The U.S. Media Is LYING To You—Here’s The Truth About Global Chaos | Shane Smith PT 1

You're probably not seeing the world for what it really is. Your beliefs about truth, politics, and even chaos itself are all being challenged by the way information is being disseminated today. What if the chaos that surrounds us every day is actually a ladder, waiting for you to climb it? Sounds audacious, right? That's exactly what my guest today, Shane Smith, co-founder of Vice Media, is here to talk about. Shane is someone who's pushed boundaries in media and has witnessed first-hand the complexity of a world that’s increasingly becoming post-truth. He's a man who’s not afraid to ask the tough questions about politics, media, and the intricate latticework of truths and lies. Buckle up, because today's episode is going to take you on a deep dive into the gritty reality that shapes the narratives we believe in. SHOWNOTES 00:00 "The Nature of Political Truth" 06:19 Politics and Propaganda in News 12:52 "Navigating Reality: Shared Facts Debate" 22:01 Tribalism in Politics and Culture 23:45 "Success: Money, Timing, Growth" 28:27 "Equal Skills: Nature vs. Nurture" 35:31 "Canadian Ambition vs. New York Drive" 39:08 Political Strategy: Shifting Party Dynamics 44:14 Social Media's Influence on Politics 51:33 "The Simplified Dao Path" 57:25 China's Global Manufacturing Rise 01:01:57 Preparing Kids for Climate Challenges 01:06:48 Future Conflicts: Inequality and Technology 01:11:50 "Intelligence Everywhere with Open AI" 01:17:01 Tort Reform and Plato's Cave 01:21:43 Futuristic AI Romance Explorations 01:27:30 Gen X: The Overlooked Generation 01:32:26 "Future: Personalized Virtual and AI Worlds" 01:39:14 Fusion Power's Impact on Living Trends 01:46:06 Kandahar Warrior Turned Taliban Slayer CHECK OUT OUR SPONSORS Range Rover: Range Rover: Explore the Range Rover Sport at https://rangerover.com/us/sport Audible: Sign up for a free 30 day trial at https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY https://audible.com/IMPACTTHEORY1 Vital Proteins: Get 20% off by going to https://www.vitalproteins.com https://www.vitalproteins.com/ and entering promo code IMPACT at check out Thive Market: ​​Go to https:thrivemarket.com/impact http://thrivemarket.com/impact for 30% off your first order, plus a FREE $60 gift! ITU: Ready to breakthrough your biggest business bottleneck? Apply to work with me 1:1 - https://impacttheory.co/SCALE Kettle & Fire: Get 20% off your first order at https://kettleandfire.com/impact with code IMPACT Netsuite: Download the CFO’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning at https://NetSuite.com/THEORY https://netsuite.com/THEORY Found: Try Found for FREE at https://found.com/impact ********************************************************************** Do you need my help? STARTING a business: Join me inside ZERO TO FOUNDER here https://tombilyeu.com/zero-to-founder?utm_campaign=6762613-Scaling%20YT%20%26%20PC%20Ads&utm_source=IT_PC&utm_content=ztf_it_pc_ad SCALING a business: Click here to see if you qualify https://tombilyeu.com/scale?utm_campaign=6762613-Scaling%20YT%20%26%20PC%20Ads&utm_source=mindset_PC&utm_content=bdceo_mindset_pc_ad Get my battle-tested strategies and insights delivered weekly to your inbox:sign up here. https://tombilyeu.com/ ********************************************************************** If you're serious about leveling up your life, I urge you to check out my new podcast,Tom Bilyeu’s Mindset Playbook https://open.spotify.com/show/47VE90Cittmo6TGGFqg2xf —a goldmine of my most impactful episodes on mindset, business, and health. Trust me, your future self will thank you. ********************************************************************** Join me live on myTwitch stream https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ. I'm live daily from 6:30 to 8:30 am PT atwww.twitch.tv/tombilyeu https://impacttheory.co/4fitmnJ ********************************************************************** LISTEN TO IMPACT THEORY AD FREE + BONUS EPISODES on APPLE PODCASTS:apple.co/impacttheory http://apple.co/impacttheory ********************************************************************** 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.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

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• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  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 Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. I'm Tom Bilyeu, and this is Impact Theory. Right now, the world is chaotic. The media is fractured. Political polarization is at an all-time high. And the truth, good luck finding it. It can be defined by anybody. Everybody has an agenda, and what actually is true seems to depend on which side you're on.

• 1:27Tom Bilyeu?

  And that's exactly why I wanted to have this conversation with today's guest. As the founder of Vice, he built one of the most disruptive media companies of our time, one that went straight into war zones, dictatorships, and places the mainstream media wouldn't dare go. And today, he's exposing how the game is really played. Who's pulling the strings? Why news has become more about narratives than facts? And what that means for you? If you've ever felt like you're being lied to, manipulated, or just cannot figure out who to trust anymore, this episode is going to give you some answers. So without further ado, I bring you Shane Smith. As somebody who founded arguably the most disruptive media company of this generation, as you look at what's going on today,

• 2:12Tom Bilyeu?

  what do you think is the most important story that we should be paying attention to?

• 2:15Speaker 01

  For the first time ever, like we're a post-truth world. And I think Vice, our whole thing was...

• 2:26Speaker 01

  We would go to Afghanistan and we'd go, oh, there's a whole nother story going on that nobody's talking about because news is institutionalized. They have like a guy who stays in the hotel. He has stringers, the stringers come to him, he writes a thing, it goes in, that goes into a teleprompter and the host goes blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then when you go there, you're like, yeah, nobody's left the hotel in three years. And that we got into that by mistake because we were filming the only heavy metal band in Baghdad.

• 2:57Tom Bilyeu?

  As you do.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  As you do. And we were there coincidentally when Bush came and said, mission accomplished. We won and we were in using the green zone. We were in the red zone and everyone's shooting at each other. And we're like, ah, the war isn't over. So we just started going places. And I'd say 90% of the time when you went somewhere, the story would be completely different than than what you were being told. Now, there's 50 different versions of every story on social media. And that's A. And then B, young people believe them. That's two. And then there is a lack of trust in the mainstream news media with good reason, I think.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  And then there's, you know, op ed crap on one side and snide comedy on the other and not a lot of facts. So it's a it's a terrible situation, but for guys like us, it's a great situation because we can go out there and sort of try to find the people that, you know, I was watching your podcast this morning with Michael Saylor talking about Bitcoin. And you're like, that's interesting. And that's going directly to the source and figuring stuff out. And so it's kind of good, but kind of bad, I guess.

• 4:16Tom Bilyeu?

  I was gonna ask, does the truth matter? Or does the interpretation of truth matter?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  There lies the rub. I mean,

• 4:25Tom Bilyeu?

  but how do you think about it? Because you've said multiple times that what you're trying to do with Vice News presumably, and certainly your own show, is figure out why we don't have shared facts. And I'm assuming to try to, in all of that, figure out what actually is true.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:43Tom Bilyeu?

