominantly, a lot of them are former or current military who have a superhero complex in a great way that they'll run towards danger if we need it. Christian values, care about people. They just don't like the bullshit." And the more I was in LA, where I lived for like

• 23:00Speaker 02

  five years, the more I saw that liberals or Democrats as we know them are the exact opposite of everything they pretend to be consistently. Like, it wasn't like, once it happened, five times. It's every, I'd say 99% of the time. And we're seeing that in politicians now. It's like, "These are the rules. You have to abide by them. I'm eating at French Laundry," you know, or like, "You can't go there. I'm on vacation in Cabo." It's, are you a Simpsons character? Like, what is this nonsense?

• 23:27Anthony Pompliano?

  It's part of the playbook. It's literally like, to be a politician and to make mandates, you have to go do the opposite thing. I'm convinced there's like a secret role. To order where it's like, hey, if we shut down restaurants, we have to go to a nice restaurants. If we tell people to stay in their homes, we have to go on vacation like it's a requirement.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, that totally makes sense for that to happen. And just overall, I felt like I was living in idiocracy over there. It's like, be kind to everyone. Fuck that bitch. She can't be blah, blah, blah. I'm like, do you hear the music that you guys are putting out? Do you see the films you're putting out? Why are there 11 year olds doing slutty TikTok dances? And that's cool. Don't judge. Like, everything is just upside down, upside down land over there to me. So I still, of course, support gay people and I support all the same things I did. I just think to be an honest human being, you gotta go the other way.

• 24:14Anthony Pompliano?

  What was the reaction when people started to figure this out that you were doing it?

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Um, well, actually I learned through Dave Rubin that I'm a libertarian. I was like, yes, this is all of my values libertarian. This makes sense. And then right before the election this time, I was like, people, people are not paying attention to China. Are we, are we really, did you guys just say it's a conspiracy theory? What I said about China and how they've been buying property around the world for super low rates? And they're basically buying the whole world. Okay, you're dumb. I gotta go endorse this side now because if, if Trump, Trump represents to me the ego and narcissism that is aligned with a freedom that we require as Americans or North Americans. If we want this, we have to think we're better than other people. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  His, you know, his touches of ego and his style of doing that aligns with Merka. Yeah, let's go. Crying all the time, being fake offended by everything does not align with a company that's capitalism rich and has benefited from that and is kicking ass worldwide because of that. Like, it's just too weak. So I had to go and be like, yeah, vote for Trump. It's not that I'm like a Trump supporter. I'm like, these ideals make more sense to me. I'm not going to tell black people who they have to vote for. That's racist, you idiots. I'm not gonna, you know, just all of the different things that sit well or don't sit well with me. It went that way and people were fine. Like, majority of the people were fine with it.

• 25:44Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think that the balance between, uh, one, being willing to go do the work? Like, there's a lot of people who would say, oh, my God, that's crazy. You're going to Texas. Like, I hate all those people. They're all evil. Like, I'm not even gonna go. So you at least had like the open mindedness to like, go see it. You had those experiences. Like, balancing that with, um,

• 26:03Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, this belief that like the way that you grow up is the way that those are your values. Those are the things that like for your entire life, you like your entire identity is tied to them, right? I think there's a lot of people who even if they had the open mindness to go and have different experiences, they literally end up tying their identity. It's in their Twitter bio, right? They're like, I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican. Like, they can't get away from ever thinking about having their own thoughts or being an independent thinker. How did you do that? Or how do you suggest other people do it?

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Just truth. Just follow the truth. It's, it's kind of like the first lesson we're taught when we're kids is don't lie. And of course, as human beings, we all do it to, you know, not hurt feelings or to not go to jail, whatever, Hillary. Um, yeah, but it's just, I follow the truth. And if something's going on and I'm like, my spider senses are tingling. This doesn't feel right. I need to research it. I'll go watch it on, you know, the, the different political stations that aren't edited. I'll watch a full video myself. I called out Jimmy Kimmel a couple of months ago for running a completely fake story about Mike Pence that he knew was fake. All I had to do was go find the full clip to see that Mike Pence wasn't moving fake empty boxes of charity food

• 27:11Speaker 02

  or and PPE. It was a lie, but he ran the story anyway. And once I saw people doing that, I'm just like, yeah, I don't really care what people think. I gotta be a real person and my integrity matters more to me than making people happy.

