Today's episode with Dr. Brian Keating - concluding our conversation from last week - also acts as a fitting bookend to our previous episode with Jordan Harbinger. Brian and James delve into the perils of fame-seeking ambition and how their world views have changed after recently cresting age 50.Brian also gives some business ideas he's been ruminating on and asks for James' feedback:"Yellowstone" but Based Around the Biblical Patriarchy (00:11:53)Anti-Doxing as a Service (00:21:36)Deepfake & Chatbot Detectors (00:23:11)https://BrianKeating.com/listhttps://twitter.com/DrBrianKeating------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book Skip the Line is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltucher.com/podcast.------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsStitcheriHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on Social Media:YouTubeTwitterFacebook ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you get your podcasts: Apple PodcastsiHeart RadioSpotifyFollow me on social media:YouTubeTwitterFacebookLinkedIn
This is part 2 of Brian Keating, who you've probably listened to before in this podcast. Both part 1 and part 2 are available today. You could download both of them. As always, a great conversation with Brian where I learned so much and heard so many interesting stories. So here it is. This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is the James Altucher Show. Ryan, you and I, I consider us friends, but we've only met on podcasts. We've we've No. We met That's not true. In, yeah, the TEDx in San Diego. Yeah. We met in person. In twin In the green room. Yes. Yeah. That was, like, 8 years ago. Yeah. Can't believe it. Well, like, like, I should spend more time face to face with my friends. You know, you invited me to, I think it was your 50th party. I was not able to make it. I should have made an effort more of an effort to to make it. I I had intended initially to go and then things caught up with me and I couldn't make it. Yeah. And I know. You know, I feel I should be less ambitious and more about, you know, improving my relationships, improving my mentorships, improving at the things I love doing instead of always chasing after false accolades and things I don't necessarily enjoy doing. So this is advice Have you ever heard this book before called The 5 regrets of the die? Yeah. So yeah. Exactly. One of those is, as you said, I wish I kept up with my friends. I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I I wonder how many people are actually doing that, though. Like like, when you're when you're and these are people on hospice, basically, or right before hospice. At the end of their life, there's some caregiver that's asking nurse that's asking these questions. I think she's in Australia. It's a great book. I haven't read it, but the summary is just like I mean, it's one of these books, like, you know, it's like the book of the 10 command you just need to read them, I think. I wish I had let myself be happier. I wish I had the courage to express my opinions and my feelings, and I wish I hadn't worked so hard. So I I see that. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Nobody is on there dying. You know? Ben said, I wish I spent more time on Zoom telecons. You know, definitely agree with that. But the I wish I had the courage to live a lie how many people do you think right now, James, are not living the life that they want, and they're leading it because like, an 80 year old or 70 year old people. Really? Yeah. I I could think Who do you care about? I mean, like, let's take Jay. You think Jay is living a life, you know, to like the best life he could possibly be living right now. Jay is no complacent. Jay so Jay and I have spent more time together in the last 2 years than you and I have. We had a amazing Chinese food. Looking forward, James is my best time ever. Yeah. It's true. I know. It's it's pretty how long have you guys been together? Does he still get you anniversary presents? 2016. 2016. 2016. 2016. We even have We've given him a raise. Wait. Is he going on strike? Jay, are you going on strike soon? Strike with James. Damn. I'm sorry. James. James is probably the only employer that I would never go on strike with. Is this longer than most of your marriages, James? It's it's longer than all of them. So so my business partner my business partner, Dan, he's my partner in investing, and he's been my partner on Yep. Several entrepreneurial ventures. He's been on this podcast actually about 6 or 7 times now because we did Yeah. Yeah. And, we've been partners well, he started working for me in late 1999 or early 2000. So he was working for me. But we've been actual Yes. 50 partners since 2 that 2001. So that's, you know, 21 and a half years right now. And we we we have never once had an argument. Now we've disagreed. We've disagreed on lots of things, but we've never been like, I've never been upset angry at him. And and I'm I I'm pretty sure vice versa, which is a really great I'm really happy about that partnership. I wish I had more of that in my in my life. Jay and I are Yeah. No. Yeah. No. And and but I think, like, living a life that's not true to yourself. Like, my father, you know, again, I I ended up reuniting with it, but he always blamed, like, his mother, you know, as, like, a 50 year old as you know, when I knew him as an adult, we were both adults. Hey, Brian. Like, my mother didn't, like, even know how to breastfeed and this and and I'm like, you're 50 years old, man. Like, you know, like, I'm overweight. Like, I I could lose another 15, 20 pounds easy. Seem overweight. I got we Well, I carry it well. I I I did drop 10, 511. Yeah. How much do you weigh? 511. 