  So it matters enough to guide your professional life, but.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  I think so. Look, I'm a centrist and I love the political game and I love watching it unfold. And what's happening now is incredibly interesting. And look, I think is 70% of it is bread and puppet or bread and circus theater. Because we want to be part of this grand democracy, which we aren't. We don't have a lot of agency in a two party system. There's two party system. They're always power. Super public. It's not democracy. Like if you want a democracy, you get four, five, six, 10 parties. I mean, it's the same two parties forever. So like, what is it all for?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  And I was gonna say, you know, I wanted to do a show called Let's Go Back and let's go back and see what they said about Trump, all the things that Trump would do. During his first presidency, let's go back and see what they were saying about Obama and that he's gonna take the guns and he's gonna do this and he's a communist and he's a. It's all bullshit. Like nothing ever fucking happens. And so now like there's some stuff happening, but you're like, like there's, it's always doom and gloom from one side to the other side. And a lot goes on during those four years. So a lot of it is for, we are part of this grand democratic experiment and democracy in America and the best country and da, da, da, da. And it's like,

• 6:04Speaker 01

  you know, the people are the great beast and we're going to the circus to watch this stuff. And this is the circus. It's the best. And biggest reality show that everybody in the world tunes into. And we have a new star of that reality show and he knows how to milk the cow. So uh, does the truth matter? Look, I like commonality of facts. I like science. I like, you know, look, we're gonna run into a wall. Uh, let's say climate wise and everyone's gonna go, you know, why didn't you tell us? Or like, you know, people don't like doing anything unless you have a gun to your head. And, you know, I've been doing environmental programming since I started in media and nobody gives a shit.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  And you can see it now. Now it's like, okay, our house is just burnt, LA just burnt. You know, you're having these crazy storms and everyone's like, it's the government, it's the government. It's the fucking world is like, this is only the beginning and it's gonna get worse. And there is no common, that's been politicized. Right? There will be another pandemic and half the people won't get vaccinated or what have you, because it's been politicized. Right? There's like, AI is gonna happen and upset. AI is the all human endeavor done by machine. That's going to, if you study your Smith and Ricardo, that's gonna have a lag of people going from,

• 7:31Speaker 01

  uh, I'm like, I use, you know, oh, the winemakers now have to be coal miners. Well, the winemakers don't know how to mine coal. Well, there's a lag, meaning people die. And so there's gonna be a huge cultural lag. But until there's universal living wage or until there's something, you know, that happens, but the capitalist system is not very forgiving to a huge shift towards all human endeavor done by somebody that isn't a human. Something that isn't even, so look, massive shifts. And if we can't point to a commonality of facts and everything becomes politicized, then we're fucked. And arguably, we are. Next question.

• 8:15Tom Bilyeu?

  That's a, that is a very, um, I think important take. I think there's two ways to look at the shared facts problem. Number one is, uh, if we don't share facts and people are just gonna argue, and almost certainly the people are framing things not to get to a universally useful outcome. They're arguing and positioning things so that they can get their way. Uh, but the other is that the world actually does work in a certain way, like physics are real. And if you understand the physics of money, if you understand the physics of climate, then you can actually navigate the world in, in a more useful way. But I find that there's a really fascinating tension and it's

• 8:58Tom Bilyeu?

  very interesting to hear you use almost a verbatim quote that I said this morning on the podcast that we'll be releasing tomorrow, which is that reality is the greatest reality show ever. And it just, everything that's happening is so crazy that it becomes a question of, okay, do we engage in this big game of politics or culture, whatever rapper you want to put on it because it's entertaining? And we just, it's, it's too fascinating not to engage with? Or is it that you can actually improve the direction of all of human civilization? If you can get closer to what is actually true? Which of those do you feel a bigger pull towards when you, when you think of how to spend your professional time?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  I think it's both. I think, look, it's like, you know, we, we're sitting at this, this sort of thing. But like, like if you look at Joe Rogan and you're like, okay, Joe Rogan

• 9:54Speaker 01

  sort of straddles both of those things, but became a sort of political kingmaker in the last election.

• 10:01Tom Bilyeu?

  Absolutely crazy. What he says ends up being so important.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Not only with Trump and, but like, and Elon and like, you know, all of it. And so I think that

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Both of what you say is true. So you you have the the sort of people on the periphery who are doing the reality show part of it, but to that you can get close enough to actually getting in like like RFK Junior and and Elon and all these people were on the periphery. And now they're calling the shots. And if you look what's happening with Elon especially, you're like, holy fuck. Like, it's kind of great. It's kind of crazy. Um, and to go back to like politicized, I mean, it brings into question a lot of things, which is, um, why do people believe what they believe? You know, and then you have to sort of, and I look at myself and, you know, like a lot of people

• 10:59Speaker 01

  in America, I'm sort of been moving my political spectrum. Uh, and I'm like, why, you know, did I believe all that stuff? And if you really introspective, I went to school in Canada. And I think here they done studies in like 80% or whatever, 90% are leftist and like 20% are Marxists, whatever. In Canada, like everyone was a Marxist. I was a Marxist when I left. Really? Yeah, yeah. Wow. You know, I I was, again, I was, I studied it. So my actual paper, my final paper was about how both capitalism, Smith and McCarroll capitalism,

• 11:42Speaker 01

  and Marx and Engels communism were effectively the same thing. They were apologies for the Industrial Revolution and both wanted, in the synthesis of synthesis of communism, it was a sort of like very small government that and the markets regulate themselves and people regulate themselves and then government just a sort of infrastructural stuff. And so, but yeah, I, when I, when I was going to do my graduate work, I was gonna, I sort of went with a Hegelian, I was a Hegel was pre Marx. And so, uh, very left and Canada very politically correct. But as a backlash to how politically correct Canada was, vice started. Cause it was so stifling and there was so much censorship and we were punks. We're like, fuck you, we're gonna be fucking different.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  But still coming from a place of hyper sort of political awareness. And then as you get older and you get more in the political game, you're like, holy shit. Can you believe this stuff? And I think that was a big eye opener. But getting close to the political machine and being able to move the, the needle. Look, that's a real thing and that's a great question. So, I mean, I think both. And if you look at Joe, like he's a perfect example.

• 12:55Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, and he's done a phenomenal job of the way he talks and engages with the world. He finds humor in the madness of it all, but he can so quickly switch to, but okay, this is really serious and we actually have to talk about it.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  And he talks to everybody.

• 13:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Which is big. Like you can't talk to people on the right if you're on the left. And if you're on the left, you can't talk, which I've learned.

• 13:16Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. With community coming after you.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think Vice was sort of leftist. I mean.

• 13:23Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:06Tom Bilyeu?

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• 14:47Tom Bilyeu?

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• 15:32Tom Bilyeu?

  That's Q U O dot com slash impact. All right, we're back. Let's get into it.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Vice was a big thing. There was all kinds of things, but like Vice News, we tried to be centrist. And I remember like we had a lot of young people working for us. And you'd be in the edit suite and you'd be like, you can't have the Democrat come in and be like, ah. And they have the Republican coming up, dum dum dum, like music stings, like how they cut it, like everything.

• 15:56Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  And we were always trying to shove it towards the center, but you know, it was perceived as being very left. And then when I left, it got even more left and woke and all that shit.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  And so when I started doing Shane Smith, I asked questions, my whole thing is like, I love. One of my favorite things we ever did is I went to, we went to a prison with Obama. It was the first time a sitting president went to a prison, prison reform, blah, blah, blah. We won an Emmy, so he gave me basically access to his presidency, last six months to do a, to do a doc. And I was, look, I was gonna do a blowjob cream puff, like, I shouldn't say those back to back, but like a cream pie, like piece, like.

