The Fork in America’s Road: Civil War, Populism, and the Economic Squeeze on Youth | Michael Malice Part 2

In Part 2 of this fiery and revealing conversation, Tom Bilyeu and Michael Malice turn their attention to the deeper forces shaping Western culture—education, elite power, AI, and the challenges of the digital age. Malice blasts the university system as the true “villains of our time,” tracing their role in producing ideologically homogenous elites and fueling social division. The discussion moves seamlessly from indoctrination in higher ed to the implications of Marxism, the shifting Overton window, and how mass cultural narratives are formed and manipulated. This half is packed with debate-worthy takes on antisemitism, populist movements, the dangers of artificial intelligence, and the existential threat posed by mass boredom in a post-economic world. Malice and Bilyeu tackle big questions about identity, tribalism, and the collapse of shared reality, before ending on a wild—and hilarious—tangent about tradeoffs and protein bars. If you want clarity on why our institutions feel broken and what might happen next, Part 2 will leave you thinking (and laughing) long after the episode ends. 00:00 Intro 02:29 Marxism, egalitarianism, and cultural bifurcation 04:35 Cultural shifts, earnestness vs. revolution, and memory-holed leftism 06:33 The dangers of social conformity and shifting the Overton window 09:02 Can universities be reined in? Malice’s tongue-in-cheek “solutions” 12:21 Seizing endowments and pitting coalitions against each other 13:33 Parsing the Charlie Kirk assassination (fictional scenario) 19:22 The politics of blame: Antisemitism, conspiracies, and populist rage 25:46 Warning signs: Measuring society’s health by its scapegoats 31:45 Israel-Palestine, war, and the elusive search for peace 34:25 The next stage: AI, algorithmic reality, and broken discourse 36:33 Goal orientation, skills, and navigating “useful” beliefs 39:19 Alex Jones, Candace Owens, and why conspiracy theories persist 44:33 First principles: How to actually challenge your beliefs 46:29 A personal story: Sleep apnea, anxiety, and reclaiming clarity 49:54 AI, automation, and the fate of surplus labor 52:41 Brave New World, artificial difficulty, and the post-economic Matrix 1:01:29 Hardwired for scarcity: The psychological cost of abundance 1:03:49 Trade-offs, Thomas Sowell, and the “protein bar” thought experiment FOLLOW MICHAEL MALICE: Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelmalice Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michaelmalice/ Locals: https://malice.locals.com/ Linkedin: Post your job free at https://linkedin.com/impacttheory Netsuite: Download the new e-book Navigating Global Trade: 3 Insights for Leaders at http://NetSuite.com/Theory http://netsuite.com/Theory Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Connectteam: 14 day free trial at https://connecteam.cc/46GxoTF Tailor Brands: 35% off https://tailorbrands.com/podcast35 What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here: If you want my help... STARTING a business:join me here at ZERO TO FOUNDER https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show: https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=Podcast%20Offer&utm_source=podca[%E2%80%A6]d%20end%20of%20show&utm_content=podcast%20ad%20end%20of%20show SCALING a business:see if you qualify here. https://tombilyeu.com/call: https://tombilyeu.com/call Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/: https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** FOLLOW TOM: Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/ Tik Tok:https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=en Twitter:https://twitter.com/tombilyeu YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Tailor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. I'm Tom Bilyeu and this is Impact Theory. Welcome back to part two of my conversation with Michael Malice. If you have not yet heard part one, make sure that you check that out first because it's a banger. All right, everybody, without further ado, I bring you Michael Malice. Do you see a way to unwind it?

• 1:25Speaker 00

  Like, how do we, do we defund universities that are giving, getting government dollars? And say, you've got to balance out your...

• 1:34Speaker 01

  I know how to do it.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Ready?

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Tell me, yeah. So one of the most effective methods of victory is turning your enemies against each other. Right? Taking coalitions and making them hate each other. So my plan, and I say this only slightly tongue in cheek. As I mentioned earlier, there's no better indicator of economic success in America than having a college degree. Maybe being an heir, I don't know, but other than that is college degree. So there are the crystallization of privilege. That is the most privileged population in the United States. So seize all the university endowments, distribute them as reparations to descendants of American slaves. As, and then you have the problem solved.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Okay. Only slightly tongue in cheek.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  Only slightly tongue in cheek.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  Now, who do you think that will make hate who?

• 2:25Speaker 01

  I don't know about hate, but if you're promising black Americans, sorry, African Americans specifically, not blacks. If you're for Jamaica, sorry, Kamala Harris, you don't get this money. If you're an African American and then you're this, you know, uppity, white college kid, those two are butting heads because you're saying, I'm taking that money from Harvard, giving it to you.

• 2:44Speaker 00

  And you want them butting heads. Why those groups?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Because I think those two are big coalition, parts of the terrorist coalition, and they have very little uncommon in any sense. It's just kind of this historical accident. And I think it would be very easy to, because you have, because these kind of college kids are very entitled. And I did two books with the comedian D.L. Hughley, he's one of the kings of comedy. And one of the things he talks about is this kind of Malcolm X idea where you have this kind of white elite condescension. And anyone who's black knows that tone of voice where that, that college kid, that white woman talks to them as if they're talking to a dog. Oh, my God, I love your hair. That's so cool. And it's just like, they know what you're doing.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  And you think you're being friendly, but you're being absurdly racist and patronizing. And you're just trying to mask your discomfort or your position that you're here, they're there, and you're talking down to this fellow human being. So, and it's even the issue in minority communities, you know, Spanish communities as well, like the people who didn't even finish high school or who just have a GED or a college, a high school diploma. And then someone goes off to some bougie place and comes home. This is a huge issue already. It's the same thing with like first generation, first generation immigrants. They go to school, they look at mom and dad and their backward ways like in the motherland. And it's kind of this kind of inter-family sense of strife.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  So that I think would be a very organic mechanism to turn those two groups against each other.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  I'll take a lot of tongue in cheek on that one. I get the point. Now, one thing that that does-

• 4:25Speaker 01

  The tongue in cheek is about reparations. It's not about the seizing the endowments.

• 4:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's fair. Now, one thing that-

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Can I say one more thing?

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  A lot of people have heard me say this and gone after me and said, you call yourself an anarchist. How are you going to defend? You're such a hypocrite. You're sitting here defending the government seizing all these endowments. How can you say that? And I go, you know what I say? I don't care.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  That's very direct.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  That's it. I don't care.

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Guys, I imagine in that hypothetical, that is, uh, it is a solution to a problem, not necessarily your preferred method of governance.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  That's right. They're perfectly said, yeah.

• 5:05Speaker 00

  Okay, so it does get at like all of these different groups, subgroups in the world. I feel like you mentioned James Burnham before. So, reading that book, The Machiavellians, made me realize that once you can't control the narrative, all bets are off.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  And I think it's going to be one of the biggest changes in society is literally all throughout human history, even including the printing press and all that. It's still been controllable. You could more or less create the illusion of this is the right thing, the true thing, to think. That's gone.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  And there's-

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Very recently.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, very recently. There is a sense of chaos, my word, in all of that. So, I'm very curious, like I have a, you can think of them as calibrating questions. So, what do you think? Who killed Charlie Kirk, for instance? What, given how many narratives are beginning to spring up around that? How do you parse that?