5512 with the Afro. How much do I weigh? Yeah. That's very personal. I weigh north of £200. Alright. So Well, I could I could lose I could lose £25 and be and be really then I'd be as ripped as you are looking right now. Okay. I I'm at the upper end of my weight in my life. Like, so I'm Mhmm. 5 9 and I'm a £160. So, really, I feel like I should be normally, I've been about around a 150, and for some reason now I'm a 160, and I don't know why. Well, some reason I I don't know what happened the last couple of years. Well, I mean Not that you were, like, jogging 6 kilometers a day, you know, back I wear the same size clothes. I have a theory that I've been working out more. So and muscle weighs more than than fat. So That's true. It does. It does. But, you know, my father would say things like and I have one of my one of my sons is like I call him my twin, and he looks like me. He acts like me. He's got the same personality. He wants to have a podcast. He wants to meet Jay. But, and he and he's overweight. As I I was really overweight as a kid, he's not as bad as I am, and he's much taller. He's like super tall. He's almost 5 feet tall, and he's just 10 years old. But when I, and I look at him and I'm like, okay. So I was overweight as a kid. Now if I go to a therapist and we have this, like, Matt Damon, you know, in Goodwill Hunting. Remember that movie? And, like Yeah. Like, if I've learned anything from movies, James, is that to have a psychological breakthrough, a man has to, like, become completely weepy, teary, and just bawling on his therapist, you know, Robin Williams chair. Right? Okay. So, like, let's say that's true for me because my parents got divorced. My father abandoned me. He, my my older brother and me and went off, create a new life, got remarried, didn't talk to me, you know, did his thing. Then, you know and and and I live with my stepfather who had you know, he would drink a lot. He would hit, you know, on occasion. You know? And just discipline. I I wasn't abused, you know, thank god. And I I have a lot of respect for what he did. But but this is just the reality of my life. Right? It happened. You know, I was uprooted. I moved 5 times before, going, freshman year of of high school. It was a lot for me. And so you could say, oh, well, like, that's why you're overweight, you know, as a kid. And and that's why maybe you're still overweight because because you, you know, you haven't dealt with this childhood trauma. Maybe I do need that, James. Maybe I need to go to Robin Williams, and and just break down, bawl my eyes out. You know, but but I haven't. You know, may whatever. I'm not saying anything negative about psychotherapy. I think it's fine. But then I look at my son, you know, he's also a little overweight. Again, not nearly as much as I was. He's had, like, 2 loving parents, never do never moved never never lived in a different room. You know? He goes to this great school, has a lot of you know what I mean? He's like or so in other words, if I'm, like, blaming my childhood as a 51 year old man, I think I'm, like, kind of a loser. And and and I think, you know, to do that, like, people like, well, maybe you just need to get in touch with this childhood trauma. And I know you had challenges and you had issues, but, like, I think there has to be a statute of limitations. When you are like first of all, I'm like, now I'm taking care of my mother. Like, I'm financially my brother and I, we have to support her. She's in her eighties. Right? And she's not married. You know? My my father's dead. You know? So I'm I'm taking care of my children. I'm taking care of my parents. You know? It's very awkward such and I'm my career is in, like, full bloom. Right? And and I'm doing all these side hustles and, you know, like, gotta stop blaming your past. You You gotta stop blaming your parents on a certain true, but living a life true to yourself is more than that. Right? Like, maybe you're working for a boss who so you're always trying to kiss his a*s because you want promotions or whatever. Or maybe you're married to someone who politically is one way and you're politically another way, but you can't say where where you feel politically because you're afraid she would lose interest in you. Or or maybe you're a salesman, so you're always trying to please the people you're selling. There's a lot of reasons why like, I feel for from the year 2000 to the year Mhmm. 20 2010 roughly. Roughly a 10 year period. Maybe even longer. Maybe 1995 to 2010. I was totally not living a life true to myself. It was only when I really started writing about my own stories in 2010, and and I and I was I I reduced my expenses and because I I, you know, I had just gotten out of a period of going broke, and I I was able to and I wasn't working for anybody. I I was able to live a life true to myself. And I've always tried to stick to that, but it's hard I think because of so many different agendas. And I think the more ambition one has, the less you can live true to yourself because the more you have to cater to the people you're ambitious about. Mhmm. Yeah. But, I mean, do you feel like the the fact that you weren't oh, that's a specific circumstance. So unless you're totally self employed or inherit money or, you know, born, you know, on 3rd base, you know, at a certain point, when when is the statute of limitations? When you are out of the nest, you every decision at some level like, you could've quit. For me, I I didn't You felt pressured as you couldn't, but but you could've quit. Right? I mean I I didn't care what You weren't a slave. The day after I left their house, like, when I was 18. But Sorry. You didn't talk to them yourself? I didn't care what they thought. Like Oh, you didn't care. Right. So that was living a life true to yourself. So from 18, at least with the the the