Category: The Diary Of A CEO

President Zalinski, how are you doing?

Well, it’s hard. Uh, I’ll be honest. I uh don’t sleep. It’s a huge terrifying pain that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I can see the tears in your eyes. Yeah.

The war started February 24th of 22. I didn’t think there would be a full-scale invasion. I was with my family, told my wife that to the kids, “The war has started. I love you. I’ll call you.” And ran up. Satellite imagery captured a massive 64 km long Russian military convoy leading to Kiev. And just imagine 200,000 people are coming at you. It’s simply impossible to defend. Missiles were raining down on your head. Those were absolutely horrifying moments. And I was in the bunker built right inside my office. Biden called me. We are ready to help you evacuate. What did you say to Biden? I need ammunition, not a ride. They expected people to run and me. I couldn’t abandon the people. And then people showed up as volunteers and our army grew from 200,000 to an army of 800,000. Day after day, we pushed back harder. What was your hardest day through the last four years? We liberated BHA. I went there. Dead bodies lying everywhere. Kids, adults, elderly people chopped meat, butchered them, hands tied, tortured, and then buried in in in pits. When you see a mass today finding a grave in the US or in Britain, God forbid, with 500 tortured people, how do you forgive? And that’s why when President Trump says we need to find a compromise, well, you can’t just forgive everything like that. Is there a realistic path to the end of this war?

President Zalinski, sometimes the question I’m about to ask you, we answer it flippantly when people ask, but I really want you to answer it in the fullest honest context you possibly can. How are you doing? Well, it’s hard uh hard because it’s like I’m surviving along with my country and with the people and it’s like really uh a question like will tomorrow come or not and the answer to that is yes it will you can’t answer it any other way because I am that means my family my relatives uh my country I’m an inseparable part of it and so How do I feel? Hard but with understanding the difficult reality with optimism because I still believe good wins. I believe in that truly. Is it a bit of a roller coaster on a human level for you? Are there there days where there’s more hope and days where there’s less hope? You can’t live without hope. I understand sometimes inside, you know, you can be shattered inside, especially during wartime, especially families who, you know, lose some someone close in the in their family, a child, God forbid, or uh a wife, a husband, a mother, that is it’s just an internal uh breakdown. It’s very hard and it’s much harder for them I believe just so much harder than uh uh than it is for me with all these challenges. The weight of all of this sits often on your shoulders and when someone does lose a child or a loved one or or a wife or a sister or a daughter, I imagine as I’ve seen from, you know, some of these photos I have here of you. I mean, this photo in particular stands out to me. Oh, that’s a terrible story. It’s just a terrible story. That was uh that’s when a missile hit a playground and the missile speed was such that the siren didn’t help at all. So it was a matter of seconds and the missile struck and children were killed and both children were killed there mostly and adults just adults right there. A couple I remember they were just out walking passing by and because they were walking by and and and were killed. parents, you know, like right on this on this side there are ho homes too and parents there they some of them saw through the window. Do you understand what it’s like to see through a window one of your children just torn apart and toys just such a during such a tragedy it’s a tradition to bring flowers uh for adults and toys for children. I went there. It’s pain. I’ll say it again. My pain can’t even It’s not even 10% of the parents pain. It’s terrifying. Just terrifying. A missile that cut short the life of uh a child who had seen nothing yet. Imagine, by the way. And there are children, a lot of them among the fallen as well, who never lived in peace. I mean, we we lived in in in a different time. We understand what it’s like to live when there are no sirens, no shelling and so on. But there are kids uh every night they go down to the bomb shelter when the alarm goes off and the alarm goes off every night. Then they come back up and some of them have died. And just imagine there are children who never knew what peace was. That’s horrifying. Absolutely. You said at the start of this invasion, this war, that you weren’t sleeping. You said early in this invasion, you said you’ve not earned the right to sleep. And I’m really curious about the sort of human toll that all of this has taken on you over the last four or five years because it it never stops. It never ends. And you you are a human being just like all the rest of us. You have a family, you have kids, but you have the the burden of this kind of horrific incident taking place in your country at all all the time. What is what is the sort of human burden there? And are you sleeping? Uh I’ll be honest, I uh don’t sleep. I I’m a responsible person. I have different traits, good ones, not so good ones. Like every person, nobody’s perfect. Yeah. And every night I speak with our air defense operators, with our guys who run the air defense. Every night we talk. Well, yeah. Thanks to modern technology, it’s very easy. And we text back and forth what’s needed right now. Let’s pull some over from another region. So, it’s an active discussion which obviously well doesn’t let you sleep. Yeah. you know, getting 8 hours of sleep like that is something something totally new to me during these uh years almost 5 years of war. I’m not complaining. I’m not complaining at all. And that’s how I live. Uh the burden, the strongest emotion, I once answered this honestly. There’s a moment when I present awards and there’s this moment when I award and personally the hero of Ukraine, it’s the highest honor when I present this award to parents who uh lost a child. Yeah. A boy or a girl soldiers. That feeling uh you know well how I cease to exist in that moment. I’m just well it’s not e it’s not pain. It’s something ter terrible. I look at these people at their eyes at what they say. Many of them say something and and there are people who just ask for a hug. Imagine you give an award to a father whose very strong hand you can feel. He’s, you know, a strong man. You feel his strong hand and he just quietly says to you, “Can we hug?” So they well, you know, they’re gone. Gone as people anymore. Well, for a time then strong people try to survive. And these moments on the one on the one hand, I respect them. I do it. But on the other hand, it’s hard to bear. I I understand them. And it’s a huge terrifying pain that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. what these parents feel having lost a child, a soldier. These parents didn’t lose a child on a playground. They lost a soldier. They knew that could happen. But knowing and losing are completely different things. I can see the tears in your eyes as you describe this. I’m a human being. I’m not ashamed to be who I am. I’m not the strongest man in the world. I try to set an example, but I’m definitely not a perfect person. Yeah. Is there anything that you Because this is this is a lot to deal with. You know, I I hear you recounting the stories of dealing with these parents. Is there anything that you you do to take care of yourself? What is it that keeps you strong?

