AI That Helps, Schools That Don't, and How Not to Go Crazy on The James Altucher Show

James sits down with astrophysicist Brian Keating for a candid, useful tour through three hot zones: how to think about AI (and where it actually helps), what’s broken in higher ed and admissions right now, and why outsourcing your mood to politics is a losing strategy. You’ll hear first-hand stories (from UC San Diego classrooms to New York City politics), specific ways James and Brian really use AI daily, and a simple framework for protecting your attention and happiness—even when everything feels polarized. What You’ll Learn: How universities can leverage AI-guided curiosity to revolutionize learning, according to James Altucher's vision for "Altucher University." Why mastering communication skills—writing, speaking, negotiating—is crucial for career success, and why these skills are often neglected in traditional education. Firsthand insights into how Brian Keating and James Altucher use AI daily for research, problem-solving, and creativity, along with practical examples from their personal and professional lives. The economic and philosophical debates around AI's actual impact on industries, jobs, and the broader GDP, including its use in coding, media, and even farming. The limitations of AI and large language models in science and creative work, and why critical thinking and prompt engineering remain essential—even as technology evolves. Timestamped Chapters: 00:00 "AI Clarifies Venezuela Questions" 05:59 Venezuela News Omission 07:45 Frustrating Academia Raise Policy 11:54 Collaboration and Engagement Terms 14:23 "Ideas Overload Dilutes Impact" 19:11 Economic Efficiency Benefits All 19:49 Automation's Effect on Jobs 23:43 "Decentralized AI Competition" 27:09 "AI's Rapid Growth" 31:39 Copyright Limits Creativity 33:17 AI Book Recommendations 38:38 "AI Won't Replace Writers" 41:01 "Dumb Takes by Geniuses" 44:39 Content Overload Shift 47:47 Self-Publishing Outperforms Traditional 49:05 Dying Publishing Model 54:21 "Nobel Laureates' Impact Explained" 57:49 "Epstein, Trump, Wishcasting" 59:37 "Thrills Free on Pluto TV" Additional resources: 📚 Target Earth by Govert Schilling: https://a.co/5uCEmZi ➡️ My new book: 📖 Into the Impossible Volume 2: Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner: Lessons from Laureates to Concentrate Your Creativity and Ignite Your Career: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U ➡️ Follow me on your fav platforms: ✖️ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating 🔔 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/DrBrianKeating?sub_confirmation=1 📝 Join my mailing list: https://briankeating.com/list ✍️ Check out my blog: https://briankeating.com/cosmic-musings/ 🎙️ Follow my podcast: https://briankeating.com/podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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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• 0:28Speaker 01

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• 0:58Speaker 02

  This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show.

• 1:14Brian Keating?

  What's Altucher University? Like, if you have a university, what's gonna be in it, James? What do you mandate to teach? Chess? I mean, be thoughtful about it. What would you teach at a university? You have complete control as the president of it.

• 1:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, so I think, I think A, 90% would be motivated purely by what you're interested in, and using AI to guide you and focus your curiosity, and the professor seeing what your, where your plateaus are, where your, what your questions are, what you're interested in, and the professor could guide and direct you according to your curiosity. But I also think the most important things that helped me in my career, that literally has made every success for me, is communication abilities. So, ability to write well, speak well, think logically, steel man your arguments, the ability to negotiate, the

• 2:10Speaker 04

  Ability, you know, all of these communication skills are a hundred percent the secret to success. As well as the psychology of entrepreneurship, money, these things that are never taught in college that are so important for success. But if I'm not curious about biology, but I take a biology class, I'm going to remember zero afterwards. So there's no point. So, so you have to, it really has to be motivated by what you're interested in, what you're curious about. The great thing is someone could be listening to this and say, oh, I don't know who Mamdani is. And then you use chat GPT and like, oh, well, did he really say, why would he say he's African American on his college application? Did he really say globalize the infantata, you know, and where did he say it? What's the context?

• 2:50Speaker 04

  What does that statement mean? Is it really true what James is saying about it's in the Hamas, you know, founding charter? So, so now you can have your, your curiosity guide you and the AI is much better than just Google for answering these questions.

• 3:03Brian Keating?

  Using AI, because I heard your conversation with Ryan Holiday and you guys focused on like what AI is not good for. But, and, and, and why, you know, humans are safe for now, which I agree with. I, I, I fully agree that even in science, AI is completely underwhelming. I, I think we're on the verge of a huge bubble popping, like, does Robin use AI every day?

• 3:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, I use AI 20 times a day.

• 3:26Brian Keating?

  Me too. But does Robin?

• 3:29Speaker 04

  Yes, a hundred percent.

• 3:30Brian Keating?

  Okay.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  You know, so, so for instance, right now, there's a bunch of battleships and aircraft carriers and 15,000 troops surrounding Venezuela. So I don't really know anything about the Venezuelan political situation. So I, I asked, what spurred the reign of Chavez? When did, you know, I didn't know anything. When did it start? How did he get so, how did he become leader? And then Madero, what was his background? What does he really believe in? What has he done, you know, to the Venezuelan people? And then what companies, as an investor, what companies in the US or how might the US benefit? If there's a regime change in Venezuela. So AI is really great for this as opposed to taking my chances on Google gives me here's 10 sites. So a lot of those sites are just bullshit sites and I have to figure it out.

• 4:15Speaker 04

  AI is really good at giving me really great answers. And then if I'm I'm curious, well, I don't understand, like, you know, did Madera really do social? What's the difference between socialism and fascism? Is Madera a socialist or a fascist? And, you know, AI is really good at taking, you know, hundreds of sources and compiling it together in into something. And then I can ask dumb questions because I don't know, you know, a lot of people know this stuff like it's secondhand to them. I don't know anything, so I can ask dumb questions and not being afraid to ask. I'm just following my curiosity.

• 4:48Brian Keating?

  I don't know, you know, like I use it hundreds of times a day, probably. You have everything from like contracts or I'm thinking of switching to a podcast network. And, you know, is that going to save time and, you know, so I can develop models.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  All right, I'm I'm I'm looking at my AI history. So I'm seeing, okay, US-China tariffs. Uh, what's, you know, what have been the history of US-China tariffs? Now I've written a lot about this. I've done a lot of research, but okay, just give me a timeline. Okay. Oh, and then I'll ask, oh, in 2017, we put steel tariffs on. What what was the result in, uh, jobs increase or decrease in the US? What was the result of inflation? What was the result on the market? Okay, so that was one question. Um, I have here, uh, tell me about, this is related to you. Tell me about the relationship between photonic computing and quantum computing. So that I asked AI rather than read myself a bunch of research papers I can't understand.

• 5:42Speaker 04

  Um, I asked about, uh, uh, oh, New York City voter turnout in yesterday's elections. How I learned that 30% of the Jews who voted voted for Mam Dany. Uh, I asked about, um, uh, I didn't know. Everyone's talking about vote for Prop 50 in California. I didn't know what Prop 50 was, so explain to me California Proposition 50. Oh, don't they realize this is against blah, blah, blah. Oh, but here's this Texas thing that they're they're comparing themselves to.

• 6:12Brian Keating?

  Right.

• 6:13Speaker 04

  You know, so, so. Everything I'm interested in, I'm asked, and then I know it. Now I know it. Like now I'm able to say, you know, because I checked the sources too, because the AI links to the sources, I'm able to say, oh, 30% of these people voted for Mamdani. And now I know Proposition 50, and they've suspended their California constitution for two years, just because they want to get back at Texas for doing something similar to Prop 50.