• 27:26Anthony Pompliano?

  So this brings up a really interesting thing where there's like this blind belief historically in media journalism, you know, these large institutions, like they're going to tell us the truth. They're going to do the work. They're, you know, these honorable people. They're unbiased, all this kind of stuff. I think now we're seeing a lot of people being exposed. It's not everybody. Like, I think it's always important to say, like, there are some really, really good journalists on both sides of the leanings in terms of the political spectrum. But for many, many people, they now are losing trust in these institutions. They're saying, hey, these individuals are biased. They're actually sometimes literally lying to us. Sometimes they're just twisting facts to tell a different story, whatever. So how do we balance that between like, you have a large platform, I have a large platform, and so do they? So now, like, there's this more like even playing field

• 28:09Anthony Pompliano?

  where like, if you say something, I say something, and they say something like, Actually, we may reach the same amount of people. And so therefore, like, you have a different style of doing it than I do and than they do. Where is like the truth lie? And like, how does the audience start to try to understand? Like, who should I listen to? Should I listen to Nicole? Or should I listen to New York Times? Should I listen to Jimmy Kimmel? Or should I listen to somebody else? Like, how do they wade through that kind of issue?

• 28:36Speaker 02

  Turn off mainstream news. Turn it off, all of them. Turn them all off. If, not just America, if North America turned off all of their mainstream news, we would all be better. Period. And I've had to have these chats with my parents because they watch it. They always watch it. It's every night, you know, six o'clock news, whatever. And I'm like, Mom, you know, this isn't real. You've seen them do fake stories about me. You've seen them like run. There was this narrative that I was fired from a movie. I was never part of this movie. I don't even know these people. There was a narrative that I was mean to this guy on an airplane. They took a bit from my stand up and pretended it was real. And they, like, everything is proven wrong. I'm like, stop believing them. They're liars. I would say most of them are liars now. It's opinion pieces and spin stories.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  And I just think that mainstream media is just like the National Enquirer. There is no difference now. So if you don't believe in Bigfoot, you should probably turn off Fox and CNN. And then listen to people online.

• 29:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it because they have to be entertainment to drive the ratings? Like, they're losing viewership and so you have to be entertaining? You have to elicit those emotions? The best way to elicit emotion is basically scare the shit out of people into thinking like the world's ending, so they tune in tomorrow?

• 29:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. And I really think with the rise of online and the click through rate and making money from ads that way, they've tried to clickbait us all. So if you keep us terrified and more later, stay tuned, we're going to tell you more later, then they got us. It's just a hook for stupid people. So we just have to stop being dumb, be like, oh, good game. But, you know, you've been cheated on by that boyfriend multiple times now. You're going to keep going back? What are you doing?

• 30:12Anthony Pompliano?

  The one that just blew my mind is for six, seven, eight, nine months, whatever it's been now, CNN has had the, what I call the death scoreboard up on CNN, right? And like, by By the way, like, yes, we should address this seriously. We should absolutely take all the steps that are necessary. They're science, like, everything that people know that we should do, we should do.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  Science is great, yeah.

• 30:32Anthony Pompliano?

  But the idea of putting a scoreboard on CNN every day and literally making people feel like if they walk out of their home, they're gonna die, just feels like complete fear mongering and literally is the definition of like, how do we get people to tune in tomorrow to check the numbers?

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. I really think that reporters should be put in prison for lying. Or if they're doing something that they know is fear mongering and they're trying, I just think that there should be crimes against humanity charged on these media outlets sooner than later because they know what they're doing.

• 31:04Anthony Pompliano?

  So people who hear that, there's gonna be a lot of people who will immediately say, uh, we need freedom of the press. We have to protect people in the press. We can't throw them in jail, blah, blah, blah. That whole argument, I'm not gonna go through the whole thing because people understand that argument exists. Okay, you, you disagree, why?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Because they're not reporting. When they were reporting, freedom of the press. They're not journalists anymore. They're doing puff opinion pieces and they're activists. I don't care about your activism. You're not giving me facts. If the fact is, you know, this many people died or there's a war in this place and this is what's going on, freedom of the press. But you're lying to us now. And once you lie on purpose, I think that should be a crime.