My kids. My kids. I I just you know I have to be an example. I told myself maybe I don’t have to but that’s what I told myself. I have to set an example for my kids. This is the way that is not and you have to set an example. Be strong. Be as brave as possible. But don’t don’t hide the pain if you have it. You shouldn’t say I don’t feel anything because human beings by nature they’re alive and that’s their weakness but it’s also where a person’s strength lies. That really is where our strength is. And so my kids keep me grounded very much. So I want to set an example. I want them to be proud of me. We’ll talk about that later. But there’s um there’s one big outstanding question which is who is President Zalinski? And I’ve been through hundreds and hundreds of photos and stories from your childhood. I’ve got some some wonderful photos here of your earliest uh days. And yeah, and this is a beautiful one of your wonderful mother as well. That’s my mom. Yeah. Mom was very beautiful. Well, she still is, but she’s gotten older. Can you take me into your earliest context just so I can get a sort of a a view of what childhood was like for you? What’s the context in which you grew up? And really, I want to understand how that context and early experience fed into the man you are today, the perspective you have, the values that you cherish. I’m from the generation that um straddled uh two u let’s say two different lives meaning I was born in the Soviet Union when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union and I grew up in an independent Ukraine and I’ve always said that my kids they’re lucky because they were born in an independent country without all these, you know, shades of gray. This is gray. That’s something else. No, it’s black and white, totally clear. They’re patriots. They love their country and their country is Ukraine. While we were born in the Soviet Union, and you know, we were kids from a fairly, let’s say, not I don’t want to offend anyone so my dad doesn’t get upset. Well, from a regular very ordinary family, not not very well off. Let’s put it that way. Yeah, let’s put it that way. Well, that’s and I think it’s totally clear from the photos. Kai was born in Kiri, an academic family in Soviet era Ukraine. Wasn’t um not not like you know in Europe or in the United States. An academic family with everything provided. Usually our academics didn’t make a lot uh of money but again I’m I’m not complaining. I respect my father an honest man a professor well values again and again I got an education and I got raised right and my parents love I think th those three things are enough to be grateful to your parents. I’m not sure people find this interesting. So, let’s move on. Um, when you were a young boy in those photos, when you’re under the age of 10, had I asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, what what would you have answered? Because, and to be honest, I changed like the wind. Honestly, there was a time when I really wanted to be a diplomat, wanted to be uh a border guard. Yeah. And then uh I went to law school, graduated from law faculty and while studying I realized that I was more interested in media. So I got out and started working that exact field. I mean at 17 years old you became interested in comedy. Yeah. And you joined a comedy group. And you from what I read you you did that up until the age of about 26 years old. So you were a comedian up until the age of 26 years old before starting a media company. I yeah, but I was more I enjoyed I was a script writer and so sometimes as a writer I also did um a little acting. I I enjoyed it. Yeah. Until I was 26 and then um at 26 I got my own company. There’s some interesting stats I found. Uh 28 years old you won Ukraine’s Dancing with the Stars. Yeah. Yeah. So, you can dance? I think yes. I’m not sure that now I can. And later you voiced Paddington Bear in the Ukrainian language film. Yeah, I really really loved I think Paddington is a very cool thing. Really right. and for the people. I’m not sure all of it is just for kids to be honest. But nonetheless, that character resonated deeply with me. And I I even after I became president, the next Paddington installment was coming out. And all this was before the war and they were sending me signals. Would you consider voicing another Paddington movie? I said, well, I’d really love to, but I didn’t. Yeah. No. Um, and then between 34 years old and 37 years old, you appeared in a bunch of different feature films. And most interestingly, you starred as one particular character, a school teacher who accidentally becomes president in the satirical TV series called Servant of of the People. The People. I think I have a photo. No. Teacher of history. You’ve got to explain the context here because people can’t believe that this is true. They can’t believe that you actually acted as an actor who accidentally becomes president. And you must find this bizarre that you then became president because presumably at that time you weren’t expecting to become president when you became an actor pretending to be president. Absolutely. I definitely didn’t expect it. Absolutely. And this idea this this idea was about 10 to 12 years old. Once um this idea came to me and I thought about it. I lived with this idea for a long time. I love doing that. And at some point the feeling was that um the world is changing, Ukraine is changing and right now this idea is relevant. It will resonate and people will like it. What was the idea? When you say the idea, the person from the people without any uh history, without any political background becomes president and that’s how it turned out to be honest. So, you were playing a character in a TV series called Servant of the People, and the character was pretending to be the president. And you and you realize that actually the idea of there being a sort of servant of the people party or president was probably quite a good