• 16:33Tom Bilyeu?

  This is getting worse by the second here, Shane. I love it.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Called Freudian, Freudian slip. Barry, I love you. Um, no, he gave me this access to the White House and

• 16:44Speaker 01

  and I like, again, I was just gonna do like a nice, you know, and he, all they would talk about was the Republicans and Republican, this is at the peak of the Tea Party and Speaker Boehner. And so I I'm like, well, now you brought it up. So now I have to go talk to all these guys. So I went to hang with Speaker Boehner, who's a lovely cat, like great guy. And so I just was hanging out with him and he was a great guy. So sort of hanging with Frank Luntz. He's a great guy. So I was hanging out with all these people. And you realize, oh, like, there's, there's this, like, Speaker Boehner got fired from his own party, being Speaker of the House, for going to meet President Obama. And you're like, that's your fucking job. Sorry, cancer.

• 17:28Tom Bilyeu?

  No, you can swear.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I guess.

• 17:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Say what you want.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  Sometimes we get deplatformed for the salty language. Um, that's your job to go see him. And so the Tea Party sort of ousted him just for even going. So what does that mean? It means that there's no consensus politics anymore. It means even if you go meet the opposite side, you can be kicked out just by meeting them, not by doing any deals with them. And that's where we are today. We're in a hyper galvanized into an activity, or even worse, we're going to go back and undo what you did during your presidency or and or how. So we're going to, what we're going to do is reverse everything that you you guys did.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  And so we're, we're in this bipartisan, not bipartisan partisan, partisan bipolar. There we go. I got it. Partisan bipolar world of near the twain's, I mean, like, they're over here, they're over here. And during that presidency was, that was when the Republicans say, well, not one vote. So we're not going to give you one vote on any of your legislation.

• 18:35Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, that's super unhelpful.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 18:38Tom Bilyeu?

  So, uh, yeah, uh, as I look at this stuff, I, because my content used to focus primarily on, um, what I always called empowerment. So I'd worked in the inner cities. I had a thousand employees that grew up like hard in the inner cities. And I realized, oh, some of these guys are quite a bit smarter than I am, but their lives are going nowhere because they have a set of ideas that's just not useful in the real world.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:01Tom Bilyeu?

  And so I said, look, I'll come in early. I'll stay late. I'll teach you everything I know about entrepreneurship. So you can control your own life. That ends up becoming impact theory. It was me just really trying to see if people could take these ideas and run with them. And, uh, it was very distressing to see how few people do once they hit a certain age.

• 19:20Tom Bilyeu?

  But the people that did, it had a similarly positive impact on their life. And the, what I call the two percenters ends up being this incredible journey for them to go on. But you begin to realize, okay, wait a second, ideas matter. They matter a lot. Your frame of reference matters. It matters a lot. Depending on how you engage with the world, you can actually get it to move in a direction. And then just the more I've been in it, the more I kept like getting closer and closer to like, uh, the final line, which is politics and culture. And as I got there, it became very much the community was like the initial community. I don't want to hear about this stuff. I don't want to talk about it. Everybody's tribed up. To your point that if you're talking to the wrong person, then people just feel betrayed.

• 20:01Tom Bilyeu?

  They don't want to ask of themselves, this thing I believe, when I act in accordance with that belief, does it make my life better or worse? They don't even look at it just because it feels so good to have a team. And to feel like, okay, the world's very complicated. I don't want to have to parse it all. So just in my blue or red team, and then just give me all the, the download. And then I'll know this is how I'm supposed to think about these different issues. And my thing, the reason that like you, I'm always trying to push my own thinking back to the center is it feels like the most useful place from which to pick the best ideas. True. Because if you tribe up, now you're no longer looking at an idea based on its ability to take you where you want to go.

• 20:46Tom Bilyeu?

  It's just, am I going to look to my left and right and be cheered on? Yeah, it's an ideology. Exactly. And ideology certainly lead to feeling good about being on your team. They lead to having a simple answer to very complex problems, but they don't lead to, I know where I'm trying to go and this thing is actually going to get me there. Yeah. Now, do you have like a, when you think about being a centrist organization, looking at what's happening in the world? Do you want that kind of outcome where it's like, hey, maybe things move slowly, but they do move. And so I want to give people the information that they need. Um, or is it something else?

• 21:22Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I want to go back to impact here for a second because you just spurred something on in me. That's a great thing, by the way, going to people and saying, hey, I'm going to give you all the tools that I had and whether or not they take it or not. Because I was always, I went from sort of being a hustler in Montreal, just like trying to make a media company work. All of a sudden, you're in the stratosphere where everyone's a billionaire and everyone's got a boat and everyone's got a plane. And, you know, there's like this knock on effect of you made money and now you're like a design genius because you know, your houses are nice and you know, you're a style guru because you know, all of a sudden you know about clothes or all of a

• 22:07Speaker 01

  sudden you know about travel or where the coolest restaurants are and all these things and like, you know, is it because of the money and you were in the right time, the right place with the right product? Now, because you have money, it opens up your brain and confidence and so you and you've become a sponge and you learn and you learn and you learn and other people aren't learning. So you do this. Or were you sort of predestined because of your brain to do all this because you can figure out the systems of modernity, you know, better than anybody else? That's a great thing and someone should study, like, what's the percentage of if everyone's given the same tools? Because obviously, rich people have kids and those kids, a lot of the

• 22:48Speaker 01

  time, don't do well. In fact, the opposite. So that's a very interesting thing. To go back to your direct question, again, you're exactly right. So it's an ideology. I don't want to be an ideologue. I like to look at things critically and say, okay, look, you know, some people on the right have a great idea. Like, if you ever put a tax on anything, that tax is staying there forever. And it's never going away. Like, we just need to tax it now for this one bridge. We just need to, you can go back and say in 1789, they needed to do a tax for wigs. It's still in there, right? So I'm like, I'm not very-

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Like the more tax you have, the harder everything becomes in economy. And look, the reason why this country is great is because people like I'm an immigrant. They come here and make money. So, but yet there are some things like, look, you can't walk around LA. We were coming here today. There was, there was these sort of hipster, rich guys over by the Chateau Marmont. And there was a dude naked, just jacking off on the street.

• 23:50Tom Bilyeu?

  Okay.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  And you're like, you're like, look, the homelessness situation, especially in LA is insane. And, and look, I don't know if that's because people are insane or because of, you know, you don't see that in like Denmark, you know, like there's got to be a, so, so there's, there's points. But the problem is if you go too far to the right or too far to the left, to go back to, I think the left went way too far to the left, which is why now you have a huge move to the right, because the left kind of fucked up. And so, like, I like to look at both and say, what's the best of both? And I think you bring this up a lot on your podcast is like, I want to be able to pick, you know, the best person and or the best theory and or the best thing. You want a meritocracy.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  I'm exactly that way. And I think if you become an ideologue, you're, you're saying, I'm going to take 50% of the world and say, I'm not going to look at that. I think that's wrong.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  So I think, you know, you should be Switzerland, you should be, I'm going to take everything from all people.

