#259 – Thomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and the Rolling Stones

Thomas Tull is founder of Legendary Entertainment, Tulco, part-owner of Pittsburgh Steelers, and guitarist for the band Ghost Hounds. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Paperspace: https://gradient.run/lex to get $15 credit – ROKA: https://roka.com/ and use code LEX to get 20% off your first order – InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex and use code Lex25 to get 25% off – Athletic Greens: https://athleticgreens.com/lex and use code LEX to get 1 month of fish oil – Eight Sleep: https://www.eightsleep.com/lex and use code LEX to get special savings EPISODE LINKS: Tulco: https://tulcoholdings.com/ Ghost Hounds: https://www.ghosthounds.com/ Pittsburgh Steelers: https://www.steelers.com/ Legendary Entertainment: https://www.legendary.com/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: – Check out the sponsors above, it’s the best way to support this podcast – Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman – Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman – Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman – LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman – Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman – Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) – Introduction (07:14) – Legendary Entertainment (23:56) – James Cameron (25:50) – Storytelling (36:02) – Allure of movies (39:56) – Future of American industries (58:48) – Tulco (1:03:58) – Intellectual honest and life lessons (1:14:30) – Colossal (1:18:28) – Warren Buffet (1:27:10) – The Rolling Stones (1:45:20) – Greatest guitarist (1:53:33) – Thomas Tull’s music (2:03:00) – Football (2:13:56) – Advice for young people (2:19:42) – Mortality and death

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

• 0:00Lex Fridman?

  The following is a conversation with Thomas Tull, founder of legendary entertainment known for producing blockbusters like Batman's Dark Knight trilogy, The Hangover franchise, Godzilla, Inception, Jurassic World, 300, and many more. He runs Tullco, which is an investment company that focuses on how artificial intelligence can revolutionize large industries. He is part owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. He's the guitarist for the band Ghost Hounds that tours with the Rolling Stones. But most importantly, he's humble, down to earth, and someone who has quickly become a mentor and friend. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast.

• 0:46Lex Fridman?

  First is Paperspace, a platform I use to train and deploy machine learning models. Second is Roka, my favorite sunglasses and prescription glasses. Third is InsideTracker, a service I use to track my biological data. Fourth is Athletic Greens, the all-in-one nutrition drink I drink twice a day. And fifth is Eight Sleep, a self-cooling mattress cover I sleep on. So the choices, artificial intelligence, style, or health. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Paperspace Gradient,

• 1:29Lex Fridman?

  which is a platform that lets you build, train, and deploy machine learning models of any size and complexity. I love how powerful and intuitive it is. I've been doing a lot more machine learning recently, and I've been really wanting to release code so that people can use it for educational purposes. So I would definitely use Paperspace for the couple of machine learning experiments that I'm doing and use those notebooks to then release it so others can follow along as well for the upcoming videos that I have on the machine learning side. Fast AI, of course, I highly recommend, run by Jeremy Howard. He's brilliant. I love him as an educator and as a researcher. I'm really excited about what they're calling Workflows, which provides a way to automate machine learning pipelines on top of gradient

• 2:14Lex Fridman?

  compute infrastructure. It makes it really easy to build production apps because all the orchestration is reduced to a simple YAML file, which is a configuration file. To give gradient a try, visit gradient dot run slash Lex and use the signup link there. You'll get 15 bucks in free credit, which you can use to power your next machine learning application. That's gradient dot run slash Lex. This show is also brought to you by Roka, the makers of glasses and sunglasses that I love wearing for their design, feel, and innovation on material optics and grip. Roka was started by two all-American swimmers from Stanford, and it was born out of an obsession with performance. Two words I love, obsession and

• 2:58Lex Fridman?

  performance. It holds up in all conditions, in the heat or in the winter. I mean, Austin doesn't get much of a winter, but even holds up. I was in Boston in the snow. So don't matter the conditions, no matter what you're wearing, whether it's athletic stuff on a run, or if it's wearing a suit, looking classy, it works stylistically and functionally in both cases. I love their minimalist classy but functional design. Their headquarters are here in Austin. I met one of the founders, just incredible people, incredible company. I'm a huge supporter. Check them out for both prescription glasses and sunglasses at roka.com and enter code Lex

• 3:39Lex Fridman?

  to save 20% on your first order. That's roka.com and enter code Lex. This show is also brought to you by InsideTracker, a service I use to track biological data. They have a bunch of plans, most of which include a blood test that gives you a lot of information that you can then make decisions based on. They have algorithms that analyze your blood data, DNA data, and fitness tracker data to provide you with a clear picture of what's going on inside you and to offer you science-backed recommendations for positive diet and lifestyle changes. Andrew Huberman, the great Andrew Huberman, talks a lot about it, which reminds me, he just texted me, I need to call him. We we talk often. He's a friend, an incredible scientist.

• 4:22Lex Fridman?

  Whatever he says, I back 100%. So if he loves InsideTracker, you know it's legit. But in general, big picture, I love this idea. It feels like the future. You should be making lifestyle decisions, not based on population data, but based on the data from your own body, especially longitudinal data. For a limited time, you can get 25% off the entire InsideTracker store. If you go to insidetracker.com/lex. That's insidetracker.com/lex. This show is also brought to you by Athletic Greens and its newly renamed AG1 Drink, which is an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance.

• 5:04Lex Fridman?

  It replaced the multivitamin for me and went far beyond that with 75 vitamins and minerals. It's the first thing I drink every day. I drink it twice a day now. I'll often come back from a long run, put it in the freezer, take a shower, come out of the shower and it's like nice and cold and I celebrate a hard, long run with a cool Athletic Greens AG1 refreshing drink. It tastes delicious, it's refreshing and I know that if I take AG1, I got my nutritional basis covered, no matter the diet that I'm doing. Anyway, they'll give you one month's supply of fish oil. When you sign up to athleticgreens.com/lex, that's athleticgreens.com/lex.

• 5:47Lex Fridman?

  This episode is also sponsored by Eight Sleep and its Pod Pro mattress. It controls temperature with an app, it's packed with sensors and can cool down to as low as 55 degrees on each side of the bed separately. The hilarious thing about my place is that when it's super cold outside in Austin, for some reason, the heat really wants to come up. Like, it's almost like freaking out that it could at all be at all chilly outside and so the heat is just acting up. And so it's actually pretty hot at my place. So a nice cold bed with a warm blanket is just heaven. Whether we're talking about a power nap or a full night's sleep, that's just one of the many joys of life for me.

• 6:34Lex Fridman?

  They have a Pod Pro cover, so you can just add that to your mattress without having to buy theirs, but their mattress is nice, too. It can track a bunch of metrics like heart rate variability, but cooling alone is honestly worth the money. Go to 8sleep.com/lex to get special savings. That's 8sleep.com/lex. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Thomas Tull.

• 7:14Lex Fridman?

  In 2004, you founded Legendary Entertainment, known for producing blockbusters like Batman's Dark Knight trilogy. That includes Batman Begins, Dark Knight, and Dark Knight Rises, the Hangover franchise, Godzilla, Inception, Jurassic World 300, and the list goes on. It's just some of the biggest movies in history. What does it take to make an epic movie like that? Or what does it take to make it happen from start to finish?

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Well, look, I've been enamored with movies since I was a kid as a fan, and I think what you need is to be able to tell a great story. And if you're going to tell a great story, you need a great director. You got to start with a fantastic script that is able to take some of these iconic characters that we did and put your own stamp on it while still respecting the mythology. And I had zero experience in movies and television before I started Legendary. So it was a very interesting trip. Total luck that we had the opportunity to make five movies at the time with Chris Nolan, who turned out to

• 8:26Speaker 01

  be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. But each one is its own little startup company, and I don't think there's any formula to get there. But I know that if you don't have a great director and a great script, if you don't have that foundation, it's hard to pull off.

• 8:43Lex Fridman?

  Who's the CEO of that little startup company? Is it the director? Who would you say kind of defines the success or the failure of a movie?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Well, when you build a big movie like that, it's an enormous effort, 360 degrees. I mean, from digital effects... Certainly the actors. I mean, if you have an amazing script, an amazing director, but you don't believe anybody playing the parts, that's a problem. So the reason I think it was so difficult to pull off is I always used to say, you start with a stack of papers with words on it called a script, bring that to life, and you're asking an audience to believe in everything that you're trying to put out there. And you've got a cast that even if they're immensely talented individually, they have to mesh together,

• 9:30Speaker 01

  they have to have chemistry together. And, you know, the director is kind of the general on the battlefield, but if you have a strong producer who's very hands-on. But it truly, to me, is each one had its own story and its own sort of how it came to be and why it worked or didn't work.

• 9:52Lex Fridman?

  See, you said you were new to the industry, but you did a lot of revolutionary things with Legendary. So at that time and now, what is the good, the bad, and the ugly of the business of filmmaking? What are some interesting holes that you were able to, or like, problems that you were able to fix? What problems still exist that can still be solved?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Well, look, the business has changed so radically since 2004. When I started Legendary, DVDs were still a cash cow. So, you know, that's how far things have come. But I would say a couple of things. The reason that I started it from a business perspective was at the time, it was a $30 billion industry, and there was no institutional capital around the movie business. And I was fascinated by that because almost every other category that you look at of that size has institutional capital, private equity, et cetera, is kind of a cottage industry set up around it. And I was perplexed and fascinated that that

• 10:58Speaker 01

  didn't occur. And the way the movie business worked was unlike any business I'd ever looked at before. So. After kind of convincing myself that you could actually make money if you were disciplined and had the right approach, you know, went out, raised the money from the capital markets, which was Herculean, still maybe the hardest thing I've ever done in my career, to walk around and say, "Look, I have no experience, I've never done this before," but, you know. And then the second thing, being very fortunate at the time, was able to partner up with Warner Brothers. Warner's at the time was run by a man named Alan Horn, who besides being creative

• 11:41Speaker 01

  is also a Harvard MBA, so really understood what I wanted to do. And Alan, you know, was just an absolute gentleman, someone that I still look up to to this day. After Warner Brothers, he went and ran Disney with their run, you know, between Marvel and Star Wars and everything. And so between Alan being responsible for Harry Potter, the Dark Knight stuff, and then on to all the Disney stuff, he probably had as great a career as anyone I've ever heard of in the movie business. So my first focus was around sort of two concepts: global, worldwide, large, tentpole films and franchises, and then the business

• 12:22Speaker 01

  aspect of being, bringing long-term institutional capital to bear.

• 12:27Lex Fridman?

  I'm gonna ask you dumb questions, which is a part of the style, I guess. But just for people who don't know, including me, what is institutional? What is capital? What is institutional capital? What is equity? What is private equity?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Got it. Okay. Well, so if you're starting a company and you go around to a bunch of your successful friends and say, "Hey, you should invest in my company," well, that's great, and it's capital, but it's not... Getting money from Fidelity or T. Rowe or, you know, a sovereign wealth fund or an endowment fund from a university that has large pools of organized capital that has a long-term point of view on your business. So if you get money from your neighbor who's a successful

• 13:24Speaker 01

  dentist, next year, the dentist may say, hey, times are hard. I need my money back. If your partner is with, you know, Fidelity or Morgan Stanley or any of these institutions, they have the capital and the wherewithal to say, okay, I'm looking at this over the next five to 10 years. And I thought there was an opportunity to bring that type of capital to the to the movie business to be patient.

• 13:52Lex Fridman?

  And the benefit of that patient, so it's long term, you have to deal with fewer parties and they would do much larger investments. So what are the benefits? What are the sort of the challenges of that kind of investment?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Well, I think the benefits in some ways are the professionals who are largely dispassionate, right? It's like, look, if you're hitting the numbers you told me and you're hitting your plan, great. And the other, the other thing that always was interesting to me about the movie business is if I'm investing in an artificial intelligence company or a chipset company or something like that, a lot of the institutions don't have the technical expertise to really, truly grasp what's being done. So they don't, you know, other than good business practices, they're not offering every little opinion. The movies

• 14:46Speaker 01

  and television are completely approachable, meaning everybody has an opinion. So, you know, whether it's, I think you guys chose the wrong actor for that, or why did you do that movie? It's, it's, so it invites a lot more sort of second guessing and things like that. So that was always one of the idiosyncrasies of the business that I thought was, you know, was interesting. And then when you talk about private equity versus public equity, if you're a public company where the companies can Are traded, you want to buy Microsoft shares, you just go to your broker, go on TD Ameritrade

• 15:25Speaker 01

  and buy them. If on the other hand, you're talking about private equity, that's institutions or individuals investing in private companies. So thus, if you have pools of capital that mostly invest in private equity deals, that's how you how you think about it.

• 15:42Lex Fridman?

  But it's difficult to make those happen because it's individuals, you have to sort of what have dinners and agree. So it's much less, it's much more human, much less mechanical, I would say.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, and again, massive difference between large private equity shops who are professionalized and in the same category that I mentioned earlier versus private individuals who are wealthy or whatever. But again, it's it's much more individualized when you're going to people who like your idea and just say, I'd like to invest in this.