• 6:04Speaker 01

  So, I, I, I'll give you the long version, I'll give you the short version. In 1901, Leon Shalgosz shot William McKinley in Buffalo, right? And he gets up, and I recount this also in my book, The White Bill. He gets up and he goes, I was radicalized by Emma Goldman. And she's like, oh, fuck. And Emma, he had been hanging around anarchist circles and they, this is 1901, they thought he was a fed because he was so weird and no one knew who he was. Like, who is this guy? He's, something's off with him. He's, he must be a fed. So, she goes on the lam. And by the way, I recently won an auction, the autopsy drawing of his brain. And two of the telegrams when McKinley was dying and then we died. They're framed hanging in my house.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  So, she's on the lam because the argument was, the president was just shot, clearly.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  There is this big anarchist conspiracy or movement or cell that decided to take McKinley down. What's even funnier, Goldman gets caught and is arrested and she goes, I sympathize with Leon and like President McKinley is an idiot and I want to thank the cops for arresting me. They've done more to recruit people to anarchists than anything I've done in my lifetime. So it's like, I don't care about the president. I side with the assassin. F the police. So she was really a badass and they were people out for blood. I mean, he died, of course, and it's like, and they had nothing to pin her on because she had nothing to do with it. It was just a crazy madman.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  I think we all look for, there has to be, this is in any circumstance, this is one of the reasons many people believe in God. I'm not saying they're wrong to do it, but it's like people have this need for a sense of order and control. And I think we know who did it. I think this idea, this Israel derangement syndrome, where anything bad happens as a result of Israel, it's like, let's suppose it was Israel, right? First of all, why wouldn't they just destroy him if they're all powerful, put CP on his computer? Why wouldn't the killer be have some, the manifesto would be the big one. Have a manifesto that's that says they're from Hamas or some Hamas or something like that, you know, so on and so forth. I had a tweet that I haven't sent out and I'll say it

• 8:18Speaker 01

  to you. And it is so powerful in its chaos that I'm scared to deploy it. And I'm going to reveal it on the show. You ready? It's the first time I've I've thought of something where I'm like, this might be too much even for me. Whoa, ready?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  I want to reply to one of these people and say, when will you admit?

• 8:40Speaker 01

  That Kamala Harris won the election and Israel stole it for Donald Trump? And then you have to watch their brains scramble. And, and so I, I will say to you, I, I'm not tweeting it out. Not ready for that. Not ready for that. Yeah.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  That is, uh, one of my other calibrating questions is what do you make of the phenomenon?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  But one more thing, just to the Charlie point, nowhere on the political spectrum is Charlie Kirk public enemy number one. Like if you had a list, whoever you were of people who were like, if I got rid of, God forbid, got rid of this person, you know, things would be great. No one had him there. He's not your guy. That's another reason, besides the many, many other reasons why this is so nightmarish and horrific.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  So the, did you call it Israeli?

• 9:29Speaker 01

  IDS.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  IDS?

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Okay. So Israeli derangement syndrome. Uh, so obviously that side has a narrative.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  And their narrative goes something like.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Can I say, please, one of my favorite ones of these, someone tweeted out, they go, I, it only took us 48 hours to realize that Israel is behind this. They tweeted this out in September 13th.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  As if like.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Gotcha bitch. No, as if I could have given you that in five minutes. It's Israel. Like, what, what do you wait two days for? Everything's Israel. It's obviously, it's obviously Israel.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Right. Uh, were they being funny or did they really mean it?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  They meant they're like, oh yeah, two days later, we, we realized.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, this, this is IDS is getting wild from where I'm sitting.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Uh, so their narrative would go something like this. Um, even President Trump admits that Charlie Kirk was likely to become president.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  What?

• 10:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  Trump really did say it.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 10:22Speaker 00

  Uh, that you, you could be president one day, I think is what he said.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Uh, that Charlie, Charlie, it's my understanding that Charlie had the biggest or one of the biggest TikTok accounts.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Oh, cool.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  I would assume by views.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Uh, that he was pro-Israel and really did, I mean, just confirmed by the president of, um, 30 Point USA, that those really were tweets from him that said, I am left with no option except to leave the pro-Israel movement.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  So, yeah, did I not say?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  He said tweets.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  Oh, sorry. Thank you. Text. Uh, and so their whole thing is, yeah, they, that they can't have. They can't have somebody that influential. And so the bad news is from a narrative perspective, it's got enough surface level, like, oh yeah, like that checks a box. If you're not going to go super deep on it, you can see, okay, cool. Got it.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 11:14Speaker 00

  But to your point, it's like there are probably a lot easier answers to get to Charlie. There are other people that would want to see him dead. So my thing is like, even if you just take the surface level, it's already a big enough problem. The fact that somebody did assassinate Charlie Kirk, like who assassinated him almost becomes secondary. But sticking with IDS for a second, I want to know, so I look at that. I'm admittedly a bit of an outsider to this in that I never gave any of this a thought until I saw probably about 18 months ago. Oh, the Israel Palestine thing is just not going away. Like this is really ratcheting up.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  And I could see it like starting to like seep into everything. Like all of a sudden you just found it everywhere. And so it's what I refer to as the Jews. So you've got people who talk about the Jews and you've got people who talk about the Jews. And what is that? So when you look at history, you just see pogrom after pogrom after pogrom. And when I see that it's anytime the economy breaks bad, people need someone to blame. You spill into populism. We talked about this at the beginning, fear needs to become anger, anger needs a focus. I've read Mein Kampf and he, you can almost feel Hitler being like, I need to blame somebody. Who am I going to blame? We need like a specific figure. We could probably do the Jew. Like it felt like that to me.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  It didn't feel like a guy who's just hell bent. I'm going to make it about them.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Oh, he believes.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Somebody tried to work. No, no, no, I know.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  But like, there was this sense in reading his own words that I got where it was like, oh, it's very, I need somebody. They'll fit the bill. Cool. Let's go with it. But it was more, I need somebody. And so to me, that's what sort of the longstanding history of the pogroms are is, well, we need somebody. Now, the argument, the counterpoint to that, that people will always make is, well, if you've got one group that is always the somebody, like, doesn't that say something?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  So how do you make sense? Like it's, you can laugh about it, but it just repeats over and over and over.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  So how do you make sense of that?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  What do you make sense of it?

• 13:24Speaker 00

  How do you make sense of the endless pogroms? Why, why does it keep coming back to the Jews? We'll be back in a moment.

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• 14:20Speaker 00

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• 15:58Speaker 00

  All right, let's pick up where we left off.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Well, I don't, first of all, I don't think they were endless, and I think it depends on the country and so on and so forth. There's a great book called The Satinization of the Jews, and I forget who it's-

• 16:11Speaker 00

  Satinization?

• 16:12Speaker 01

  As in making it like Satan.