vector in the direction of your parents, you were living a life true to yourself. And now you're certainly living in other words, I guess I'm I'm just I'm skeptical of these notions of of catharsis that, like, everything has a root cause or, you know, Freud thought everything was traceable to sex or, you know, Frankl thought everything was traced to, like, searching for meaning. And, you know, there there there is kind of, like, like I said, a statute of limitations when you were an adult. And and and, yes, you may have been actually traumatized. I mean, you and I have multi mutual friends that have been, like, legitimately traumatized, abused, and so forth. And and yet they're incredibly healthy individuals, and and they've gotten past that. And it's almost like they weren't responsible for what happened to them, god forbid, but they were they're responsible for how they react to it. Look. I think this is really important. Like, I wrote a book, choose yourself, because it was basically don't let anyone else choose your opinions, your job, your passions, your anything, and it's the whole book was about that. And but it was I wrote it because it was something I had to learn because I wasn't choosing myself. I wanted to be picked and selected. I wanted some group of people to like me and and reward me. And to live true to yourself, you have to, at every level, choose what choose who you are. And and it doesn't and it's not like you it happens once and then forever after, you're free. It's like every single day. You have to do this. Every single day, you have to make progress even if it doesn't mean make progress at x. Like, I can't make progress at basketball every day because I'm getting older. I'm gonna get worse at basketball every day. I I don't play basketball, but I'm just using it as an but, despite the, 59 hops that you have. But it actually reminds me of a of a notepad idea I have. I have a couple ideas for you. So you've been watching 18/83. Right? Yes. And Yellowstone. Yeah. And 1923 is coming out in a few days. Yeah. What do you think of this idea? You know how that's kind of rekindled this notion of of, like, westerns and and, like, and, like, tractor supply company is, like, seeing this huge explosion, and there's whiskey brands and and whatever. All these western themes. Okay. I have an idea mapping directly on from, Yellowstone onto, stay with me, the biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph, and Jacob and Joseph. Okay? Oh, it So the Yellowstone By the way, it totally maps 1 to 1. I'm sure Yeah. It was inspired by that. Well, it may have been, although you really can't see much of that, but but watching 18/83 as I did on a 12 hour flight from Santiago to to Los Angeles, that show, it's it's really it's it's of course, there's there's, like, people dying and there's attacks by Native Americans, and then there's this and there are others disease and there's bandits. All those themes are happening in the Old Testament, in the first book of the 5 books of Moses called Genesis. There's not a single there's only 2 laws in that whole book that starts it's 40% of the Torah, the old testament. It only has 2 commandments, like, be fruitful and multiply and circumcision. That's basically it. And the rest of the the Torah has Wait a second. Don't eat the apple. That's in Genesis. That's not one of the 613 commandments, but yes. Yeah. That was it. That there are Don't All I'm saying is it's all narrative. In Genesis. That's right. Onanism. Yeah. Yes. Very good. That's actually technically spilling your seed. It's not masturbating, but masturbating does the same thing that onanism does. So in other words let's not get into it. Right. The point is that that Genesis is all stories, and the other 4 books of Moses are almost no stories in all laws. So it's kinda interesting. But but the stories are you know, there's rape. There's, like, tribal invasions. There's wars between kings and queens and and there's, takeovers and political dynasties and and intermarry all incredible themes. And and you can almost map, like, John Dutton, you know, today, onto, like, say, Joseph, when he's become the king of Egypt, effectively, the pharaoh, you know, the courtier to the pharaoh saved the life. There's a famine. There's wars. His brothers who sold him into slavery and told his father he had been killed, you know, because they were jealous of his dreams, and he was, hit upon by the by the pharaoh's wife. It's incredible drama. Right? Yeah. And so that's that's that's Yellowstone. Okay. So Joseph is Yellowstone. Then you go back to 18/83. That's Abraham. That's Clearer. So Abraham, like, sets off into the land. He leaves he leaves Iraq, and he goes to Canaan and Israel, and he has all these battles with the kings and the and and his and his son. He has to sacrifice his son, these things. He's talking to God. He gets divorced from his wife. It's incredible. Right? Yeah. The drama. And then, Isaac is in there because Isaac is actually the one that we know least about. There's only, like, 2 or 3 chapters about him. And the women in Genesis are the heroes. They are the brilliant ones who tell the this the husbands are, like, kinda bumbling. You know? Like, they're they're just too ethereal. They're they're talking to God, and the women are like, this this, you know, kid who's living in our house is gonna try to kill our son, and even the twins in my womb, you know, Rebecca, you know, says, like, the one is going to try to kill the other one, Esav and and Isaac and, Jacob. Anyway and then the 1923 is, like, is Jacob. It was where, you know, he's goes and and he settles, you know, he settles the the land and he has these dreams and ladders. And, anyway, I thought that I'd like to get your opinion. I actually pitched