idea based on what was going on in Ukraine at that time. And because of the government instability at the time, you actually registered Servant of the People as a real political party in Ukraine. Uh well, that sounds basically like a pretty good uh script. Uh yeah, but it wasn’t honestly calculated like that. Uh the series was very popular. In parallel, there were a few other projects. We had a political satire uh project. Uh it was very popular. It was even before that series. So I already had my bearings in politics. Anyway, the point was that indeed um I decided to try my hand in this direction. And I really wanted after the occupation of Crimea, after the occupation of Donbas, this whole situation changed us and you and and you started to feel like something something was going wrong here a and it’s war, but there still wasn’t wasn’t that feeling yet because it wasn’t a fullscale war. And so I didn’t want to we were doing business with Barus and with Kazakhstan and with Russia as well. We had offices and projects that we were filming and so on. So uh life changed. I I want wanted to drop it all and this this sense of betrayal by Russia. Well, all of that happened and that’s why and you ch this whole period changed you as well. And so it’s not like it was some calculated plan. The TV show comes out and then a political party. I know about that. I know about that. Some people might think that and that’s fine. That’s normal. People have their own opinions. That’s normal. It coincided the mood in society coincided with my inner mood and with my determination and desire. So it’s a coincidence of many things. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you’re already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you’re not yet. And if you’re not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you’re someone that watches our show, but you haven’t yet hit that button. Thank you so much. So, you you talked about how it was really sort of a change in the climate in Ukraine that caused you to move closer to politics because everything that was going on at the time, Russia invaded Crimea here in 2014. Yeah. Um they annexed Crimea and this is and and so four years after this point, you announced that you’re going to run for president. Is this really when the war began in your view? Because there’s been lots of people that have posited when the war began. Some people say the war began a thousand years ago and they talk about old Crimea and the everything that took to took place there with the Roose. Um, some people say it began in 2014 and some people say it began in 2022. In your mind, when did the war begin? I think for many people that time really is different. But if we take take the new Ukraine that regained its independence in 1991 in the 20th century, then I think that in 2014, all of us just couldn’t believe it that this kind of occupation was happening. The war really started with the occupation of Crimea. That’s true. It’s just that it was slow that occupation. It didn’t look much like a war. Why? Well, because Ukraine wasn’t fighting back at that point. Meaning, when they occupied Crimea, there were shots fired there, of course. But for a very long time, Russia wouldn’t admit these were its people. They looked like regular people. They even called them little uh green men. That’s what they called them because you couldn’t tell what that uniform was. Meaning these are people carrying some kind of weapons on the peninsula. And the problem was that there were no clear orders from the Ukrainian authorities that you need to defend your land that someone violated your borders with with weapons and is seizing seizing gradually seizing Crimea. So it was really that kind of creeping occupation. Looking at that time today, not back in 2014, not in 2015, but today, you realize that that’s when the war really began. Our mistake was not pushing them back. And of course, if there have been an order, an order uh to defend the country, I’m sure that I think a full-scale war in the form it h it has today wouldn’t have happened. Well, at least that’s how it seems to me. Um I I read that your your great-grandfather and his grandfather’s four brothers were killed by the Nazis, and his grandfather was the only brother to survive the war. And I wondered how that experience of having that in your family tree has changed how you think about this moment in time when you’re facing a war with Russia. My grandfather went through World War II from start to finish. My grandfather, my father’s dad, and he was Yeah. from a family where there were several brothers and all of them were killed by the Nazis. I have very few relatives in general on both sides of my family on my father’s and my mother’s u many relatives were killed u by the fascists and that’s all that’s why it always sounded so bizarre when Russia accused us Ukraine of supposedly having Nazis. It’s bizarre and completely wild. If people uh all knew even a little bit of history, they would realize that fascists in Ukraine, fascism as such doesn’t exist. Why? Because Ukraine understands deep in its roots what it means uh to be under the fascists. Because during World War II, Ukraine was occupied 100% completely completely totally whereas Russia Ukraine uh Bellarus was occupied Ukraine and Nazi Germany it lost a huge number of its soldiers who died specifically in Bellarus, Ukraine because we all well because our countries or our lands they stood and fought. Russia was not occupied and that is also uh very important to understand. That’s why all of our people in Ukraine saw it well you know as barbaric and an outrage when Putin attacked us and said we have fascism and he’s liberating Ukraine from fascists. I mean it’s absurd. We fought against the fascists. We were the ones liberating. A lot of people don’t have the historical context on how this all began. If if I was a 16-year-old and I had no understanding of