• 16:22Lex Fridman?

  Is that from all the kinds of investments you've seen, what do you think is the most conducive to creating works of genius, whether that's in technology, AI space, or whether that's in movies?

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 16:37Lex Fridman?

  So creating something special in this world?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  I would say a couple of things. Enough money that whatever endeavor you're you're going into, that you're not so nervous about the edges, right? If my if I have a hundred dollars to spend and I'm I think I can create a perpetual motion machine or something for a hundred and four dollars, I can't do it because they're all over me about the budget. So I would say making sure that you have enough capital, making sure that that capital is patient enough so that it's, you know, if you're going to do things that are extraordinary, it takes some time and you're going to break stuff, right? You're going to make mistakes, you're going to have a whole bunch of film on the cutting room floor, so to speak, or

• 17:25Speaker 01

  if you're in the lab, you're going to have a whole bunch of broken stuff. And I also think it's very important at the beginning, and I always try to do this with companies I invest in or buy, is make sure that you have a philosophical and somewhat mechanical alignment with the management team. So that going in, you both understand, hey, this is how we think about this problem or this company. This is what we feel like our culture is. This is what our goal is. And these are the metrics by which we'll agree to measure them by. Because if you don't have that shared, you know, hey, we're going to take this journey, then I think that's where people get upset, disappointed, et cetera.

• 18:11Lex Fridman?

  What about, this is a weird question, but constraints. So this is both for filmmaking and investment. Do you think more money is always better?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:23Lex Fridman?

  So I, I like constraints a lot. It's like constraints and almost like a desperation and deadlines are catalysts for creativity, for productivity, for sort of innovation. So can you, can you kind of speak to that?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 18:42Lex Fridman?

  As an investor, as a creator, like what's, what's the right balance here?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Well, I think if you're focused on a particular problem, or a company, or a thesis, if you have that focus, and you feel like I have unlimited resources, or renewable resources, so there's really, there's no leverage in the situation, right? There's no, if I fail at this, I'll just go get more money, right? I'll just go, I think that's a hard way to be resilient, and to think of new ways to solve problems.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  So I think capitalizing things just, you know, to the nth degree does create some problems. So I think there's that perfect blend of don't starve the oxygen to the point where you make short-term decisions or non-strategic or thoughtful decisions because you gotta pay the rent. And on the other hand, you, you can't have it be like this, you know, everlasting gobstopper of whatever you want, we'll just keep flowing the cash because that doesn't create any friction points that I think do result in, in works of genius, in, in things that, you know,

• 20:07Speaker 01

  that, that are transformative. And one of the things that is interesting to me about society sort of writ large is I, I think that when you go through hard times

• 20:23Speaker 01

  and you have to do things that are uncomfortable and you don't want to do them because you're tired, because you're, that in some ways builds up that you're comfortable being uncomfortable muscle. And I, I sometimes think we're losing that a little bit and you, you can't sort of paint with a wide brush, but

• 20:47Speaker 01

  you know, I, I, that's, that's one of the things that I kind of observe and, and hope that we don't go that way.

• 20:54Lex Fridman?

  I, I do think challenge and discomfort are a kind of gift. It's a, like overcoming that, it's like, uh, from, from every perspective, from a human perspective, it's a source of happiness and fulfillment, overcoming challenge. But from a business perspective, I see like, if something is really difficult, to me, it's also a sign that most others would, or many others would fail at this point. So like, it's a feature. It's nice that something is difficult. When, when people tell you that something is impossible, I love that because it's like, all right, well then that's what a lot of people would believe. And then that gives you an opportunity to be the person who shows it's not impossible. And you, of course, you might be wrong, but if you're not wrong, you have the opportunity

• 21:39Lex Fridman?

  to stand out. So going through that hardship, taking those big risks is going to really pay off. So like discomfort is a

• 21:49Lex Fridman?

  Is a feature, not a bug of both personal life. It's just good for life, but for business, it seems like just, just good business sense. If something is hard, it's probably a good idea to do that.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:03Lex Fridman?

  Cause most others will fail. Fun question. I don't know if you can answer this, but what's the most expensive movie you were involved with to make? And why was it? You don't have to say numbers, but like, is something stand out as being exceptionally expensive? And why is it expensive?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  I think Jurassic World was pretty expensive. Work, I mean, worked out great. And.

• 22:31Lex Fridman?

  That's like, that's an epic film, by the way.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  It, it, look, it's, uh, it's, it's one of my favorites. They, they just did an amazing job. And frankly, the crazy thing about my life is all the stuff that I loved as a kid somehow came full circle back into my adult life. And having the opportunity while I was out there to, to develop a friendship with Steven Spielberg. And then have, have my name on the same film as Steven Spielberg. I mean, that, that was pretty surreal. So that was an expensive film. You know, Dark Knight Rises was, was an expensive film. But again, to me, there's a difference between expensive and irresponsible.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  And expensive because the vision warranted. And it turned out financially, it certainly did.

• 23:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Well, Jurassic World, it's. I mean, I can't even imagine having those meetings cause like you have to create so much. And so much of it is obviously not real. You can't bring dinosaurs in a.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:40Lex Fridman?

  Is that where a lot of the cost is, is in the, you know, the, the computer side of things?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, those are generally pretty massive components of, of the budget. And especially if you're doing it and inventing things.

• 23:56Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  As you go, I mean, Jim, Jim Cameron is one of those filmmakers who. You know, is designing the plane as it's flying in such a brilliant way. And I, you know, I've got to know him over the years and just in awe of the way his brain works. And so, yeah, it's a big component.

• 24:19Lex Fridman?

  Can you speak a little bit more to him in terms of, because you're such a fascinating person. Because you care a lot about technology. You care a lot about the cutting edge of technology. So how does he, a creator, a director, build the plane while it's flying? Like, what's the role of innovation in this whole process?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Well, so I never made a film with Jim. I'm just a huge fan and got to know him. And John Landau, his producing partner. And one of the things that just fascinates me about Jim is, so he makes Titanic. And there's a bunch of underwater cameras and things that they need that don't exist. So he goes and invents them and, you know, has a good grasp of engineering. And has not only the imagination, but the ability to lead a team to build them. I got to go down early when they were shooting Avatar at a warehouse, I think it was, where they were shooting.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And as they were explaining to me how they were capturing it and that they could go back later because they created the environment, it blew my mind. And I said, okay, this is truly, people talk about a big leap. This certainly is one. So he has continued to push the envelope in terms of the art of the possible. And I just think he is an incredible genius in that way.

• 25:50Lex Fridman?

  Again, another hard question. So you, in the realm of music, care about story, storytelling.

• 25:58Lex Fridman?

  Is there some aspect in which money and beautiful graphics get in the way of story?

• 26:06Lex Fridman?

  In filmmaking, so if you think, if you think about Jurassic World, obviously that's an experience like any other.

• 26:16Lex Fridman?

  Like, what do we, what do you think about the tension between story, experience, and like visual effects?

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Well, look, if you're using big effect shots and all kinds of tricks to cover over the fact that you don't have a very interesting story to tell, that's where I think it gets in the way.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Where I think you have these incredible filmmakers, we mentioned Chris Nolan and Jim Cameron, Guillermo del Toro, you know, you could go on and on, of folks that just see the world differently and use technology to enhance the storytelling, right, to make you believe differently, rather to make you, not just suspend your disbelief, but to feel like you're immersed in it. So I've certainly seen it done expertly, and I've seen it done poorly.

• 27:19Lex Fridman?

  You've talked about this a little bit in the past. You've kind of left the movie making business at an interesting time. Perhaps you saw the changes. There's been a lot of excitement with Netflix, with TV, so the role of film in society has changed. So what do you think is the future of movies versus TV? Like, if you were, as a businessperson, as a creator, as a consumer, as a technologist, are thinking about the next 10, 20 years, what do you think is going to be the godfather, the great pieces that move us as a society in the next 10, 20 years? Is it going to be TV? Is it going to be movie?

• 28:04Lex Fridman?

  Is it going to be TikTok clips? What is it?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  Well, so, and I think the other category that I would add to that, that will be the next great medium, is truly immersive virtual reality, in which new storytellers will emerge, especially when you can go into VR. And there's enough computing power to sustain it and to allow it to be social. And you know, for you to have different paths to go down. That'll be, I think, the next realm of what storytelling and experience will will look like.

• 28:44Lex Fridman?

  Do you think a video game kind of world or is it more movies? Or is it more social network? Or is it all of it kind of blending reality and gaming and movies?

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought if you saw Ready Player One, which I love the book and and the movie was cool, too. But you know, that that's one version of it, right? Where you go in. Now, everybody's talking about the metaverse and all that, but you go into a world that's fully rendered as yourself and you interact with that world. The other side of it is to go in somewhere between being a passive observer, but being able to move around your point of view and experiences, which I think is interesting. And then I think another another adventure, so to speak, I could think of is a blend of video games. So there's a mission, right? There's a there's obstacles, there's everything and you move through it.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  But it's immersive and it tells a story at the same time. And that's why I think you're going to see new amazing storytellers that we don't know yet, that understand how to innovate and how to make you feel something in in that environment.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  And to your earlier point, you know, I saw probably around 2015 when Netflix decided to be bold, put out House of Cards, put out all the episodes, leave you in charge of the pace at which you would view them, which I thought was was great.

• 30:20Lex Fridman?

  That was a gutsy move.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Yes, it was. And I can't tell you around Hollywood, anybody that says that everybody thought it was a great idea is not being truthful because everybody I talked to said this is they're idiots, right? They're what do they know about movie making and and TV? And what I saw happening was if you look at what Netflix pulled off and they realized that there isn't really a moat around the studios, you really could make stuff.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  And really good stuff. And so they started to create their own content. That pulled in Amazon, which pulled in Google through YouTube and and then you had Hulu. Then you had Disney deciding that they're going to have Disney Plus. And the next thing you know, you have some of the the biggest companies with the largest balance sheets on the planet. Uh, being in the creative business. That's, you know, if you're an independent, that's that's bringing a a knife to a a gunfight, to be sure. And so, you know, I thought that was interesting. The other thing that it used to be that movies were where the big things happened and television was sort of. It was small screen, different experience.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  And you had something like Game of Thrones come out, which was not only on the same epic level visually and storytelling wise, but had the budget to be able to do it. And now I think you're you're seeing um. You're seeing uh all kinds of different storytelling taking place. And also like that it's you're not pigeonholed into a time like you got two hours to tell the story. You can do a three part mini series, a five part mini series. You can do television that's, you know, all kinds of different format. And that I think is uh allows creators to do a lot more interesting things.

• 32:21Lex Fridman?

  It is also interesting to consider the role of companies that enable that, like the capital that enables that. You know, without Netflix, you wouldn't an HBO, you wouldn't have um some of these epic shows. And so for if we're thinking about the virtual reality world that you're talking about.

• 32:41Lex Fridman?

  It's interesting to consider who will enable that, you know, now, like you said, Facebook is talking about meta and metaverse. But it's unclear that just having money is enough. Netflix did a lot of really revolutionary stuff. There's a, you know, Amazon has money. There's a lot of companies that have money that don't quite do as good of a job yet at enabling creators of um. Creating revolutionary new content that changes the the whole industry. And that's probably going to be the case with virtual reality. There there is a lot of money needed to enable experiences like in terms of compute infrastructure. There needs to be a huge amount of money there, but you also need to somehow give

• 33:26Lex Fridman?

  freedom to creators to have fun, to do their best work. And at the same time, like, provide the the perfect amount of constraints, all of that together. However Netflix makes it happen, they do a pretty good job because it's a very constrained platform. But yet, all the creators I've ever talked to, comedians and so on, that work with Netflix are really happy because they feel free to create their work.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I I think a lot of times, you know, companies are a letterhead, but it boils down to the people.

• 33:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  And I think I I've known Ted Sarandos a long time, who who ran the studio at Netflix and now took over for Reed, running the company. But Ted, very smart, talented guy, and understood early how to cultivate talent and relationships with talent, which is important. When you're dealing with creative people, their motivations and their goals are not always the same, right? They're not always capitalistic, right? And so in terms of being able to communicate with creative people that are not always A to B to C is is a talent. And so I think they they did a great job. Ted did a great job with that early.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  You know, but I I think that you're gonna see different formats. I I don't think, I mean, going to a theater to see a massive movie on that screen in that format is a fundamentally different experience.

• 34:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  And I think you're gonna find movies, you know, my old shop Legendary just put out Dune, which I thought was phenomenal. I, you know, when we secured the rights to Dune years ago, it was, I was over the moon because it's, I love the book, I I love the the entire world that that is Dune. And that's a movie that I think you see on the the big screen. I I think when Avatar two comes out, I want to see that on a on a big screen. But I think you're gonna see. A ton of content is obviously being produced and it's not all going to go to a theater going experience. So you're going to see, I think, different versions of this over the next five to 10 years.

• 35:44Lex Fridman?

  In case James Cameron is listening to this, so he officially agreed to talk at the time of, on this podcast, at the time of Avatar 2 release, I'm just holding you to that in this recorded conversation. Also, just super excited, both the movie and the director.