this to to someone that I don't think you've had on your show, Ben Shapiro, who's become I've become friendly with Ben Shapiro, who's had an incredible year himself. Yeah. And, and he said, I like the idea, which which I thought was pretty high praise. So I'm gonna pitch that to his he has a whole production company now, and I'm gonna pitch it to them as a screenplay. So and stay tuned for that. But what's the idea? Just Genesis itself or or another The no. No. Like, Yellowstone, but but mapped onto the patriarch. So it'll be called Canaan instead of Yellowstone, or or maybe it would be called patriarchs. Yeah. And it would be like a multiseries, multipart, but not like I don't want it to go on forever, like, you know, friends or something. You know? I mean, it should just be, like, 2 year Like, look. Whenever they've done this in other religions like, in in India, when they did the, Mahabharata as a as a TV series, it was, like, the most popular TV series in all. Yeah. So That was must see TV. Yeah. No one's ever done that, really. I mean, they've done that about Jesus, but no one's ever done that about and they've done, of course, the 10 Commandments, but, the the movie. But nobody's ever done it about Genesis. And you're right. You know what's so funny, James, is that, like, people say people say, like, Kanye West, you know, will say, I love the way, by the way, that we have to respect his choice of of like, we have to call him Ye or it's, like, not respect who cares? This freaking loser, anti semite, you know, scumbag. I agree. I'm not gonna call him Ye. I agree. Him. Name. It's a shame this stuff has come out about him. I do think he's, like, the greatest music producer at at least for hip hop of of all time, you know, regard He might be. He might be. But that's again, I just did a video about this guy, Fritz Haber, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, who invented fertilization techniques and also invented the, you know, tech tools to that create the gas chambers and create a chemical warfare. He's called the father of of chemical warfare. And I have this video called the man who killed 1,000,000 and then won a Nobel Prize. Yeah. But, anyway So you so you could be very smart, but you could be very evil. Right? So intelligence, wisdom, and knowledge are totally different things. Yeah. And So, okay. So that's one idea that maps. And the reason I think it'll be so successful is that people have this romanticization about the past. Like, they forget about, like, how even after seeing, like, a guy gets bitten I'm not spoiling it too much. But let's say someone gets bitten by a snake in 18/83. Right? And then it it's like a death sentence. Like Yeah. You sprain your ankle and you're dead. You know? Like like, we have this butt, like, sales of cowboy boots and western and and the Airbnb where Yellowstone is shot, you know, the the why when the bar let's, like, rents for, like, $10,000 a night now. Anyway, people romanticize it. They're moving to Montana. They're changing the culture and the lifestyle. But, but the same thing could happen, you know, with respect to the Middle East. Like, the Middle East is kind of having a renaissance. There's more peace there. Maybe not with Palestinians, but but that'll happen, I I hope. But but the rest, you know, UAE, Dubai, the World Cup is in Qatar. You know, it's it's like almost a renaissance in the zeitgeist that people are getting very, very infatuated with Middle Eastern and the culture and and the hospitality of the and showing that and how it traces back literally 1000 of years. It's not like made up. Like, you can call the the Bible, you know, whatever you want. But but the culture, like, those things, family dynamics, where the the the role of women, the role of children, those are all crystalized back then. One thing I'm always interested in is I think first off, I I agree. I think the story of Genesis would make a great TV series, whatever. But I would argue if you take any topic and map Genesis onto it like they did like, you're you're making the comparison with the Yellowstone, that's gonna be successful. So you have to decide, do you want to the topic to be biblical, or do you wanna you could make a a science fiction space opera like Star Wars. You could map Genesis onto onto Star Wars because there's a generational thing happening, and there's about, you know, who is inherits the the, you know, the the family power, essentially. And all these things happen in in many search. You know what what also is the the books of of Samuel, Samuel 12, I think, would make a great series because that's King David, which is arguably the most interesting story in the Bible because that's got real, like, you know, palace intrigue and wars and deception and betrayal. I mean, so does Genesis, but I think I think even books of Samuel even more with King David and King Saul and and Solomon and and then of Israel split in half after Solomon. So Mhmm. We could we could you know what we do? We just take every section of the Bible and turn it into a TV series because Exactly. Right. So that's one of my ideas. Then the other one okay. So what's the problem? Like, when people get really famous. Right? So they're getting really, like, Internet famous. And and people are saying, like, they'd rather be famous even for doing something bad. And that and that's why, like but Ben Shapiro actually does something important where If there's a mass shooting, like, at the nightclub, the LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado last month, he won't use the name of the shooter. He won't ever mention that. And and whereas the New York Times, they'll print the name and, like, oh, his upbringing and, like, he can blame his mother because he was overweight. He used to not