• 24:53Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, my thing that hides in plain sight that people seem to ignore for reasons I really cannot grasp, is that you can certainly chart a different course in your own life. You can probably sway culture more than you think, certainly if enough people are going in the same direction. But nobody, not nobody, but very few people take the time to say, I want to end up at exactly that place. And they'll have goals, but they'll be hopelessly vague. So I coach entrepreneurs and I get that all the time. They say they know what they want and they'll give you an answer and it's really vague.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  They don't want to be poor anymore.

• 25:29Tom Bilyeu?

  That honestly, sometimes it's that simple. Like I want to make $500,000 this year. Rad, doing what? So it's like they don't even have the specifics. It's crazy. If you have what I call the only belief that matters, that if you put time and energy into getting better at something, you will actually get better. Then it's like, I want to go there. I'm not good enough to get there yet, but I can get good enough. And then you start putting time and energy into that. But to answer your question about, okay, if everybody had the same skills, what would end up happening? I don't have the studies in front of me, but from what I see coming out of the scientific community, it's roughly 50 50. So your outcomes are 50% based on your brain, your genetics. And then 50% is malleable and it's going to be culture and it's going to be all the things you do.

• 26:14Tom Bilyeu?

  And the bad news is that you can really fuck somebody up by raising them poorly. And like the first three years is all you need to just absolutely decimate them. Clearly. And the example I always use is that the language centers of somebody's brain will either develop or not develop well. Based on the number of words that they hear by the age of, it's either three or five. And they looked at kids in low income areas compared to people in the middle class. And it was people in the middle class heard five million words by the time they were, let's say, three. Uh, and people in low income areas heard three million words by the time that they're three. And then the ratio is the middle income kids heard 70% positive to 30% negative.

• 26:59Tom Bilyeu?

  And for lower income kids, it was exactly reversed. Wow. And then when you take, because they were trying to answer the question, like, what is it that happens? That leads a kid who grew up in the inner cities to effectively have an accent in their native language? And that was the big thing. There, the language centers of their brain do not develop as much as somebody who just hears whatever 40% more. Words, volume of words by the time they're three, and there are realities to be faced about the way brain. Brain development happens. And so like you're able to make all these crazy connections up to like age 11 and then it starts pruning. And then post 13, you're sort of on this downward trajectory until at 25, your brain is effectively done developing.

• 27:41Tom Bilyeu?

  People are going to argue the exact moment, but it's effectively done developing. Now it's still plastic, it can still change, it can go in any direction that you want. But most people don't because at that point they've gotten all the early easy gains. They've set things like their vision of themselves, their vision of how the world works. They don't realize that those are decisions based on, oh, this thing happened to me and this is what it means. And if they could change that story, but they probably won't. And then there are actual developmental things that are now baked in. And I had a guy on the show, Gabor Maté. And I say, Gabor, you have two options before you. Option number one, a kid is raised unbelievably well up to the age of three. And then after that is just abused horribly until they're in, let's say they're early twenties.

• 28:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Versus somebody who is just absolutely in a terrible situation, bad parenting, neglected, abused, whatever, until they're three. But after three, they're in a loving relationship, they get highly educated. Which of those two has a better chance of having a positive outcome? And he said, it's the person that has the good first three years. Even though they're going to go through some brutal stuff, they will have had things locked in to the way that their brain developed. That's going to carry with them forever. Attachment styles and things like that is going to carry. But if they have those first three years are just brutal, then they're really going to be in for a hard time. Now, look, the, the, some of the stuff going on in charter schools proves that you,

• 29:08Tom Bilyeu?

  if you catch somebody at say kindergarten-ish, you can still really change the trajectory of their life in a positive direction. But yikes, it, there are just hard truths to be faced. Quick break, but don't go anywhere. There's more to come after this short break from our sponsors. All right, we're back, let's get into it. That's really interesting. Makes me feel kind of good. About being a. Yeah, because you're like, yeah, just because the first three years, you're like.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Laser focused on the kid and you know, so you're like, oh, good. I got those three years and that's good. Cause now I have two teenagers and they, they definitely don't want me to be laser focused on them.

• 29:48Tom Bilyeu?

  Yes, that is a, that's a whole thing. Also very predictable. And that, I think that's one of the things that I am obsessed with. So going back to my initial question, I'd love to hear from you, the thing you think people should really look at, because for me, when I think about, okay, what's the thing that matters most? If you're really trying to help people or you're trying to sway culture to a direction where my north star is human flourishing at scale. So

• 30:11Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 30:12Tom Bilyeu?

  What do we do? What do we have to set up? Um, I am a big proponent of some cultures are more effective at leading to human flourishing and therefore we should be adopting whatever works to get people there. Um, and in trying to move people in that direction, I just come back to over and over and over, uh, the way that money works. And if you make it impossible for people to get economic progress, boy, oh, boy, are you going to have all kinds of problems.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yes. Every time I come back to the States, I'm like,

• 30:44Speaker 01

  there's a lot of countries, I don't know, I'm not, don't pin me factually, but I would say 85% of countries, you don't get a kick at the can. Like, I'm like, oh, you know, I'm on my third kick at the can. Like I, you know, made a lot and then lost it and I was like, you know, if you have access to capital, like you can day trade and you can do stuff with crypto and you can do, and

• 31:07Speaker 01

  whenever I come back particularly from, you know, Southeast Asia, Africa, Middle East, and but Europe, I mean, if you don't have the right name and the right accent and didn't go to the right school, you don't get a kick at the can. And it's pretty wild, like that you don't have any ability to move that socioeconomic ladder. Um, and that's most of the world.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  So that's like when you you're right, I mean, capitalism and hyper capitalism are the way that people who are smart and or dedicated and or, you know, focused and or, you know, who can figure out systems, whatever it is, that's that's where it happens. If you have any other type of like going back to the Copenhagen, Copenhagen is lovely. It's great. It's a great city. Everyone has clean sheets, beautiful apartments, everyone's riding bikes and rosy cheeks. But like, what's what's coming out of Copenhagen? Like, you know, then you look at New York City, which is

• 32:13Speaker 01

  sort of dirty and heft up and, you know, there's rats everywhere and there's poor poverty right next to extreme wealth, but it's atomic engine of culture, man. So, yeah, it's

• 32:26Tom Bilyeu?

  Do you put a value judgment on those?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 32:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Is one better than the other?