• 36:02Lex Fridman?

  There is something special about movies. You know, they win Oscars, they, they're historic in nature. There's something about TV shows, even when they're epic like Game of Thrones, that they're forgotten much quicker in history. I don't know, maybe that's because we haven't had enough of them. But, you know, the De Niro performances and, you know, the Scorsese films, all the great films that kind of we think of throughout the generations that define generations are films. Is that, is that just old school thinking? Is that always going to be the case?

• 36:38Speaker 01

  I mean, look, to me,

• 36:42Speaker 01

  going in a darkened theater with a bunch of strangers and the lights go down and you go on this journey, there is something special and magical about that. And I think movies have been a part of our cultural fabric forever. And for some reason Hollywood and America was, you know, uniquely positioned to do a great job with it, right? And not that there aren't great foreign movies, but far and away, American movies, you know, are dominate not only the world market, but, you know, and so whatever it is that we do well, or

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Hollywood does well, you know, there's, there's something in the water apparently. But I, I agree that I love movies and I will, you know, for the rest of my days. It's, it's interesting how creators can move back and forth now as well. That used to be a complete no, no. You're either a movie guy or you're a person or a, you know, or you're a TV director and that's that. But tho- those lines have completely blurred.

• 37:52Lex Fridman?

  And they're also blurring, I mean, they're blurring all kinds of lines like they're, they're moving to TikTok and Instagram and like, I know right now it seems ridiculous to consider that these like one minute things could be considered even in the same realm creatively as a, as a film, but maybe that changes over time too. Maybe experiences can completely become fluid in terms of their size. As long as they have some deep lasting impact on you as a human being, as a consumer.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Look, to me, the whole thing is about either the moving image or even sometimes a picture will bring out an emotion or reaction, something. So, you know, short form is harder because you have less time to set things up and all that. But I'm sure there will be short videos and creators that come up with things. And if a moving image can get a reaction out of you and make you feel a certain way and stay with you or inspire you, well, that, that to me is just the next evolution of whatever it's going to be between humans and cameras, et cetera.

• 39:05Lex Fridman?

  See, I think that's why we've talked offline about this. That's why I love robots is I think there's certain things in the short form with robots that immediately can bring out a feeling in people. There's something about our consideration of our own intelligence, of our own consciousness, of all the fears and hopes and the beautiful things about human nature, the dark things about human nature that somehow especially Lego robots bring out.

• 39:36Lex Fridman?

  Because we have both a fear and excitement towards that. Are these going to be our overlords, our gods that overtake humanity? Are these going to be things like horses or something like that? Something that empower humanity? Like, you don't know what to make sense of it. That's why they're super exciting.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 39:56Lex Fridman?

  Speaking of robots and film, you've gone into traditional industries and disrupted them quite a few times. Was there, is there a system for deciding which industry is right for disruption? When you look at the world and see what are the big problems you would like to solve?

• 40:18Lex Fridman?

  Do you have a system of how you see which problems to solve? How do you look at the world?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, on the business side of that. So I have a holding company called Tulco, very imaginatively named. And part of that is literally every name ever is now taken.

• 40:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Registered and all that stuff. So we're a holding company.

• 40:41Lex Fridman?

  What's a holding company?

• 40:42Speaker 01

  So instead of being a fund that has money flowing in and out of it. And, you know, there's what's called a vintage year. I raise capital and I agree to invest that capital for so long. And then I give it back to you, which sometimes creates artificial time pressures and things like that. A holding company is more permanent capital. So the idea was behind Tulco was to buy almost always whole companies or majority stakes with great management teams in spaces that did not traditionally have a lot of innovation. And to have our labs group, who were data scientists, AI practitioners, you know,

• 41:25Speaker 01

  engineers, machine learning, et cetera, and to be able to bring that wherewithal to that company. So to provide them with the right capital and to provide them with access to technology that would be hard to individually recruit for that company. So I would say. That the thesis was to look for industries that were large enough that hadn't traditionally had access to that type of technology or innovation and to try to look for companies that not only look that part, but had management teams that embrace this and wanted to take that kind of journey.

• 42:06Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, there is quite a few industries like that, but that finding the industries and the management pair, because like those industries often have a lot of old school folks who don't. It takes quite a bit of work for them to leap into technology. I work quite a bit with the autonomous vehicles and just the automotive industry. Depending on the company, there's old school folks. It's like Detroit thinking versus like, what do you call it? I don't know. California thinking.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Well, you have to, I think you have to look at the nexus of two things there. One is just plain old human behavior. If I am uncomfortable and I, this isn't a comfort zone for me and it's not something I have as a field of expertise, I'm going to shy away from that.

• 42:57Lex Fridman?

  Right.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Especially if I'm successful and I feel good about myself and it's a big, successful company or person or whatever it might be. And the second thing is that especially if you're a public company and you're being weighed and measured every quarter, you are rewarding the managers of that company to hit metrics and to be reliable and to say, hey, I'm counting quarter to quarter that you're going to deliver what you say. It's difficult to say, you know what, everybody? For the next two years, I wouldn't count on our financial projections at all because we're going to reinvent what we're doing. It's going to lurk and work in the long run and you're going to see that this was a really smart investment five to seven years from now?

• 43:43Speaker 01

  That's not the way capitalism is currently wired generally, right? And a lot of, so again, if you reward managers with yearly bonuses and stock options based and tied to stock price and all these other things, you know, and then ask them to go break stuff, that's, that's, that's hard, I think.

• 44:05Lex Fridman?

  So you're saying, like, the, the Taco approach, the private investment is the best way, or perhaps the only way to enable this kind of long-term innovation, investment, taking big risks and investing in innovation?

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Well, look, we certainly are not by any means the only one doing it. I'm just saying that when you, when you think about big companies, more successful, you know, that are in old line businesses, and I hear people sort of talk about, well, why can't they just pivot? They recognize they need to be in the technology business, well, because it's hard. It's hard to steer a ship and turn it that big, and especially if it's not part of your DNA at that company. So, you know, I, I just think that what we tried to do is to enable management teams

• 45:03Speaker 01

  that know where they want to go, and to be patient with capital, and also, again, bring, bring innovation to bear that they have access to. There's plenty of capital structures doing interesting things. That's one of the things I love about our country.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  This country innovates, and this country invents things, and I'm constantly in awe of, of just the, you know, the human ability to, to innovate and to iterate.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  You know, I get to hang around some universities, including your old shop, MIT, and it's like...

• 45:45Lex Fridman?

  I'm still there.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:46Lex Fridman?

  Still there.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Still teaching there. Still teaching. But that place is like Hogwarts. I mean, it's, it's just... It's inspiring.

• 45:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Right? And certainly, the energy in Silicon Valley, which now Austin, Texas, where we're sitting.

• 46:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Has its own incredible ecosystem. So that's one of the things I love about America is the ability. And that really is, I think, in the American DNA, to create things and invent things. And I just, I think that's invigorating.

• 46:20Lex Fridman?

  And I think that's even bigger than capitalism, sort of the machine of how capitalism works. That's just human nature. Capitalism is just one of the ways to sort of make that human nature shine, I suppose. But it's like, you mentioned MIT. You know, there's a drive there to invent, to innovate. That's, that's so purely human. That human spirit to sort of build something new. It's like that hopeful, optimistic experience, especially in the engineering space. Like, if you pay attention to the internet, like Twitter and all that kind of stuff, intellectuals and so on.

• 47:02Lex Fridman?

  There's a cynicism to when we talk about stuff. But there's an optimism to when we do stuff. And the doing part, when you actually build things especially, like you care a lot about manufacturing too. Like, you actually build physical products. That, that's where we truly shine.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, no question about it. And I, you know, I'm passionate about our country making stuff again, right? Doing our own manufacturing and making sure that we don't lose the ability, not just to create things intellectually and do the world's greatest blueprints, but actually make things here.

• 47:46Lex Fridman?

  Actual factories.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right.

• 47:48Lex Fridman?

  How, how do we, how do we do that? How do we bring more manufacturing to the United States?

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Well, there's a company that I have a big personal investment in called Rebuild with some folks that all went through the MIT school years ago. There's a good friend of mine named Jeff Wilkie, who used to be at Amazon. And we all felt the same way that. You know, America needed to make sure that it didn't lose its edge in that way. So it's a, it's a company that invests in American high-tech manufacturing. And I think the way that we do that is provide capital, provide training. To me, this is also fertile ground for good, sustainable, high-paying jobs.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  And, you know, we have to, we have to make it economically feasible to do that again here in this country. And not to say to companies that, again, are being weighed and measured quarter by quarter. Hey, this is three times as expensive to do it here, but you should do it here. We need to innovate and, and we need to create processes and, and companies and opportunity that balance that equation. And I think as we saw during the pandemic, you know, I, I don't think in this day and age you can be an isolationist. That, that, that doesn't make any sense to me. But being self-reliant and self-determinant and making sure that you are never in a position as a nation

• 49:24Speaker 01

  that we can't do basic things because we're relying on supply chain in other countries. And whether it's, you know, we're not friends anymore, or a natural disaster, or a virus, or something pops up. I, I think those are costs of doing business that we have to put into the calculus of being able to make things here.

• 49:47Lex Fridman?

  There's an extremely high cost to making supply chain resilient that we really have to consider. And it's so, if you really consider that cost, it makes a lot of sense to invest, especially long-term, in building up manufacturing in a way where like you're making most of the stuff in one place. Sort of bringing it all, not all, but as much in as possible. And building it almost like from scratch here in the United States. I mean, what, I guess the, your thought is with innovation,

• 50:22Lex Fridman?

  it's possible to sort of revolutionize the way we do manufacturing. So reduce the amount of supply chain stuff and like build stuff from scratch. Like do high-tech manufacturing. So like optimize all aspects of the manufacturing, all that kind of stuff.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think where technology is the most efficient is is the human machine interface, right? It's not let's automate everything and have nobody work anywhere. I for a long time, that's neither feasible nor desirable. But where we can enhance jobs and make that interface immensely productive with the right training and so forth, I think that's a worthwhile endeavor and something that's going to be important to our country.

• 51:13Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I mean, you're you know who you're talking to. I love human robot interaction, human machine interaction, human AI interaction. So what do you think is the role of robotics in this high tech manufacturing? Sort of like industrial robots, robotic arms, all that kind of stuff? Or even even more complicated kind of robots? What do you think is the role of robotics? What do you think is the role of AI in this manufacturing future you're thinking about?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Well, robotics, to me, is an extremely exciting field. I don't have the same expertise that you do. I have an adjacency, but not the depth of knowledge. Have never really delved deeply into it or made investments in it. But I think what's exciting about it is everything from doing jobs that are very dangerous for humans, enhancing the human experience. When you look at really repetitive labor, things that, you know, it might take away a job, but is it a good job for that that person is, you know, spending 30 years doing something highly repetitious? Is that is that a good experience in life?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  So I think and then when you think about everything from military applications, you know, rescue, we're already seeing a bunch of those things. And then, just lastly, when you talk about that human interaction with robots, when you start to have the combination, so you have some level of intelligence and interaction. I mean, that's why we always love the droids in Star Wars, right? I mean, it's it's it's exciting. It captures the imagination. And I think, look,

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Many, many hours and have been spent on debating artificial intelligence and the ramifications, if things go sideways and so forth. And I think those are all, you know, those are appropriate conversations to be having. AI is happening. I think it's actually happening slower than most people realize. Because there are tasks that humans do every minute of every day, standing up without losing your sense of balance. I mean, these are really hard things. But I think there's enough investment, both in private industry as well as nation states

• 53:43Speaker 01

  now on artificial intelligence, that it is coming.

• 53:48Lex Fridman?

  So both in the software space, in the digital space, and in the physical space, so we talk about manufacturing, so industrial robotics, is very true that even in the factory, even the tasks that you think are pretty basic, you know, the amount of small intuitive decisions that humans make is quite incredible. So we have to be kind of explicit about saying which tasks are actually really hard, and humans are just really good at them. And so, on the flip side, in the digital space, with social networks, with recommender systems, with all

• 54:27Lex Fridman?

  kinds of like, personal assistants, in terms of voice, voice-based AI systems, all of that, there's opportunities there to find niches where AI can really have a transformative effect. I think one of the places that really haven't...

• 54:49Lex Fridman?

  This is where like, you're worried to say stupid things, but I believe this very much, that when we have AI systems in the home currently, you have somebody like Alexa and Google Home and so on, they're kind of...

• 55:03Lex Fridman?

  Very basic servants. They tell you about the weather, they can play some music, they can turn the lights on and off, all the kind of like smart home stuff. I think there's a lot of value in systems that form relationships with us in the way that pets do, dogs and cats. I don't know, cats, just for people who have cats, cats don't care about you. They, they really don't, they don't form any kind of relationship. I don't know why you have a relationship with them, it's one way. Anyway, so I throw some shade. I'm just kidding, by the way. That's a basic kind of connection you have with another living being. Then there's also just friends. You have, you have different levels of friends, acquaintances, you have lifelong friends, all that.