• 31:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so I always use this framework of, uh, people in the media basically fall into one of three categories. I'm gonna put media very, very loosely here, right? But I usually think of it from a financial media standpoint, but let's just talk media in general. So there's journalism. These are people who are legitimately doing journalism. They have a story. They go, they, uh, investigate it. They talk to people on all sides of the story. They kind of fact check. They do all the things they're supposed to do. They write a, uh, as unbiased a piece as possible. They present all the different, uh, viewpoints in the story and they publish it and then they see what happens. If there's an issue, they correct it. They, you know, do all the things that a journalist would do.

• 32:16Anthony Pompliano?

  That's one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum, you have what I call market participants. These are people in the story, right? So this is, uh, something happens to you, you go and you write a blog piece or you, you know, create a video or whatever. In the financial markets, it's literally the investors who are investing in the markets that when they are wrong, they Have skin in the game, right? So if you say something and you created a video and you're wrong, or you're racist, or you're an asshole, or whatever, like, there's blowback directly because you've put your name on that thing.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Financial markets, if you go out and you say, I believe X, and you're wrong, you lose money, right? Like, that's the whole point of a market. Those are the two kind of extremists. But in the middle, and it's an ever-growing middle, is what I call bloggers masquerading as journalists. These are the people I think you're talking about, which are, they essentially are using blogger tactics. They use clickbait headlines, sensationalism, etc. But the pieces that they write are being published under the news section, but it's their personal opinions. There's no, they're not talking to sources, they're not going and getting quotes, they're not fact checking anything. It's literally, they wake up and they write a story, and the story is just, it's an opinion piece, it's activism, it's, you know, whatever you label you want to put on it. But it doesn't fit into the market participant bucket, because if they're wrong, there's no downside, and it doesn't fit into

• 33:28Anthony Pompliano?

  the journalism side. And to me, that's the danger, right? Like, that's kind of like the threat to American democracy is just, we're allowing things that are being passed off as journalism, but they're not actually journalism.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly. And my favorite game to play now is, who wrote that? So if you see an article, I go and I click on it, and I'm like, who wrote that? And I click on them. And recently, Business Insider has been my favorite to roast, because it will be a student who their only credits are writing for their student newspaper, and now they're a reporter for Business Insider, giving completely fake info about, let's say, Tesla, or whatever. And all of the, all the only things they've written are puff pieces. And if you don't know and respect the people that are giving you the info, stop reading it. The headline, who cares? Click on who's writing this. Look at them. If you don't respect that person, don't take their opinion.

• 34:19Anthony Pompliano?

  So how much of it is, it's young people, right? Because this is actually a huge piece of it, right? And pretty much every, what I'll consider, true journalists that I know, everyone from my wife, all the way to a number of friends of ours, are actual journalists that their biggest complaint is, so many young people now are running these places, and they don't have experience, they don't- Have the, you know, 30 year veteran there to say, hey, this is the way journalism is done. Kind of you just went to journalist school or literally you were a blogger and then you got hired somewhere and now you just keep doing what you've always done because you don't have anyone to tell you to do anything differently. And it feels like it may literally just be an inexperienced thing that contributes to the problem as well.

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Somebody needs to spank them. They need to be spanked. This is, you know, there needs to be some kind of ramification for their actions. And if no one's holding them accountable, then we need to hold them accountable by just unfollowing all those accounts. I don't want to see Business Insider if you're going to feed me crap. And, you know, I don't want to follow Fox or CNN. If you guys are going to lie to me, screw you. Like, I almost threw up the middles, but I don't know where this goes. Yeah, like, that's how we can vote on that.

• 35:29Anthony Pompliano?

  So what are those ramifications that you think are appropriate, right? Obviously, it sounds like you think if somebody is egregiously lying and it's like super bad, your position is like, hey, there's literally could be crimes, jail, like really, really bad stuff. I'm assuming that's not what you think for everybody. So like, what are the ramifications or solutions that you think could be imposed to try to help solve this problem?