• 32:33Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's look, coming from Canada, it's two different ideas. So, yes. I was about to say, no, but coming from Canada, Canada is really a cut off the tall trees. You know, culturally, culturally. And there's a joke, there's an American fisherman and a Canadian fisherman, they're standing on the border and they have two buckets and in both buckets, there's lobsters and the lobsters are coming over the edge of the Canadian fisherman's bucket. And the American fisherman says to the Canadian fisherman, hey, you're gonna lose your lobsters there, they're going over the edge of your bucket. And he doesn't look back and he goes, no, they're Canadian lobsters, his friends will pull them back in. So

• 33:15Speaker 01

  one of the reasons why we left Canada was because of that. It's like, really, like, everyone just be a B minus. And and if you wanted to polish the turd to become an A plus, there was not a lot of incentive. And in fact, there was disincentive. And if you were arrogant and you said, we're going to be the biggest in the world, or we're going to be the best, or we're going to do, you were kind of like, you know, that Shane is a bit of a braggart, you know, and whereas when you came to New York, it's like the hardest city to get to, but it's also the hardest city to stay in and also the hardest city to like, like everyone's. Having a hard time. So they have, you have to be smart and tough and amazing and have story and to climb that ladder is even harder. So it's like you're playing,

• 34:00Speaker 01

  you know, NFL, Super Bowl football every day in New York. And then you go to like, any other country and they're just tossing it around in the backyard and you're like, well, I can really do this in my sleep. And we've noticed that like when you're, when you're baptized by fire in New York and you go to Europe, Europe is a very weak market and, and, and sort of five to 10 years behind. And you can get in there and really, you know, I know we're going to get a lot of comments from Europe and Canada for both those statements. But yeah, it's, it's brutal. But it's like a gladiator war. Like it's like Conan on the wheel of pain. Like he pushes,

• 34:39Tom Bilyeu?

  go Shane.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  He pushes through the wheel of pain, you know, he comes and he becomes a pit fighter. So it's like Gladiator. I mean, like Gladiator, he has to, he fights as a gladiator for whatever the fuck in his five years. Of course he's going to be like, you're going to fight Caesar. I mean, like he's like, because he's a gladiator now, like that became his special skillset. So if you're in New York, you're learning all these special skillsets that nobody else is learning. But is it hard? Yeah, it's hard. But like at the end of it, you're like, now I can go up against anybody.

• 35:12Tom Bilyeu?

  So right now feels like that moment. So we, at least in America, we have been regulating the life out of everything. Things were moving in the wrong direction. People were feeling like they couldn't even speak. And obviously we had with the election of Donald Trump, a huge sort of release from that pent up energy. And what do you think about that? When you look at how fast they're moving, the move fast break things, the make big cuts, we can always add it back later. Are you energized by that? Or do you think, ooh, ah, gents, we got to slow down a little here?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's hard not to be energized. I think, um, like I said, the sort of American political system was sort of galvanized into inactivity. And because of the non sort of, you know, working together, you know, polarization, it became just unbearable and unbearable politically unbearable for media. Um, you know, everything became propaganda like, like the, you know, the, the right has propaganda, the left has propaganda. The left doesn't know that it's propaganda is propaganda, you know? And I think that that came out, which is good. I think that's a good thing. I think doing stuff is good.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  I think, um, look, there was a lot of bullshit, you know, out there in the world. And now at least if you're moving to one side, you can say, is it right or is it wrong? And by the way, the Democrats will have their, you know, their time to Chuck Spears. Um, but if it works, boy, oh, boy, if it works. You know, I remember when Obama got in, they were doing demographics and they're like, okay, because of Gen Z and millennials, just like the baby boomers were the largest cohort and now it's going to be millennials. And so there might never be a Republican president again, because it's just the young people vote. And now you're like, I mean, is there going to be a Democrat?

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Like they have done such a terrible job of building their bench and coming up with hard hitting political slogans and, you know, cultural zeitgeist moments and Joe Rogan moments. And they just, I mean, they just did a terrible job and to the victor go the spoils. Also, I think, look, I think a lot of people begin to go back to the center, the Nixonian great center, the the silent majority.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  A lot of people were pissed, like a lot of people were just sitting there going, come on, dude. What is this now? Why is this now everywhere? Why has this become what everybody's talking about this thing? Like we have bigger fish to fry here. And so I think that there is kind of a release of people going, okay, let's focus on these big things that matter. Like I was listening to you talk about this, but, um, The sort of unbelievable, I'll go back to taxation, but the unbelievable waste that in the Pentagon, like, you know, they're finding out stuff. So I've been reporting on, you know, Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan for, you know, I've been going to Afghanistan for 20

• 38:29Speaker 01

  years and I used to get all these scoops and I'd be in Afghanistan and they'd be like, where do you get your stories about all the waste? And I was like, Sigur, the American-appointed, congressional-appointed Secretary General for the investigation of Afghanistan. The American government knows it's happening. They know that trillions of dollars are going out the window. And that's your money. And so for me, like, look, that's, America should be frustrated, like, the Pentagon just spending nearly a trillion dollars a year with no audits. I mean, that's crazy. And having Elon go there and say, hey, we should be able to do, have an audit. I

• 39:10Speaker 01

  mean, I saw a thing that Jon Stewart did and the head of the DOD was like, giving him shit for, like, saying that, you know, that they should do an audit. And then he just did this thing where he was like, okay, I'm not a, you know, a specialist, but I'm a human being who's on the earth and you get a trillion dollars and can't tell me where any of that money goes? No. So I think there's a lot of common sense that people are waking up and going, thank God.

• 39:38Tom Bilyeu?

  Why do you think though? Because I would read that as, at a minimum, political figures and media figures on the left are screaming bloody murder, trying to get every judicial interruption that they can get. Is that corruption come home to roost? Is, what is that?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  I'll ask you. I don't know. I mean, the USAID stuff is interesting because you don't know what's true. I mean, why is Politico getting USAID money? I don't know. I like Politico, but like, that's crazy. Like, were they buying?

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Stories? I mean, I don't know. Like, that's, I'd like to know. I mean, that's interesting. You know, were there slush funds for money coming back? I don't know, but it looks interesting. I mean, and if that's the amount of corruption that's going on in USAID, which is comparatively small, can you imagine, like, the Pentagon? Which is, I mean, 80% of our budget, 70% of our budget. I mean, it's lots of money. And by the way, they can't, and they're so big that they say they can't audit it. And you're like, why? I mean, that's our money. So I think that's good. I think there has to be some sanity.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  I, yeah, I don't understand the narrative, like what soapbox you're going to stand on. Because if you're going to stand on, no, we don't want the Pentagon to be audited. That's the hill you're going to die on politically, and you should die on it. And, um, look, rooting out corruption and waste in government? If you're going to say, no, we shouldn't be doing that,

• 41:24Speaker 01

  then you should look at your, your electorate should look at, you should tell that to your, your voters.

• 41:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, definitely alarm bells going off. All right. So the new show is Shane Smith has questions. How do you decide what question you're going to pursue? Because when you go down a rabbit hole, like you go pretty far. So it's going to be a pretty big time investment for you.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:44Tom Bilyeu?