• 55:47Lex Fridman?

  That, that friendship you have, I, I really believe that there is some aspect of the human experience that is deeply enriched by interacting with other beings. And for systems, computing systems, artificial intelligence systems in our world, to have the capability to engage in some of that, I think, is not just an opportunity to, to, to help people grow, become better people, but it's also just a good business opportunity too. And that hasn't really been explored enough. So that to me is really, that's a whole exciting space that I think will enable better industrial, industrial robotics.

• 56:32Lex Fridman?

  It will, it will empower a better Facebook or a better social network, a competitor to Facebook that overthrows Facebook. So it'll, it'll create better technologies that currently don't have that human-robot interaction touch. So, I don't know. That's super exciting to me, but that, that has to deal with the mess of human nature. The, the, the reason that most robotics people and AI people stay away from humans, they stay away from the human-robot interaction problem is because humans are complicated. They're messy, they're hard to control, they're hard to.

• 57:17Lex Fridman?

  Predict stuff about they're hard to make sense of or like test repeatedly because one human can be drastically different from another human. And so to deal with that as a robotics problem is super hard. And so one of the questions is, uh, which problems can you remove the human from consideration when you're trying to solve the problem? So like Elon Musk is an example, somebody who believes autonomous driving, we can remove the human from consideration, we could solve autonomous driving as a robotics problem. It's stay in the lane. When there's a red light, you stop at a red light. You know, if there is humans in the picture like pedestrians, that's a ballistics problem.

• 58:01Lex Fridman?

  It's just treat them as a moving object that has a was with like 90% probability keeps moving in the way they were in the past few seconds with some smaller probability, they might stop or turn like just do some basic models about them and you'll be able to do just fine. So I, I tend to believe that even driving has to consider the full messiness of humans. The dance, the game theoretic dance of chicken that we all do when we jaywalk, we look at the car, is that car, that car doesn't, that driver doesn't have the guts to murder me. So I'm going to walk in front of it and not look at the car. We do that kind of dance and AI systems need to be able to play, uh, uh, do that kind of

• 58:45Lex Fridman?

  dance. In Talco, there's the, the labs. So there's a, a data science component, it's an AI component. So how do they go into a company and help revolutionize that industry?

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Well, there's different examples. So, um, one of our companies, Figs, makes healthcare workwear, started by these two brilliant women and you know, uh, early days, helping to build the platform and recruit and, um,

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Make sure that the, the, everything that we did at the company embraced technology. And at the same time, they were obsessive about their customer, which is, you know, doctors, nurses, healthcare workers who are putting it on the line every day and obsessive about their product. And when you have those two things come together, you know, you, you get the result that, that, uh, that we did at, at Figs.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  We have a company called Accusher, which its AI lab and base is down here in Austin, Texas. It was a, an insurance, one of the largest insurance brokers in the world. And, uh, you know, we did a deal with them and sold some of our, our insurance holdings. It was completely AI driven. Um, and in that case, you basically put the team inside the company, right? Because it's, it's a massive, uh, company with all, and we've gone into all kinds of things. Um, so it just depends on the different situations, but the, you know, the biggest thing was just to make sure whatever the company needed, uh, they

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  had access to the talent. Sometimes we'd build it. Sometimes we'd help recruit for it. You know how thing, in, in technology, it's whatever works, right? There's, there's no one way to do things.

• 1:00:46Lex Fridman?

  Well, Accusher is really diff, uh, is really interesting as an example. So insurance is a fascinating space. It seems like very ripe still for disruption across the board. So how do you, it seems like a lot of the disruption has to do with like, uh, almost the first dumb step of we've been using mostly paper. Uh, like it's not digitized. You have to basically convert, uh, create a, uh, infrastructure, a framework where like everybody is using the same digital system, like databases and just organize the data. That it seems like that's a huge leap that basically can revolutionize major industries

• 1:01:28Lex Fridman?

  that still hasn't been done. Insurance is obviously the great example of that.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  And one of the things that struck me, uh, the, the founder, CEO of Accusher is a guy named Greg Williams. They're out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. And as we were looking at expanding our footprint in insurance, I met with a lot of insurance executives and they would talk about technology, but Greg. Truly understood the power of what would happen across actuarial sciences, you know, predictive analytics and using machine learning to really run every aspect of your business. And then automating a lot of the, just the back office tedious steps. And as you said, one of the things that was great for us, they already had

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  a data collection system and department. So it was much easier to pivot. And, you know, I'm very excited about the future of that company. It's, uh, you know, they're, they're doing some pretty innovative, groundbreaking things. And those are the things that I like doing, right? Is that, um, yes, I want to make money, just, you know, that's what that is. But at the same time, what did you do with your time on earth? Right? Did, did you do anything to leave any kind of mark that, you know, you did anything interesting? I can only speak for myself. There are many more ways to measure one's life.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  And I can only speak about how I think about things. You know, I grew up poor in upstate New York with a single mom and watched her work a couple of jobs. And, you know, had to, from a young age, you know, shovel snow and mow lawns and do all kinds of things to help her make sure the lights weren't turned off in our little place. And so that's just something that I've always been driven towards. And, um, you know, I just, I have really eclectic tastes and interests. And, um, you know, it's just, it's just been an interesting journey.

• 1:03:35Lex Fridman?

  So help be part of and help enable some cool new creations across the board. Like film, music, AI, manufacturing, just, you know, insurance, all the specific industries that you disrupted. Yeah. Uh, small tangent. Back to your childhood with your mom. Any memories kind of stand out, stick with you as?

• 1:04:09Lex Fridman?

  As something that helped define who you are as a man?

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, even though, you know, the university and college experience was not part of the the family tree.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  And we had no connections. I didn't understand, I didn't know what a trust fund was or prep school. I didn't know what any of that was.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  But my mom from a young age would always say, you know, you're gonna go to college. There's no, you know, if you choose to, and I, and I think from a young age, that was just an expectation that that I had and that she instilled, and the work ethic. I watched her, and then my, my grandmother was, was a janitor, a cleaning lady in a hospital for 50 years. And then I, I remember there were times of, you know, I'm probably 10 years old, it's freezing cold out, and if I don't go out and shovel six driveways, we don't have enough money to pay the bill. So I don't know, I'm not a psychologist, so I don't know how that manifests itself in my life today.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  But I think the grit to say, I'm not in the mood to do this, I don't want to do this, but that's the work that needs to be done. And no excuses, not I'm a victim and I'm gonna sit around and talk about, no, it is what it is, and you have to get done what you need to get done. And again, I think it's, you can never fully put yourself in someone else's shoes or experience, because I don't know what that is or feels like, but for me, tho- those were two, I think, formative things that that were important in my childhood.

• 1:05:58Lex Fridman?

  So that, that's pretty, the reality of life like that is pretty humbling. You still, you've been so exceptionally successful that it's easy to get soft now. How do you get humbled these days?

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  By getting up. You know, you know, I, I think. For me personally, trying to push the envelope and being weighed and measured, right? That's why I always loved sports too. There's a scoreboard. And, you know, I'm a huge believer in opportunity, meritocracy, all those things that I think are ideals that we wanna aspire to. And I think that there's a lot of things I'm involved with right now that I just wanna see if I can do it. I wanna see if, you know, if, and, and, you know, my own little mantra is cause the outcome, right? As much as you can, and at the same time,

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  have the humility and not to have the hubris or arrogance to say, I'm always gonna cause the outcome. Cause you'll get your ass kicked pretty quickly and humbled. The world and the universe is a big place with forces, you know, beyond. But I think, you know, I also think a lot about being intellectually honest, which when I do university talks and so forth, I, I think that's a superpower. Because if you find yourself making decisions based on other people's expectations, based on places you don't wanna go, but, you know, you're, you're either, you feel

• 1:07:41Speaker 01

  like momentum is taking you there. I think that's a big problem. And there, there are people that go to our top universities and can't wait to get out and start their own company and they want that pressure and they, they want to grind. And there are other people that are smart and talented, but just say, look, I, I don't wanna lay awake staring at the ceiling, wondering how I'm gonna make payroll. I don't want that in my life. And I think if you can. Square that up and be okay with it and say, what, what makes me tick? What makes me happy? What puts me in a bad headspace? Cause there's a difference between challenging yourself and going against your nature.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  So that's why I, I think that being intellectually honest and being able to really sit down and go inside your own head. And say, what am I good at? What am I not good at? How am I going to put myself in a position to be successful? Because, you know, I'm, I'm working on my weaknesses, but I'm not going to put myself career wise in a position. Where I, I'm just fundamentally going to have a hard time being successful.

• 1:08:52Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, intellectually honest is a tricky one and it gets, um. There's like levels to it too.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:09:00Lex Fridman?

  Cause, um, well, like some of the things, you know, I, I think about when you. When you dream of doing certain kinds of big things. Uh, a part of intellectual honesty is to say. Several things, one is like, hey, um, the thing you're dreaming about. Like, one, the fact that nobody's done it probably shows that you're, you know, um. You're just a dreamer. This, this is not, this is not going to like, think clearly. The fact that it hasn't been done probably shows that it may not be the right path.

• 1:09:42Lex Fridman?

  And, uh, two is like, if you're dreaming about stuff, there's a certain point where it's like, hey? You haven't done it. Like, why haven't you done it already then? Like, you have to be honest with yourself, like you have to be ambitious, like, you know?

• 1:09:57Lex Fridman?

  A lot of people work hard a long time for a dream, but you have to wake up and be like, all right, I've been at this for 10 years. Like with a startup, you launch a startup and you think, okay. One year, two years, three years, four years, pretty successful, you know, but it hasn't exploded like you dreamed and. You have to shut it down, you know? You have to be intellectually honest there. At the same time, you might want to be, uh. Like step it up, lean into it. Say almost like, um, the flip side of like intellectual honesty is like.

• 1:10:35Lex Fridman?

  Maddening ambition of just saying, fuck it, I'm gonna go all in. But that that is a kind of intellectual honesty saying like, you know, the the big problem here is I've been kind of going, doing too many things. Maybe with this dream, you have to go all in on it. All those kinds of things. I mean, this is human experience. It's complicated.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Yes, without all human things are complicated. The the and I think there's a difference between being reckless and making well thought out, informed decisions. If you're gonna go all in, make sure you you've, you know, measure twice, cut once, as they say. And one of my other favorite, I I forget, many years ago, I heard this saying and it stayed with me. It was never mistake, clear line of sight with distance. And, you know, that so I I think that the key, whether you're starting a business or you're thinking about leaving the company you're at and starting a business or just leaving for another job. Any of these things is as much as you can, right?

• 1:11:43Speaker 01

  And psychologists, I think, would tell us it's hard to be self aware completely, right? That's the rub, that if we were all completely self aware of everything that we did and strengths and weaknesses, uh, it it'd be a different world. But I do think you can work on that and at least challenge yourself to to think about it and not be in a position where I'm, you know, I'm going to medical school because that's what you do in my family. And even though I'm miserable doing it, uh, you know, things like that.

• 1:12:16Lex Fridman?

  So definitely you don't want to be sort of, um, because you don't think fall victim to conformity, that just go on doing the same thing over and over.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:12:27Lex Fridman?

  But at the same time, the is measure twice and cut once.

• 1:12:36Lex Fridman?

  It does feel like some of the the biggest leaps taken are where you cut once and measure later.

• 1:12:47Lex Fridman?

  Is you leap in first.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:12:49Lex Fridman?

  It's it's almost like a gut. I suppose that is a measurement, but you build up a good gut. Uh, instinct of like what to do and then you just do it. And then you figure out as it's it's the building the airplane as you're flying it.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Right. Well, and I think each one of those uh instances that you could probably cite has its own unique circumstances, right? I don't have a a deep biotech background. So if I suddenly stood up and said, I'm going to put everything I have into this idea. Well, that's, you know, those are right. It's game theory, right? What are the odds of success? If on the other hand, uh, you know, you're you're brilliant in your field or you've seen some opportunity that you you think is wide open a- and you're going to go for it and break stuff. That's great. You just want to wait to me always say like,

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  how crazy is this on the spectrum of, you know, do I have any expertise? What is the downside if I fail? Right? You know, i- if you're if you're at a certain point in life with young children and you've got a mortgage and whatever else that that is one circumstance versus I just got out of Stanford or I just got out of whatever and I'm gonna go for it. It's just the whole thing, right? It's it is complex, as you point out. And sometimes you just want to have the right matrix in your head of decision making process to try to arrive at the right place. And even if you get close, that's where I think you say, you know what? The hell with it. I'm doing this.

• 1:14:28Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. Yeah. I do want to ask you um about one specific idea that uh sounds super fascinating that you're involved with recently. You led the $15 million seed round for a company called Colossal that is focused on de-extinction. Uh, this is funny relative to our connection uh and conversation about Jurassic World.

• 1:14:53Lex Fridman?

  They're seeking to restore lost ecosystems and use gene editing to restore the woolly mammoth to the Arctic tundra. How are they gonna do that?