• 35:51Speaker 02

  I think make it like sports. The first time you get fined. You know, you do something wrong in a game, you get a fine. The second time you get a fine and a flag. And then the third time, if you're doing something that can lead to, let's say, someone being assaulted because you painted them as a racist, and that's not the story, then that is jail time to me. If you're printing that someone did something awful to another human being, and that's going to affect the rest of their life, that's jail to me. You know, that's, that's human being assault, whatever it is. But I do think, you know, first time, give them a warning. Second time, a bigger fine and a warning. And the third time, if people aren't afraid of going to jail for what they're doing, they're just going to keep doing it. So

• 36:29Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, hold on. So you think fine, fine, jail, not like fine, fine, fired, something else, and then jail's like the end of the road? You would immediately jump to the final thing?

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, because if you get fined twice, you know what you're doing. I'm not stupid. You stop playing stupid, you know?

• 36:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, now, another piece of it is, there would be some, I'll call them labels, right? Or kind of buckets of this that are not very well defined. So for example, they're a position of perspective, right? So let's say that you were a journalist and you're writing about me and you're like, you know what? Pumps a fucking asshole. I'm gonna write an article today and say he's racist.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  He.

• 37:08Anthony Pompliano?

  When you write that article, your definition, or what the evidence that you use in your mind to rationalize racist, may actually be different than somebody else's, right?

• 37:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And so then there's also very clear examples of racism. A perfect example is Yale was literally found guilty of being racist towards certain demographics because of quotas and things like that, right? And that's not up for debate, like that was in a court case, etc. And so when you look at this, it's like, some people have a very narrow defined, provable view of what racism is. Other people have a different view. How do we determine like, who's right and who's wrong? Like, it's, it's a thing that is so-

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Ah, yes. Myriam Webster can help us with that. You just go to the definition, and then if it fits in that, that is racism. It has to be an actual hatred for someone because of the color of their skin, their background, whatever. You don't get to just be like, "You use a different water than me, you racist!" There's a joke I don't like, sexist homophobic racist? Like, no. Let's, let's go back to basics and be adults and read the dictionary. And I think it's pretty standard. And I've seen that. I've seen people called racist, homophobic, whatever it might be. If you're harming someone's professional reputation based on your opinion, I don't think that should be allowed. I think if I say, "I think you're an asshole," okay, I think you're an asshole.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  Me saying, "I think you're homophobic," I better have some fricking examples showing that you hate gay people. And not just, "It's my opinion of it because he didn't wear a rainbow on Rainbow Day." You know, I just think that there has to be harsher consequences for the things we're doing because the people who are doing that is the anti-bully crowd. Pick a fucking team. Are you anti-bully, anti-suicide, pro-mental health? Or are you trying to cancel people? You can't be both. This is where I'm at.

• 38:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, my favorite is definitely the people who claim to be inclusive, etc., and then bully people on the internet.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. Kind, man.

• 39:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 02

  Be kind. He's canceled. Yeah. You just wrecked his whole life. Be kind.

• 39:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Those were the best. In terms of where the solutions lie, we talked a lot about like addressing the problem. What other solutions do you feel like are out there in terms of that people outside of maybe kind of that traditional media system can do to try to solve all this?

• 39:22Speaker 02

  Comics. I think there's going to be a rise of the comedians in the next year. And it's because everything got so crazy, everything bubbled up. And where comics might have been more like, you know, just kind of doing jokes and whatever, everyone has to commentate now because we're the only ones telling the truth. And the comedy that I've seen coming out of people the last few weeks even, it's some of the best shit I've seen in like 10 years. So I'm really excited. I think follow your local comedians and they're going to tell you the truth.

• 39:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Who are your favorites to watch right now?

• 39:55Speaker 02

  My favorites are a lot of my friends. I would say JP Sears is hilarious. If you like sarcasm, buddy of mine. I said a couple of weeks ago that John Crist is killing me with his videos. They're really fun. Krista Stefano is awesome. History Hyenas, they're just hilarious podcasts. And I just think everyone, you know, watch Rogan because they'll have, they'll have someone on, but they'll talk about both sides. And they're not coming with an angle on any one topic, which I think is great. And yeah.

• 40:26Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the, when you talk about this rise of, wait, what?