  How do you pick?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  That's a great question, too. You should do this for a living.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  The idea was, uh, during the last election, social media, which I'm fascinated by, and has become media.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Social media was sort of informing, especially the Republican side of like questions and policy and narrative, like immigration, for example, was a big one. And so I'm like, nobody's reporting on it, like reporting on the social media, like, so no one's looking at it like an investigative journalist and saying, okay, where's this coming from? Like immigration was the big one, like on this side, you had literal like gates opening and people flooding across the gates. And I said this on Rogan, and by the way, I still get like thousands, thousands of comments. There was no gate that was open and people running through, like that was, you know, two miles before, two miles after the border, whatever. There were people coming and giving themselves up and then they get released into America, which

• 42:49Speaker 01

  is open border versus being sacked back to Mexico, which they're doing now. And so you get into it, but the, the Republicans had done such a great job of saying open borders and, you know, the criminals and all that stuff and keep hammering it, hammering it, hammering. And the Democratic response is, well, it's kind of nuanced and sort of like 80% to go back to facts, 80% of the people are showing up for the adjudication and the Republicans are saying 90% never show up. And it was illegal immigration versus legal immigration and da, da, da, da, da. And when you get into it, it's this insanely complex thing. But the Republicans had sort of boiled it down to something they could hammer that people believed in their bones, even if it wasn't true, they still believed it to go back to, doesn't matter if it's

• 43:32Speaker 01

  true. Um, and the Democrats couldn't come up with a response. And it's one of the big reasons they lost the election. And none of it was true. And so we, parts of it were true on both sides. You're gonna get more DMs. Yeah. Well, parts of it were true, but like, open borders is not what people think now.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Illegal immigration versus legal, we don't have any legal immigration. It's like 85,000 people a year or something. It's nothing. So we have to increase legal immigration, decrease illegal immigration. It's very complicated and very nuanced and whatever, but we don't have gates where it's just people, the gate opens and people run through, there's no gate, right? And so. That's when I started saying, okay, let's talk to people. Because there's no fact. So let's go talk to the border guards. Let's go talk to the Homeland Security. Let's go talk to the sheriffs. Who are reporting that, you know, people from Senegal are coming in like straight out of Africa who are paid by the UN. Literally with UN credit cards and you're like, okay, let's just go ask questions. Because these stories are crazy.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  And so what happened was basically what you think would happen, which is half the stories were there's a gate not letting them through. And then the other half were like, there's no gate. And what happened was. We started releasing them into America versus releasing them to Mexico. Because Mexico Supreme Court said. It's unconstitutional for us to release. Other people from other countries into Mexico. And now Trump came in and said, well, either you take them or.

• 45:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Tariff, tariff.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Tariff, tariff.

• 45:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Apparently the most beautiful word in the English language.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  It works.

• 45:12Tom Bilyeu?

  I'm sure about that.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Up until now, we'll see.

• 45:14Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it's a so, okay, you see something that people. There it is a consequential issue.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:20Tom Bilyeu?

  But people do not yet understand what's really going on.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:23Tom Bilyeu?

  So.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  So we do a deep dive.

• 45:25Tom Bilyeu?

  Take immigration.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:27Tom Bilyeu?

  Did you walk away from that being like, okay, I now have an understanding enough that I can. Like if I were asked, I could at least give an opinion on what I think should be done. Or is it like, hey, I make the facts available to the world and what they do is what they do.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 45:45Speaker 01

  Yes and no, I think. You know, I went on Rogan and I was halfway through shooting it and. I knew sort of that there weren't gates and stuff because I've been reporting on the border for 20 years, but I wasn't. Sort of fully. You know. Up to speed as I am now. It's going to be an ongoing story. So, you know, ICE is going to become a huge thing. Who goes, who stays is going to be a huge thing. Uh, it's that's going to become a very nuanced story and interesting because it's it's not going to be. Operation went back, i.e. You know, back in Eisenhower, just like everybody goes, you know, it's it's. And so that's going to be an interesting space to watch.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  There needs to be comprehensive immigration reform. Uh, what's interesting is if you look at it, you know, the immigration god was Reagan ironically and, and the, the Democrats were anti-immigration because they were the party of the unions.

• 46:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Bounces back and forth so much, it's crazy.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  And so now I think there needs to be bipartisan, like you have to, there has to be legal immigration. I mean, if you look at Japan, you look at all the, they're offering, you know, all kinds of incentives and as are Europe, you know, to people to come in because we need people and we're not replacing fast enough. We need, you know, people to come and, and be capitalists who want to work and make money and live the American dream. That's America. That's the basis of America. But it has to be legal. I'm a legal immigrant, like it, and, and what, what happened was everyone was applying for asylum. And everyone doesn't deserve asylum. You can say, I want to come and

• 47:26Speaker 01

  have like make money economically and there should be something for that. Um, but you know, everyone was saying, yeah, I'm going to be beaten or killed or whatever in my country, which, you know, a lot of the time wasn't true. So there has to be sort of comprehensive reform, legal immigration. The border can't be a question mark, even if it's not true, it can't be a question mark. You can't just have it dividing the American people 50 50. So it has to be controlled. And I think both sides realize like it has to be controlled. And that's just going to be going forward. That has to happen and on either side. And I mean, you're going to be hard pressed even as a Democrat to say, no, just let it go.

• 48:09Tom Bilyeu?

  And they really tried for four years. That was the effective design. Well, so let's argue that point. So when I look at a complex thing like the border, I say to myself, uh, the result of a system is the effective design of that system. It may not be what they set out to do.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:26Tom Bilyeu?

  But it is the effective design. And I think the reason people think of it as an open border, though I get the um, nuanced linguistical reality of. Ah, there there would first have to be like a hard thing for it to be open. Um, but what what I think people are emotionally trying to convey is there are a lot of people coming across the border one way or the other. They're no longer being shoved away. They're being allowed in whatever way you want to talk about it. Uh, and they feel some kind of way about that. Now, my thing is you've got to go back and ask the bigger question, which is why do they feel some kind of way about this thing? Uh, because I think that the the picture actually gets far more complicated.

• 49:08Tom Bilyeu?

  But it really does have to be simplified into a thing that people can understand. So a phrase I never thought I'd be saying a lot, but I find myself saying all the time now is the Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao. So it's from a book called The Tao Te Ching, uh, written two thousand, three hundred years ago, whatever. Uh, and what he was getting at, the Tao means the way. So translates as the path that can be explained is not the actual path. And the second you put words to it, it's no longer actually literally true. But if it's the thing that allows people to get the gist and to sort of understand where this goes, then it's like you can begin to unwind all of this stuff.

• 49:51Tom Bilyeu?

  Because, man, my thing is, all right, I want to look out at the future of America and I want to see something good for the people. Okay, now we have to define what good is, human flourishing, we have to define what that is. Um, I'll round everything to the ability to, uh, make progress towards an honorable goal. Just to like, keep it as simple again, as simple as possible. Um, but now you get into, okay, people feel some kind of way because they they can't make economic progress and they don't understand why. And so, oh, I can't, my parents in their twenties had access to way more house than I can get. Uh, you know, they, it cost them like a matchstick and a piece of chewing gum to get a house and then over the next forty years, yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Easier to get a mortgage.

• 50:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Exactly. So they're just like, uh, what's happening? Oh, what's happening is people are flooding over the border. Okay, problem. And so going back to the initial debate of is this what's really happening or not? Um, my thing is the effective design of the border right now is that a lot of people are coming over the border in a way that's very noticeable in that, um. You could send and many social influencers were podcasters, whatever, going down to the Darien Gap, seeing that it's happening, reporting on it, showing what was going on. And then conspiracies then run wild. And so now it's like, well, hold on with the thing I can see with my own eyes and capture on my own camera, I can see that many people are entering the country.

• 51:19Tom Bilyeu?

  And so if, and I think this is exactly what happened, if the Democrats or anybody else tries to get people on a technicality to not believe their lying eyes, then it's like, you just start hemorrhaging credibility.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  They failed.