to, historically. Well, I look at that, but then then you've got this whole thing where people are, you know, like, some people are saying to Elon Musk, like, you better have a food taster. And, you know, like so in a then you get so big that you become like a target and everything you say and you make fun of pronouns, you know, prosecute Fauci and this and that. I'm like, oh, like and you get death threats. Right? So, or you get doxxed. So imagine a service. So this is anti doxxing as a service, a d a a s. Okay? And then so so you go out there, and you basically do what's called a white hat hacking thing. You, like, find out everything about Jay, you know, that you could possibly find out. And then, and then you just, like, protect him against all these different threat vectors. You know? So, like, it's it's basically like insurance against, you know, Jay getting doxed. You know? Like, oh, he works. You know, he he just moved, you know, back to Malaysia. I don't know. They're just making stuff up. So what do you think about that? Like like, as as more things in in society become more kind of highly prized, like fame, attention, I think it's gonna get worse. Like, people are gonna go after, like, Josh Peck. Like, I've become friends with Shua Peck. You know? Like, he's, like, has to have security. It's insane. Yeah. No. And he's got 13,000,000 followers. But I think it's a I think it's a good idea if if it were possible. It's, like, sort of like cybersecurity. Like like, cybersecurity is an important industry now in society, but as has been described to me by cybersecurity companies, the good guys will never be as good as the bad guys are at creating the threats. And so for doxxing, I think it's very hard to to create that as a company. Now you provide insurance against doxxing, that might be a Exactly. So That's right. That that might be an that might be another thing, and then you have to just figure out if someone's gaming that or not. But, to prevent it, yeah, you can provide consulting to help prevent it, but it's it's unpreventable. And then the last idea has to do with, like, this chat, AI chat, GPT. Mhmm. These chat bots, which are which are very interesting. I don't think they're quite there yet. I mean, maybe because it's more subjective than, like, beating somebody in chess or or AlphaGo or whatever, folding a protein simulate. But, but you have these things. So I guess the the analog would be kind of, something that tests for biases in these chats. So, like, I got one from my brother yesterday. He put in, like, what is, the great reset? Write 3 paragraphs about the great reset and why, you know, Karl Schwab is is trying to have a social credit system implemented. You know, just just for fun. He sent me the the output of it. It's like, that's a myth. And, a GPT comes back with, like, that's a right wing talking point that has a so it's obviously, like, looking at Wikipedia. So if I ever do a video about COVID, which I have one coming out with, doctor Jay Bhattacharya. I don't know if you know that name. Yeah. Yeah. He's a He's a in Diego. Oh, he's a Stanford professor who was just, made news because he was in the Twitter files. He is in the Twitter files, but the reason that he was in the Twitter files is because he's established what was called the Great Barrington Declaration, which was a common sense protocol that we should work to not do social lockdowns and and complete society shutdown, which we did do, because that would have ultimately negative downstream consequences on mental health and physical health and economic health. And he's an epidemiologist and a medical doctor at the Stanford Medical School. And he was later targeted specifically by Fauci and Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, and he was called they called for a takedown of him. And one of his colleagues, Michael Levitt, who's a Nobel Prize winner at Stanford, for being fringe, quote this is what Collins is imagine the, like, basically, the any boss, the ultimate boss of the world, you know, of this world of academia. He's a director of the NIH who supplies $50,000,000,000 a year in medical research, and he called him a a a fringe epidemiologist. And that he called for a takedown of them, public takedown, basically calling for a public shaming, and Fauci said, I largely agree. And, this is just despicable. So I have a podcast coming out with him. But, but when I do the podcast, YouTube will insert in the YouTube, and that's why I don't like YouTube very much, even though, you know, it's trying to grow my channel's audience. But, but they'll put a warning and a a link to Wikipedia. It's just like, if you put COVID anywhere in there here's the thing on COVID. Or if you put it in the great reset, I did an interview with Neil Ferguson, the historian also at Stanford. And it it was about the great reset. And The great reset is a myth, and it just refers to Wikipedia, which is, like, wildly as left wing as Twitter ever was, and, it'll refer you to there. And so it's GPT chat is just searching so it's like these biases are just getting, like, mega, mega amplified. And so we need some kind of tool to, like, the to like, an AI tool that's basically gonna be the anti Turing test. So it's a tool that's gonna prove that you're a computer. And I don't know how to implement it. I mean, you would know much more about computer science than I do. But, like, we we're gonna need some way just like detecting, you know, oh, this guy Tom Cruise, you know, or Michael Sailor, you know, is telling you to to buy this crap coin, let me say, that, you know, oh, well, this is the this is a deep fake. But we need the the same thing. We need, like, deep fake detectors. We need chatbot detectors and and all sorts of things. I think it's gonna