• 6:35Brian Keating?

  So now I know it's so evil that they have to do it and do it hard. Even if Texas doesn't do it, they took out that provision.

• 6:41Speaker 04

  Right, right. There's all this bullshit stuff, but then you find out. If I had just read about it, I could have.

• 6:47Brian Keating?

  Yeah. Do you even read the news? I mean, I don't read the news. I knew all this stuff. I know all this stuff about New York City. I don't live in New York City. I knew about it. You know about this stuff in California. You don't live and go.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  And, and you know, but it's interesting because the Venezuela thing, I did look on the news and I couldn't find anything. And yet we have 15,000 troops who have moved to be surrounding Venezuela. So for some, whatever reason, the news is not reporting on this, and yet it's probably the most important geopolitical thing happening for America, at least right now, because as, and I know this from AI, Rio, you know, Machada, who won the Nobel Peace Prize a few months ago, has literally said to Trump, we've got 1.7 trillion dollars in assets here, come and get it. And so all this stuff, I'm learning from AI. And I'm not ashamed to say it. Like, I wouldn't have known it. I wouldn't have known where to look and so on. So.

• 7:37Brian Keating?

  The thing is, like, these people, like, Mike, I asked my, first of all, I asked my students on the first day of class. I said, you're allowed to use any resource you like, human or silicon, for anything, including the homework solutions. I don't care how many, because like, it's like telling your daughter, you know, it's okay if you, you know, drink while you're in college, if you're 21, you know, like, she's gonna do it no matter what you say, but at least now, if she overdrinks, she's gonna come and tell you, right? So I said, but you won't be allowed to use anything on the exam. So there's three major exams that count for 50% of your grade, as well as the homework counts 50%. So like, yes, you could do, you could rely on it. And I said, just out of curiosity, how many of your professors allow you to use AI? And none of them raised their hand. I'm like, this is like child abuse, you know, student abuse. I, I think it's so, we're not only

• 8:21Brian Keating?

  crippling their ability to do research and we're, we're preventing them from competing in the, in the real world. Once they graduate against people who are and, but it wasn't just UCSD. I don't want you to think I'm, I'm dumping on UCSD. I love it. It's my, you know, I couldn't be anywhere. Like I got an offer to go to an Ivy League school a couple of years back. I didn't even like bring it to my chair. We have the stupid policy here that the only time they would give you a raise, if I, if I wanted a raise, I basically have to tell them, I, not only do I have a job offer from, you know, Cornell or Dartmouth or whatever, but, but here it is in writing. In other words, I have to go so far down the rabbit, which takes a long time in academia to get a, a job offer. Firstly, I have to have a position, the money, the startup, you know, it's millions of dollars

• 9:03Brian Keating?

  of commitment. It's a lifetime appointment, you know, for somebody like me. Um, and, and so, so this takes, you know, six to eight months of another university doing. And then, um, and by that time, there's so much sunk cost into it that you're going to leave. Like a lot of my friends who didn't, you know, who did leave UCSD, they went to Stanford and other places, you know, they went through the process because they didn't nip it in the bud at UCSD. They could have kept the person. They didn't have this stupid policy. So we have a lot of stupid policy. One of my other favorite things is I cannot have an office as a professor that's bigger than the office of a state assembly member. That's actually part of the constitution of the UC. It's so petty and, and, and that actually is like dates back to like probably, you know, Ronald Reagan or something like that. Uh, but, but it's still in force and they still do enforce it. So, so I went to Princeton

• 9:48Brian Keating?

  and I asked my good friends and colleagues there. They're like, no, we don't let them use AI. It's like cheating. They won't learn it the real way. I'm like, how do you know what the real way is? Like their, their minds are so, are so adaptable and malleable and you didn't know about AI when you were, you know, like eight years ago. And now you're telling them that you, they can't use it in their career, which can last the next 60 years. Like, you know, that's really a lot of chutzpah.

• 10:13Speaker 04

  Right now, I think there's an amazing kind of career arbitrage that can happen, which is the people who are using AI, and by the way, you don't need any expertise to use AI, you just need to open up ChatGPT, or Grok, or whatever you want, and ask questions. The only skill you need is the ability to ask questions. And people who are using AI, and not afraid to use it, have a significant advantage over the people who don't use AI.

• 10:39Brian Keating?

  Absolutely.

• 10:40Speaker 04

  You know, like, I was in a debate a few weeks ago, it was Bitcoin versus gold. I was on the Bitcoin side, obviously arguing for Bitcoin, and my opponent in this debate was arguing for gold. And it was on a stage in front of a thousand people. And I heard in just conversation that this guy I was going to debate said Tether, the biggest stablecoin, has never been audited. Okay, I didn't know that, and I didn't really know who to ask to confirm this. So I asked AI, and it gave me real details about the difference between audit and what Tether does, which is basically the same thing. And I was able to understand the subtleties of what was going on. So I was able to address this if

• 11:23Speaker 04

  it had come up in the debate, which it didn't. And it took me two seconds, my knowledge of crypto, I'm a crypto expert in general, but I didn't know this one question. I knew that their assets had been confirmed, but I didn't know officially what was the official mechanism that they confirmed them. So that's why I asked the question. And so now I know the official mechanism, now I can answer this question. And it wasn't much different than what I thought, but now I know specifically.

• 11:47Brian Keating?

  Now, you have to be careful.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  Yeah. But that brings up another. I do research the source and see that it's accurate, because I don't want to be fooled by any AI hallucinations.

• 11:57Brian Keating?

  That's part of the thing, James, you're doing the right thing. But that's part of the vitality and the urgency that we have to teach students how to use it right now. So for example, I go to ChatGPT, I say, what books has Brian Keating written? Comes back, Losing the Nobel Prize, Into the Impossible, Galileo's Dialogue, and A Brief History of Time. And I'm like, oh, that's really nice. I hope, do I get like 1% of the revenue of the book sales? You know, residual. Uh, no, I didn't write that. Stephen Hawking. So not only does it flatter you, it hallucinates, it's sycophantic. So I get an email a day now with a theory of everything. And the reason that I get so many, I exploded since chat GPT. And what happens is

• 12:40Brian Keating?

  these people have these ideas, they're earnest, they're well meaning. And they send me an email and they say, you know, Professor Keating, you know, I value you so much. You do such good work. Here's my theory of everything. I think it changes everything. Um, I'm willing to have you as a collaborator, you know, I won't share the number of products with you. But, but, and, and here's the deal, just to, just to prove to you that I'm right, chat GPT's output, you know, and evaluation and 600 different parameters. I literally had a guy I talked to. So what I started to do, James, is I have an auto reply on my phone. And when you write me with your theories of everything, that's great. I say, thank you for your email. Due to extreme, you know, overload at work, I can only engage with you um, for a thousand dollars an hour for private consulting, or you can join

• 13:23Brian Keating?

  my group chat once a month on YouTube I host uh, for $20 an hour, for $20 a month, which is a good deal compared to a thousand dollars an hour. Um, and the thousand dollars an hour goes to charity, a 501(c)(3), either the UCSD has a food pantry for students that can't afford food. Can you imagine like go to college, but you can't afford food? So there's a food pantry on campus. And then there's a Jewish organization called Habard on campus. So you, and I've had dozen, half dozen people, like I made thousands of dollars for charity. I don't take it for myself. And that gets rid of about 90% of it. But I still have a lot of people, James, that are coming through. And it's all because, you know, chat GPT is telling them that they've solved everything from entropy, the arrow of time, dark matter, dark energy, and they have to get this to the

• 14:08Brian Keating?

  world. And they're, they're very earnest about it. But before, you know, chat GPT, if I had said something like that, no one would have put their money, because they wouldn't have had any confidence in it. Now it's giving him this, this like false bravado that they're the next Einstein. And, you know, and the probability of that is, I always say to each one, because at the end of each hour, they always say like, I want to talk to you longer. Yeah, let's keep going. And I'm like, well, I learned from my friend who's a psychotherapist. You always end at fifty minutes, not an hour, so that you can start wrapping up. And then, you know, you say my time is like this. And now I just send them like they say, like, nobody else is as smart as me. I say, oh, yeah, well, here's ten other people that wrote me this week. I took out their names, but here's what their theories of everything are. Here's the chat GPT validation. And, you know, how would you respond if you're me? Oh, I'm right.