geopolitics and I asked you president, I said, “Could you explain to me the background context that I need to understand to understand what the hell is going on at the moment? Wh why why are Russia going into Crimea? What is Vladimir Putin’s perspective? Why does he think that that’s okay? Why does he think that he can invade Ukraine? What is the historical context explained in the simplest terms to a 16-year-old about what the hell is going on here? And I’m going to give you all the time in the world to inform me. There was an empire called the Soviet Union. And that empire, it included a large number of what are now independent states. It’s always like that with empires. Without getting into the historical context, everyone will understand this. It’s always like that with empires. Empires exist for a while and then they collapse because you can only hold everything together through autocracy, a territory like that. So many people through tyranny, through feudalism, through slavery, through certainly not through freedom. Empires don’t survive on freedom. And this is very important. Why do empires fall apart? Because people want to be free. Because people compare their lives in an empire with life in other countries, even small ones. They see how things develop there. They see how things develop there. How they live, walk freely, choose any partner they want, whatever hair color you like, music, clothes, and so on. While the Soviet Union, these empires, like everyone always said, the iron curtain. Why an iron curtain? So you wouldn’t see what’s out there in the west in Europe in the United States of America in Britain or anywhere in Asia. So people couldn’t see in terms of information an empire is hold control everything right. So a complete information vacuum there. You don’t exist. Nothing exists. No internet, nothing. Television that you run and control and people get the information. People live like fish in a fish tank. That’s all it is. The fish tank can be massive like the Soviet Union, but it’s still a fish tank. North Korea is a smaller fish tank, but it’s a fish tank. And that’s what happened with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union fell apart. Countries were happy. Countries became independent, smaller. Ukraine is one of those countries. And when identity emerges, you have your own language, your own music, your own clothes, and so on. What exists all around the world, it’s great tourism, you travel to Asia, you travel to Thailand, you travel to Japan, you travel to the United States. different culture, different music, food, people, and everyone lives freely. And it’s really cool to soak in another culture. That’s the diversity. Why does an empire fall apart? Because it’s made up of these kinds of people, nations that want to have their own thing. The Soviet Union fell apart, but nostalgia for the Soviet Union stayed with people. Putin was the president of Russia and he set a goal for himself and he’s a purely Soviet man, a very Soviet man. He was an intellig intelligence officer. He uh he worked in the KGB in the KGB in Germany and so on. He said, and this is his fa very famous phrase, that the greatest collapse of the 20th century in the world was the fall of the Soviet Union. And all of that shows that Russia just wasn’t enough for him. And he had the ambition to go back to that to bring back the empire, to bring back the Soviet Union, because he believes that another major country is to blame for the collapse of the Soviet Union. Which one? the United States of America because this has always been a geopolitical war. They’re enemies, the Soviet Union and the and the United States of America, they were allies during World War II and after that, you know, their enemies, the Cold War and so on. So, it’s very simple. Putin wanted to bring back the Soviet Union. And what is the Soviet Union? It is above all Ukraine. Ukraine. It’s Ukraine. Ukraine is country number two. Why? They called the Soviet Union a forge of talent. In Ukraine there were so many people who later led had that kind of education because there were many scientists, many engineers, many universities, a huge intelligencia. That’s what they said that for the Soviet Union, Ukraine was the forge of talent. In other words, in other words, many people who came from Ukraine, who then ran various institutions, ministries in the Soviet Union and so on, meaning it’s the intellectual part of the Soviet Union. Ukraine was always rocket the biggest rocket manufacturing was here, nuclear weapons which Ukraine handed over. A lot of things were made in UK in Ukraine. And what’s the problem for Russia? If Ukraine becomes part of Europe and without the Soviet Union, Ukraine started taking gradual steps in the other direction. Meaning if Ukraine becomes part of Europe, then Russia will collapse. It will fall apart. There are many different peoples, different religions, entirely and simply different nation into many different countries. And Putin decided to piece this whole empire back together. This ambition, where do you start piecing it together? He started the war in Cheschna. He occupied Chichchna, a small country that is now part of Russia. He destroyed it completely. Everything that’s happening in eastern Ukraine. It’s the very same commanders, military commanders who fought in Cheschna who destroyed Cheschna completely. There was nothing left, no buildings, nothing. People were killed. Killed. A huge number of people, by the way, were killed in Cheschna. And he occupied it. And then he decided to bring back the empire starting with Ukraine with a free state, one that wants to be in the European Union, one that is uh smart, intellectual. Other countries too, but here here’s what it is. Well, and the start, there always has to be a pretext to start an occupation. What pretext? It’s always a pretext. The pretext is always language. And he starts with Crimea. He starts the occupation with