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Well, I met this fascinating guy at Harvard named George Church five, six years ago and found him to be incredibly smart, have an imagination. And he partnered up with a guy named Ben Lam, who's an entrepreneur. And basically, the, the, the press and to me, the, the imaginative, like you're capturing my imagination by telling me you're gonna bring back the woolly mammoth and other extinct animals. And I, you know, we'll see where that road leads.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  I'm, was more interested in an investor in the things that they're working through around understanding genes and more in proteins and CRISPR and all these other things because being adjacent to George Church and his team, as these things unfold over the next decade, I, I thought was the right, the right thing to do.

• 1:16:07Lex Fridman?

  People are important here, just like investing in people and seeing what the hell they come up with.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I mean, you can look through history and great things are done by great people, right? And companies, they end up over time becoming a logo and immediately what you think of them, but they started out with a person, with an idea and a team that cultivated that and made that happen. And I, and I think there are certain folks that are just immensely talented, that if you can be around them, and I also know his and his team's ethics in terms of, you know, after spending time talking about where the lines are.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  People in other countries that, you know, may not have the same process, may not have the same checks and balances are doing this and pursuing this regardless. So at least I felt like with with George and Ben and their teams, they're also very responsible people.

• 1:17:14Lex Fridman?

  This is where the human side of things comes into play. I've interacted with a lot of really brilliant people in the technology space. Where you kind of, you know, there's a lot of ways to feel this out. You can ask them whether they kind of read literature. You can feel out how much they really understand about like human nature here. Like whatever the technology is, when it actually starts to play, interact with society at scale, like do they have an understanding or an intuition about how that happens? Some of that requires studying history. Some of that requires like just looking at the worst and best

• 1:17:57Lex Fridman?

  parts and events in human history to understand like, hey, it doesn't always turn out like everybody hoped that technology turns out. And if a person has a depth of understanding about history, about human nature, then I think that's the right person to to mess with some of this cutting edge stuff.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you want Marcus Aurelius with a PhD from MIT.

• 1:18:25Lex Fridman?

  Exactly, exactly. You just small tangent, but you mentioned having a conversation with Warren Buffett. You spoke really highly of him as an investor, as a human being.

• 1:18:40Lex Fridman?

  What about him do you admire? What what from him? What insights have you drawn from him as a great investor yourself?

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Well, the afternoon that I got to spend with him, which, you know, something I'll treasure forever. Look, sometimes when you meet people, even that are immensely successful. You you may decide that after 20 minutes or a half hour, oh, you were in the right place at the right time. And, you know, that's, that's fine. There are other people that are clearly different, special, and I don't care if you made them start from zero, you know, would would end up in a good place. And so it was, it was an absolute privilege to spend the time with him. You know, and a couple of things that stood out in the conversation.

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  He is incredibly intellectually curious and well read. And I like how simplistic he likes to keep his thought matrix. And then also, instead of trying to outsmart the market, it seems like a simple axiom, but just, look, good companies that are led by talented managers that are good businesses over time are going to get there. So I'm not going to day trade. I'm not, I'm just gonna, I'm looking for, for value. And then just on life stuff, he just, you know, and also his ability to take in and then use information was incredibly

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  impressive. So I only spent the, you know, I'd met him before, but I only spent one afternoon with him. But it's, you know, pretty incredible. And one of the things that stuck out to me is we were in the middle of talking about Talco or investing or how we thought about it. And I said, you know, I'm trying to be smart about. And he stopped me and he said, Charlie Munger, his partner of many years, Charlie and I don't try to think of the smart thing to do. We try to think, what's the dumb thing we could do here? And I kind of laughed. And he said, no, I'm, I'm dead serious. We think about it from the standpoint of, what could we do in this situation that later we'd be like, that was a really dumb

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  thing to do? And I actually thought that was, it got in my head. And I still think a lot about that as I'm, as I'm dissecting problems.

• 1:21:11Lex Fridman?

  So there is a like, that's a kind of long-term thinking if you just avoid the dumb things, or if you if you simplify every, just focus on those simple steps. All it takes is just do that for a long period of time and you'll be successful.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Well, it certainly worked for him, all I can say.

• 1:21:32Lex Fridman?

  What about, what about you? You've been a great investor yourself. How do you know, when you judge people? So I, whenever I go to San Francisco, I was thinking of moving to San Francisco. That's why, that's why I decided to, after really giving it some thought, talking to people, decided to move to Austin. You know, everybody's dreaming big and they have big plans and it's actually, I don't envy the job of an investor of any kind, because everybody has big dreams and it's hard to know who exactly, what idea is going to materialize, what, what team is going to materialize into something great.

• 1:22:16Lex Fridman?

  How do you make those decisions about people, about ideas?

• 1:22:21Speaker 01

  Well, if I had any kind of a latticework on this, it start, absolutely starts with the people. And I think the reason for that is, your business plan is going to change, right? There's very few businesses I know of that say, we're going to make a widget in this location and 30 years later, we're successful and we just make a widget. And that's what it is. Things happen, right? And today, they happen with such velocity that you have to be able to make hard decisions based on imperfect information. And are you, how are you going to calculate those answers? How self-interested are you going to be?

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  What kind of ethics will you apply? What's your short-term versus long-term thinking? Are you able to give an honest assessment of a situation? Because the thing that you can count on is problems are going to happen, things you didn't anticipate are going to happen. How pliable are you, right? How, how much elasticity is there in, in your ability to, to be successful? And I think.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  It's important when you invest in something that you both see, you, you, you understand the roadmap ahead and agree to it. Right? Doesn't mean there won't be twists and turns, but you're not like, whoa, wait a minute. What did we do here? I, this isn't what was in the, the thing I signed up for.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  And then I, I think honesty and communication is a huge thing to me with, you know, I always tell people if bidirectionally, if there's something going on, start the conversation with, you know, Lex, we have a problem. Okay. Now I, we're, I'm sitting up, you have my full attention. We're going to talk about whatever it is. Bad news should travel faster than good news. And because it's going to happen, being in business with someone that is going to shoot you straight and sometimes say, I don't know.

• 1:24:34Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  I don't know what the answer is. I gotta go figure it out. That I can process a lot better than, look, I, I don't want you mad at me or disappointed, or I, I can't handle not having success. So we're just gonna kick the can. And I, I, I think especially in today's business environment, that's very, very dangerous.

• 1:24:54Lex Fridman?

  So that's a bad sign, not just because it's good to do, to communicate and be honest. But if, if they're not willing to do that, then it goes back to the intellectual honesty. They're probably not also able to be brutally honest with themselves when they look in the mirror about the, the direction of the company.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  But look, I, I wasn't there, so I don't know. But I think if you unpack many situations that turned out negatively, most of the people, whether you're faking lab results, right? You have a biotech company. We have, everybody's staring at Theranos these days. Do I think in a lot of cases, you're either the villain, like you started out saying, I'm, I'm gonna screw my shareholders over and I'm gonna be a liar. That, that, that isn't my experience. Most things are little incremental moves that you say, we're gonna get this right next week, but today we gotta make the presentation. So we're gonna just tweak things a little bit. That's a slippery slope.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  Right? And so that's why I think from a standpoint of people.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  You want to go into the foxhole with folks that, you know, understand, things are going to happen and I'm going to let you know about them and we're going to try to solve them together. And then just in terms of the idea, it's, I always ask like, okay, if this company executed the way, that's the other thing that always cracks me up about financials. Whenever somebody pitches you, inevitably they'll say, our projections are really, really conservative. I'm still waiting for somebody to come in and say, look, my projections are wildly optimistic. We'll never hit these numbers, but anyway.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  It's, you know, if this company did what it says and executes, and does it matter? Right? Does it move the needle enough? And, and what are the, what are the things that uniquely position this company to be successful? And you just have to be able to answer, I think, a number of those questions pretty crisply.

• 1:27:03Lex Fridman?

  But at the end of the day, it's still a big risk. So you're just trying to minimize, to try to minimize the risk.

• 1:27:11Lex Fridman?

  Let me jump to another topic. You're an incredible human being that you're involved with this. Your band, Ghost Hounds, is touring with the Rolling Stones. So before we talk about your band, let me ask about that. What's that like? Playing with the Rolling Stones?

• 1:27:32Speaker 01

  Surreal, just because they're my favorite band of all time.

• 1:27:39Speaker 01

  The, to me, the greatest rock and roll band. It's not even close of all time. And, you know, to, to share the same stage, to, to be on tour and to go out and get that energy from the crowd.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  You know, and every night and come off stage and later when they go on and you hear that iconic, ladies and gentlemen, the Rolling Stones. And then it's incredible. And, you know, what's, what's amazing to me about the band, next year will be their 60th anniversary, 60 years.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  And it's it's hard to be around anything for that long, but making music and packing stadiums. And what's amazing to me, they can play a two hour set and it's not just that, oh, that's a hit or you recognize it. It's like every song is an anthem, right?

• 1:28:31Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  So, uh, so it's, it's, it's been amazing. We got to play with them in 2019 and when they ask us to do this, uh, again. Um, just, it's just a absolute privilege.

• 1:28:44Lex Fridman?

  I asked you this offline, so I know you are a kind of rock star.

• 1:28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:49Lex Fridman?

  But just me, maybe I'm projecting, but do you get nervous? Such a large audience with the Rolling Stones. It feels like there would be a lot of pressure.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you definitely don't want to screw it up. I think, um, the band, our band. You know, is tight knit and all that stuff. And I think that you. The individual nervousness dissipates when you go out as a group and you're making music together. And you sort of, okay, we're all in this and you know, we're, we're, we're doing a thing, which is why even in sports. I always look at individual events like ice skating or you, you know, anything where it's just you out there alone.

• 1:29:33Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  And that's, that's different than being, uh, with it, with a team and nerve wracking. So. Um, I, I'm sure if it was me with an acoustic guitar, just going out, it would feel different, but absolutely you get. The right kind of butterflies, I would call it. Um, and just the energy of playing music and having it be this. Relationship and you, and look, I, I get it. I've been. To a ton of concerts where I'm like, look, can we just get to the band, please? But, uh, what's been great is just an amazing reception.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  And we have this, this, uh, guy named Trey Nation is the lead singer is just. Incredibly talented. I mean, he's just not only an amazing voice, but just has that charismatic thing.

• 1:30:21Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:30:21Lex Fridman?

  He's great.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  It's fun.

• 1:30:22Lex Fridman?

  What's it feel like to play in front of a huge audience? What's, as a guitarist, like, what's the feel? Are you lost in the music? Like, you almost don't feel the audience? Does it add extra energy? Does it extra anxiety? What does it make? What's it feel like?

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  You know, stadiums are interesting just because it's so big and cavernous. And because, you know, you want to protect your ears. So we use an in-ear system so that you are a little disconnected from the crowd. Because if you're playing that loud and you're standing in front of your amps without ear protection, that's bad.

• 1:31:00Lex Fridman?

  How are you monitoring the sound? The in-ear stuff, is that producing sound or is it strictly earplugs?

• 1:31:06Speaker 01

  No, it's producing the sound. So it's like putting AirPods in and listening to a song and you're playing to it. Right? It's just us playing, but it protects your ears. But the, the energy from the crowd, when they, when they get going and get into it, which knock on wood, so far has been amazing, there's nothing like it. I mean, there's, it's, it's just this bidirectional thing that happens. And I, music was kind of, music and sports were, you know, kind of my first loves.

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  And it's, yeah, it's, it's very difficult to describe, I think, accurately because it's like no other feeling.

• 1:31:54Lex Fridman?

  Musically, how is it different than playing in a garage with a band by yourself, practicing? Like, is, is it, do you, do you feel like you're creating something different when you're, when you're?

• 1:32:10Lex Fridman?

  When you got the guitar and the amp and just the sound dissipating out into and everybody's listening was is that?

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  It's uh, listen, the first time we did it and there's nobody in the stadium, first time I ever played in the stadium and I'm just like, I'm out there in front and just hitting different chords and playing different licks and I'm like, it's like I won a contest and I get to do this. But uh, you know, what's different about it and each venue is different. So if you, if you, um, we went on the road with ZZ Top a few years ago, which was incredible. Love Billy Gibbons. He's a Texan, um, incredible person and guitar player. But you know, when you're playing in like five to 7,000 seats, it's really, I mean, it's, you know, you're

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  right there with them, uh, with the crowd. And then when you play in an arena, um, for we, we toured with, uh, with Bob Seger on his last tour, which was cool. Played some shows with him. And again, the arena, like they're all kind of packed on top of you and it's super loud, which, which was cool. Um, meaning the crowd is stadiums is a completely different animal. And, uh, it's, it's just a completely different experience.

• 1:33:29Lex Fridman?

  Do you enjoy it versus like a smaller room?

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 1:33:34Lex Fridman?

  What's as a guitarist, as a musician, what's your favorite like room to play of the size?

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  Any room that'll have me. No, uh, I look, I think arenas are the perfect blend.

• 1:33:47Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  If I had to say, because it's loud and you know, 20, 30,000 people, but like right up.