• 16:14Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  And it's by, I forgot the guy's name, Camille Paglia, recommended to me, and I'm just glad I read it, you know, 25 years ago or 30 years ago at this point. There's a, there's, first of all, that's a lot of historical reasons, because if something is in, always in the background, right, as soon as a hypothesis, it's out there, as soon as something go bad, you'd be like, aha, I knew it. So you don't have to be original, you can just go back to, look, this is something that's been, as you said earlier, this something's popped up historically, there must be a reason, let's blame it right now. This whole concept of the Jews, and I say this as a Jewish person, is not as coherent as people would like it to be, because the biggest

• 16:55Speaker 01

  critic by far of Israel in the Senate is Bernie Sanders, right? And this argument also is, well, we need this kind of white nationalism where there's like no Jewish influence. Vermont is the whitest, or maybe number two or number three state, Bernie Sanders is their senator, they're like the most left-wing state, I think, maybe other than Rhode Island, that there is. So the argument is, oh, okay, well, it's Jewish socialism. But at the same time, who is the one population that the socialists hate? It's the banks. So if the Jews are the socialists, and the Jews are the banks, do they want socialism? Do they want capitalism? They say, well, it's the same thing because they're controlling it. It's like, okay, even if it is this, even if it ends up with them controlling it, what do they want it to look

• 17:39Speaker 01

  like? Do they want it to look like this capitalist system where the banks run everything? Or they want to look like this communist Lenin thing? It's like, they don't care. Well, they do care, because the standard of living, even for Lenin or Stalin in the Soviet Union, is not the same, the standard for living for Michael Bloomberg, or Stephen Miller and the Trump administration. So this concept that it's this one unified hive mind, and the same time, they're like, oh, you're gonna see Jewish influence everywhere. It's like, well, if it's everywhere, they're not all in agreement, are they? The other thing is, it's kind of interesting how the gotcha is, as, you and I both know plenty of Jewish people, I went to yeshiva. I would never call the Jews alpha.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  And the argument is the Jews are the, any Jewish person is the most alpha person in any room. So if you have a group of 10 people and there's one Jewish person, he's in control. I don't need to look at anything else. Oh, there's a Jew there. They're doing what he says, like he's the natural leader. It's insane. So if you have a publisher who is Jewish and a reporter who is not Jewish, the publisher's in control. But if you have the publisher is like Jeff Bezos and the reporter's Jewish, well, then the reporter's in control. So no matter what situation there is in their minds, if a Jewish person exists, he is running the show. And I don't know what you can say to that other than like, go outside, look at Woody Allen.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, it, this one I find, uh, very troubling.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  One more thing, it's fascinating is I always say people don't look at a true false filter, but an us them filter. And if you want to have them be the Jews, which is your prerogative, certainly. Their definition of Jew just means bad, right? So if they, like Jimmy Kimmel, when he was suspended, oh, you know, typical Jimmy Kimmel's Catholic. Well, you know, he's one of them. It's like anyone who you don't like is Jewish. And if you like someone who is Jewish, somehow you have to make excuses for it. Explain it away. I even saw people were saying that, sorry, keep up, probably. Some were saying that Trump converted to Judaism. And I don't know if you know this, the process for conversion to Judaism is like a year long.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  And you have to keep kosher and it's really onerous because Jews don't proselytize. So if Trump converted, he firstly, he's not wearing yarmulke, that would kind of be a big tell. And he's working Sabbath. That's another big one you're not allowed to do, but. It's the kind of thing where like if you disagree with this narrative any way, you're Jew controlled. So it's perfectly internally consistent.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  Hmm. Yes, this issue to me is dangerous as a signal of where we're at in the economy. Like there are certain things that you can look at and to know whether you're in a healthy spot or not. So are wages going up? Are young people able to buy a house? How much times the median income is a house? Those kinds of things, but there's also like, what's the temperature on the Jews? It's, it's pretty wild.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  But here's what I think is gonna happen. Okay? I think a lot of people, because the Democrats, especially the woke aspect of Democrats, were completely decimated on social media after that last election. So a lot of people feel very safe and very comfortable running their mouths and saying awful things. And when the Democrats regain their footing, which again, they're the oldest political party on earth. They know how to seize and maintain power really well. When they regain their footing, they're gonna, they and their lackeys in the media, or actually the Democrats, the lackey of the media running the show, are going to be asking all these Republican candidates, what do you think about this quote? What do you think about that quote? And no matter what they say, it's not going to be enough for these rabid people. Those people online are gonna turn those politicians.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  You're gonna have this huge divide on the right and it's gonna work for the benefit of the Democrats.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  What, what do you see as the explicit thing they're gonna try to pin them down on? Their take on Jewish people?

• 21:42Speaker 01

  What, do you agree that Israel killed Charlie Kirk? No politician's goodness. Do you agree that this, this, this? No matter what they say, because I mentioned this on Andrew Schultz's show. If I said to you, I think I said this to you on your show as well, that I think President Trump is, if I said dumb, he shouldn't be in the White House, he's a racist, he's terrible for the economy, he's a buffoon, I give him a C minus. Do you know what you call me? A Trump supporter. Because unless I say that President Trump is the worst thing that's ever happened to America, unless I say that this man intentionally is trying to destroy this country. If I say, you know what? I hate war more than anything. It makes me sick to my stomach.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton on that basis. I certainly can't vote for Trump. I voted for Jill Stein. Oh, you're a Trump supporter. So if you voted for Jill Stein, you're a Trump supporter in this logic. So in the same way with this space, unless you say that Israel is literally responsible for every bad thing, but they are, you are going to get so much heat from this wing of the base.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  The wing of the base on the Democrat part?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  No, from the Republican, from the right, the right wing side. I would say Republican.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  Do you see Democrats and Republicans being united on this?

• 22:58Speaker 01

  No, I see Democrats exploit, I see Republicans and these right wing. I'm not going to call the Republican because they don't identify as Republicans, certainly. I see a huge divide between the Republican politicians and this base who's like, unless you constantly are talking about Israel, you're bought and paid for by them, which very few.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  But you don't think Democrats are on that team as well?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  In what way?

• 23:20Speaker 00

  Like what I see right now is basically the acceptable opinion to have is that Israel is the bad guy doing bad things.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  That is an acceptable, no, I'm sorry. I'm not being clear. That is a perfectly acceptable opinion. That's not the opinion of these people I'm speaking about. From their opinion, literally everything, including COVID, including trans and kids, including, you know, spending, everything is the fault of they vacillate something between the Jews and Israel. So when these Republican politicians are asked about this and they say, no, you know, I don't think COVID was a result of, you know, Jewish power. They're not going, no matter how pure you are, you're not going to be pure enough for these people.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Because their definition of, their definition of Jewish is something I don't like.

• 24:04Speaker 00

  Right. I'm just trying to see, because I see this as it is a tsunami that is consuming both the left and the right. That it is a far more risky position to say that, like, do you know Coleman Hughes?