• 14:52Brian Keating?

  You know, so I'm like, the next hour goes up to two thousand. And then it's just going to keep doubling and doubling. And if they want to, you know, they want to pay sixty four thousand dollars per hour, you know, to donate to the food pantry, I'm all I'm here for it.

• 15:06Speaker 04

  That that's funny. So some people have have paid and has anybody's has anybody? I mean, obviously, nobody's theory probably holds up to the math. But has anybody's theory even conceptually made sense?

• 15:20Brian Keating?

  It's hard to say. I mean, they're often extremely convoluted and they all have a common theme, which is that they try to solve everything from, like I said, from dark matter, dark energy, entropy, the arrow of time, the ontology of quantum mechanics, everything. And there's like, imagine Einstein, you know, in nineteen oh five, Einstein published four separate papers. And I'm, you know, Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, the theory of relativity. And one other that I'm blanking on, but it's embarrassing. But anyway, I'm convinced if he published all four at once, you wouldn't know his name. Because it's just too much. Yeah, like proving the existence of molecules, describing a photon,

• 16:04Brian Keating?

  talking about things moving relativistically, electrodynamics of, you know, all these things that he did. Nobody would believe, you know, you just couldn't take it seriously. And he was very smart. He didn't have chat GPT. And he just broke it into that easily, you know, digestible, you know, kind of core puzzles. And that was then magnified the response. And still he didn't win the Nobel Prize for seventeen years. Because, you know, people that invented the gas regulator for the lighthouse and buoys, you know, that was just a much more important invention than the theory of relativity. As you know.

• 16:35Speaker 00

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• 16:52Speaker 00

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• 17:06Speaker 04

  You know, it's so fascinating, though. You're right. So AI is a tool, right? And you just, you need some basic skills. So maybe I'm wrong when I say, oh, you just need to ask questions because you could, you're right. AI does want to please, AI wants to please the user. So sometimes it says what you want to hear. That's why you have to, you do have to look at the sources, but AI will give you the sources. So it's easy to do.

• 17:29Brian Keating?

  But you have to check it. That's part of the process of using AI kind of responsibly. And that's what I teach my students, even my kids. You know, my kids love it. They'll never know a world that AI didn't exist in. And now, do I think it's going to be, you know, contribute? I read somewhere that, you know, the imputed value of AI in the world economy is like five, at least $5 trillion. I mean, Nvidia is worth $5 trillion, right? So it has to be more than that. Let's say you put a multiple on that of 10x. Like, it has to be at least, you know, like, Apple contributes more than $2 trillion to the world economy over, over its lifetime, right? It's probably close to 10, 10 or 20 trillion because of all the things it enables and apps. But like, in other words, how much does AI contribute to GDP in billions or trillions of dollars right now?

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Right now, I think it's hard to say, but let's say over the next five years, it'll probably be 30 to 50 trillion dollars.

• 18:20Brian Keating?

  So I wonder how you get that valuation because...

• 18:23Speaker 04

  You just look at like, everybody, you know, Apple's committed to spending $600 billion, Nvidia's committed to spending $600 billion. You know, all this is on data centers and, and, you know, AI compute and inference. You know, TSM is building factories here. By the way, then you have every company, let's say in the Fortune 500, is going to, you know, be 10% more profitable.

• 18:43Brian Keating?

  I think that's more than the internet. I think that's like more than the internet has contributed.

• 18:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, AI is going to be, AI is definitely going to be bigger for society than the internet.

• 18:50Brian Keating?

  But how is that? I mean, do you feel like you have a bias, you know, and because you have a survivorship bias? You know how it works, you use it effectively, you know its limitations, you know its, you know, fallacies.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  That might be, but like 10 minutes before this podcast.

• 19:05Brian Keating?

  My student doesn't know, like even a top student, like they don't know how to use it. Like a junior in college at a top university in the world, they have no idea how to use it or what it's for and how, there's so many different kinds of it. And, and, well, I didn't tell you the answer. So this comes from Aswath Damodaran, who is a famous professor at NYU, although like Scott Galloway, your friend Scott Galloway, who ghosted me many years ago.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  I have his book right in front of me.

• 19:29Brian Keating?

  Did not come on the show. Is he coming on your show?

• 19:32Speaker 04

  Well, he's come on like seven times before. Jay, as Scott Galloway responded to you.

• 19:38Brian Keating?

  I think he's too big for his.

• 19:39Speaker 04

  On, on notes on being a man.

• 19:41Brian Keating?

  Somehow these guys, you know, are teachers, but they don't live in the city where they teach. Anyway, so he says something like the amount of actual, current actual revenue is under $50 billion. There was like a hundred X.

• 19:57Speaker 04

  But okay, but that's, that's like, he's just looking, I, I don't really think of AI as just chat GPT and, and, and, you know, Grok and, and all that.

• 20:05Brian Keating?

  He took everything. He took, you know, DeepSeek, he took, and, and, you know.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  No, no, but like, did he, did he take Tyson Foods tractors? Because some percentage of that now, they use AI to, to more efficiently spray pesticides and they have self-driving tractors.

• 20:19Brian Keating?

  Sure, but that's, that's going to reduce the tractor inspector is, it's going to take some GDP away as well, right? Cause the tractor inspector or like, look at lawyers. Let's say every lawyer is replaced by chat GPT. Is that net positive for, for GDP or is that negative?

• 20:33Speaker 04

  It's going to be net positive because.

• 20:34Brian Keating?

  By a hundred X? I don't know.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  No, no, but it might be, you know, it's a net positive. It's like, take the farmer who used to ride the tractor and buy more pesticide. Now he's got more money and more time. And what will he do with that money and time? Well, he's a, he's a, an entrepreneurial person. He's got his farm that he, that he, you know, harvests and sells the products and so on. So he's going to use his time and money more efficiently and he's going to be a, probably a better allocator of that money and time than, you know, he would have been otherwise. So he'll start other businesses or buy other things that allow other people to start other businesses. Ultimately, we don't know the net result of this sort of economic. Velocity, but it will be a net positive.

• 21:16Brian Keating?