Crimea. Why? In Crimea there were a lot of Russian speaking people, Russian speaking Ukrainians. But to understand this and in Crimea there was deportation. There was more than one deportation expulsion of the Tatars. In other words, Crimea has indigenous peoples and it’s a multithnic peninsula. Uh but um what happened is he started the occupation with Crimea and with Domba with the east. Why? Because he divided society, unleashed this war based on language. Because language is always such an issue, uh a painful issue. And when you want to divide society, it’s totally unfair. It’s totally despicable toward the people. You start bringing up the language issue. So he brought it up, said that I’m protecting Russian speaking people, which wasn’t true. Nobody took anything from anyone. Yeah. But it was just easier. The east of the country uh borders with the Russian Federation. days before I I think it was the day before Vladimir Putin ordered troops to invade Ukraine, he did a statement where he said, “Modern Ukraine was entirely and completely created by Russia, more precisely, Bolevik, communist Russia. This process began almost immediately after the 1917 revolution. Soviet Ukraine is the result of Bolevik policy and can rightly be called Vladimir Leans Ukraine. Ukraine never had a tradition of genuine statehood.” So he’s very much denying that Ukraine is a nation of it. Why did he choose to invade February 24th? Why did he choose then to invade? If he had invaded Crimea in 2014, why was in your view that the moment where he decided to cross the border and try and by the looks of it take control of the whole of Ukraine? Um, first of all, notice he talks about the Soviet revolution of 1917. That’s ridiculous to anyone. Your country’s history can’t start in 1917. In Ukraine, there are churches. Everyone knows we have very beautiful churches that are a thousand years old. Ukrainian churches painted by Ukrainians. Total master professionals. A thousand years old. Ukraine is it’s the heir to Kievan Rous, a great state that was very well known in Europe on the European continent at least with an advanced civilization. Uh it really with with its own art, with its own traditions and so on. Russia wasn’t even close to existing. Russia came after Ukraine already existed. But he cuts all that out. Starts with the revolution. Why? from the October Revolution of 1917 because he’s talking about the history of the Soviet Union, not about the history of Russia and not about the history of Ukraine. The Soviet Union. Why? Because he’s signaling to people who are in Russia who honestly the kids, they get information in schools and they take it. They don’t go any deeper. He’s signaling to them that their life is the Soviet Union and that’s where we’re heading back to. That’s what he’s doing. He started a fullscale war. The war started 20 4th 24th uh of 22 February 24th. Missile strikes were launched immediately from the territory. It was flying from every every side. Troops were also entering from the territory of Bellarus right from here because it’s the closest route to the capital. they were advancing on Kev and also um came from all directions. Uh they the main goal was to seize the capital of Ukraine. That was their main goal. Naturally, they were counting on the tough guys who were both Russian and the separatists already in the occupied uh in the occupied territory of Donbas. Why? Why in February 2022? Why not later? Why not sooner? Why was that the moment? What had happened that you know because I I part of the reason I asked this question is because President Donald Trump often blames Joe Biden for being weak and that giving Vladimir Putin an opportunity to invade because he didn’t respect President Biden. That’s what’s claimed. Is there truth in that? I’ll explain. I think that um it was a little bit earlier. Um in 21 uh there was a summit. I don’t remember when anymore. I think I don’t remember. There was a Biden Putin summit. Remember that famous summit? We didn’t have all the details. They came out and started talking about something uh publicly and so on. Then rumors started that they discussed the issue of a possible escalation against Ukraine and we kept bringing up this issue over the next few months. We kept bringing it up with the Americans uh and this could really happen and they were saying well it could happen. We asked them then please give us what we need to defend ourselves if there are such risks that some kind of occupation could start. We couldn’t imagine though that fullscale invasion would start because we saw what Russian occupation looked like with Crimea and with um Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. So you imagined it differently. You couldn’t imagine that overnight missiles would just start flying. Nobody had ever seen anything like that. Why were kids screaming? Why were people fleeing? Why was there absolute chaos? Those were hor absolutely horrifying moments because missiles are literally flying at you. Nowadays, a thousand drones fly in and we shoot them down. We fight. But back then, right around 4:00 in the morning, missiles were raining down on your head. Everyone was in shock. So, he did it in February because that’s what he wanted to do. That was his his plan. I think he told Biden a whole lot of things. I remember unfortunately I think unfortunately President Biden stepped in later um in in the first uh minutes or days of the war. I I had a call with him back then when he offered to evacuate me back then a lot of people offered me help. I said give us weapons, help us defend uh the country. And I think they realized that it’s impossible to occupy us. That’s what I think think happened. I think that um uh the United States back then um I don’t know, maybe they did consider that it could turn out that uh there’d be a conflict and we might be occupied, but nobody counted on us holding out for sure. I remember that uh I think a