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  So Coleman Hughes defends Israel and what they're doing.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  I can't believe I'm blanking on his name again. British Douglas Murray. Thank you. Douglas Murray defends them. Like they get a wall of attack, left, right, center, doesn't matter. Like people are going to go after them. So to me, that I was surprised that you were saying you thought that was going to be.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  I'm talking about Israel. I'm talking about Jews. We're talking about Jews here. I'm not talking about Zionism or anti-Israel because Israel is never going to be that much of an important issue when it comes to like the purses and putting food on the table. I'm talking about the divide that there's going to be between right of center or right wing.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Publica. Yeah, I get the purity test idea. I'm just saying I'm picking up on something different. Get the purity test. I am, I am concerned deeply by the rise in antisemitism. I'm concerned deeply by the scapegoating, by everything somehow being a conspiracy theory of Jewish people, because when I look in history, every time that happens, that society is unhealthy. I won't say on the brink of collapse. I don't want to overdramatize it, but it's like, it, it's like a mile marker on the way to a bad destination.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  And so I'm like, oh shit, like we see that mile marker. I've got instructions that are like, by the way, if you pass the mile marker where it's the Jews are bad, like you need to turn around and go the opposite direction. I don't even need context. I just know, oh, when you see that mile marker, it bad things are happening. Turn around.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  That's where I'm at. So I see the left. I see the right. Get it? Purity test. Yep. The right is going to be divided. For some people, it's not going to be nearly enough, but I'm just saying, hey, we're at the mile marker. And that's the thing that I am very concerned about. So that is not me. Of course, I'm going to get the same comments like, oh, he's bought and paid for, which is hilarious. That is people who do not understand my background, but.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  This is a part of the show where you should whip out the.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. This is where I remind people of where I'm at economically. So.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  You're like Ted DiBiase.

• 26:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I don't need to be bought and paid for by anybody, but it, uh, as somebody who really, I don't have kids, so I think of the next generation as my kids.

• 26:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  And so I'm super keen to make sure that we're going in a good direction. This mile marker, I think, Warren's screaming about and saying this is bad news, but at the same time, we then have to contend with Israel, Palestine. Like, what do we do about that? Like, do you, do you talk about that much?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  I don't think it's our problem. I am, I am, like I said earlier, I am.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  It makes me very saddened when people who correctly understand that war is the worst thing a government can do, who see innocent people being killed, aren't not optimistic, hopeful that this peace plan will work. I mean, I'm just, the fact to me that there's even any kind of buy-in from like people as diverse as Iran, the US, the EU, and Saudi Arabia, and the fact that Hamas was clearly being pressured by their kind of puppeteers to be like, all right, you know, kind of, we're in on this. I don't know that it's gonna work. I'm very skeptical of many reasons why it might work, but even talking and discussing

• 27:36Speaker 01

  some kind of, what's that line about compromise is something that nobody likes but everyone can live with? Like, this is something I would hope, if you want the killing to stop, which I most certainly do, like, let's hope that this works. And I feel like they're one of the worst things about war. Not one of the worst, this is, maybe it's like number 20, because the worst is all the killing, you know, the trauma, you know, the blah, blah, blah, all the destruction. So maybe like number 20, but there are a lot of people who are incentivized, like, not just the war machine, to make sure this, any war continues. I think we see this in Ukraine. I think, you know, very much, I was born in Ukraine, as you know, I think it was very clear that there was like a gun to Zelensky's head,

• 28:21Speaker 01

  to being like, don't settle, you know, keep the fight, and we're gonna send you arms and money. It's like, yeah, it's great to have those arms and money, but you also have a lot of corpses. And I was gladdened to see that the Ukrainian people, who are very proud people, who have very good reason to despise the Russians with every fiber they're being, you know, I speak Russian, I was raised speaking Russian, I just had an Uber driver here a couple of months ago, he was from Ukraine, we spoke a little bit, and as I was leaving, I said, you know, "друзья, дружба", something like that, some Russian goodbye, and he looked at me like I'd slapped him, because speaking Russian to Ukrainian is like, it's not as bad as the N-word, but it's up there. It's really this huge measure of disrespect. I forgot that, but and I don't speak Ukrainian.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  So the fact that even the Ukrainians are like, okay, we reached our limit. I'm glad to see like, I don't want sections of Ukraine under Russian control. But what I want even less is more and more people being killed, you know, by huge numbers.

• 29:23Speaker 00

  Okay, so.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  The other thing, I'm gonna, I just see this out of the way here, which is gonna make you feel even more scared, as you should.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  AI, we are months away from AI being implemented to craft a social media feed that only validates your perspective.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  So if you have Grok or Siri or any of these characters and they're like, this is what I like. And you could, the algorithm knows what you like and what you don't. Feed me stuff that validates this, ignore stuff that disvalidates this. We all have that kind of confirmation bias. So what happens when you have an entire population when, and right now on any issue, you have a huge gamut of perspectives, right? And there's no referee to adjudicate who's right and who's wrong. Like, not that long ago, you had four networks and it was agreed that the center left is some kind of big consensus. And you're really, very hard to have any views outside of that. And people on the right complained about this, not unfairly. Now, the gates are wide open. So if I have a view that's right here,

• 30:29Speaker 01

  soon I will only see news that validates that view. How am I going to have a conversation with you when I'm in my Play-Doh cave? And I'm seeing clear as day, you know, it's red all the time. And you're like, what are you talking about? All I'm seeing is blue. And not only are you not gonna be able to talk to me, you're gonna think that I'm crazy or lying because you saw with your own eyes, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue. What are you talking about?

• 30:56Speaker 00

  Hold tight, we're going to take a quick break.

• 31:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 32:04Tom Bilyeu?

  All right, we're back. Let's get into it.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I worry about algorithmic control. I think that-

• 32:11Speaker 01

  It's bravery world.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  There's gonna be need to be some regulation that allows people, one, that forces companies to be transparent with their algorithm. And then, two, you're gonna need to give people control over the algorithm. And I get that hastens the world that you're talking about. However, it's better that than to be blindly manipulated. If somebody wants to do that, I think they have the right to do that, but-

• 32:35Speaker 01

  They do want, they all want it.

• 32:36Speaker 00

  I certainly don't want it. And so hopefully I can bang the drum. Like, I try to find people who disagree with my most cherished views.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  My producer is just off-camera, knows to bring me guests that disagree violently, especially with the things that I really think I know the most about.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Violently, eh? Okay, add to Charlie.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  I use that very metaphorically, of course. But I want people to challenge it because of one very simple idea. Skills have utility. So I hold a belief, it makes me feel something, but it- Doesn't allow me to navigate in the real world unless it's tied to reality. So I'm always trying to figure out what's most useful. So I take the pain of like, oh damn, I was wrong about that. But I get the, and now I can do something in the world that most people can't do because they're just so in love with feeling a certain way versus accomplishing a specific task. So anyway, I think most people will spiral themselves out of control because they'll just want to be reinforced.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:36Speaker 00

  For people that really are goal oriented, I think it'll be extremely useful.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  So tribalism, which is a word I don't have an entirely negative opinion of. If my goal is to maintain status of my tribe. Then I want to be well read. Within my worldview. And I think there's more of those than there are of you.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  There's no doubt. And partly because just knowing that you actually have the protection of a tribe is really, really helpful.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  As somebody who I just do not have any natural proclivities to um group building is probably the, the right thing. Like I'm perfectly happy in total isolation.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:14Speaker 00

  But I can feel how dangerous it is. And I can feel how dangerous it is from this particular political moment, being a moderate, knowing moderates get killed first. It's like.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  I don't think moderates get killed first.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  In a revolution, they, so the saying goes.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  No.

• 34:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, you've never heard that phrase?