  I look at like, you know, like kiosks at McDonald's or something like that. Not that I go there, but, but, you know, like it's taken away. Actually, don't go to McDonald's, but it's taken away. You know, I go to healthy place like Dunkin Donuts. As you see my coffee cup over here. So, but you know, it's taken away a lot of entry level jobs and stuff like that. Right. So, um, in that, in that sense, like, you know, was it net accretive or not? It saved money for McDonald's, but like, so anyway, there's two different things. It can either save money, reduce, uh, you know, kind of expenditures, costs and payroll and stuff like that. Which is, I agree that benefits, but you can't cut your way to profit. Like, if you don't have a profit, you're not, you can't have a bigger profit if you just keep reducing your expenses to zero. So then it has to leverage things.

• 22:01Brian Keating?

  I, I just think, you know, I tend to be biased by something when I like a product or whatever. It's very different than, than, you know, it's like.

• 22:10Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 22:11Brian Keating?

  And add on, and it's not like we haven't had it. We've had chatbots, we've had, you know, AI assistants. Remember the Microsoft paperclip, you know, we've had things that help us, you know, for a long time. And, and these are markedly better, but like, are you deploying agents to do coding? You know, project and like, how many coding projects do you have? Like I have one or two, like, again, we are unusual because we, you know, I can analyze data. But like my neighbor who does like insurance adjustments, you know, and stuff like that. Again, he might be able to like model something that he couldn't do before. But, you know, is that a hundred X what the cop X is currently? Anyway, I know it's not what you want.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  No, no, we, we don't know, but look, this is an area that I am very familiar with. And, um, so I need, I need an AI assistant to keep reminding me of all the conversations around me.

• 22:59Brian Keating?

  I have this pendant that records everything that I say. I forgot to put it on today. That's the other problem.

• 23:04Speaker 04

  You know, but I just had a podcast right before this one where I was talking to these two guys who created a company to do special effects using AI, do special effects on Hollywood movies. And then, you know, each scene now costs one tenth the price. So you're talking about instead of having a hundred million dollar budget for visual effects, you could have a ten million dollar budget now to make the same movie. So across all the movies, okay, it doesn't add up to trillions of dollars, but every industry now is using AI to improve profits. So you can, like a movie that would have been unprofitable can now be profitable because they reduce expenses using AI. And that that does become a net positive because it does mean the studio can make more movies,

• 23:46Speaker 04

  hire more actors, hire more crew. And again, I'm not saying trillions, you have to kind of add up lots of small things to get to the trillions. But I think that is happening across every industry where money's being saved and that means it's being more efficiently allocated towards new projects, hiring new employees. So seventy percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 have filled out a survey and said, yes, we're using AI. But only four percent of those companies have said, oh, this has led to firing employees. So we haven't really seen the mass layoffs yet. We see the headlines of mass layoffs. We haven't seen countrywide mass layoffs.

• 24:19Brian Keating?

  Like, how do you justify, you know, Nvidia being worth more than all the European stock markets put together? You know, just, and then if that like, and then let's say you took out one of their customers, like ChatGPT, like that could be the pinprick that pops everything, right? I mean, because, yes, they're gonna, I mean, again, it's not like a consumer thing. Like, we don't buy the hopper chips. We pay for tokens. And then what if that goes to zero? Like, the Chinese flooded the market with solar panels in 2000. I remember solar panels was a hot new thing in 2005, 2006. America was going to dominate and be great. And now we don't, there's not a single company in America that makes them. China barely makes a profit, but they make quality products.

• 25:00Brian Keating?

  And, but they, you know, now that market's totally gone with DeepSeek. DeepSeek costs ten times less to train and to run per million tokens than Claude does with ChatGPT.

• 25:10Speaker 04

  A hundred percent, I agree with you about DeepSeek. I think decentralized, open source, general purpose inference, like a ChatGPT, is much better done in the long run by a decentralized, open source platform like DeepSeek. So I think that.

• 25:27Speaker 04

  Any one industry, yes, I agree with you. OpenAI is probably overvalued. Who knows? I don't know. But it's certainly, you know, up against some, some strong competitors that are one one hundredth the, the price like DeepSeek or Mistral. There's plenty of open source decentralized AI competitors to, to OpenAI. So we don't know the answer there. And on Nvidia, I agree with you. That might be overvalued only because, not because they're going to run out of the need for GPUs. Some other company might come up with something better than GPUs. And that's the risk you take when you're an investor in, in Nvidia because the demand is still there.

• 26:14Speaker 04

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• 26:58Speaker 04

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• 27:41Speaker 04

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• 28:08Speaker 04

  You mentioned about AI coding. Well, Google and Microsoft have laid off thousands of programmers because they're using AI coding. And Cursor, which is the leader in the space right now, they are the fastest company in history to get to a billion dollars in revenues and their AI coding. And their code is not perfect. Like you need programmers to go over it, but it reduces the time for a good Google programmer, it reduces their time and the amount of manpower and man hours needed to make a program by 90%. So, so it is valuable. And again, that's built on top of the Anthropic platform and Claude, Cursor is. So there's going to be other, these niche companies that get to a billion dollars in revenues, super fast. That means, you know, if they get to a billion dollars in revenues, it's super fast like

• 28:51Speaker 04

  that, they're probably worth, you know, I think actually Cursor's valuation in the last fundraising was about 30 billion, which actually makes, makes some sense because they're still growing at that rate. And, uh, you know, that's where you start to build all this value is that the time to build things and the efficiency using AI is, is really great.

• 29:07Brian Keating?

  No, yeah, believe me, I know, but I just feel like the, the user base, you know, how many millions of people are going to use it? Yes, Cursor and those things are, are very good, but it's also like, it's like quantum computing, which we're, you know, eventually we'll talk about, um, and maybe not even today because I have to teach quantum mechanics soon. But, but the, you know, quantum mechanical computers are extremely useful at discovering and optimizing the properties of quantum computers. Like they don't, they don't have tremendous, like there's no AI, you know, quantum computer You know, a secret killer app yet now there there are certain things that they're very good at and then the most famous one is like encryption decryption.

• 29:47Brian Keating?

  And and so forth, but that might have like a really negative externality in that like it could compromise, you know, like encryption schemes, including those used in tensor and and Bitcoin and other things like we get into that at some point. Why is that the case? How does that work? Yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 04

  But but but like, OK, I I agree and there and it feels almost like a similar bubble when you look at stock market valuations or private company valuations. But the here's the one big difference. Quantum computers have zero zero legitimate users. Now, there are research users and there's there are users who are trying to build better quantum computers, but there are zero users at the current moment. Other than research and and kind of academic.

• 30:26Brian Keating?

  It wasn't the case. Yeah, right.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  AI has two billion users just using like chat GPT and and, you know, competitors to chat GPT, not counting the tractors spraying pesticides and and all that kind of stuff using AI. So just two billion users on these general inference platforms. That's a real difference.

• 30:42Brian Keating?

  I gotta see your tractor. I mean, you keep talking about your tractor. You're a chicken farmer down there? What are you doing down there? KFC?

• 30:49Speaker 04

  No, I need I need like AI to make the pickleball lines on my on my tennis court, so.

• 30:55Brian Keating?