• 1:33:54Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  Right up on you. A stadium, look, playing the stadiums with, uh, with the Rolling Stones is it just is going to go on the head marker somewhere is one of the more, you know, I say this and I really mean it. My, my life is like a punked episode. It just hasn't, no one's burst in yet.

• 1:34:12Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  But, um, yeah, it's, it's as cool as you think it is.

• 1:34:17Lex Fridman?

  So 60 years, how do you think Mick Jagger's still got it? Well, how do you?

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:34:22Lex Fridman?

  How do you explain it?

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  I, I gotta tell you something. I mean, the, the funny thing is whatever, wherever there is excellence, people want to know, how'd you do it?

• 1:34:32Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Speaker 01

  Right now, how, what's the secret? Not only is Mick Jagger, and I think the songs that Keith Richards and Mick Jagger wrote together, if you go back and listen to the lyrics, it's just incredibly poignant. And I'm just a huge Stones fan, so, but he works out like a maniac, right? And it's, it's that 10,000 hours thing, and it's that, hey, maybe I don't feel my best today, but I'm gonna get up and do my routine and work out so that, you know, at his age, which, you know, I mean, you can look at people at different ages chronologically that

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  are, you know, maybe we're both at this age, but I'm a lot older than you are, vice versa. And he just, I think it's the combination of raw talent and the ability, and he's, he's very smart, right? Like, he's, understands how to have interaction with a crowd and hold them in the palm of his hand and be an entertainer. But then on top of that, the reason he can at this age run around stadiums and be just as energetic is he puts the work in. And that's one thing, step, that I think a lot of people miss sometimes, where they want that magic trick, they wanna know what's the shortcut. Most of the time, the answer is, there's no shortcut.

• 1:35:57Lex Fridman?

  Yeah. You have to work hard on the way there and work hard to stay on top.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:36:03Lex Fridman?

  And, and sometimes it's not even like work hard, it's just like, it's like be a professional, which that involves, like, in his case, at his age, with the amount of stuff you have to do on stage, and the way he does it.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  For two hours.

• 1:36:18Lex Fridman?

  You have, this is a professional athlete, a professional athlete that has to do things that are probably designed for 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds, has to do it at an older age, which means like, what do you have to do? Well, he has to probably, he probably has like a whole physical routine he has to do.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  Diet the whole thing. And it's hard, look, if you wanna do great things, you probably have to do hard things to get there.

• 1:36:45Lex Fridman?

  I'm not gonna make you pick, just stick on the Stones for one more minute. But what are some great Rolling Stones songs that were impactful to you? Lyrically, musically, maybe something you like playing, like air guitar? I don't know.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  Probably my favorites, I love Sympathy for the Devil. It's a very, I don't know, sort of Faustian. I love the lyrics. I love the, how the, almost a voodoo beat just kind of builds throughout the song. That's, that's always been one of my favorites.

• 1:37:24Lex Fridman?

  So in that song, he never mentions devil, does he? No, wait, sorry.

• 1:37:30Lex Fridman?

  Like, you know my name?

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:32Lex Fridman?

  There's, there's like a flirtation going on in the lyrics. It's kind of interesting.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's, here's all the trouble I've caused along the way with you humans. And I, I just think it's really, really great.

• 1:37:43Lex Fridman?

  And musically builds really nicely.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:45Lex Fridman?

  It's, and it's like both fun and dark. It's, it's cool. It's a

• 1:37:53Lex Fridman?

  it's, it's, there's a playful nature to it. It's, that's very Stones. Only they can pull it off because it's like playful, but it's also like dark and cool.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  Dangerous.

• 1:38:03Lex Fridman?

  Dangerous, dangerous.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and Gimme Shelter.

• 1:38:06Lex Fridman?

  Gimme Shelter.

• 1:38:06Speaker 01

  Is just, you know, and to this day, when I listen to the studio version and Mary Clayton just comes on and sings that epic, iconic part. And there's a documentary that was done about backup singers. Phenomenal. And it tells the story of that moment in that song with Mary Clayton. And it's just

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  her voice and, and the way it unfolded, they got her out of bed at like 10 o'clock at night in LA. And she's like, the Rolling Stones? And went in and just killed it. And I can't sing at all. I'm by ordinance not allowed around a microphone. So I'm always in awe when someone can sing like that. But you know, tho- those are, those are some of my, uh, my favorite Rolling Stones songs and Paint It Black's awesome. I mean, I could go on.

• 1:39:07Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, Paint It Black is great. Again, a song that builds badass. I mean, it defines a whole generation. What made you pick up a guitar? What made you fall in love with the guitar?

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  It's just the coolest instrument, right? I mean, when you watched back then, you know, and, and I was kind of an old soul. I, I was listening at a fairly young age to Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Lightning Hopkins, B B King, and just the soulfulness.

• 1:39:39Lex Fridman?

  Thrill is gone.

• 1:39:40Speaker 01

  Oh my God. I mean, B B plays five notes and just kills it. And the emotion that, that it evokes. So I, I just was just in awe of the instrument. And, uh, you know, I, I also, there's, there's always somebody around who's a musician that just picks the instrument up and can play. Right? And they're just so talented at it and they can just listen to a record and play it. That was never me. I, I, I never took formal lessons. I had to grind, you know, to just make it sound like I wanted it, uh, to sound.

• 1:40:18Lex Fridman?

  So both technically and ear, everything was hard work.

• 1:40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I could hear it. And, and, and what they call, you know, you're, you play. So my right hand, the ri- you know, the rhythm side of it is, uh, that's probably if I have anything, my, my strength. But there's something pretty amazing that happens when you get together with other people and play a song. In that moment where it hits the pocket. And you all kind of know it and it just, it's just such a cool feeling. And it was interesting growing, growing up because I was, again, I always had eclectic interests. So I loved math and physics and science. So I had those friends and I was an athlete and played football and baseball and basketball.

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  So I had my jock friends, uh, and then I had my music friends and it, so it was, it was just kind of that. And, um, so when I was still living in Los Angeles and had, uh, legendary, I just missed playing. And so I, I put this band together and called it the Ghost Hounds because, again, huge Robert Johnson fan and that legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads in exchange for his musical talent.

• 1:41:41Lex Fridman?

  You guys have that in one of the videos?

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:43Lex Fridman?

  Such a cool video.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I always, I just thought like, that's, that's such cool lore. Um, I just love the blues. So Robert Johnson would often would, would talk about hellhounds on his trail. And so I always just thought, huh, what about ghost hounds? So that's, I wish it were a more clever, deeper story, but that, that's about it for the name.

• 1:42:08Lex Fridman?

  That's pretty deep. Robert Johnson's incredible. But you also talk about this, that you, you connect to the storytelling of blues. So what makes a good story in a song? Like what, what aspect of storytelling connects with you in songs? So I'm a big lyrics guy too. I love, um, like deep lyric people like Tom Waits and, uh, like people that are like, you know, Leonard Cohen, like that are even Bob Dylan, that are like,

• 1:42:35Lex Fridman?

  obviously, yes, poetry. And then there's some people like the Rolling Stones there. It's like seemingly simpler, but it's still so much more to it. It's like less is often more. It still tells a strong story.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there's, there's certain people and Jagger and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are in this boat. Billy Gibbons is in this boat. They just say things in a certain way.

• 1:42:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  That are just cool, right? It's just, uh, and so, you know, I, I write our music and lyrics, um,

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  I have to tell a story. I have to know the characters in the song. I'm not good at just writing some rhymes and having it match up to the right key and the right music. I have to understand, like, that's just me. And so I think that, look, if you have three or four minutes to tell a story, you have to be more efficient with your use of language. And you have to understand what you're building to, if anything, and evoke emotion. And hopefully, for those three minutes, get the listener to understand not only the point of the song, but where you're coming from, and to make you feel a certain way. There's

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  a song that, you know, the audiences seem to like a lot on the new album called Good Old Days. And I wrote that because, especially during COVID and reflecting on what normalcy looks like and what happens when you're cut off, I just was kind of taken with this idea of that when you sit around and reminisce with friends, oftentimes, it's not just like some big event happened. It's remember that summer, we'd go up to the lake all the time, and it's who you were with. And at the time, it probably seemed pretty pedestrian, right? It just seemed like kind of a normal day. But it was the company you were keeping. It

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  was the time in your life. It was whatever it was. And I just kind of struck me that right now, we're doing stuff that you're going to reminisce about later that seems kind of ordinary to be like, man, that was such a great time. So the idea is be in the moment and all that stuff. But these are the good old days. And enjoy it and soak it in and, you know, kind of be present for it.

• 1:45:03Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's a great perspective to take on the present because we are in the thing that we'll remember. We're living through the thing we'll remember. And sometimes the things we'll remember is the simple stuff, the little stuff.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:17Lex Fridman?

  Outside of Keith Richards, who is the greatest? Ridiculous question, but just indulge me. Who is the greatest blues guitarist of all time, rock guitarist of all time?

• 1:45:30Speaker 01

  Well, you got a little bit of a hybrid with Jimi Hendrix, right? Because he played the blues and he played rock and roll. So I think most guitarists would say Jimi Hendrix is pretty ridiculous.

• 1:45:42Lex Fridman?

  That probably for me, I'm a huge, huge, huge Hendrix fan.

• 1:45:45Speaker 01

  Well, because he can't, you can't, I mean, even to this day, I don't care technology, pedals, whatever. He just somehow fused with the instrument.

• 1:45:57Speaker 01

  I can't be sitting here in Austin, Texas without mentioning one of the great guitar players of all time and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

• 1:46:04Lex Fridman?

  See, that's how I know you're like a rock star. You're sucking up to the audience.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  Well, no, you, you, you have listeners all over the place. But Stevie Ray Vaughan is another one of those.

• 1:46:15Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, he's incredible.

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  Just blows me away. And then with the older guys, Bebe King, Hubert Sumlin, Clapton.

• 1:46:25Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  Clapton's, I saw him on his last tour and just walked out with, on my, just like unbelievable how he still sounds. So.

• 1:46:39Lex Fridman?

  And both electric and acoustic.

• 1:46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:41Lex Fridman?

  Just so much range.

• 1:46:43Speaker 01

  Absolute master.

• 1:46:45Lex Fridman?

  And the greatest storyteller, you mentioned Bob Ziegler. That's, that's, that's an interesting one. He's, he doesn't, he almost doesn't get enough credit, I feel like, for how great he is. Obviously, he's super famous, but.

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  No, he's, and his voice, I also, I had the privilege of getting friendly with John Fogerty.

• 1:47:06Speaker 01

  You know, John Fogerty and CCR fame, and he's another one that's just, the way he phrases things and you just look at the catalog of stuff he wrote. Amazing talent. I read Bruce Springsteen's book and was, I'm, I'm a fan, but after reading the book, it was really, you go back and listen to his lyrics and way he pours himself out is, is, is pretty incredible.

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  And then again, with the old blues guys. I just think the emotion they could get out of playing like the staying on the one, right? Just playing the same rhythm, John Lee Hooker. You listen to Manish Boy by by Muddy Waters and it's just, there's something so, it just draws me in every time and the emotion they're able to get out of things. And I'm also a huge Chuck Berry fan. I just think that sound is, I love it.

• 1:48:13Lex Fridman?

  Do you know how to play Johnny Be Good?

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:48:18Lex Fridman?

  That's good.

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  Maybe, you know, one of the great moments, at least of my childhood, was Back to the Future and watching Michael J. Fox plug in and then at the end play at the dance to save his parents with Johnny Be Good. Pretty awesome.

• 1:48:36Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, the guitar is so much more than a musical instrument. It feels like, it's like the, in the 20th century, it's like the car. Like it defines so much of Hollywood, so much of a generation of what it means to be, I don't know, what it means to be a man, what it means to be a human in America. It's fascinating.

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  Emblematic to me of a certain type of music.

• 1:49:01Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  And that, that's, I made a documentary years ago called It Might Get Loud.

• 1:49:06Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:06Speaker 01

  With Jimmy Page, The Edge.

• 1:49:08Lex Fridman?

  Highly recommend that everybody watch that documentary. It's incredible celebration of the guitar. Yeah, it says Jimmy Page, Jack White from White Stripes.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  The Edge.

• 1:49:18Lex Fridman?

  And The Edge from U2. Okay, all right. Well, now you have to tell the story of that one. Cause how the heck did that all come together? Cause it's so fascinating. Such different musicians all coming together, talking about their story, talking about how they approached music and also playing together a little bit in this casual kind of setting.

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Well, look, I, one day I came downstairs and I, the Rolling Stone magazine is sitting there and it was the 50th, was the 50 top guitarists of all time, their list. And then I had some other financial report with video games and the top video game at the time was Guitar Hero, right? And then there was a third thing, I can't recall it, but I just, and I said to myself, what is it about the guitar? That is so central to the rock and roll, whatever you want to call it, like, why is that the symbol? And I said to myself, I want to ask Jimmy Page why he picked up the guitar, because he's Jimmy Page, right?