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Liberals get the bullet too.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Yes, moderate, diverse in a rev- anyway, here, here's why it feels bad.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  I disagree.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  I completely disagree with you anyway. That's perfect. I love it. Whether that ends up being true or not, the reason it feels bad is, um, so I actually went to an event at um Mar-a-Lago. And for the first time I was like, oh, this is why people want to be a part of a group. All of a sudden, like all these people that were influential on YouTube in my space were all there together. They all knew each other. They were having each other on each other's shows. And I was like, oh my God, if I just started coming to events like this all the time, I would see the same people. I would get to know them. Like you start being present on their show. And I was like, this would be really good for my business. And I was like, yeah, this is why people like to be in a group, but it also gives you the heuristic of vote this way, think this way, say this thing. And you know, you're going to be in good company.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Right, sure.

• 35:22Speaker 00

  I think people hunger for those shortcuts. What do you think about the way that Candace Owens is parsing the world right now?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 35:31Speaker 00

  So I look at Alex Jones and I think this is somebody who either loves conspiracies, has a mind for it, because he's not necessarily always wrong, but it's also a approach to the world of nothing is what it seems, there's always something going on behind the curtain, let me find the dots that connect. He probably has a mind for unique connections. And so actually finds pleasure in seeing how, wait a second, that actually does connect to the whatever.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Okay, so I have in my house hanging over when you walk in Alex Jones's tinfoil hat. Okay, next to Tim Poole's beanie and above Lex Friedman's tie. And also the face paint when the QAnon Shiman painted my face on January 6th last year.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  I talk about this in my book that you write. Everyone is a conspiracy theorist because McDonald's, right? There's a small group of people who sits down, a much larger population, and teaches them how to speak, how to dress, how to produce a certain product, to the point where if I go to McDonald's in Los Angeles or go to McDonald's in Augusta, Maine, it's going to be the same thing, right? So and COVID was a great example of this, doesn't have to be nefarious. It is very clear, not in dispute, and many people would say, this is great, that a huge group of elites sat down, coordinated between the different countries,

• 36:57Speaker 01

  you might say necessarily, and had a plan that differed in different country to country, but basically was very heavily coordinated and talking to each other, so on and so forth. So conspiracy theory is one of, oh my God, I remember this. When I was, my buddy Jay, we're at a party of his in Brooklyn, and there's a guy there, just very blue pilled. And I forget what Jay was talking about, and guys go, oh yeah, it's conspiracy theory. And as soon as he heard those term, that term, he knew, okay, I don't need to listen to anything else, this is crazy, right? So here's one, the founding fathers, the Constitutional Convention was a conspiracy.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  A group of elites got down in Philadelphia, swore themselves to secrecy. They locked the door. They say, we really don't have the authority to overthrow the R S Confederation, which have been governing these United States for that. They go, yeah, but we're gonna do it anyway. Right? They're like, sure. They got their constitution together. I think it was Luther Martin, who blew the whistle on them. And all of those colonies or states at the time had duly represented, duly elected representatives in their state legislatures. And they said, yeah, we're not gonna listen to them. We're gonna have different elections just to vote for people because we know that's gonna be more conducive to getting them to kind of rubber stamp the constitution. That's what they did. Now, you don't think in those terms because we like the founding fathers

• 38:17Speaker 01

  and it's good. So if it's conspiracy theory, it's gotta be nefarious. I don't think anyone listening to this would deny that powerful international elites such as yourself are more interested in furthering their power and have more in common with powerful international elites from other countries than they do with, say, the guy from the Midwest. This is not really in dispute. So Alex is right in that regard. As for Candace, I don't think Brigitte Macron's a man. I think she could. And I also, when people say something, I don't say, that's ridiculous. I had a friend who was QAnon, and they told me with a straight face that all of Congress has already been arrested,

• 39:01Speaker 01

  and I forget what such and such was going to happen. And I didn't say, okay, that's ridiculous. I said, what would need to be true for that to be a fact? One of the things that would need to be true is that 435 congressmen, I don't know about the Senate, so let's just fence the House, 435 congressmen and probably their spouses and their chiefs of staff, none of them leaked. Now, that to me is less likely than all of Congress has been secretly arrested. There was also a theory that John McCain was secretly executed for treason, that he did not die of brain cancer, and so on and so forth. And it's like, okay, what would need to that to be true? If I regarded John McCain as treasonous and wanted to execute him, I'm doing it publicly. The whole point of these treason trials is to make an example of the guy. So even in that case,

• 39:46Speaker 01

  so.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  As for the idea that literally everything is the result of the Jews, it's not falsifiable because things go bad, things go good. Why aren't the Jews making it good all the time? Or conversely, if they want to destroy, why aren't they making it bad all the time? People like, well, everything's everything's getting worse. I don't think everything is getting worse.

• 40:09Speaker 00

  So from a, if I were going to take something away, let's say that I'm a person on the internet. I'm seeing these different factions pop up, which I'll say are essentially ways of parsing the world. You would say, all right, you need to go in. I don't know if you are comfortable with the phrase, seeing from first principles, but that's essentially what I hear when you describe, okay, what would need to be true for that to actually happen? How would I falsify this? It's very sort of scientific method-y. So you've got to think for yourself, building up from first principles, not just taking the shortcuts that people hand you.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  And also don't start with the conclusion or reasoning backwards. Now Jonathan Haidt's book, The Righteous Mind, he discusses at great length. The point is this is how we all morally reason. This is another reason to be very concerned about the future. Because if you start from the conclusion and then you work way backwards, a conclusion being the basis for your thought is not disprovable. So you're not really going to get jarred out of that conclusion. One of the things I'm very big on, and I apologize to you again. You were at my house and you were telling me a story and I was nodding out. And I'm of the view, I hate, if I'm going to disrespect someone, it's going to be on purpose. But I'm serious, you know what I mean? Like if, if I like someone, I respect them, which I like and respect you. I don't want to be disrespectful. I feel very guilty about it and I feel it's like humiliating, right?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  So that was one of the cues that something was wrong.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  But the thing is I was getting nine hours of sleep every night. And the first time I took a Waymo, I filmed it and I put it on my Instagram. And all the, I'm using this word as loosely as possible. All the fans are like, are you beating off in there? Why do you sound like a pug? Is someone choking you? Cause I was breathing so heavily. Now, in retrospect, all these data points are clear, but at the time, nothing was making sense. I remember my mentor Harvey P. Carr toward the end of his life, he was having, he's getting older. He was having memory issues. So he tried to remember like past addresses or things like that. And I could feel my cognition starting to fade. And if I don't have recall, and if I'm not quick with my tongue, what good am I? I'm going to be out of work. I'm going to be homeless, right?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  And at the same time, every day when I was waking up, my anxiety was like at 10. So I'd wake up like fully anxious. And the thing with anxiety, which people might not realize is your body feels it first. Then your mind finds a rationalization for it. A great example of something like this that really clicked for me was I was at the gym. This was in back when I was in Brooklyn Harbor Fitness and I was doing chest press and I had one more set to do. And my brain's like, you better go home. You got writing to do. And I'm like, this is going to be five minutes. And I'm like, oh, my body is tired and my brain knows what to say to conserve resources. It's very rare when we know that our brain is not always telling the truth. Anxiety is one of those examples.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  No matter what I threw at it, I was taking valerian root. I was taking a little bit of GABA. It wasn't helping. And then that makes me more anxious because I'm like, is this how I'm going to be for the rest of my life? I'm losing, if I walked up the stairs, I'm out of breath. I was reading out loud. I was out of breath and I'm like, I can't work out because once said I'm out of breath. And I'm like, something is seriously wrong. Then I'm anxious about that. And that wasn't in my mind. And it was very, very scary. And then one day I woke up and this is the first time this ever happened to me. I thought to myself, I'm losing the will to live because all the signs were in a bad direction. And nothing was making sense. And like, maybe I'm just getting old prematurely, like what is wrong with me? And I wasn't making up these symptoms. Not like, oh, maybe my friends don't like me.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  I went to a ear, nose and throat. And the guy goes, the back of your, he goes, you don't look like someone who has this, which was great, uh, cause it's usually for morbidly obese people. The back of my throat was all swollen because it would, I would breathe, breathe through my mouth. So it would dry out, then heal, then dry and heal. So it looked like waffles, he said.