become very, very, very, very serious pretty soon. I think, you you could be right. And I think my solution is to withdraw more and more from social media. And this relates to our beginning conversation, which is, you know, every day I used to be on social media to try and try to get more followers and engage with my, you know, with with people and as many people as possible. And and now I just realize, a, not only the uselessness of it, but it just gets me in more and more trouble and, but your point about AI, I just wanna tell you on on notepad, we have an AI we have GPT 3 hooked up, and if you need AI based ideas to add to your own list, we haven't we, you know, coded it up so that you can do that. And so I had a a bad business idea. I called it bad idea the other day, and it was called the podcast family tree. So, like Okay. Like, you've been on my podcast, and so so you're, like, a, quote, unquote, son of mine on my podcast. And Ryan Holiday And Jordan Harbinger, just to interrupt, was the reason that I was able to come on your podcast. Right. So I've been on or I've been on mine. Or let's say Andrew Huberman's been mine, and Lex Freeman also had Andrew Huberman. So Lex Freeman and I would be sort of, like, in laws together of Andrew Huberman. And the idea of the podcast Family Tree, the business point is that you could see which podcasts are similar to yours, the ones you have the most kind of genetic, quote, unquote, you know, genetic material together on on this Family Tree. And, also, it could help you find guests. You could see which podcast and I guess which podcast is similar to yours on the family tree. I've had guests that you haven't had and so on. So anyway Yes. Networking. Yeah. The network of networks. Yeah. It's like face yeah. But I had the I I had I had the AI generate an additional idea for this list. I kind of the list was describing the idea. And then I fed in just the phrase podcast family tree to the AI and to have it come up with an idea. So it didn't really understand what I was asking. So here's the here is the idea it came up with. The title of the idea is the family tree of bad ideas. And then it says Mhmm. The description of the family tree of bad ideas is how capitalism is ruining our planet. In this podcast, we explore how capitalism is ruining our planet. We trace its origins back to its creator and see it has see how it has spawned a new generation of terrible ideas. That was the AI generated idea. Had nothing to do with capitalism when I was asking it, but that was, like, its impulse. So you're right. Wow. It's just, like, weird bias that we have to be careful. Yeah. It's funny. Oh. Yeah. Exactly. Yep. So look, Brian. You you gotta come on the podcast more often. We can't have it be, like, you know I know. Care. And and we should Yeah. I definitely miss Figure out another thing to work on. We always were thinking out things to work on. Yeah. Well, we had a pod pub, which, you know, we kinda we should get back to, you know, distilling books. Are you still bullish, you know, on podcasting as a as a as the the net you know, a big thing, or you think we're reaching peak podcast? No. I I'm Now we're up to 4,000,000? I don't see the podcast world growing, but, but podcast but it's not shrinking either. And, I think there is always a voice for you people wanna listen to things when they're driving to work or they're at their gym. They can't watch things. They listen to things then, and Yeah. They're they they wanna hear good ideas and interesting ideas and an insightful ideas and and or good stories, you know. True Crime is the biggest podcast category actually. So so I think there's I think, you know, people always say books are dead, and now they're saying podcasts are dead. None of these things are true. It's just that TikTok is amazing. So Yeah. Exactly. I started to do the short video. I can't get into TikTok. I I just, hey. I think it's gonna get shut down. The the most talented humans on the planet. Okay. Whether it's TikTok or Instagram reels, whatever. The most talented humans, you see these, like, kids jumping from building to building and then doing flips and then and then other kids doing, you know, magic that's unbelievable. And it's it's amazing the talent that finds itself on TikTok. Gonna be the TikTok? I I asked a question on Twitter. I was like, what's going to be what is, you know, what is, now there's post news, and then it was Mastodon. I was like, what is Postnews going to be the Mastodon of? You know, like cause, like, Twitter's just gonna stay. Right? I mean, you're pretty still pretty optimistic about Twitter even with Yeah. Yeah. No. I think Elon Musk is gonna do a great job. But and he's already doing a great job. But, notepd.com. This Yeah. The social network of ideas. This is the most actual, insightful social network out there with a great community. I'm I'm self promoting because it's my site. Yeah. No. I love it. I love this site too. I was I I got I got the Brian. I got the at Brian at notepad. That's I got the the premium handle, the 5 character handle. Yeah. That's thanks to Jay setting it up. You're gonna get, offers for 1,000,000 for that. Oh, I know. I'm gonna sell that squatter domain and and, squat on that. So, last question for you maybe is, like and it revolves around so one of the things that's been hard for me is, like, I don't you know, I get paid. I'm a public, you know, university professor. I I get paid fine. But, you know, obviously, I get sponsor opportunities for the podcast. And and you always said, you know, in the when I was first asking you, like, should I accept this, you know, click, you know, CPM, whatever that stands for, cost per mil. And I said, you know, should I accept, you know, a dollar per whatever. 