• 1:50:20Speaker 01

  And so I called a friend of mine, Davis Guggenheim, who had directed Inconvenient Truth, and I think still is, but at the time was the biggest documenter ever. And I called Davis and I said, look, I have this idea. I want to make this movie about the guitar, about different eras and styles and whatever, but I've never made a documentary. I don't, I don't know how to do that. So I was just looking for advice. And thankfully, because he's one of the best documentarians ever, Davis is like, you know what? I can't get this out of my head. I'll direct it, which was amazing. And we, we wrote three names down that represented different eras and different styles.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  Rarely do you get, you know, you go three for three, but it was, it was those three guys. And it was just, it was just such an incredible experience to sit there and get to know Jimmy Page, you know? I mean, it was like, and he was, he was like Gandalf, man. He was like, always Jimmy Page.

• 1:51:24Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:51:26Lex Fridman?

  That was so cool to see him. Gandalf was, there's like a wisdom, there's a calmness to him compared to like the restlessness of Jack White, like the, I mean, that, that combination was just fascinating.

• 1:51:41Speaker 01

  It was one of the coolest experiences ever. And one of the things, there was a moment where Jimmy, he was going through his, his guitar case, and he had the double neck from Stairway to Heaven, and he handed it to me and I was like, mhm. I mean, it's like somebody handing you Excalibur or something.

• 1:51:59Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  Amazing experience. And The Edge, one of the kindest human beings you'll ever meet in your life. Just an amazing person. And I think you hit it right on the head with Jack is he's got that, that energy, you know, and constantly pushing himself. But it's hard to believe it's been, I think, 10 or 11 or maybe even 12 years since it came out, but.

• 1:52:22Lex Fridman?

  After watching it, I realized like, how much it was needed. And I was almost surprised it didn't already exist. It was like, yeah, the guitar wasn't quite celebrated, like explicitly. We almost didn't acknowledge it. How important it was culturally. It's kind of amazing. And the way it closed from the song, The.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  The Weight.

• 1:52:45Lex Fridman?

  It was, it's called The Weight, yeah, by the band.

• 1:52:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:48Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  That's because they didn't want to go home.

• 1:52:50Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:51Speaker 01

  We were, we were shooting on a Warner Brothers Soundstage for three days when we called it the Summit where the three of them came together.

• 1:52:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  And the two things I'll never forget is when Jimmy starts to play the riff from Whole Lot of Love.

• 1:53:05Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  Edge and Jack ceased to be rock, you know, rock gods or whatever, and had the same 15-year-old kid feeling that I did. You could see in their face. And then at the end, they're like, hey, can we play? We just want to, we don't want to go. Can we just play something acoustically?

• 1:53:23Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:24Speaker 01

  So we printed out the lyrics. That's what they wanted to play. And they just sat there and sat on those couches and just.

• 1:53:31Lex Fridman?

  Such a good way to end.

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Incredible.

• 1:53:33Lex Fridman?

  What's your guitar rig setup like? You also, you have a few guitars. First of all, let's just put it on the line. So what's better, Les Paul or Strat?

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  Well, I'm not going to get into what's, what's better because I'm sure that'll start a flood of whatever. For me.

• 1:53:52Lex Fridman?

  I'm going to say it's strat.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:53:54Lex Fridman?

  Like a strat, I'm just going to put out there.

• 1:53:55Speaker 01

  I, my main instrument is, is a Les Paul.

• 1:53:59Lex Fridman?

  But I, okay, okay. Let me just put it on the table. I'm speaking as somebody who literally, I, I, I don't think I've ever actually strummed a chord on a Les Paul. So I've been, I'm maybe.

• 1:54:08Speaker 01

  So you're uninitiated.

• 1:54:09Lex Fridman?

  Exactly. So I don't, I, I don't speak from experience, but I, I, it's probably because of Hendrix is so deeply influenced by Hendrix that.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:54:17Lex Fridman?

  I just kind of followed in his footsteps and clapped in and so on.

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  The, the amazing thing to me is if you look back at Leo Fender and what the Gibson Guitar Company and Les Paul did in the 50s. Those are still the shapes and the perfect thing today, right? The strat and the Telecaster.

• 1:54:35Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, they lost.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  The Les Paul. And it's, they got it right way back, way back then. So, um, I have, uh, my main guitar, you gotta name your guitar. So my main guitar is named Hazel and it's a 59 Les Paul. And there's something magical in that year, like a Stradivarius. And they're just, there's something different about them. Um, so I, I play that and then I play it through.

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  Sort of my main rig is either a 59 Fender, uh, twin, uh, or a 65, um, Marshall. And then the, when we're on the road now, because when you use older vintage stuff, you just got to be super careful with the tubes and everything. It has to be reliable. So very nicely, the guys from Two Rock sent me some of their amps and they're really, because I don't use any new stuff. But the Two Rock stuff is, is pretty great. So that's actually what I'm.

• 1:55:32Lex Fridman?

  Oh, it gets close, like it's a close to the sound that you like with the Marshall.

• 1:55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's new and reliable. So that's what I'm using on the road right now.

• 1:55:40Lex Fridman?

  Do people use like emulation? Do they use software or is it still?

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  They do. I, I personally don't. I, I go, you know, I don't have many pedals. I use a Klon, an old, you know, vintage Klon, straight into the amp and.

• 1:55:52Lex Fridman?

  Just go as old school as possible.

• 1:55:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:55Lex Fridman?

  Is there other cool guitars you have that, uh, kind of stand out?

• 1:55:59Speaker 01

  I have a bunch of what they call Black Guard Telecasters from the 50s, which are pretty great.

• 1:56:06Lex Fridman?

  What are those? Black Guard Telecasters?

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so they just, you know, it's in the 50s.

• 1:56:10Lex Fridman?

  Oh, they actually legit have a Black Guard?

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

  Black Guard.

• 1:56:13Lex Fridman?

  Got it.

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  Uh, but they're incredible, so.

• 1:56:15Lex Fridman?

  What's the color of the Telecaster itself?

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  Most of them are yellow with black and then they got into different configurations, but there's something, I have a 51 Telecaster that I, I play in Open G and on songs with Open G that just, again, there's something, you know, and I'll take all the help I can get in terms of, you know, making it sound great. So I, I'll try to find the magic ones.

• 1:56:40Lex Fridman?

  What's your writing process like? For the music and the lyrics? Is there, do you have to go to the, uh, the mountains? Is there whiskey involved? What, what do you have to do? Or do you just write a little bit whenever you have a moment of free time?

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  I'm a boring guy because I, I don't drink. I don't, I just, uh, I, I figure I can screw things up plenty on my own without adding anything.

• 1:57:04Lex Fridman?

  It's a good call.

• 1:57:04Speaker 01

  Um, but, uh, you know, for me, it either starts with, uh, with a riff, just some, something that I think is an interesting, you know, riff or tone that I, I can kind of sink my teeth into a little bit. And then a lot of times I'll write a title and love a title and then start to.

• 1:57:25Lex Fridman?

  Oh, cool. So the title is almost like an idea?

• 1:57:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, like this is where I want to be. And, and then start kind of writing it out. And again, I, I just have to know, am I writing from a character's point of view? Am I writing about someone or something? You know, is like the narrator? And, you know, what is this person? Are they happy? Are they sad? Are they? Where are they in life? I, I, I don't know if all that, like, great writers I'm sure would say, why don't you just write? You don't need all that. Uh, but that's, for me, that's my process.

• 1:58:02Lex Fridman?

  Well, I'm not so sure about that. And I bet you quite a lot of writers have create a world in their mind before they even put the simplest of words down. So yeah, there's, there's, there's quite a lot to that.

• 1:58:19Lex Fridman?

  What's your favorite song to play?

• 1:58:22Lex Fridman?

  Is there some favorites, favorite ones you go to? Both play and kind of, I'm sure you love singing.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no.

• 1:58:29Lex Fridman?

  No, you don't.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  I'm not, I'm neither talented nor do I have the desire. And I think, you know, if you come see the show, you won't see a microphone anywhere near me.

• 1:58:41Lex Fridman?

  But do you, I mean, do you hear, like, when you're thinking about lyrics, do you hear the idea of the words?

• 1:58:46Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. And especially what's great, you know, with Trey is I write for his voice. And then we have these amazing backup singers that are just, and I can hear all of it. I just can't do it.

• 1:59:02Speaker 01

  And so I'd say to, of our stuff, there's a song called Half My Fault that I play in open G. That just, I love playing the song. I love that energy. And then there's, we have a new blues album coming out. And there's a song called Baby, We're Through. And it just stays on the one. And for non musicians, that means, like in a lot of rock and roll and blues, it's what's called a one, four, five progression from your, your kind of root note. And you would hear, if you're a non musician, if you heard it, you'd be like, oh yeah, that's a lot of songs. And this song just stays on the same groove, like Look Range or Shake Your Hips or any of those songs.

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  And it's just got this unbelievable energy and it's fun to play. But I have to keep the same rhythmic thing going for the whole song.

• 1:59:57Lex Fridman?

  With that simplicity, I mean, the, the personality of the song can really shine. I mean, Trey's, I mean, that guy, really cool. He just comes through. I mean, I guess you need that from a lead singer. It's just like, it's just.

• 2:00:11Speaker 01

  You gotta have that. And my other guitar player, Johnny Bob, is, he's a phenomenal. I mean, like a legitimate guitar slinger.

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  You know, we probably split the leads 70, 30. And he is just, you know, there's times, sometimes I look over at him and I'm like, I'm being a fan right now. Cause what you just laid down is pretty good.

• 2:00:37Lex Fridman?

  From a lead perspective, what's the most fun thing to play? What do you, what kind of stuff do you, do you like slow? Do you like, I mean, if you feel like thrill is gone. There's, uh, so if you look at B B King, sometimes one note just bending the shit out of that.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:50Lex Fridman?

  What do you call that vibrato?

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. If I'm gonna play the lead, it's a certain kind of feel. Slow blues is probably my favorite to play. Or something that's got a little more of that Chuck Berry drive where you can be rhythmic in the lead.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  You know, I can't, the shredding thing that those guys do is that's not.

• 2:01:10Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:11Speaker 01

  My.

• 2:01:12Lex Fridman?

  I was actually always able to do that really well. Like you mentioned people that pick up fat, like maybe it's the classical piano training. I could, I could play super fast and guitar, super technical. But to me, the hardest thing and the, my favorite thing is, is just, um, has probably less to do with the guitar. More living on life that's worth playing a guitar for. It's like a certain kind of emotion that you can put into the notes. And that has to do with bending notes. Well, like bending notes is a whole other art form of, um.

• 2:01:47Lex Fridman?

  I worked surprisingly a long time on Comfortably Numb.

• 2:01:53Lex Fridman?

  And there's the, so, so David Gilmour is, there's a lot of bending and they're simple. They're, they, they, they sound simple. But they're, the, the, the dynamics of them to express like a buildup and the way it's held. And there's often a vibrato at the top for, for a bit, just that, um. The, the, it's almost like a sigh and a sigh of relief and the buildup. I mean, it's just the, the, that's an art form for him. That's hard to get right. It's not just playing a note, playing a note, playing a note. It's, it's in that like dynamic movement of a note that so much can happen. That's where the blues is, happens to.

• 2:02:32Speaker 01

  It's, look, I'm a huge Freddie King fan too, right? Who, and you listen to these guys and they're.

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  You sit there and they're like, man, you're, you're playing in a small range on the neck.

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  But in, you know, it's like, I know the notes you're playing and I'm playing them too, but not like that, right? I mean, it's in Gilmore is certainly one of those guys. It's incredible guitar player.

• 2:03:00Lex Fridman?

  And yet another chapter of an amazing life. You love football. Like you meant, you, you play football?

• 2:03:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:03:07Lex Fridman?

  What positions you play?

• 2:03:08Speaker 01

  Wide receiver.

• 2:03:09Lex Fridman?

  Wide receiver. Awesome. So, um, maybe we can talk a little bit about your love of football and the fact that you are part owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

• 2:03:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:25Lex Fridman?

  So, I mean, where do we start? Do we start at the beginning? Let's start at the end. Why the Steelers? What attracts you to the, uh, first of all, I think, not to be controversial, but one of the best uniforms in football in terms of just like black and gold, just.

• 2:03:43Speaker 01

  Decal only on one side.

• 2:03:45Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, it's great.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, the helmet. Look, I've bled black and gold since I was a little boy. Uh, I grew up in upstate New York and, uh, the first football game I ever saw was the Steelers in the Super Bowl as a really little kid. And it just, I mean, Jack Lambert and Joe Green and Franco Harris and those guys were like, came down from Olympia, Mount Olympus or something. And I just was enamored with the team. And because we only had three channels, the only time I'd get to see him is occasionally when they were the game of the week or something. Um, and I just loved, to me, what they stood for, the toughness.

• 2:04:27Speaker 01

  And they played football, you know, the, the way that I thought, I thought was, was great. I was a huge Jack Lambert fan, uh, our, our Hall of Fame linebacker who just intimidated everybody.

• 2:04:40Lex Fridman?

  So that was like the, that was the decade of the, the steel curtain.