• 44:09Speaker 00

  Oh shit.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  I almost cried because it, I asked him, do I need surgery? He goes, no. It was the first time where I'm like, oh, I'm not crazy. So what sleep apnea is, is you're woken up many times, not totally, just enough to get out of REM sleep. Because you're choking, right? My ex was like, she's like, you sound like you're dying in your sleep. So what happens is if someone is choking you for eight hours intermittently, you're gonna get anxious.

• 44:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Cause you're gonna have that fight or the adrenaline is gonna spike. That's why I was waking up with anxiety. So I got the machine and I was very quickly back to myself.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  But it was so scary and it was the first time I understood people who ended. And it's not that it was so severe, it's that you get exhausted. Cause every single day is the same and I know tomorrow's gonna be the same. What is the point? It's only getting worse.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  It was so scary. So I talk about this as much as I can, cause if this sounds like you, someone who's like, it, it, please get it tested. The sleep test is very easy to do and it'll save your life.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  And been nothing but better since. CPAP machine, that's it. That was the sum total.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  You don't have to wear a mat, you know, excuse me. You don't always have to wear a mask. I have something called nasal pillows. So it's just two little, little nozzles here and it's very comfortable. It's not a huge invasive thing. I, the first night I tried it, it was perfectly fine. Plus, this is amazing also. You get how AI is gonna control us all. I have an app which has a little score. And it tells me, there's four, several metrics, how long I used it, um, how many incidents I had, how good the seal was, and there's a fourth one. And if I don't get that 100% score every day, I am troubled, even though literally no one else knows what this score is. But it is training me to sleep better. But what's that gonna happen when you have social credit scores, things like that?

• 46:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, yeah. What do you think about AI?

• 46:09Speaker 01

  So if you look at right now in San Francisco, Waymo just overtook Lyft to be the number two rideshare app, right? Waymo self-driving cars. What do you do when with that? And that's only going to escalate. What do you do with that middle-aged woman who does not have a college degree, who's a very lovely person, and wants to make a little bit of money on the side? Where are you going to put her? The factory? She's not going to the factory. And as AI increase, people say, well, they'll have more and more jobs. At a certain point, AI is better than, let's not say the average person, the 40th percentile. What are you going to do with those people? I have no idea, and I'm very scared. And right now, we are already seeing

• 46:51Speaker 01

  people outsourcing their thinking to AI. It used to be, I'm going to look it up on Wikipedia, and people have thrown my Wikipedia back in my face and argues with me. I go, yeah, I know what it says about my biography Wikipedia. I assure you, I have a better perspective on this. But now, I've had Grok, I've had Art. I used Art from, I put a picture from a cartoon I did with the very failed podcaster Tom Woods. People go, Grok, what is this? And he goes, that's from my graphic novel, Ego and Hubris. And I go, no, it's not. They go, ha, ha, very funny. It's definitely from Ego and Hubris. So not only is it wrong, which is fine, it's certain in what it's saying. Now, if I'm sitting there and I don't have information, and Grok is saying, I am certain this is correct, I wouldn't double guess it.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, that AI is, if you think of AI as an abstract, it is intelligence. It's the ability to process data. I think they'll solve for most of those problems. You'll find ways to get around that. We've already got Elon building up Grokpedia. So if it gets good at identifying what is true, especially as humans can fact-check it, I think you can deal with some of those. The part that scares the life out of me is, humans have been wired for hundreds of thousands, millions of years, depending on if you clock us as like, you know, protozoa or tiny mammals or whatever. And We're wired for, no, no, no, you have to go do this thing, otherwise you're gonna die.

• 48:20Speaker 00

  And so we have these like really intense impulses to do things. We're a very goal oriented creature.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  And so meaning and purpose becomes one of the ways that we get up and do it is like, oh, this matters. This means something. And when AI is better than us at everything, then that's gonna be a pretty hopeless situation. I think people are gonna have to find some way around that. I think I mentioned earlier in the interview, but we didn't get really into it. So I think that is gonna happen on a long enough timeline. Maybe it's 30 years, maybe it's 50 years, maybe it's seven.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  It's like two, yeah.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  It's really gonna be bad. And I think a big part of the solution is gonna be virtual worlds. So we'll be in a post economic situation.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, the matrix, you mean, you mean the matrix.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  And people are gonna need some artificial difficulty thing that's exciting and challenging, but meets that sort of sweet spot. And I don't see that as dystopia. When you look at that, is that like wildly dystopic to you?

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Is the matrix wildly dystopic?

• 49:21Speaker 00

  If you are forced into the matrix because you are being enslaved by something, yes, it's bad. But what I always found interesting was Neo, because he can choose, he loves it. He's becoming literally inside the matrix, he's becoming a superhuman.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  And so, but he had to earn that and he had to go on like this incredibly Buddhist journey of realizing there is no spoon and all of that. Like it's this incredible place where you, as long as it's by choice, you are able to go in, explore worlds, push yourself in ways you wouldn't be able to in the real world. And I think just like people climb mountains now, you will go into these incredible worlds and really be able to push yourself and find that sweet spot of challenge.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  What percent of the population do you think is interested in pushing themselves?

• 50:18Speaker 00

  Without an impetus?

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:22Speaker 00

  Two.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Right. Okay. We're on the same page. I, I think I've always said Brave New World is far more likely than 1984. I think this is Brave New World.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  I think H.L. Mencken nailed on the head when he said the average man doesn't want to be free, he simply wants to be safe.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Now, maybe I can, let's, let's steel man this. Maybe it's great because, you know, the 2% of us who like to push ourselves, by which I mean obviously the Jews, we're gonna have our own little space and the 98% can fuck off and basically be farm animals. Like it says in the Talmud, but I am, this is kind of UBI kind of stuff. And I, I think it's-

• 51:05Speaker 00

  I really love that about you.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Being that I'm Jewish, I think it's, there is,

• 51:11Speaker 01

  I am scared,

• 51:16Speaker 01

  as you are, I'm sure, at this bifurcation in this kind of HGL's time machine between the Morlocks and the Eloi. And that different humans, already people, I mean, obviously someone who's wealthy and someone who's like hand to mouth have different experiences, but not to the point where they're literally in different realities. That is something that is scary to me.

• 51:39Speaker 00

  Yeah. No, I, the transition period will be super wacky. I imagine that my most controversial belief is that

• 51:50Speaker 00

  I plan to merge with technology and I think that that is very distressing for a lot of people.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  You mean like when you put that remote control dildo up there?