• 51:32Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  The Democrats in the last election, Republicans are saying the border's chaos. And it's bad and there are criminals coming, there are lots of drugs coming, there are things happening and people come all over the world and Democrats didn't have response. And one of the major reasons they lost the election, there's many, but that's one of them because they didn't have, and you hit the nail on the head, which it doesn't matter to go back to our, because we're so good at this, we're going to go back to the original thing is, is it doesn't matter what the truth is, but the perception is the reality. And you're exactly right in that, look, economically, I'm not where I want to be. There's a lot of reasons for that thing. Immigration can be blamed on a lot of those things. Now we always, I mean, it's the easiest political tool.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  It's been done since there's been politics. Well, it's not us, it's them. But there are problems and, and you're saying, look, there's problems and my tribe is saying that my problems are caused by those people, which some of them are. And some of them aren't, but some of them are. And so you have to address that and you can't address it with sort of namby pamby wishy washy, well, it's kind of, so a lot of them do come to adjudication and we give them a phone and they come and maybe they get some money, but maybe they don't. And you're like, okay, dude, like you can't do that. Like you have to hammer it. And by the way, you have to solve the problem.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  So that's what you get paid to do. So you have to at least try to solve it, or at least say that you're going to solve it. And I mean, ironically, in the last year before the election, they shut down all like the, he had executive orders Biden to shut down everything. And all of the way stations and shit were empty and they started saying everyone else's and but they couldn't even get that, you know, message out there. They just failed miserably at that, at that. And now, so you have to have comprehensive reform. And you have to control the border, which probably means ironically, building some sort of wall that people can't get through or around.

• 53:34Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah. Yeah. As you look at the future of America, somebody you've traveled all over and I've heard you say like, when you travel, you really get a sense of what America is.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Uh, when you look at the future of America, what do you see? Where are we going?

• 53:49Speaker 01

  I think we've lost Africa to China.

• 53:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Whoa.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I don't think, I know you could talk, Ian Bremmer about that, but I spent a lot of time in Africa and it's all Chinese. I think America is number one, China's number two, that will change at some point. I don't know when.

• 54:09Tom Bilyeu?

  China number one.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:10Tom Bilyeu?

  Number two, talking economically or international influence?

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 54:14Tom Bilyeu?

  All of the.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Because if you look at when America became the hegemonic power, it was post-World War II. We had just a bigger market. We were like four X the market of, of, of UK, which up until then was one third of the world's landmass. And it was just the economic powerhouse, but we just had a bigger domestic market. We had manufacturing. We had, you know, population, we had space, right? And so just mathematically, England could not compete. And also we had modernity, we had the new factories and they had Manchester and Liverpool and we had like, you know, Detroit. We can see where this is going. China now has, obviously, whatever it is, a 3X domestic market to us. They have the manufacturing.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  They have, but Britain built the rule, which is you get the stuff, you get the trees from Canada, you get the cotton from India. You bring it to England and then you sell it to everybody, right? So you get manufacturing and you get the sale of all these manufactured goods. Then America really did a great job of exporting America. I mean, we were probably the best at it. And then now China is going from an internal, you know, everything is about China to now external. So they need the raw materials. And so they went to Africa, for example, not just Africa, they're going to the world, but and saying, okay, if you're a dictator, you know, we don't give a shit about human rights. Like, America's gonna at least, you know, make you pay.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  And by the way, here's a lot of technology, facial recognition technology, all kinds of stuff to keep your people in line. And by the way, you want to build a, like a super stadium to celebrate yourself named after you? Fine. Instead of a railway? Fine, we'll build you that. And by the way, if you can't pay us back, that's no problem either. You just give us your uranium for the next 30 years. So they're just winning, but they're just, they're trading better than America. And so that, by the way, that has, it's not just trade because, you know, every hotel you go to is Chinese. Like, it's, it's culture. Once the, once they get there, I mean,

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Gramsci said that if you can export your culture and not your troops, that's when you've won. Gramsci and Hegman, he said, like Coca-Cola, Hollywood, Marlboro. Well, China's doing that now. And so for the next few generations. So like, if you look at, there's a, there is a Cold War going on now with, between China and America. That's going to increase. And the quantum slash AI, I mean, it just happened, whatever, two weeks ago when they're like, here, we're gonna give you. Open source AI for free. That's maybe as good, if not better than for open source. And I was talking to Mark Andreessen about this. And what's interesting about that is at the time where we have been basically saying, we're going to control AI and the government's going to control it.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  And we're not going to, you know, open source. And China is saying, we're going to open source it and give it to the world. You're like, oh, what? America's saying we're going to put dampers on it. And China's saying we're going to open source AI, the future of everything. So that just goes to show you. And, and there is some question as to whether or not that's not the CCP saying that. So to me, that's wildly interesting that China's taking the high road on tech and AI. And when quantum comes, when quantum comes, it's going to be quantum and AI. And that's going to revolutionize. It's going to like, if you think there's, to go back to your philosophy of all like humans picking themselves over the quagmire in the mud.

• 57:49Speaker 01

  That's going to be a big one because quantum and AI is going to further differentiate. It's going to be like super, super smart people over here doing crazy things that nobody knows what the hell's going on. And people eating mud. And like, that's going to be, that's going to be like, that's going to be a big one. That's going to be a real wealth redistribution. And it's going to be, right now, it's going to be two countries.

• 58:13Tom Bilyeu?

  When you look at that future, what, uh, what are you most excited about?

• 58:17Speaker 01

  I mean, I think tech can solve the majority of our problems. Um, which is interesting. And I think, look, you can die and go shit. Like, if I thought that environmentally, like what we're seeing now, like my kids are like driving through their neighborhoods that are gone.

• 58:42Tom Bilyeu?

  From the fires.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  From the fires. And you're like, you know, and they had COVID and, you know, they're, they're actually growing up ironically like. I talked to other dads especially, but you know, they're like, oh, my, our kids are, you know, we used to grow up tough and we were, I'm a sort of, you know, Gen X and latchkey kid. And we just went out until the dark and lived in the forest and, you know, the raft would say, it was like, stand by me every day and you'd come back like, I lived, you know.

• 59:07Tom Bilyeu?

  I remember it well.

• 59:08Speaker 01

  And, and, and our kids are so weak and not prepared. And then you're like, actually, like you grew up during COVID and then there's fires and there's environmental things, create chaos and all that stuff. You're kind of learning.

• 59:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Are they getting tougher or are they getting more anxious?

• 59:23Speaker 01

  You learn how to cope with it, or you don't, but I mean, you learn how to cope with it and that's makes you stronger. And I see my kids sort of getting stronger, being able to adapt to shit that I never thought they would. So environmentally, I would be very sad to leave this world to my kids because it's going to get worse. And it's going to be bad. Like, I mean, sea level rise is going to be a big, big issue for them. And all the things that that entails, like we think immigration is bad now. To go back to immigration, if we don't get our shit together now, when, you know, we have two feet of sea level rise, which means a third of the population's moving somewhere. And then it's going to be really bad. So we better get our shit together.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  But

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  tech is going to be like, there's like, we didn't have those solutions before, like we didn't have the, now we can look at like, cloud seeding or ship tracks or geoengineering, all stuff, which now seems stupid and whatever rudimentary, but like anything, it's going to get better. And we didn't even have that. Like when I came out of school, by the way, there's no, nothing's changed. When I came out of school, my first job was for Greenpeace and I'm like, well, dude, yeah, we're screwed. Like I've already lived in the biggest house and the biggest, I've driven the biggest car because this is my parents. Like, we have to stop doing all this stuff. Nobody stopped doing anything and it got worse and it's going to continue to get worse. So we're not going to stop using fossil fuels, which is not. So tech has to change things and,

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  and geoengineering, eventually, you know, we're going to find some stuff that.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Hopefully work. So I think tech is going to be like what we've seen hitherto is nothing compared to AI and quantum. It's going to be Moore's Law on steroids.