• 2:04:46Lex Fridman?

  I mean arguably one of the great sort of defensive of in in the football history and also one of the greatest football teams period of in football history.

• 2:04:56Speaker 01

  I've been a lifelong fan and was very fortunate to meet Mr. Rooney. The Rooney family started the team in 1933, got to know him and just was asked to be part of the ownership group. I think it was the end of 2007. First year as part of the group in 2008, we won the Super Bowl and it was like beyond surreal and just beyond surreal. And you know, it's, it's, it's amazing to be able to do. I mean, the Rooney family is one of those most revered in sports for the way they they conduct themselves. Mr.

• 2:05:41Speaker 01

  Rooney passed away, I think five years ago now and we lost him, but was a champion, helped build the league. I mean, put the league as we know it together. More importantly, was a civil rights champion who created what we now call the Rooney Rule to make sure that we're being fair about giving minority coaches a chance to get hired and just, just is one of the most kind and amazing human beings I ever, I ever met.

• 2:06:12Lex Fridman?

  It's incredible what sport does, like to bring out the best in people, to give people hope, to inspire people. There is something about football that has all the elements of a great sport. It's the teamwork, it's the sort of the combat aspect of it. It's like, it's the purity of it. It's of like strength and power and speed and all the elements of like last minute, close calls required to, to win the game. And where referee decisions, of course, that's essential for a sport can screw up the

• 2:06:54Lex Fridman?

  whole thing. Just got all of it together. I think just, I don't know, it gives the drama and the triumphs are just beautiful. Like some of my favorite memories, I don't know if it's an accident or this is common with people, is just with friends watching football.

• 2:07:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:12Lex Fridman?

  And connecting over that.

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's, look, it's an incredible game because there's nowhere to hide, right? You're out there on the field. It, you know, it's, it's a great game that requires not only all those attributes that you said, but it's, it's incredibly complex game. So if you don't know what you're looking at and you don't understand how complex defenses are trying to disguise what they're doing, offenses are trying to overcome that and, and you can set up one play the entire, you know, the entire game, but a team that plays well together, right, knows their plays inside and out, knows their assignments inside and

• 2:07:54Speaker 01

  out, can overcome and beat a more physically gifted team because of that, you know, work, that, that aspect of working together. One of the things that I always loved about sports is just, you're out there, there's a set of rules and there's a scoreboard. So at the end of that game, it says, and you can make excuses about the refs or this happened or that happened, but, you know, at the end of the day, did you go out and compete? And when you went out and were a competitor, how did it work out? Right? And, and the simplicity of that and the purity of that is something that I always have been drawn to.

• 2:08:39Lex Fridman?

  What about the business of sort of owning a team or putting together a team or trying to like build up a team that's going to be a great team? Like, what are some interesting aspects that people might not realize that you can carry over from all the other experience you have in business?

• 2:08:57Speaker 01

  I think the hardest thing about professional sports right now it's individuals getting paid money to to play a sport which is different than certainly different than amateur and you know the decisions that are hard is when you get to know somebody who's a player on the team and either they're at the end of their career or you need to go in a different direction and that person who's done everything that you've asked you know whatever the coaches have asked of that person and you get close to them and then when they when they have to be traded released or whatever happens it's you know that's sad and being able to

• 2:09:40Speaker 01

  stand back and in some ways be dispassionate and not be a fan right there's a I'm on the baseball hall of fame board and one of the the guys that's on the board of me is Jerry Reinsdorf and I think it was Jerry who said you know if you act like a fan you'll be sitting with him which I thought was kind of funny.

• 2:10:02Lex Fridman?

  Well, I gotta push back on that a little bit as a by way of a fan asking a dumb question.

• 2:10:12Lex Fridman?

  Okay, let me just give some examples. It's very common in sport. It's funny you said this example of like certain great players going to another team right at the end of their career.

• 2:10:25Lex Fridman?

  And it always makes me sad. It almost makes me want to wish that you kind of retired right there.

• 2:10:32Lex Fridman?

  From a perspective of just like do you ever as a as an owner but just in that space think about like the Steelers in the full arc of human history. So not like as a business.

• 2:10:48Speaker 01

  Okay, the good news is I don't have to think about it as a business. I'm a minority owner, so I can think about it almost as a fan, but I'm sorry, go ahead.

• 2:10:58Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, that's what I mean. I suppose this is a dumb question to think of.

• 2:11:05Lex Fridman?

  Like of a business in that way, not just investment, but like, like legacy of like, what footprint would you leave on this world, on this history?

• 2:11:17Speaker 01

  That is one thing that I can say unequivocally, and I only have the experience that I have. But one of the things that I'm so proud of about the way the Steelers conduct themselves is, and that's the Rooney family, that's the legacy of the Rooney family, is asking constantly about what's right for the league, what's right for the players, you know, what, what, what's the right thing to do here? And that's something that I would hear Mr. Rooney say all the time. So I think that legacy is important because ultimately the team belongs to that city, right? Belongs to those fans and, you know, the owners are the custodians of that.

• 2:11:59Speaker 01

  So I think, and when you realize what sports teams mean to the fans, the memories that creates, the bonds that it creates, it's a, you know, it's a responsibility.

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  And I, I, I think that you do have to think beyond the, you know, certainly not just dollars and cents, but just, sports is a very big deal in our society and, and it has to be, I think, held to a standard that's not just, oh, were we profitable this year? Or what, that's, there are other businesses for that. It is certainly a business. I don't mean to romanticize to the, the point that it's not. But it, to me, it's, it's more than that, or at least my experience has been that it's more than that.

• 2:12:49Lex Fridman?

  It's a source of meaning for millions of people, like, and you see that most like during COVID, for example. When there's so much desperation, so many people losing their jobs, so many people having to deal with the uncertainty of what the future holds.

• 2:13:03Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:13:03Lex Fridman?

  There's something about sports that just unites us, that, again, the tragedy and the triumphs of sport, of uniting, of gathering together with your friends, with family, shared experience of over like this, yeah, over just team, over rooting for your team, for your city.

• 2:13:23Speaker 01

  And the access, you know, again, as I alluded to, we didn't have anything when I was growing up, but I would pour through the box scores. I was a huge Yankee fan and Steeler fan, and feeling some ownership of that, right, that I could read the box score and relive what they did and occasionally see them on TV and feel like I was part of that celebration when they won and everything. It's a very powerful thing.

• 2:13:52Lex Fridman?

  You've been exceptionally successful in a bunch of avenues and a bunch of efforts. What advice would you give to a young person today, a high school student, a college undergraduate that's thinking about career, maybe advice not about just career, but about how to live a life they can be proud of?

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  You know, we talked earlier about intellectual honesty, and to me, that's the first step of just saying, to the best of your ability, who am I and what's important to me and what do I want to do and accomplish? If you can start with that and develop some sort of rules-based, philosophical, here's what I'll do, what I won't do. And that way, you can be flexible and pliable, and you're going to need to be, but if you still have a compass that tells you... Hey, at least I know this is the path I'm gonna take. I think that's very important.

• 2:14:54Lex Fridman?

  The rules you're referring to, the principles, that's kind of like underlying integrity. So knowing what lines you don't cross on this path.

• 2:15:03Speaker 01

  It's exactly right, because if you have those absolutes, there are many decisions that come into focus very quickly, right? Because, hey, that's not for me. Or, hey, I'm willing to do whatever it takes to do X, Y, and Z.

• 2:15:18Lex Fridman?

  And it has to do with the thing you were talking about. It's kind of interesting, you mentioned earlier in the conversation about slippery slope, and that's how often it happens. Like how the slipping into unethical behavior happens. It's a slippery slope of little adjustments. You put stuff off. And that, I found that to be, I've been fortunate to not have to encounter these moments very much in my life, but I still encounter them. That's what integrity, I think, looks like is in, as the slippery slope is happening, those little things is without drama, without making a show of it,

• 2:16:00Lex Fridman?

  making a decision that stands behind your principles and just walking away.

• 2:16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and besides the big ideas, I'm gonna change the world. I'm gonna innovate. I'm gonna do all those other things. I also start, if I'm giving any advice, which, you know, we can debate whether or not, you know, I should be giving advice. But just in terms of, well, let me start with this. Are you a good friend? Can you be counted on? Do you do what you say you're going to do?

• 2:16:29Lex Fridman?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:30Speaker 01

  Right? Are you accountable to what you sign up for? And do you hold others accountable? Right? What does all that look like? And then I think it's being as intellectually curious and well-read as you can be. We live in a world that is designed to distract you. Right? And being able to sit with your thoughts or go on a walk and think deeply about something and not just surface area. You text me, I text you back, and we decide the fate of the world based on a couple of text messages or something.

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  You don't want to lose touch, I think, with being well read and understanding and standing on great thinkers' shoulders and learning from, uh, from, from those works. And then I also think that, you know, there's, there's resiliency and then there's grit. And I, I heard someone say one time that those, those are slightly different. And, you know, I, I'm also, I know that there are all kinds of challenges in life, right? That, that are tragic, that are unfair. There's no question that's the world we live in. But for me personally, to try as much as possible not to be in the victim mindset,

• 2:17:51Speaker 01

  because unfair things are gonna happen. And, you know, we all want to live in an idealistic, just world. That, that should be what we aspire to. I'm, I haven't seen that yet. I haven't experienced that yet, but yet you still have to function uh, in, in that world. So, you know, I, I think that that resiliency thing is very important. And then putting yourself out there, right? Because if you play scared and you're always afraid to fail, you know, this is, this is probably a dumb way to get to the end of the podcast, but

• 2:18:30Speaker 01

  there are times, especially I'm out west, uh, I love the big sky out in, you know, Montana, Idaho, places like that. Yeah. And when you look up at night, it, it's almost like I've never seen anything like this before. Yeah. Cause there's no, uh, light pollution, so to speak. And sometimes when I look up, the most daunting problems that I'm experiencing, I'm like, those, those things have been there for a billion years or whatever, and I'll be gone and it doesn't. You know, the most famous person on earth 200 years ago. Eh, so it, you know, it's pretty fleeting. And so make sure you, you have a good journey and especially coming out of COVID.

• 2:19:15Speaker 01

  I think telling people that you care about, that you care about them and maintaining and cultivating your friendships and relationships and they're not just transactional. Right. And, and making sure that someday when you're laying there, you can say, yeah, I was a good family member. I was a good, a good friend. I was someone that could be counted on. I think all those things go into the mix of, you know, however you want to take the journey.

• 2:19:42Lex Fridman?

  So when you look up to the stars, do you think about that quickly approaching end of yours? Do you think about your own mortality? Do you think about your death? Are you afraid of your death?

• 2:19:52Speaker 01

  I'm a huge fan of Stoicism, right? I read a lot, lot of Stoicism.

• 2:19:58Speaker 01

  I think Ryan Holiday has done a great job of bringing some of that back into the forefront. It's just, uh,

• 2:20:06Speaker 01

  really thought provoking to me and rings, a lot of it rings, just hits me and says, I think that's right. And that momento, memento mori thing, which is, hey, we're all going to die. So you should contemplate it. There's a finality to this thing. And so I think if you can rightly frame that between fretting about it every day and being afraid and being so laissez faire that you think, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna live forever. It'll influence some of the decisions you make. It will influence the way you attack things.

• 2:20:45Speaker 01

  And hopefully the, the way that you live your life. So yes, I, I, I wouldn't say I obsess over it and I wouldn't say it's omnipresent.

• 2:20:56Speaker 01

  But because I read a lot of Stoicism and just, I think it's, it's right to pause and say, who knows, right? There's gonna be an expiration date. And if it happened tomorrow, am I, have I done the things I wanted to do? And am I the person I wanted to be? And I think it's important along the way to check those things.

• 2:21:18Lex Fridman?

  Yeah, I try to make sure that I actually visualize this, that I'm okay dying at the end of the day, at the, at the end of each day. Like, if this is the last thing I do in my life is talking to you.

• 2:21:32Speaker 01

  Oh, good lord.

• 2:21:33Lex Fridman?

  I'm, uh, I'm happy. I know you're joking, but I'm, I, you know, that, um, yeah, I'm, I'm happy I get to live the life I do. And I think momentum more, I think the, the Stoics have it right. So you, and, and you have it right in saying, meditate on death enough to remember that this ride ends pretty quickly. To help you appreciate, uh, every day and the people you love, the people close to you, and the cool shit that you're doing in your life, the cool shit you're creating. And the fact that you, Mr. Thomas Toll, are playing with the motherfucking Rolling Stones tomorrow. You are the man in so many disciplines, so, so respected, so successful.

• 2:22:17Lex Fridman?

  It's truly an honor that you'll sit down and talk with me today. Thomas, thank you so much for showing up in Texas and for talking on this silly little podcast.

• 2:22:26Speaker 01

  Oh, it's great, man. I'm a huge fan of the show and have had a great time hanging with you. And, uh, really appreciate it.

• 2:22:33Lex Fridman?

  Thanks for listening to this conversation with Thomas Toll. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find you'll get what you need. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.