• 51:58Speaker 00

  That, that, obviously. In fact, I've enjoyed this whole interview that much more because of it.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  It's been buzzing.

• 52:06Speaker 00

  The whole time. No, I mean that I think just like Neuralink right now is literally helping the guy with ALS control a robotic arm and is gonna give some of his life back. That will eventually be like, once people understand how limited the human umvelt is, they'll be like, oh, wait a second, like, there's a lot more that I could be experiencing. Infrared light being just like the most banal example.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  You know, I have my DNA change, right?

• 52:32Speaker 00

  I think you did tell me about this. Yeah, you did.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  So I'm on, I'm on board with this to a point. Here's what's, here's, let's, let's go back to the other side. Here's what's scary. Right now, if I get an Uber, because it's been four years, I still haven't learned how to drive since moving to Austin. And everyone drives people crazy. And like, if it drives you crazy, I think it's hilarious. So calm down. I put the address in the app. The Uber driver has the app telling him where to go.

• 52:56Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  He's entirely superfluous.

• 52:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  So we have made this human being who has needs and values and feelings and is a real person, secondary or superfluous to technology. And I am not comfortable with, at least just like, let's acknowledge this. Even if it's a good thing, if you don't care, it's something. And I don't think enough people are acknowledging this is happening. And again, the point is, oh, he can, his labor is now freed up to do something else. But at a certain point, how is he going to compete with the labor of someone in Thailand? Or some, you know, starving country where you could just, if it's especially with the internet, you could outsource things. So it gets harder and harder to figure out what to do with people like that. And I'm not comfortable, even my most right wing moments being like, eh, too bad.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Because I think very few people are really comfortable with seeing mass strife or mass hunger, or even just mass boredom. And mass boredom, as you and I know, does not lead to good things. And if the answer is put him in a video game forever, fine. But I can't look at a population where one fourth, whatever percent are in headsets 24/7 and be like, all right, this worked out great for everybody. What's interesting is there's a lot of questions in astronomy and astrobiology. Why, if the aliens are real, why haven't they been here? Because they did the math. They're like, okay, let's suppose space is infinite. So there's got to be billions of planets like Earth that could support life. And some of them are going to be millions of years technologically ahead of us.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  You know, just doing the math. How come none of them, so the questions are, okay, maybe they show up here. We just didn't notice it. Maybe so UFOs are. Well, the theory is, what if we become the cocaine mouse? Right? If it gets to the point where we're just hooked up to the machine and it's just delivering pleasure was 24/7. And we have no interest in going outside the planet because we're just in this kind of hedonistic, lotus eaters space.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, so the one variation on that, because I think that actually is the reason for the Fermi paradox is that sufficiently advanced.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Is that what it's called?

• 54:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  The Drake equation is what you were talking about, but the Fermi paradox is the answer to the what the hell, like, why is there nobody? And the reason I think that that plays out is any tech, any civilization that becomes technologically advanced enough to bend spacetime will have long before figured out that traveling inside of a virtual world is far less dangerous, requires far less energy. And so you're far more likely to do that would be my guess. But I actually think it'll be a bit of both. I think what's going to happen with AI is people will have a need for hardship. We will have a need, whether people are smart enough to understand it or pursue it or want it, won't matter. They'll feel a profound sense of dis-ease without it. And so some people will sign up to go to Mars.

• 55:42Speaker 00

  And you'll get people that are like, cool, put, put life on hard mode. I'm going to go live on Mars and that's going to be rad. And it's like starting a, for anybody that's a survival crafting game fan, Mars is the survival crafting game. So I think a ton of people are going to go there. And then I, assuming that things go the way that I plan, I'm building a video game right now, but it's just a video game. It's the kind of thing you play on your PC. But, you know, give it another 15 years and in success, if I'm able to keep building, then it really does start to become some approximation of that. I think we're probably more than 15 years out from people like truly jacking into the matrix. But barring some catastrophe, we're not more than 30 years out.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Look at World of Warcraft. How many, yeah, that's, that's a good example of this.

• 56:25Speaker 00

  So, and I think inside of those worlds, I get people, especially people believe in God, like there's a real moral repulsion to that idea. And, and certainly understand that, and I'm not trying to convert people or convince them, but I certainly will be. In success, trying to build something like that so that myself, if nobody else can go on these insane adventures, because I'm assuming we're in a post-economic world. So the game that I play now of entrepreneurship, of trying to make people's lives better by building things that solve problems for them, and then being enriched as a result of it, it just won't exist. So in a world where that doesn't exist, I've got options. I can

• 57:05Speaker 00

  be what I call new Amish, and I can go reject technology completely. And fair enough, I think a lot of people will do that, and I'm sure their lives will be amazing. I'm just not, that doesn't appeal to me. So I would rather go this other direction.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Have you had Bret Weinstein on your show yet?

• 57:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  I love Bret. So Bret is either an evolutionary biologist or evolutionary psychologist. I forget which one it is.

• 57:26Speaker 00

  Biologist.

• 57:27Speaker 01

  And I had this hypothesis, and I threw it to him, and he's like, yep, you're right. And it was very validating to hear from his, who I respect enormously. And I edited a book called The Paleo Manifesto by John Durant, my buddy John, who lives a block away from me. Great book, everyone should pick it up. And one of the concepts behind paleo is that our diets and our technology regarding our diets evolve faster than we have biologically. So there's a disconnect between what we eat and what we should be eating. So the more the close to nature and the more less processed food, the better it is. I don't know how much I believe it, but as a heuristic, I think it's a pretty good one, you know, just all

• 58:05Speaker 01

  things considered. One of the things I asked Bret about was, we are evolved to be scarcity fearing creatures, right? Like, we are worried about what happens with the winter, where's the next meal gonna come, and so on and so forth. The point is, what happens when Maslow's hierarchy of needs, or most of it, has been fulfilled? What happens when I don't have to worry about shelter, I don't have to worry about food, I don't have to worry about clothing? You know, maybe I can't have intimacy with a partner, but I could certainly reach that point by myself with my hand, right? When that's checked off, is the brain gonna be content? No. The brain, right, because the brain is still gonna be looking for problems to solve. And I think that might be a part of what we're seeing in politics, when people's basic needs have been met. And not that

• 58:50Speaker 01

  You and I both know people lived in depression who like, you know, I, I don't know where I got this idea. This is one that I, cause this is not something we did as when I was a kid. But if I have hand soap and I have one that's almost done, I will pour the remainder of one into the other one, even though it's literally scents and I would make more money not doing that than if I go out and tweet or something. But somehow it's in my brain. What happens to, and the thing is, I think you get neurosis and you have this kind of, it's externalized. And COVID was a good example because if I'm a neurotic, if I have mental problems or anxiety, depression, now it's not, the calls are not coming from the front side of the house. It's everywhere. If there's one person in California who's not vaccinated, I have a right, the television tells me to freak out all the time.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  So I think more and more of this is something I'm going, we're going to be seeing. And you know, this, I think is one of the, you know, we talked about trade offs and, and capitalism having all these benefits. This might be one of the hidden costs that it doesn't calm that animal brain. And video games would be a good example of, okay, go solve these imaginary problems. Go finish that quest. Cause now you're kind of, you know, animal brain has something to worry about.