day before. God, that was so long ago. I’ve forgotten so much already. A day before the invasion, the Europeans who knew less than the Americans, they were talking with Putin and Putin promised them there wouldn’t be an invasion. Oh, he lied to all of them back then. Just he knew there would be an invasion. He knew everything. When did you first get a phone call telling you that Russia were planning to invade Ukraine? How many days before it happened did you get that call? And who was the the call from? It it was never direct like Russia plans an invasion on such and such day and there will be a full-scale war like this and that. It was never like that. These were very cautious diplomatic signals and so on and this uh how can I put it? We kept bringing up this issue. Why? because people were worried and people were worried that affected the economy and affected the currency and the stability of the national currency started to drop which affected the country’s economy and we asked the Americans give us a clear signal if you believe this is war then give us weapons urgently everything you can give because well that’s what our um dialogue was like yeah well but nobody would would give anything. And I asked, “Impose sanctions.” That’s something everybody in Europe knew about. They knew. I asked President Biden, “Impose sanctions on Russia now preemptively. If you know there could be an invasion, impose sanctions. We other and then he won’t go in if he’s really decided to.” But President Biden said, “We’ll impose sanctions if there’s an invasion.” postfactum, not preemptive sanctions, but postfactum. I’m not God to judge uh a president, but I believe that was a mistake in my view. Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but in October 2021, the director of national intelligence and CIA director briefed US leadership and top NATO allies that Putin was making concrete plans for a multiffront invasion. And European media published satellite imagery showing a 100,000 Russian troops, tanks, and field hospitals that had started to emerge. And CIA director flew to Moscow to warn Putin directly against invading in November 2021. Then in December 2021, the US government took the rare step of declassifying intelligent maps and troop estimates, predicting an invasion force of up to 175,000 troops to prevent Russia from using a false flag operation as a pretext. And then in late January, early February 2021, the US National Security Adviser publicly warned that an invasion could begin at any time, urging foreign citizens to evacuate Ukraine. And then on February 24th, 2022, Russia launched a fullscale invasion. And they launched the invasion from multiple sides. Yes. Really with the focus on Kiev. Yes. Can you remember where you were when you realized that they had crossed multiple borders of Ukraine at the same time? I I want to if I was a fly on the wall in whatever room you were in, wherever you were, what would I have seen? Where were you? How did you find out? First of all, I’d like you to know that in Bellarus, the Russians were conducting drills, training. These were annual drills. That’s very important because when we talked to our partners and they uh briefed like you’re saying folks from NATO and so on, nobody fully believed it. Why? Because everybody said they were just saber rattler. Putin was intentionally trying to scare everyone. He wouldn’t launch an invasion. What I just told you, European leaders called him. He said, “I won’t invade.” He had exercises in Barus, military exercises. On top of that, our defense minister was invited there to these exercises and he was there. Just so you understand, imagine that he went there, came back and so on. And then the full-scale uh invasion started from multiple directions. And what the Europeans said, echoing my messages, was impose sanctions and give weapons to the Ukrainians. if you know an invasion is coming. The Americans didn’t do that. They didn’t give them and didn’t impose sanctions. And that’s why everyone had doubts. Everyone thought the Russians were just bluffing. Why? Because he wanted to push us into the Minsk agreements and so on. So that we’d give them Donbas and recognize Donbas as not Ukraine and also recognize Crimea as not Ukraine. That’s what in other words that was the format of pressure. But what happened happened. What did you believe? I didn’t think there would be a full-scale invasion and so on. So that we give them Donbas and recognize as not Ukraine and also recognize Crimea as not Ukraine. That’s what in other words that was the form of pressure. But what happened happened. I didn’t think there would be a full scale invasion. I didn’t think so because I believe that if people know there’s going to be a full-scale invasion, partners and so on, and they don’t take preemptive steps, don’t sit him down at the table. Don’t tell him, “Are you out of your mind? Have you lost your mind to wage war in the 20th century to kill people? You’re completely unhinged.” But even so, a full-scale invasion happened and just and they approached Kevly, like really quickly. I mean, it was just it was well an avalanche. And I was I was with my family and I was with my family. I got a call from the office saying that before that during the night uh missiles were flying missiles. I got ready, told my wife, told the kids, told them the war has started and I went to the office. I arrived at the office. I was the first or second the second person I think in the office and I called everyone in and we started uh started the work day. Such a terrible work day. The first one during the full scale war. What did your wife say? I don’t remember. I It was very fast. Everything happened so fast. I told my wife, “Wake up quickly. The war has started. I I love you. I’ll call you. And ran up. And life has not been the same since. Absolutely. It’s just a different life. Everything is different. Everything’s different. 100%.