• 1:01:11Tom Bilyeu?

  What do you think about it from impact on people losing their jobs, the way that kids interact with the world? What do you, how do you perceive that?

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  That's the problem. So to go back to Smith and Ricardo,

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  the reason why communism exists is because during the industrial revolution, if you want to go in Marxist dialectic.

• 1:01:31Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's go.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Marxist dialectic is very simple and I love it because I love history, but it's basically, you always have to increase production. Humanity has to increase production. So it used to be horizontal. So if you want more carrots, you have to go get more land and labor, which is why humanity was just continual warfare. Because if I want more carrots, I have to come take your carrots, right? So that's just how you get more carrots. So it was warfare all the time, just fighting, fighting. I want your carrots. You want my carrots. It's why we have castles. It's basically the whole of human existence is around keeping my carrots from you.

• 1:02:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Those fucking carrots, man.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Then it goes to, you know, vertical production, which is technology, industrial revolution. And so everyone went from farming carrots to like, now you have to learn how to make cotton gin, things work or fabrics or, and most of the people knew how to make a carrot by planting the seed in the ground. And then all of a sudden they moved to these horrible cities and had horrible jobs and made no money. And very few people made a lot of money and a lot of people didn't make any money. It was so bad that people said, wait, if we do this, we're going to have a dystopian world of very few people being rich, everyone else eating fucking coal

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  and garbage. And by the way, it was that, you know, for a while. And then tech got better, tech got better. We started getting more people and, you know, education, healthcare, all the things you talk about, giving a shit about your kids. Like, like, really, that's a very modern way of thinking. And so, uh, now, if you look at it, that's going to go like through the roof.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  And that's going to happen because of capitalism, and I think it's the best system for that. However, will masses of people be left in the slums of London? You know, yes, I mean, there's going to be, there's going to be,

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  you know, instead of the slums of the London East End, or the gorbels in Scotland, or all these places, there's going to be arguably continents that won't participate in that upside. There's going to be heavily populated areas. I mean, if you look at climate change, but like something like 20% of Bangladesh, which is all at sea level, has had to move from the coast into like mega slums, which are now like 30, 40 million people of slums in Bangladesh, which is not enjoyable. Um, and that's, they make the slums of London in the turn of the century look like, you know, Paris in the 20s. So that's going to be a problem for sure. And smart people like yourself, or, I mean,

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  I think this is why Silicon Valley is like, you know, universal living wage, or whatever the new acronym for it is, is they realize that because, you know, there's going to be quantum and AI. And then there's going to be dudes with AK-47s and the new currency is going to be bullets. And if you don't have

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  some sort of solution to that, and we see it already. I mean, like, if you look at, we've grown up in a period of non-conflict and non-war and stuff, but the war that we do have is sort of a war of ignorance, where you have a lot of people who are illiterate, being told what to believe by imams, what have you. And they grow up with a Kalashnikov and eat sand, and then we come in with drones. And it's, that's the disparity in the war that's happening. And if you look forward to massive hundreds of millions of people being displaced by environmental degradation, and then super rich, big-brained people with quantum things, and then they're just going, well,

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  I have to feed my kids. I mean, that that could be, that could be the, that could be a problem unless we, unless we do something to fix that. I mean, you see it happening in Europe right now.

• 1:05:35Tom Bilyeu?

  The, well, what do, what do you see happen in Europe right now?

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  I mean, you have Sub-Saharan Africa, which is conflict and poverty.

• 1:05:43Tom Bilyeu?

  Right. Flooding into Europe, you mean?

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and basically like, I'm so screwed. Like, for example, i- i- if you go to study immigration in Europe, it's a different ballgame. But what they'll do is they'll have like a boat and inflatable, and they'll have like 50 people in the boat and they come and they, they put a knife into the boat because in maritime law, if you catch a boat, you take the boat back. But if the people are, are in the water, then you have to take them, right? So, I mean, it's, it's become super sophisticated. And by the way, life threatening. And for you to sort of pop a boat like in the middle of Mediterranean, it has to be pretty bad. Right? And so, but people are coming and it's, it's now it's causing huge, I mean, front national in, in France.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  You know, in England, it's massive political upheaval. Obviously in Italy, huge political upheaval. This is like a trickle. Like, imagine when there's a drought and, you know, or, you know, it reaches above 50 in Sub-Saharan Africa for three years in a row. What's going to happen when it's not a trickle, it's a flood?

• 1:06:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Yeah, it seems like you're now on to another problem, uh, which is integration. So this is, when you look at, I haven't ever had a chance to speak directly with Douglas Murray, but I've read his work and the whole idea of the strange death of Europe and people not recognizing that culture matters and that if people are coming into your country and they're not assimilating, then you're going to lose what you think of as your country. But then for the last however many years, you've been called a bigot, if you even brought that up. Going back to the idea of traveling makes you look very differently at your own country. Um, I'm a total Japanophile. And so going to Japan and literally just seeing Japanese as far as the eye can see, it is not

• 1:07:28Tom Bilyeu?

  a multicultural place. You will literally see the occasional, uh, American person, but boy, oh, boy.

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  Much more so now than before. Like when we prefer, I don't know when you started going, but when you, you were just nobody.

• 1:07:42Tom Bilyeu?

  I have no doubt. Yeah. And when you say much more, it's still like, just radically outnumbered. Now their birth rate is so low, that's going to change. Korea is basically not going to exist. But My, my whole thesis on all this stuff is I think AI is going to bring about as close to a technological utopia as you're going to get.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:08:04Tom Bilyeu?

  But it's on the other side of a horrific amount of upheaval. And I'll call it pockets of violence. I, that, that literally is just an act of faith because I can certainly paint a picture where it gets very dire, very fast, with a lot of weapons and a lot of bloodshed. But I'll, I'll call it pockets of violence as a, an act of faith that will figure something out. But

• 1:08:26Tom Bilyeu?

  nature just does not care about any one generation. So even if the long arc of history bends towards justice, uh, there are still people that put 20,000 people on pikes as a way of scaring off an invading army. Like that's just the way it is. Read about Genghis Khan long enough and you're real fast going to be like, yo, humans are capable of tremendous evil. Like it is insane, but also from said tremendous evil comes the Silk Road and the uniting of the world and incredible trade. And so it's like, I, I don't know what to do with that. But I think that if we can get on the other side of all of that, then you've got an opportunity where AI can really help people all over the world.

• 1:09:09Tom Bilyeu?

  Because one thing I learned working in the inner cities is that intelligence is more or less evenly distributed. Intelligence, meaning the ability to process raw data. That's it for part one with Shane Smith, but trust me, we are just getting started. In part two, we're getting into the real power players behind the news, how governments and corporations shape the narratives we all consume and where it's all heading. Make sure you're following us so you don't miss a thing. Part two drops soon and you do not want to miss it. Until then, my friends, be legendary. 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.

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