  Yeah, that's that's a that's a number one use case. I think that's how Nvidia is going to stay in business. Now I'm not worried about my position, my one share of Nvidia. I have this friend who who like he's like this complete genius like programmer and and just like he's got this whole idea for new new types of AI that's like different from diffusion. It's like diffusion plus like branch and and network theory, got graph theory like Stephen Wolf from works on and stuff like that. It's this revolutionary thing. He told me to buy Nvidia in like 2019. And he's like almost broke. I'm just like this guy. I mean, literally, if he bought like a hundred shares, you know, when it was like

• 31:37Brian Keating?

  a thousand dollars, you know, that would have been a thousand dollars. Like, he could have been, I don't know how much, but we could ask AI, but like he'd be like well off. And now he's he's totally, you know, like, I feel bad for the guy. And I'm like, I didn't I didn't really. Take your, take your advice, but that, that's sometimes the problem with it. Yeah. I mean, these, these things have such abilities, we impute to them these like almost mythical, magical powers, including the power of the economy and, and over science and physics. And, and that's why people have this misplaced trust, in my opinion, that their theories of everything are correct because they're vetted by, you know, Gemini or whatever, but like, but Gemini in the hands of a professional physicist is an extremely unusual, powerful tool.

• 32:17Speaker 00

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• 32:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, cause I, I would say that, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'll ask you the question. Like, I would say the difference between the guy pitching you the theory of everything and someone like you using ChatGPT is you won't ask leading questions. So if I asked to ChatGPT, hey, if I, you know, assume gravitons are influenced by gravity, does that have a, make a theory of everything? And if ChatGPT is gonna say, yes, that's very astute. Like if you do this, so ChatGPT is gonna like try to agree with me. Whereas you'll say, you'll ask meaningful questions to give you more information. So you can come to a conclusion. You won't ask

• 33:27Speaker 04

  leading questions. You'll ask information oriented questions. And I think that's a big difference in terms of how to use ChatGPT correctly.

• 33:35Brian Keating?

  Yeah, no, and it is. And that is a huge form of leverage, which is again, why I don't think that it should be really reconsidered by my colleagues. And even like my fellow parents, you know, my daughter, one of my daughters is, is interested in, in making a song using Sona or whatever they, yeah. So she's doing it and she's like, oh, make us, make a song, you know, Like Taylor Swift singing about my friend, you know, Brittany and my friend Kaylee and Leila and whatever. And then they're going to, you know, try to get me at recess and hit me with a dodgeball or whatever. And it comes like, I'm sorry, Orlie, I can't get back to you on this and we can't, sweetie, we can't deal with this.

• 34:18Brian Keating?

  Uh, because it violates copyright, you know, like not only is her name trademarked, but like even her style, like Taylor Swift's style is trademarked. And that was like kind of revelation, but then she said, oh, okay. Well, how do I get around it? So she asked ChatGPT, well, like, what are like basically synonyms to describe Taylor Swift's voice perfectly? Uh, to an LLM that isn't allowed to use. I helped her a little bit.

• 34:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:41Brian Keating?

  But isn't allowed to. And it came back and it was perfect. So what did she learn? She learned how to prompt. She learns that prompt engineering, you know, so to speak, which is an important skill. And she learned that, you know, as a, as a kid, and now, you know, she, that's a lesson that she's not going to forget. And now she knows she can't do certain things. There's guardrails on it. She learned a tremendous amount and I feel like.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  By the way, then she also learned Taylor Swift's style and maybe some music theory around Taylor Swift's, you know, what makes a pop song.

• 35:08Brian Keating?

  Right.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  And, and that's incredibly valuable. Taylor Swift is the, one of the best selling artists of all time. So it's kind of incredibly valuable that she wouldn't have learned.

• 35:15Brian Keating?

  I read, you know, um, I wrote just in my Monday magic mailing list where you can get it, briankeen.com. Slash mail or list. Um, and I wrote about, um, this, uh, this new site that I found called book.sv. And all it does is give recommendations. I said, do you ever read a book, James? That you kind of wish you didn't read it because then you'd be able to read it for the first time. Like, I know you were like that with losing the Nobel Prize, but, but, um, uh, but, uh, so it gives you recommendations of similar books. It's pure AI. So.

• 35:49Speaker 04

  Oh, I love that.

• 35:50Brian Keating?

  Recently I typed in and you could put that in the, in the show notes, James, uh, or, you know, first put in my mailing list, uh, Jay, and then put in book.sv. It's a great little, uh, um, uh, thing. So, okay. So I put in, uh, of course, you know, my books, but then I put in a choose yourself, be happy, make millions, live the dream. So what do you think are some comparable books, similar books to choose yourself?

• 36:14Brian Keating?

  Besides the Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth.

• 36:17Speaker 04

  Okay, maybe Seth Godin's books it would recommend, maybe something like The Four Hour Work Week it would recommend.

• 36:23Brian Keating?

  Yeah, it's got that. But here are some other ones that I, like, I didn't think about at first, but then I read it and I was like, yeah, you're absolutely right. Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield.

• 36:33Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 36:34Brian Keating?

  Uh, Scott Adams, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

• 36:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:39Brian Keating?

  But these are books like, if, like, and then Gary Vaynerchuk, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Um, so that's like, first I thought, well, it's just, it's just looking at the title, like, but then it has, um, Josh Waitsky and The Art of Learning.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  No, and these are all books that I've read pretty heavily, you know, either before or after.

• 36:55Brian Keating?

  You've interviewed all these people.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:57Brian Keating?

  I've interviewed.

• 36:57Speaker 04

  Mastery. Yeah, and, uh, yeah, Mastery was by, uh, um, Robert Greene. So, yeah, all of these things were actually.

• 37:04Brian Keating?

  Which one of Seth's books is most similar to your book, according to book.sv?

• 37:10Speaker 04

  I mean, he, I think he actually had a book called Pick Yourself, but, uh, yeah, I, um, I, or there was a book I felt like that, but maybe Purple Cow, I, I would have to think about.

• 37:20Brian Keating?

  Icarus Deception.

• 37:21Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 37:21Brian Keating?

  How High Will You Fly?

• 37:23Speaker 04

  Yes, that one was, yeah, that came out a little bit before Choose Yourself, and I felt it was like a similar, similar theme.

• 37:30Brian Keating?

  Isn't that cool? So that's a great application of, and so just that feeling, there must be some Japanese word for that feeling of regret after you finish something you like, you know, like, it's almost like you, you, you finished eating at this three-star Michelin restaurant, and now you can't eat anymore. You're like stuffed.

• 37:47Speaker 04

  You know, I just, I, I just put in my favorite collection of short stories and, and I asked recommendations, every single recommendation I've read and loved.

• 37:56Brian Keating?

  That's amazing. Okay, Choose Yourself Guide to Wealth, what do you, so this is a little bit more popular one. Now there's Reimagine Yourself, Choose Yourself, The Rich Employee, um, let's see.

• 38:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, a whole series.

• 38:07Brian Keating?

  Yeah, let's see what's one that's not, um. Actually, this one should have been Kamal Ravikant's book. I think that should have been that was that should have been more similar to Choose Yourself, but they have it as

• 38:19Speaker 04

  Only because I wrote, I think I wrote, did I write the foreword to that? I forget. I don't think I did.

• 38:23Brian Keating?

  Mm hmm.

• 38:23Speaker 04

  No, I'm just, I just recommended it. So.

• 38:25Brian Keating?

  Yeah, some of these are not, I don't, I haven't read that book, your book, The Wealth Guide, but, but I've read the other one.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  It's the same as Choose Yourself. Just don't read that one.

• 38:35Brian Keating?

  Okay, yeah, yeah. So save, save money. And then the other one is Reinvent Yourself. Let me just see that one.

• 38:43Speaker 04

  Oh, skip the line. Skip the line.

• 38:44Brian Keating?