• 40:30Speaker 02

  I think most, like a lot of comics are great right now. That are none of like the old ones. I wouldn't say the liberal comics are great right now. I'd say the opposite. If, if, if they're a comedian and they're mostly being a social justice comedian, get away from that. It's like all the other ones are way better.

• 40:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Are there bad comics right now?

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. Um, I'd say you're not a comic if you're doing a fucking TED Talk and expecting an applause break at the end. That's not, that's not comedy. Like if you're trying to cancel another comedian, you're not a comedian, period. That guy can say whatever he wants. Lenny Bruce, you know, like all of these guys who came before, they were nuts in the best way possible. Let, let people Andy Kaufman if they want to. There's no cap on comedy. And anyone who's trying to put a cap on it or say, you can't say that about anything, bye, get out.

• 41:24Anthony Pompliano?

  So, so where is the voice for comedy? Cause there's a lot of comics who listen to this and they'll be like, "What do you mean I can't talk about serious issues?" Right? And I put it in air quotes because everyone's "serious issue" is different. Is there a space for that? Or is it only within the confines of cracking jokes, making people laugh? And like, kind of the spirit of comedians?

• 41:42Speaker 02

  No, we've always done that. Comics have always like, "This dude has always, you know, "had a speech with punchlines in it." Like, there's always an underlying message for the good stuff, "at least to me." And yeah, you can talk about real topics and make it funny, but when there, "it's, it's happened a lot. I saw in stand-up the last few years where there's a lot of comedians "that'll go up and just talk about their life and everything that's wrong. And, but you have "to be nice to me because I'm a pan-sexual, Libra, hocus-pocus, whatever." I'm like, "I don't know what you just said. I'm not clapping because you changed your sex. That's not a joke. "Entertain the audience. This isn't therapy time. If it feels like therapy time, I don't want to be there. "You should be paying me." Yeah.

• 42:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I want to talk about censorship in general, right?

• 42:27Speaker 02

  I hope you liked that definition. Like, that was ridiculous. But anyways, oh my God, "I should have just used this. I have a wand sitting right here."

• 42:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Jesus. Alright, so censorship. There's two types of censorship that I think are, well, "three times, three times actually." So there's the politician censorship of like, "You can't do what we don't want you to do. And we're basically God, and so we're gonna, "you know, impose our will on you." There's social media censorship in terms of, literally, "we're going to stop you from saying things. We're gonna cut down distribution. We're gonna do all "that stuff." And they're doing it frankly, to all sides of the aisle. And then there is what I'll call just-

• 43:01Speaker 02

  No, they're not. That's only happening to one side of the aisle.

• 43:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, explain.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  They are only censoring conservatives. And I have not seen a single liberal comedian censored, "ever, period. No Democrats, never. From influencers, anything. Only one side is being censored "that I've ever seen."

• 43:23Anthony Pompliano?

  So here's my pushback to this, is if we're talking about what I'll call "audience recognizable censorship," completely agree, right? Like, you know, my, one of my favorite- Examples is like literally Twitter is putting a like a cover over, you know, like a disclaimer over the President of the United States tweets, but the CCP state sponsored media organization is on Twitter saying that the coronavirus didn't come from Wuhan. And like, there's no disclaimers. There's no anything like, okay, so we're gonna, we're literally gonna put disclaimers on the President of the United States, which by the way, people will debate whether we should do that or not. That's not what I'm here to debate. What I'm here to debate is if you're gonna do it to anybody, you have to do it to everybody, right?

• 44:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they don't.

• 44:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. So like, I call that like the audience recognizable censorship, right? Or the disclaimers, blah, blah, whatever. What I think happens, though, in a very different way that is not recognizable and is very hard to get data on, is they actually will change the algorithm and distribution and kind of all the invisible things to all kinds of people, right? So if regardless of your political view, if you go on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, and you say certain things, they will absolutely take distribution away. And so it's less about, I'm going to censor you because of your political views or your leanings, and it's more about certain topics just you can't talk about. And I think that it is, what is it? I think it was Rogan, actually. Him or Kanye, one of the two of them said, like, once you can't talk about a

• 44:48Anthony Pompliano?

  topic anymore, now it's a religion, right? Like, once it's crossed over. And so I think that's where the censorship of both sides happens. But we just never see that, right? Because we don't know what people posted that we never get in our feeds, whatever. But I do agree with you that there's a very heavy leaning on one side of the aisle in terms of the audience recognizable stuff.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  You know, to what you were saying, there is a large censorship right now specifically on Instagram on sex workers or women who post content with a lot of skin on it, which is not my thing. You know, it's just not my thing, period. But especially right now, when people are trying to make money with their OnlyFans because they don't have a job, I do think it's unfair that they're only censoring those specific people when there's naked women all over Instagram. You know, I do see that.