15 dollars, 20 and you were like, well, there's the actual money aspect of it, which is important, but then there's a, like, there's kind of the prestige that you are in a category of people that can advertise and monetize your podcast. I think that is valuable. But now now, like, it is it is also an overhead. There's a burden. There's managing expectations, and there's there's, like, looking for advertisers, then there's vetting their things. Like, do I really wanna do, like, manscaping again? You know, like, how much is there left to mowing my lawn? You know? Whatever. Like and just for the brand and, like, I'm supposed to be a serious pro and then sometimes it'll be some program like, they'll put in, like, eBay, and it'll be, like, 500 decibel loud, you know, like, get your Christmas card and whatever. I'm like, well, I'm assigned. Like, I've got a Nobel Prize winner on right now. You know? I I I guess I'm asking you, should I I don't need the money, you know, necessarily. It's not that much. It is a workload. It is a kind of managerial overhead, a burden bandwidth to tractor. So your your pain point so let's just look at the pain points first. One is is there's a reputation thing. You you you say you're a serious professor. It looks weird when you're talking about manscaping and whatever. 2nd is the managerial overhead. 3rd is what? The 3rd is, like, giving something away for free. On one hand, it could increase your audience. Right? Because people like I I just skip over. Even your ads, like, half the time, I'll just fast forward, you know, 45 second skip. Yeah. You know, I have this thing when I'm listening to Ben Shapiro. I know what he's gonna say, like, but now. And as soon as he says, like, but now, like, it's 45, 45, 45, you know, and then, like, he's back. And I don't listen to him, but I'd like to not have to do that, you know, and it would make me more endeared to a podcaster, because he's not selling me stuff. He's not the type of person that I have to worry he's gonna sell me athletic greens or whatever. Right. So I would say for you, you probably don't need to do ads to to you know, you have a lot of things, like, your your your you you look. Me too. I probably don't need to have ads, but here's the thing. First off, I still stand by. It shows that you're the type of podcast who's big enough that people wanna advertise on you, and then your content does search the people wanna advertise. That's a kind of authority legitimacy. But Yeah. A lot of the your pain points have nothing to do with ads, but, like, managerial overhead, you can use a third party ad placement agency like midroll to do all your ad placements. And you could say, I don't wanna do any, host read ads. I just wanna do ones that are read by someone else and placed into the podcast. I wanna have nothing to do with them. Mhmm. So then you have 0 managerial overhead and 0 personal stake in what you're average. Still have this thing that you are in the category of someone who's pitching you, you know, to my audience. Now I'm, like, a salesman. Like, you personally, like, you're I'm a vector to sell them. Yeah. I agree. It's one step removed, but, like, if let's say I just, like like like, this all in podcast. You know, I think one of the reasons I like listening to them is, like, you know, if I'm going to sleep, you know, they're I'm not gonna get interrupted with some ad for eBay in the middle or some, you know, ad for for No. I don't for I don't think you need to greens, I guess. I don't think you don't need to do ads. One one reason I like to do ads is that, I also feel everything I do should have, at some point, should be profitable. Because that's another way of measuring that I'm doing something that is I don't wanna say worthwhile, but it is doing something that is No. I know. Hit some bar that people have said, okay. This is worth it. And The problem with that is that yes. Right. So as long as you're not like, I have to break even or I have to, you know, make money, I think that's when it becomes like Podcast. I got into this for fun. Unless you're like Joe Rogan or Ben Shapiro. But, Or Tim Ferris or yeah. Exactly. Or Andrew Huberman who won't come on my show. But, like, I like to know that everything I do pays for itself. So and I I wasn't always like that. Excuse me. This gives me a good discipline about the quality of what I'm doing, so I don't take it for granted. It gives me a good discipline about, you know, understanding what to pay people and what, you know, what different costs are worth it. So so this is only a new philosophy for me, and, I I think and but it was told to me by Naveen Jain, who's the billionaire who started Infospace in the nineties, and now he has various entrepreneurship activities. Because I asked him, why'd you raise $20,000,000 for your latest business when you're a billionaire? Why didn't you just fund it yourself? Right. And he said that if he paid for himself, he would never know if it was if it really had value. Like, you know when it has value and other people value it. So That's true. But, I mean, at a certain point but you only wanna know it has value because you want it to be not sunk cost, you know, and and and kind of giving leaving money on the table or whatever. Like, in other words, you could just start a charity, you know, or or whatever. I don't wanna do that. I wanna do a podcast. What do you wanna do in let me ask you a question. Next year, what's, like, your calendar look like? You're, you know, kind of in all different dimensions, a week scale for the whole year. Like, if I had asked myself last year what why I want the I couldn't have imagined how great this year would be with the one major tragedy of losing a very close friend at a very young age with young children. That's put that's equal to