When I was doing my research on that day when Russia invaded, what I couldn’t believe is just the the volume of troops that rolled across the border. I read one thing that said there was 65 kilometers of armored vehicles and troops on one particular road as they tried to take Kiev. Um, I want to talk about that, but I I just I really want to also get an answer to this sort of outstanding question in my head, which is Trump has repeatedly said probably a hundred times now that this never would have begun. It never would have happened if he was president. Do you believe that?

Uh,

I think that no, nobody knows the answer, honestly. Um,

the fact remains that this happened during Biden’s presidency. That’s a fact. It’s a fact that this didn’t happen under Trump. A fact. But it’s also a fact that Putin chose the moment for a full occupation. That’s also a fact. I think Trump had a special relationship with Putin and still does. And maybe uh it really is possible that um Trump being on friendly terms with Putin could have prevented a fullscale invasion. But one thing you have to know for sure, neither I nor Trump, we we’re not eternal in these presidential seats. And so either way, Trump’s presidency would have ended and Putin still uh wouldn’t have been able to change his main goal, the occupation of Ukraine. So I think that honestly it doesn’t matter who um the president is as long as Putin is there. On February the 24th, when Russia invaded Ukraine, it is reported that they sent there’s different numbers, but some of the numbers go up to 200,000 troops that were assembled across the Ukrainian border. It varies between 150,000 190,000. And when I look at the total active number of troops in Ukraine at the time, it’s almost the same number. So, it’s almost as if Russia deployed the full size of the the number of active duty personnel you had into Ukraine to attack Ukraine and specifically to take Kiev. Can you can you just explain to me in simple terms how they staged that attack? You said that some troops came in from Barus. There was uh support that came in trying to take Kiev as well. I think uh they knew that our main forces uh our main forces were in the east of our country. Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Yes. Donetsk Luhansk region. Why were uh Donetsk Luhansk regions where our main units were? Look there is Khib which was also their target. Look this whole all this all this whole part marupo which was very important to them donk which was already occupied and so on. So uh what was the bottom line? Because when part of it was occupied when Doness was occupied look Makayak all of that was uh after the occupation of Crimea look all of this was occupied this entire part the very strong troops were stationed here strong both in terms of numbers and strength and the separatists and they uh were fighting against us. Meaning you have to understand these are people who considered their homeland. These aren’t just Russians. These are separatists. So they were both separatists and Russians here. So this was their strongest grouping. And our strongest grouping was stationed right here. And that was and that and that was constantly. They were here. They were stationed right here. Why were they why were they uh stationed here? Because they were holding back the strongest Russian grouping so it wouldn’t break through. And nobody expected that they would go through Bellarus and advance on the capital. And that’s why we didn’t have any strong troops here. That is an absolute fact. We simply didn’t have that kind of army. The entire Ukrainian army was well, excuse me, it was later I changed the law to make it 200,000 plus up to 250. But before that, it was an even smaller force. And just imagine 200,000 people are coming at you. Well, it’s simply impossible to defend. You need an army like the one we have today, 800,000, which was actually the main problem for the Russians troops when we they couldn’t take our capital. We held out and destroyed them. They couldn’t they didn’t have enough troops to hold the occupied territories here. and they had to pull back. We were hitting them and they were pulling back. And that’s how we fully took back Kiev region, Cheriv region and that whole front. We completely restored it and pushed them out entirely. So it’s completely obvious they just didn’t have enough troops. Just like at first when they pushed in, we didn’t have a strong army here. We didn’t have enough troops. And later the same happened to them. Naturally, when the full-scale invasion started, we uh there was mobilization and people there were lines. People showed up as volunteers and our army grew from 200,000 to an army of 800,000. While the Russian presence was around, by the way, the Russian presence was um around 700 probably at that moment around 700,000 across all directions on Ukrainian territory. meaning this was a massive onslaught coming in a massive onslaught. There’s um in late February satellite imagery captured a massive 64 km which is 40 m long Russian military convoy. Yeah. It was terrifying footage. Yeah. Of that backed up along a single highway leading to Kiev. And when you see 64 kilometers of military military vehicles and armored vehicles heading to one city and then you hear that they failed to take that city, the question like how how um they captured by the way the Chernobyl nuclear plant where the disaster happened. All of that was occupied. That whole route was occupied. They occupied it and blockaded Kev. How did we People stepped up. people went to mobilize. Yes. A huge number on the first day we we left uh left the country headed toward western Ukraine, the western part of our country. They left, but a lot of people stayed, mobilized, and we we brought up our troops and started fighting them day after day.