• 45:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So how do you balance? Like, that's a perfect example. How do you balance that between like, hey, we don't want nudity on our platform and like, there's kids on here, right? Like that type of argument, right? Those two things are in a very overgeneralized way. They're like at the extreme ends of the angle or of the of the spectrum. Like, how do you balance? We want to help people make money and like, not take away people's freedoms, but at the same time, like, we don't want nudity and we don't want, you know, kids to see that content, whatever.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  And that's a weird one because I would get not wanting kids to see adult content, but at the same time, there's 12 year olds doing TikTok dances saying, go down on me. So, you know, like if we're going to start it, let's start it over there.

• 46:09Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fair.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  They've already seen it. They've already seen the porn. We're not, we're not topping anything. Yeah.

• 46:15Anthony Pompliano?

  So when we talk about censorship from politicians and the politically correct censorship, like, is it just, hey, don't worry about it and literally just kind of throw your virtual middle finger up in the air and just do the things that you want to do that make you happy? Or do you think that we're in a world where like people still have to be cognizant of that and almost address it in some weird way?

• 46:35Speaker 02

  In what way? Can you expand on that?

• 46:37Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's take, for example, there, the same things that Instagram, you talked about, like posting a certain type of photo, Instagram will decrease distribution, et cetera. If you go on Twitter and Chinese concentration camps, right, would be like a really extreme kind of thing. If you go on Twitter and, yeah, and you start tweeting about a bunch of this stuff. Now, I don't know exactly the way Twitter would do it, but I'm just saying in an example. So there's something that a lot of people don't want to talk about, right? But it's pretty factually provable that, hey, this is happening. And the platform then either through algorithmic distribution takes it down, or literally there is social pressure, right? Like, I mean, we saw with the NBA, for example, and the whole China thing, like, there was definitely social pressure within

• 47:20Anthony Pompliano?

  the NBA and that organization to not talk about this, to not make this a story. How do individuals operate in that world? Do they literally have to say, look, I can't be in that world. I have to step outside and literally hang my hat on being an independent and independent thinker and basically I'm gonna say whatever I want and that's gonna be part of my image? Or can people actually operate within those confines, knowing that this stuff's going on?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  No reality can operate within those confines, but if for work purposes, if you're gonna get fired and you don't think you can get another job, be smart, do what you need to do until you can exit to somewhere where you're more welcomed to being a whole human being. I think, you know, depression has gone up, anxiety has gone up, suicide's going up, and it's because we're not letting people be whole people and think and relying to them to their faces. So I saw this concentration camp. This happening in China. No, it's not. That's called gaslighting. We're gaslighting mass amounts of people at once and then wondering why we're taking so many pills and ODing and all these things. Everything is a byproduct of the thing before. So I think if you're put in a circumstance where you can't be yourself, you gotta get yourself out of there, at least create an, you know, an action plan for an exit plan.

• 48:27Speaker 02

  We have to be whole people or we're not happy people. That's my thought on that.

• 48:30Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Before I get into the rapid fire to wrap this up, I have one question.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Fire. Okay.

• 48:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And I I've been thinking all day as to what you're going to answer, and I literally have no clue. But if you were president for one day and you could do whatever you wanted, what are the things you would do first?

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh. President for one day. Okay. Well, Snowden, he's good. You're good Snowden. Um, like, that's near the top. Can I use my martial law? No, my things. AOC, you're gone. You just gotta go. I would clean, if I could, if I could make my own laws for one day and I'm like, king of the world, stop president. The whole squad, they gotta go. They're too stupid to be participating in politics, period. If there's anyone on the other side that's that dumb too, they gotta go. You can't sell a sweatshirt for $65 that says tax the rich. You are a dumb person. I don't know if you saw those ones.

• 49:19Anthony Pompliano?