  Skip the line. Yeah, I read that. Obviously, I hosted you. But I'm just trying to see any ones that are, that are like really like that resonate in that sense, like the sense I had when I was, yeah, Tribe of Mentors, Tim Ferriss, yeah. So it's an interesting site. So those are great things that like kind of distill the DNA of something. But, you know, I'm worried about writing. Like, I kind of, I'm glad that I never, that ChatGPT really came out after my first books were, you know, after I had done a lot of, because it's very tempting to use it, you know, like I use it for writing, like I write, I write letters of recommendation. I basically, you know, kind of just brainstorm in this AI voice mode.

• 39:23Brian Keating?

  And then I have like a boilerplate thing in Claude as a project. I just say like, make sure you interview the candidate, you know, that you're, that you're writing for. You know, you meet with him or her, like, and I just say, like, if you were writing a recommendation, what would you want me to? Because I don't, they've been working for me for six years. I don't remember everything they did in 2019, you know? So like, tell me everything you're proud of. Like, you're writing for, your mother is writing this thing for you. And then I'm going to make it professional. I'm going to add it, but I use AI to like distill what they say, because they're not maybe as good a writer as I am, or they just put it like a CV, like bullet points, like that's not as, I'm not going to cut and paste that. But then I can convert it and add in my special sauce and spices. Actually, train, have you done any like Jamesbots? I mean, you must have.

• 40:07Speaker 04

  Yes, yes.

• 40:08Brian Keating?

  And how did you do that? Because I saw this really good guy, Matt Wolf. He lives in, in San Diego, actually. And he has this great like tutorial on how to take every single interview you've ever done on YouTube, at least. I don't know how you do it for the audio only ones, but all your YouTube ones.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  I've done all my articles and a bunch of my books.

• 40:27Brian Keating?

  And what about your podcast?

• 40:29Speaker 04

  No, I haven't done that. I haven't done that.

• 40:30Brian Keating?

  So what did you put in it? Like, what tools did you use? Let's make this actionable for the audience.

• 40:34Speaker 04

  I actually don't know because I, someone else did it for me. So, but one thing I will say is that if I say, okay, now, right in the style of James Altucher, I can see what it's doing. Like, I do think I have, for better or for worse, a particular style. And, and I could see what it's doing and how it's trying to do it, but it's not working. It's failing. And I don't think, I don't think AI could replace us as writers. And of course, I could be biased because, you know, I'm a writer. But the problem is, over 50% of content now being written on the internet is written by AI. It's about 52% last month. So now, and AI always only learns from the latest

• 41:15Speaker 04

  things going on the internet. So it's only learning about writing now from its own writing. So it's kind of, it's kind of gaining a plateau.

• 41:22Brian Keating?

  I call it mad bot disease. Remember mad cow disease? Like, where cows would eat other cows, and then they'd go, they'd get this brain disease. So I call it mad bot disease. Yeah, it's exactly right. And that's why there's no chance as LLM, maybe AI will, but there's no chance an LLM plus GPU-based architecture will create a theory of everything. I'm going on record, right now, you heard on, there's no, it's not gonna come up, it can't do it because we haven't done it before. And the only new things that are coming into it are gonna be either new physical laws, new physics discoveries from humans, or it's gonna be like, oh, here's a transcript from the Fast and the Furious 11. Like, is that what's missing from the current understanding of physics? Is that the corpus of knowledge and tokens doesn't include the Fast and the Furious 11? No, it has nothing to do with that, right?

• 42:05Speaker 04

  No, you're absolutely right. Like, for, for, for writing, for instance, okay, there's only so many good writers. Like, there's only so many Hemingways in the world. So even statistically, you can't analyze, there isn't enough data to give you examples of good writing. Plus, it's very hard to, it's even hard, subjectively, let alone objectively, to determine good writing. So it's never really gonna learn to be a good writer. But video is a different story. So there's a million hours a minute being uploaded to YouTube for videos. So there's so much more data. On what makes a video look like a real video. Every minute, there's another million hours worth of real videos being uploaded. So the data is there. The data for good writing is not there. The data for a theory of everything is not there.

• 42:50Speaker 04

  So you have to understand how AI works. It's dependent on good and marked data. And sometimes it's not able to mark the data.

• 42:58Brian Keating?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, this kind of connects back to what I said in the beginning, like my, my, my rubric for picking a good politician is like the most liberal person in a, in a, in a red state or something like that, right? But, but what's like the dumbest take of a smart person? Like, I think Elon Musk, very bright, very high agency, very competent. But I think, you know, he or Sam Altman, like, they really believe that AGI is going to be here. And that's going to fundamentally do things like create a theory of everything. I mean, they've said such like, it's, it's just like a matter of time. And, you know, I understand they have quite an investment with both, you know, a chemical rocket company plus a AI company, plus a, you know, plus a social media platform.

• 43:42Brian Keating?

  So I understand his incentives, but what do you, what do you attribute that to? I mean, it's such a simple proposition, like, nobody believe, nobody who's knows anything about math. Or like, I interviewed Terrence Tao, it was like IQ is like 260 or something reportedly, smartest man, he won the Fields Medal. He is just this wonderkin, you know, he's brilliant, brilliant. He actually like graduated from, you know, college, I think in 19. And then he went to Princeton at 21, he got his PhD. But, um, you know, he's like, man, no, they don't even have things that can, like, literally, James, you can't even check, like, Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Like, it doesn't know how to do that. Like, you have to basically, and these are very optimized, only do things like prove math expressions are true or false.

• 44:26Brian Keating?

  And it can't reproduce something that was done 30 years ago by a human. So either that gives you a lot of, now, I believe that they can beat us in chess. I always say, like, they'll never beat us in tic-tac-toe, James. They will never take our tic-tac-toe crown away from human beings. I think it's impossible, like, I'm joking, I mean.

• 44:44Speaker 04

  Well, you know, I was, I of course, worked on everything, you know, chess software and game software. And I remember going to, when I was in grad school, I went to Kai-Fu Li, who later on, basically invented speech recognition at Apple, then became one of the biggest investors in China. But Kai-Fu Li was a professor at the time of computer speech recognition in 1989 at the grad school I went to. And I said, let's work on Go, because I knew he was interested in Go. And he had created the best Othello program using AI. And he said, no, no, no, Go is too hard. They're never going to solve it. And yet now Go is solved. It seemed like an impossible problem and it's solved because there was data.

• 45:21Brian Keating?

  Yeah, exactly. Right. So those are algorithmic things, but where there's no algorithm. Like, would you ever say like, the, you know, the AI sculpture, like this robotic sculpture, and it's going to do something that is as evocative as like Michelangelo or the Mona Lisa or whatever? Like, yes, it can make incredible art and even music. And in some of, I read somewhere that the top 10 on Billboard is like half AI in certain categories, like, which is pretty crazy. But then people, when they're asked about it, do you want an AI thing? You remember this thing, like, you must remember, because I think you told, you talked about it first, as far as I don't know, like the uncanny valley. You remember that?

• 46:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:01Brian Keating?

  Nobody talks about that anymore. We just went like, wait, like, nobody says like, oh, these AI girlfriends, like, they don't really look identical to like Scarlett Johansson or Robin or my wife. Like, no, no, they're perfect. They're exactly, you know, it can replicate people's exact images. But people, you know, do they prefer it? And, and so I'm worried about writing. I mean, I've seen like a massive decrease, even on like YouTube. Like, you take some of the most popular YouTubers, and except for the very top, like Joe Rogan or Stephen Bartlett or whoever, like, they're getting way fewer views. And, and why is that? Like, what happened in the last year? I mean, the only explanation is that there's just so much explosion of other content, and some of it's AI.