all the bad good stuff that happened and more. But, you know, I couldn't have fathomed what would happen this year, and it's great, and I feel blessed. Yeah. What are you looking forward to next year that's reasonable or that's, that's possible to occur? First off, I I always make predictions for myself at the beginning of the year, and they always change. Like, I remember Yeah. It was 2014 or 2015, I wanted to write a novel, and I ended up getting obsessed with stand up comedy. And that's all I did. Alright. And, but I'm really excited about I wanna really I help so many people with with their writing, and I really love it and enjoy it. Like, I I enjoy coaching writing now more than I even enjoy writing. And I'm really excited about making a writing course for on whether I put it on Udemy or or wherever else. I don't know. But I'm Jay and I are videotaping that this coming weekend. The other thing is That's good. I've been working you know, when I was a a lad in in the nineties, I, you know, achieved a high chess ranking. And my goal is to achieve an even higher one this coming year and then write a book about it because the book has been so fascinating. It's not about chess. Like, there's so many things I've experienced on this journey of trying to achieve something I achieved as a 27 year old that it's blown my mind. What I I didn't I learned things I did not realize I'd be learning about myself, about the brain, about health, about ambition. All these things that we've talked about has come from just simply trying to achieve the chess rating I had in the nineties. So that's kinda like your your metric, summarizing your metric for next year. Yeah. I guess yeah. Because because For me, if I do that, it means I will put myself through a study program and discipline Yes. At to a level that I've never done before. Like, I it's much harder for Exactly. No. I I get it. And it's and it's kinda like an encrypted, you know, very dense encryption that summarize a lot of things and what reminds me of a very famous Russian physicist who was the intellectual son of another great Russian physicist, Yakov Zel'dovich. He said that this guy Zel'dovich would always tell him, he would say like, when he was a young man, he said, you must take your son or daughter skiing. Like, that's your goal in life. Uh-huh. And he never knew what the hell he meant. Like, first of all, he was single. Secondly, he didn't have any kids that he knew about you know? But he was like, what the hell is he talking about? Like, imagine what it means to take your kids skiing. You have to have physical health. You have to have a kid. You have to have you know, maybe have been married. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. And then you have to have the wherewithal to to, like, go there. And That is the perfect analogy. Sorry to interrupt. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's where I because because, like, I realized now I need I need to think and this I realized a while ago, but I've been needing to think about my nutrition. I've been needing to think about my sleep schedule, my my stamina, my energy. So I have to exercise Study. Energy. Yep. And just neuroscience. I've had to learn, like, what things just at the age of 50 are different than at the age of 27. And I always thought I was very good at learning how to learn, but there's a different level now achieving something at this age that is the industry itself has changed. The chess world has changed, but I've changed. So the discipline is, like, enormous. It's much more than what I thought I needed. It's like, imagine I tell you, James, you're gonna come in last in your final race. You're like, what the hell? You know, I don't wanna come in last. But if I say, oh, you set the world record for over a 100 year old speed walkers, you'd be like, hell yeah. Like, you know, that that'll be awesome, like, just to know that. So, anyway, I wish that you will have at least the 4th power of my chess rating coming this year and that, yeah, you won't have to cheat to get there, you know, putting something, you know, in in some orifice of your body as alleged by somebody about somebody else. But I I do wish you all the best. And, yes, I hope that we can, we can talk a little bit more frequently and maybe get together. I'm gonna I'm gonna, yeah, I'm not gonna I'll I'll tell you. I have a a really cool kind of adventure that's coming up, in in January, February That involves, and we've talked about well, I'll I'll talk about it later. It it's gonna be it's related to Sam Bankman Fried, though. So I'm gonna need your advice. I'm gonna go visit him. Alright. Let let's I wanna get him on the podcast, but I I need some help in in vetting it. I he has he doesn't know about this at all, by the way. But I'm gonna be in his neighborhood, so I figured I'd I'd give it a try. The Bahamas? Yeah. Alright. Alright. Well, look, Brian, once again, such a great time having you on the podcast. And I actually had a bunch of science questions for you, but we should do another one in a month where Yeah. I because I always get these articles, like, turns out time in the universe never really I get these weird, like, a Right. Visit Wormhole was created in the lab in a quantum computer. You're like Yeah. It's probably words salads together. I have all these, like I wanna, you know, things that I really wanna learn what they mean because I I wanna be your, your house your sign I want you to treat me like I treat my grad students. I I believe you totally exploited in like, I will do that. Alright. Okay, Ryan. Well, happy Hanukkah. Have merry Christmas, everybody out there. And, yeah. Can't wait to talk to you again soon. Okay. Talk to you later. Bye. Bye.
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