  I I saw. They changed the price to $58, I saw.

• 49:22Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that's still a giant margin. Where's that money going? Anyway, uh, we know that sweatshirt costs eight bucks max. Um, yeah, I would definitely, I got, I got one day. Okay, one day I would tell Texas they're doing a great job. I would tell LA, you guys are nuts. You gotta open small, but if it was right now, I would open all the small businesses. I'd be like, no. Wear a mask, wash your hands, do the things you're supposed to do. We cannot tank all of these people's livelihoods because of a virus with a survival rate of 90 whatever percent. If you are scared, stay home and you guys are the ones who get the subsidies. We're gonna give the subsidies to this, you know, the people who are most affected. That makes more sense to me.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  I'm like, one day I would do this to China. Um, I would stop letting them, I would set up rules and regulations so they're not going to be buying more property in Canada and America. I'd tell Justin Trudeau to fuck himself.

• 50:19Anthony Pompliano?

  What's your problem with him?

• 50:21Speaker 02

  What's not my problem with him? Let's just boil it down to one, like, just, other than the fact that he suddenly talks like a robot and it's really creepy.

• 50:31Speaker 02

  Months ago, all these tons of Air Canada planes were coming from China at the beginning of the pandemic. I'm tweeting him, I'm like, hey, hey, maybe we don't want those planes coming in from Wuhan directly. Nothing. Five, six planes coming in every day. I don't know why it's spreading in Canada. I'm like, hey, man, maybe, maybe don't let more planes land from Wuhan. That's racist. No, it's not. Look up the definition of racism, morons. 20 more planes come in and then suddenly it's like, oh, maybe we should stop letting planes from China. Like, it's just such basic shit. I don't understand how they don't do it. And I just think he's done a horrible job during this entire pandemic. I just, I just think I would have voted for him at the beginning. I did vote for him before,

• 51:15Speaker 02

  but now he's just showing that he can't handle pressure at all.

• 51:18Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. I have a follow-up question now.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 51:20Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the politician that you think has done the best job during all of this?

• 51:24Speaker 02

  Dan Crenshaw.

• 51:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Um, he, he's someone I would go to for news. Dan is so stoic. And, you know, I think it's that SEAL background that he has where he's just gonna tell it how it is, as it is, deal with the reality of it. And that's it. And he cares about facts. He will put up what's real, what's not, what, you know, a celebrity said, what the reality of it is. And I just like that he stays chill. I can trust him. And I like that.

• 51:54Anthony Pompliano?

  You do realize that most people who are listening to this, who have any sort of left-leaning, are, their minds are blown right now that you are a lifeline Democrat who now supported Trump and thinks that Dan Crenshaw has handled this the best?

• 52:08Speaker 02

  That's okay. Their minds can be blown. That's okay.

• 52:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  You know, I think it's really, what was really weird to me was seeing people who are like, kind and tolerant and whatever. Let's say Jonathan Van Ness, for example, from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. He went on a live stream the day before the election. And I wa, I'm a fan. I watched him. And he said, anyone who votes for Trump is a racist and homophobic. That's half of America. And that's just not true. And putting that into people's heads is fricking criminal. That's, that's mind rape. I don't like it. That's a lie. And I actually helped organize World Pride multiple times. I was on a float standing next to Jonathan Van Ness in Pride in L.A. a year ago. I'm not homophobic. But you just told me I am like it's just such a lunacy. I just can't play anymore.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  So if they start realizing how silly they sound, I'm cool with that. Be nice people. That's it.

• 53:02Anthony Pompliano?

  I think it's a fair way to to view the world. All right. Two questions to wrap up and you could ask me one. First is what's what's the most important book you've ever read?

• 53:10Speaker 02

  Um, The Alchemist.

• 53:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 53:13Speaker 02

  Uh, I love the way it shows you how everything in your life happens for a reason, the hard stuff, the good stuff, everything, and it all circles back to why you're here. There's just a lot of good lessons in it. Yeah.

• 53:24Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a great answer. Uh, second question is more fun. Aliens. Are you a believer or a non believer?

• 53:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course I'm a believer. Are you kidding me?