• 46:44Brian Keating?

  But, you know, in terms of writing, like, are people sitting down? Like, I haven't read a physical book, like, in a long time. And I read a lot. Like, I listen to audiobooks, you know, 2X Speed for my podcast. I read a lot of nonfiction. You know, so I read more than 99% of the population. I think I'm unusual and I have a podcast and I do research. So, I mean, I'm worried about, like, I'm thinking about writing a traditionally published book. You know, about Jim Simons in, but from his scientific accomplishments, not like, you know, his financial.

• 47:16Speaker 04

  Oh, I would totally, I would totally read that.

• 47:18Brian Keating?

  Yeah, and it's, and, and there's so many more insights because if you asked Jim, who is he? Is he a, would he say, I'm a hedge fund manager? Like, no, he was a scientist. His whole life was based on his scientific curiosity. So I think that the financial thing, of course, gets the headlines because it's titillating, but, but no, that wasn't his core identity. And so, you know, I knew him, you know, as well as, you know, anyone outside of his family, I would say. And, and, and I think like, that's the story that needs to be told. But like, who's going to read that? You would read it because you're my friend and you're.

• 47:47Speaker 04

  No, no, I would read it. I read it also because I'm fascinated by Jim Simons. So yes, I would read it because of you and I would read it because of, so you're going to get niche audiences, like, like AI and the internet in general has encouraged niche subcultures, and that's what you're going to appeal to. You might appeal to a general audience.

• 48:04Brian Keating?

  But publishers don't want, they, they hear niche and they're like, screw that. I'm not getting into a niche. Like, they can do niche all by themselves.

• 48:09Speaker 04

  But, but that's why I wouldn't, I would not do a traditionally published book.

• 48:12Brian Keating?

  Are you ever going to do another one?

• 48:16Speaker 00

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• 48:45Speaker 04

  I don't know. I, I got, last traditionally published book I did was Skip the Line. And I got a great, I got a great advance. And, uh, you know, it was nice to have a really great editor. But overall, I enjoy my experience of self-publishing more. I have total control. I make a hundred percent of the profit on the book. I could design a book cover just as well as any editor because I could hire a book designer and I could get just as good, I could get better marketing because I can also control the price depending on the marketing campaign. So, so, you know, I don't, I don't really see the benefit other than. You know, advance and prestige.

• 49:22Brian Keating?

  I'm not thinking, you know, a book about, you know, uh, five dimensional topology is gonna, you know, be a huge, you know, runaway Wall Street bestseller. But in terms of, and maybe it will, because Jim Simon's, you know, involved. But what do you see as the trade offs? Like, if I just said, I don't care about the money, the advance, or whatever, but I want, like, the full firepower of a publisher, like, what is that?

• 49:44Speaker 04

  What is, what is the full firepower?

• 49:46Brian Keating?

  That's what I'm asking you.

• 49:48Speaker 04

  Okay, the only firepower with just basic self publishing compared to traditional publishing, the only firepower traditional publishing has, is they can get it into Barnes and Noble. That is the only firepower they have. You know, I say Barnes and Noble in quotes, they get into other bookstores. But, you know, they're not gonna get it into Walmart books, they're not gonna get into Target books, because you have to write like a romance novel, or a thriller, or whatever. So, so Jim Simon's book is not gonna get into Walmart. It'll get into Barnes and Noble, in the major cities, and then if it does well in the major city Barnes and Nobles, then it could get into the other cities. Um, but, there's no, I would say self publishing has more firepower. And that, and by the way, the evidence, the statistical evidence is there. So, on average, a self published book has a higher star rating on Amazon, meaning it's

• 50:33Speaker 04

  prob, you know, readers like it better than, on average, than an average traditionally published book. And, uh, it has, on average, higher rank on Amazon than traditionally published books, meaning they sell more copies if you're self published. I don't know why that is. It could be because the gatekeepers are just not that good at the traditional publishers. So, you know, so, so there's no real firepower that traditional publishing gets you, other than the fact that, oh yes, my agent got me Simon and Schuster, and, you know, the advance was published in Publishers Weekly, and now I'm, oh, you can't get me on the New York Times bestseller list if you were self published. So, you know, that, that's.

• 51:09Brian Keating?

  Like, so why doesn't Steve, why does Steven Pinker not publish self published?

• 51:15Speaker 04

  I think my guess is he, if I were to estimate, he probably gets about a million dollar advance per book and he's writing a book a year. So that's a decent addition to his Harvard academic salary. And I'm just guessing at this. And, and then he doesn't have to hire-

• 51:29Brian Keating?

  If he sells so many books, he would make it up in the book sales, right?

• 51:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, but he's not, he's probably not going to sell that many books. Like, he, he is kind of like a marquee name for them. And, you know, they don't really make the money on those authors. They make the, the publishers make the money on their backlist, but they stay relevant by having, you know, Steven Pinker is our latest author and, you know, we got, we got him on the Today Show, which by the way, doesn't really sell any books. But, you know, they can kind of then, and then when they're pitching like Stephen King's next book, they're like, oh yeah, we just had Steven Pinker, you know, and we'd love to have you. So, so, you know, but I think that's, I think it's a dying business model. And, and for Steven Pinker, he doesn't wanna, he doesn't wanna get, hire a book designer and, you know, I'm a little more entrepreneurial, not that he isn't, but I'm a little more

• 52:17Speaker 04

  entrepreneurial and, and, you know, I will get a great book designer, I'll figure out how to play with the pricing and I know email lists and podcasts and so on. Like, I don't need a PR firm. His, his book publisher will hire a PR firm for him and, and so on. So, but you know, did choose yourself sell more copies than whatever his latest book is? Probably. And that was self-published. And Skip the Line, which was traditionally published, and I got, you know, a good advance, did not make back the advance.

• 52:46Brian Keating?

  I do worry about the self-published, for one thing, the, having an editor, yeah, is, if you have a good editor, I, I think that's extremely powerful. Like, I'm very close to my copy editor, you know, Allegra Houston. She's, she's amazing and she, she does a lot. And I was very close to my original acquiring editor and editor, and then he quit Norton and went off on his own because it's a horrible, it was a horrible job, I'm sure, you know, at that pay rate. And his office was like a janitor's closet somewhere. But the, but, you know, having someone to bounce ideas off of that has a, you know, kind of a financial stake in things. If you hire somebody, you could say, well, like,

• 53:27Brian Keating?

  you know, first of all, it's pretty hard to, you know, find a group of people that are as good at copy editing. Now, maybe I could hire them again. But, you know, bouncing ideas off of, you know, that was very valuable. It's like AI, I could have AI be my editor, but I think it'll be horrible.

• 53:43Speaker 04

  So, so I think you're right. Like, I've had great editors at traditional publishers. But, okay, choose yourself. I will tell you the team of people I had helping me with edit and, and marketing and design. First, I had this guy, Niels Parker. You might not know him, but he was Tucker Max's editor on all of Tucker Max's books, which were all... Tucker Max and Malcolm Gladwell are like the two people who've had, you know, three books at the same time on the New York Times Bestseller list, so...

• 54:08Brian Keating?

  Yeah, I know. You introduced me to Tucker, so...