• 1:00:01Speaker 00

  Yes. One of the things that drives me crazy as we, as a world, look at how to solve these problems is people do not understand that everything is a trade off.

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Good point. This reminds me of a story. I have a friend who, what, what should we call him?

• 1:00:16Speaker 00

  Bobby?

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  Bobby. Okay. Bobby wanted to start a protein bar company.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  I like Bobby already.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  He's a good guy. You'd like him a lot.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  So as you know perfectly well, what's the main ingredient in protein bars?

• 1:00:39Speaker 00

  Protein powder.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  That's right. Camel hump fat. So Bobby was in his garage with his camel hump fat.

• 1:00:47Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:00:48Speaker 01

  Doling it out, trying to make his protein bars. So that's the base of any protein bar, camel hump fat.

• 1:00:56Speaker 00

  As everybody knows.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  As everybody knows.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  But the thing is camel hump fat doesn't taste very good by itself. So, and it's not high protein. It's high in, it's literally all fat. So where's the protein in protein bars come from?

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  Milk?

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  That's right. Nice try. So the, the protein in every protein bar in the market is obviously beetle larvae.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  Obviously.

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  So Bobby had his beetle larvae.

• 1:01:24Speaker 00

  This is really beetle larvae, isn't it?

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  And, well, yeah, this is how you make protein bars. You taught me this.

• 1:01:28Speaker 00

  Buddy. All right.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  So he's in there and he's in his garage.

• 1:01:31Speaker 00

  Feel like I'm making protein bars with Klaus Schwab right now.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  And he's in his garage grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding. Now, the problem is grinding, grinding, grinding. In fact, he was spending so much time in his garage grinding these protein bars. It caused problems in his marriage because his wife's like, you're spending too much time with your grinder.

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  Story is very familiar.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Starting to give me questions. Grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding. Now here was the big problem. So camel hump fat. There we go. Camel hump fat causes diarrhea.

• 1:02:06Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:02:06Speaker 01

  Beetle larvae causes vomiting. So this was a big issue for Bobby. Because if he added too much camel hump fat, a lot of people would get diarrhea. If he has the beetle larvae.

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  Too much vomiting.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Too much vomiting. How is he going to solve this issue?

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  Lord knows.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  For his customers. This quest took over all his thinking.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  And he didn't really know what to do. So sometimes he add a little bit more fat. Let's add a little bit more fat.

• 1:02:36Speaker 00

  I'm so afraid you're gonna eat this.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Well, you have to try it. And then sometimes he added a little.

• 1:02:41Speaker 00

  One of us maybe.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  And sometimes he added a little bit more beetles, beetle larvae. And then what's he doing? In his garage, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  All right, let's get it. Let's taste it. What do you think, Tom?

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  I think Bobby's on his own.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  So he tried it.

• 1:03:05Speaker 00

  Oh, God!

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Try it.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Those are moving dude.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  What is happening?

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  He couldn't get it quite right.

• 1:03:29Speaker 00

  Oh my god.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  What did he realize?

• 1:03:35Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Some of these diarrhea is going to be so severe, people will have to go to hospital and die. Sometimes the vomiting is going to be so severe, people go to hospital and die. But.

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  If you get to a point where you're selling so many protein bars. That you can pay off those people who are ill, or in certain cases even passed away. You've solved the quest. Point being, whatever your product or goal is, you're never going to achieve perfection. The point is, you have to reach a point where the benefits outweigh the costs. And you're never going to have a cost free situation. It's like Thomas Sowell said, there are no solutions, only trade offs.

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  And that is how protein bars are made.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:28Speaker 00

  So.

• 1:04:30Speaker 00

  We've had different protein bar experiences.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Well, sometimes they don't grind it all the way.

• 1:04:39Speaker 00

  Michael, I really want to believe that's a prop, but that's real.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  That's real, yeah. That's the big deal.

• 1:04:45Speaker 00

  You'll eat, you'll own nothing and you'll love it. You'll get all your bugs and your protein.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm, this is me, my autism. Why is this a big deal if you eat like shrimp?

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  Are you serious?

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  I'm not kidding at all.

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  If the shrimp were alive, I have a problem.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:05:01Speaker 00

  Yes, it's the, well, admittedly, I have a problem with both because they look like worms. And I have an evolutionary aversion to anything that looks like a worm.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  That's, you don't have an evolutionary aversion because worms are a high source of protein. So if anything.

• 1:05:12Speaker 00

  Hard pass. They are parasites.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Worms, earthworms are not parasites.

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  Earthworms, no, but worms, yes.

• 1:05:18Speaker 01

  Correct. So these do not look like the parasitic worms at all.

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  Man, there is something in my brain. Even as a little kid, I hated earthworms. I hate those worms. Anything that moves like that.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  I don't understand how this is.

• 1:05:28Speaker 00

  Brotesque.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  This is wild.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 1:05:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  On a, but on a rational point of view.

• 1:05:34Speaker 00

  Sure. If I was starving to death, I would eat them. No problem.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  You're someone who likes to push himself. You know this is-

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  In ways that make sense. I see no upside to, I cannot believe, I'm impressed that you ate that.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm not gonna-

• 1:05:47Speaker 00

  I thought he's gonna not, he's not putting that in his mouth.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna take your kudos.

• 1:05:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Because this is completely unimpressive. It is again, like two grains of rice. There's no taste. It doesn't pop. It's not gross. It's not like biting into my mouth. What's the big deal?

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Literally.

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  They're gross.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  But what is, I, I understand they're gross, but it's like, you've eaten pussy, haven't you? Like seriously, like this, look how little this is.

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  Wait. Hold the phone. Are you saying that you cannot see a category difference between beetle larva-

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  I'm saying you eat gross things.

• 1:06:18Speaker 00

  And pussy.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  I'm saying you've eaten gross things.

• 1:06:20Speaker 00

  I would not categorize vagina as gross things, but-

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a lot going on down there.

• 1:06:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, hey, I'll take it. It's a good life lesson. Thomas Sowell, be proud.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  I, I, I'm, I'm really surprised.

• 1:06:34Speaker 00

  Are you really surprised?

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Yes. I, I get these because they're big and pulsating.

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  But the reason this bit works is because that's nasty.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  I agree, but okay, so autism speaking again, when people like, you'll eat the bugs, I don't see how cricket flower is worse than like, like chicken, like mealworm.

• 1:06:51Speaker 00

  Cricket flower admittedly, once it's in that format, is purely psychological. Totally understand. If I grew up in a culture where that was normalized. Oh my God. Uh, then I wouldn't think about it, but I was not. And so it is gross.

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Done that before and I didn't know if I could. And it was surprisingly not a big deal.

• 1:07:07Speaker 00

  I am shocked that you did it. I thought he's gonna like, okay, and this is where you cut.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  I gotta commit to the bit.

• 1:07:12Speaker 00

  You did commit to the bit. I'll give you that. Just for the record, that is not how protein bars are made, but thank you, Mr. Malice for that. Dude, this was amazing. Thank you so much. As always, for spending time with me. Where can people follow along with you?

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  I'm on Twitter at Michael Malice and my locals is malice.locals.com. And I've got a graphic novel coming up. Show me excited. Talk to you about, um, when it's done.

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  I can't wait to see that. Yeah. Awesome. All right, everybody, if you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care, peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break. And that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water, and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics,

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