• 53:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Come on, ancient, because aliens, ancient aliens. Um, yeah, that's my answer to everything. Just look, I've had weird experiences in my life, but you know, just look at things like-

• 53:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you see an alien?

• 53:44Speaker 02

  I haven't seen an alien per se, but I've definitely seen craft and I've seen weird things in the sky multiple times. I used to have a real courage about aliens when I was kids. When I was a kid, I'd have it like every night for whatever, but I just look at like the structures in the world. I look at, you know, energy coming from crystals. I look at how did suddenly we have these crazy ass weapons?

• 54:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you, hold on, hold on, time out, time out. This is important. Are you one of these crazy crystal people who has a bunch of crystals laying around their house because it has good energy?

• 54:13Speaker 02

  I have like two giant, I have a skull right here. Dude, it's quantum physics. Bring it back to science.

• 54:19Anthony Pompliano?

  You get 30, you get 30 seconds to explain the absolute craziness around crystals. I recently learned about this. You get 30 seconds, explain it.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, for the craziness around crystals, come on. Um, okay, dude, what do we use to make lasers? How do lasers cut? Crystals. Crystals are used in every major weapon in the world. They're used in surgeries. They're used in all sorts of things. Uh, for us to pretend that there isn't power in crystals is actually kind of silly. You know, it, that's-

• 54:47Anthony Pompliano?

  But what does the crystal do by having it sit there? What does it do?

• 54:50Speaker 02

  It depends what it is. So it's just-

• 54:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Like that one, the one you just held up. You just held up a crystal in the shape of a skull.

• 54:56Speaker 02

  By a fan. Yeah. Um, this one, I believe it's just like, it's just good vibes and makes it chill. But there's different vibrations, just like everything is energy. There's different vibrations in us having these headphones in our ears and anything. Uh, it just changes vibrations around you and that's, that's the easiest way to do it. And then you can turn it into lasers. Yeah.

• 55:16Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. That's fair. You could ask me one question to finish up. What do you got for me?

• 55:19Speaker 02

  What do you invest in the most?

• 55:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Bitcoin by far.

• 55:23Speaker 02

  Okay, that was an easy answer.

• 55:25Anthony Pompliano?

  That was easy. I only have one investment philosophy, which is basically this idea that innovation drives returns. And so basically, look for the farthest thing away from the center mass of the investing world. So if everyone else likes, you know, I like domestic tech stocks, like, okay, well, that's stupid. Like, just go as far away from the the center as possible, and look for the things on the fringe where innovation is highly asymmetric, meaning that it has a low probability of working. But if it works, it will be off the charts in terms of their return profile. And then put multiple bets on the table. And what you basically end up doing is you're looking for the power law to take over. So venture capital is like a perfect example of this. Give money to a bunch of small entrepreneurial teams, let them go literally try to work every day to grow your money. Bitcoins is

• 56:10Anthony Pompliano?

  a very similar thing. It doesn't have a corporation or company behind it. But it's basically an innovative piece of technology that thousands of people around the world are working on to to make successful. So that's like, pretty simple strategy. The hard part is finding people that fit within it.

• 56:22Speaker 02

  Sweet. Well, I listened to you and I invested in grayscale. So Bitcoin via grayscale. And I told you, I did $100,000 in two and a half weeks. So it's not that bad.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  I'm not mad at it.

• 56:35Anthony Pompliano?

  You shouldn't be mad at that if those are the returns you're getting. Where can we send people to find you on the Internet and find all your content?

• 56:42Speaker 02

  On Twitter, I'm Nicole Arbour with a U, you know, Canada. Instagram is letter I, letter B, Nicole Arbour. Nicole Arbour fans on Facebook, just type Nicole Arbour everywhere. On Parler, I'm Nicole Arbour. Yeah.

• 56:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Where where's the one place if you send everyone, you want them to go?

• 56:59Speaker 02

  Instagram.

• 57:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Instagram? All right.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's Nicole Arbour on Instagram?

• 57:04Speaker 02

  I B Nicole Arbour.

• 57:06Anthony Pompliano?

  What? Oh, I okay, got it.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Someone stole my name. Out of principle, I wouldn't give them 30,000 to get it back. I refuse.

• 57:13Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fair. That's fair. All right. Thank you for doing this. We'll do it again in the future.

• 57:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me. Go team.