• 54:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, Niels Parker is, is a great editor and writer. Then, I had two other people helping me with marketing, design, the thinking of it, the editing of it. I had the young Ryan Holiday, pre-all-his Stoicism books, and he was, he was a marketer then. I, I hired him. And Tucker Max. So, these, that was my group of people to bounce ideas off of. So, I had a real professional team that I, made up of, you know, between, between Tucker and Ryan now, there's like 20 million copies of their books. So, so this was like a really super professional team. And I was very fortunate in that, but...

• 54:45Brian Keating?

  Yeah. I'm just thinking, like, someone like Basic Books, who does a lot of science stuff, and, or Norton, who does science. Having that, you know, as an independent person who's gonna read the book and not kiss my butt, um, and, you know, in the scientific realm, what I've heard from my agent, you know, is like, people don't really care about whether or not a theory is true. Like, they, they just wanna hear it. Like, they hear, "Oh, black holes destroy information," or "Quantum computers are gonna revolutionize, you know, our world," or, you know, "We, we go to Mars and, and it's gonna change everything for preservation of human life," or "There are aliens, you know, throughout the galaxy and

• 55:26Brian Keating?

  the universe." Like, none of those are provable statements. In fact, some of them are demonstrably false. And the, the biggest one is like quantum gravity and a theory of everything, you know, will, will change, you know, completely change the roadmap for civilization, like the invention of fire, or all these... But, and so, they like things like string theory because it's false, it's unfalsifiable. In other words, these authors are like, Stephen Hawking was famous for this, like, he would... Wrote total nonsense BS. I know I wrote his book, A Brief History of Time, but, but nevertheless, there's so much nonsense in that book. He talks about string theory and it's like less reputable cousin called M theory, which, you know, none of this thing.

• 56:06Speaker 04

  I never heard of that.

• 56:07Brian Keating?

  Yeah, no. So it's all in, but most people, 90% of the people didn't read it. I, I once was at a talk that when he could still talk or respond in near real time and someone said, why'd you write A Brief History of Time? It's rumored that nobody who buys it reads it. And, uh, and he replied, well, it's only important that they buy it. You know, it's like, my daughter needed to pay for, I needed to pay for private school for my daughter. He literally told me that. I told us that. Um, so, but, but people like that. They, it's almost like this hero where like you just want to know that there's some like SEAL Team Six of intellectual, you know, physicists out there, but you, you don't need to know how they do the wet work that they do, you know, in Venezuela or wherever they're going to be. Uh, you just need to know that they're there. Like remember,

• 56:50Brian Keating?

  like A Few Good Men, Jack Nigels, you know, you want them on that wall. You need them on that wall. Like we need these Nobel Prize winners, even though we have no freaking clue what they do, most people. Um, because it's sort of like a, a, a CV enhancer for the human race. And I just feel like, uh, you know, I know how to write a book like Brian Greene and, you know, The Fabric of Reality, or, or, you know, the, the, you know, kind of just, just the breathless tones about string theory. I know how to do that, but I don't want to do that. Like I'd rather do something that's true to like experimental. The ironic thing is that Jim Simons worked on a scientific theory, which not only could be a theory of everything, but it, it also, you know,

• 57:34Brian Keating?

  is verifiable and in some cases verified. In other words, there have been Nobel Prizes given for predictions that stem from his mathematics. He didn't predict a physical application of it. And, and some of them relate to quantum computers, which we have to talk about, but not today because I gotta go teach like right now. Um, but let's, let's catch up again soon and I'll try to get on topic about the moon landing denial.

• 57:58Speaker 04

  Yeah. The entire purpose of this podcast, the title of this podcast was to talk about Candace Owens. And denying the moon landing and we will just have to reschedule that for next few days or weeks or whatever.

• 58:09Brian Keating?

  Yeah.

• 58:10Speaker 04

  It's always going to be a hot topic. So, so we'll be able to talk about it soon.

• 58:13Brian Keating?

  It's, it's the computing of the future. It always will be and the, the moon landing is always going to be denied like any, anything like the Epstein files. People like, oh, the Epstein files are going to come out and it's going to change everything. I'm like, as long, do you think they're going to reveal everything, James? Like, not even like, like, just is it possible? Like, how many gigabytes of data is that? And even L L Ms, like, a lot of limitations of the L L Ms, they can't go through a context more than like 100 emails or something before they just like forget what they're doing.

• 58:43Speaker 04

  Let, let me ask a slightly different question, which maybe answers this question, which is, have they ever released anything about anything? So, so where's the, where's the JFK stuff? Where's the UFO stuff? Where's the MLK stuff?

• 58:56Brian Keating?

  That's coming this week, the UFO stuff.

• 58:58Speaker 04

  Well, well, I just had someone talk about UFOs and it's like, oh no, they're threatened with death. But, you know, and he didn't quite say that. I'm not, I don't mean to, I'm not making fun of that guy.

• 59:07Brian Keating?

  You claim that, James. They claim they're going to be, you know, you know, detained and that they now they're whistleblowers. And then, why do you need a whistleblower? Like, I talked to this astronaut, Chris Hadfield. He's like, well, if you're telling the truth, why do you need a whistleblower? Yeah, he was great. You know, he gave me like such a good interview about his new book. But let me just say, as long as there's some capacity for doubt, the human mind will never be satisfied, right? We'll never know exactly like to the molecule, what happened in Dallas in 1963, right? We'll never know exactly why the twin towers, you know, the building seven fell down. Yeah. Yes, there are theories and there's always going to be gaps, right? There's always going to be some plausible, you know, kind of outlet that, and as long as that happens, you can never resolve

• 59:50Brian Keating?

  something. We can't, look, we can't even resolve that the moon landing happened. There's, there's a substantial number of people who are alcoholics or felons or, or truly mentally ill people. I'm not saying that people that don't believe we landed on the moon, you know, are mentally ill, but I'm just saying like 10% of the population are murderers, you know, and alcoholics. And so you're never going to convince everybody that any- Any event happen, the Epstein files or not, even if like Trump's all over it, he was really down there, he's doing everything bad and and and it's reprehensible what Epstein did. Nobody denies that, but that this is going to somehow change everything or like, you know, Scott Galloway, he said, oh, the reason that we have, you know, that Trump is is is releasing, you know, the or is going to declare war on Venezuela and and did, you know, like,

• 1:00:35Brian Keating?

  sign that these peace accords and is because he wanted to keep Epstein out of the news. Like, it's so much like wish casting. There are people just and you can wish anything onto it such that if you hate America or you love America, you could have plausible, you know, case for your argument. But none of that has to do with the moon landing or quantum computing. So we have to schedule that. Jay, set it up. You got my email. I'll talk to you guys soon. What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

• 1:00:59Speaker 04

  Playing chess, playing in the US Masters in Charlotte, North Carolina.

• 1:01:02Brian Keating?

  Awesome. That's that's close. That's close to you.

• 1:01:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:06Brian Keating?

  Maybe, maybe I'll, yeah, can I my, I have some relatives there that would like to meet you, including one that might want to work on quantum computing. We'll talk about that.

• 1:01:17Speaker 04

  All right. Excellent. Well, look, Brian, good luck on your teaching today and we're going to talk soon about all these other things.

• 1:01:25Brian Keating?

  Figure out what, you know, six plus three equals X plus seven. I, if you can get me that information, I will, I'll be eternally grateful.

• 1:01:33Speaker 04

  I, we, we got to get to the bottom of this.

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