We pushed back harder. They cut off our food, cut off our water, cut everything off completely. So that was their that was their mission. They expected people to run and me and certain people came to me and they said Kiev is cut off and Kiev is surrounded and the Russians are suggesting you hand over your powers and and that’s it. Meaning Kiev m must surrender. Uh naturally I told those people where to go uh let’s put it that way. uh out of my office and then as you know uh leaders were calling offering to evacuate before all the roads were blocked uh to get out of Kiev. Who called you and asked you if you wanted to be evacuated and did they make you an offer to evacuate you themselves? Biden. Joe Biden asked you if you wanted to be evacuated. He was the first. The first. What did he say? We are ready to help you evacuate because uh naturally well the invasion Kiev is surrounded and you we are ready to help you you and your family. Uh likewise many Europeans offered me that later. several Europeans uh and people uh around me as well. Let’s say people around me from our political circle also suggested yeah doing all that. What did you say to Biden?

I I need ammunition, not a ride. Did you tell your wife and your family to leave?

Um

they all um

nobody could go anywhere because that was a choice. Uh that was uh the families and theirs. Um uh naturally they weren’t in the office with me or the security detail took them and they went uh to to to another location. Yeah. Well, because it was clear that that uh there was just shoot there was shooting right around the president’s office and it was obvious how this could all end. And they asked me to go down to the bunker down there. I had uh it was very deep underground built right inside my office and in that bunker I started working uh that’s where Biden called me uh all around my office was secured by snipers various guys of ours special services and I was in the bunker uh down there I had communications and I spoke with all the leaders from there that’s where I first did a video call with the Europeans pleading with them to unite, help Ukraine not abandon us and it worked. Yeah. And I continued uh being there going out into the street talking to to the people showing myself because there were so many in those first few days there were so so many uh narratives. Russia was put putting out a lot of information claiming I had fled. So basically their whole idea was for people to run and people would run if they saw that their leader abandoned them. Well I mean excuse me if the leader abandoned the capital well then everyone has to uh survive on their own. So that was the whole story. They wanted me to run and for them for them that was yeah obviously that was their goal. And I couldn’t abandon Kev, the office, the people. It’s just impossible. That would be betrayal. Betrayal of my human decency and the constitution of Ukraine. So I couldn’t uh do that. Well, and and that’s it. That’s it. And then and they put the Russians constantly pushed information that I wasn’t there, then that I was spotted at the border, then that I was seen uh somewhere else, then in other countries. And all of that forced me to go out into the street all the time. Two, three times a day, I made a decision to constantly communicate, constantly say something to people so people could see that I was in the office on Bankova, that I hadn’t fled anywhere, hadn’t run away. That was important for the military, too. Later on with time, the military told me that it meant a lot to them. They stood strong, fought, defended, and liberated Kev because they believed they were liberating their capital, their home, and their president. Meaning that he didn’t abandon us, that he stayed with us. That’s what they said. Well, it was my duty. I don’t see it as some kind of uh very special choice of mine. I believe that this was the only way I could act.

Were you scared? Because if I You have a nuclear power, one of the biggest militaries in the world that have 64 miles of military equipment heading towards where you are and you have them invading also by air, firing missiles into the cities that you’re in and your family are in. You’ve made the decision you’re going to stay. Were you scared?

Scared? It’s a different feeling. It’s not about fear. It’s about being well, being laser focused on what needs to be done right now. We were working at such speed, I can’t even tell you. I was just running around the office. I was running, making decisions, calling leaders. I just had no breaks. I had, I don’t know, dozens of calls with leaders every single day, every hour, every second. I’d run outside, come back, talk to the military, come back. So, I just didn’t have time for that. I only realized it all about 20 days into the war. I just realized that something happened, something terrible. and and the speed, you know, when the speed slightly slightly began to shift, you started to realize, my god, well, this is war. This is and it’s without a doubt a horrible war. Yeah. But at first, I I was just working. Honestly, uh I have this trait. I don’t even think it’s just me. People have this trait to pull yourself together when you know shock. People around you are in shock and you see it in their eyes. You see that they, you know, well, they’re in shock and you realize that you need to act right now. Just act. Act every second. Draw conclusions. Kev is blockaded. Open it up. Tell the military, “Open the road. We need food to get in, water, and so on.” That is that’s what crisis management is. And in tough situations, basically that’s usually how I I act in tough situations. And it’s not like I’m uh again the bravest person. It’s just when this kind of thing hits, I see people around me falling apart, you know, falling apart. Well, because it’s a terrible war, I pull myself together completely. And only later relate once you’ve relaxed you realized that a terrible tragedy occurred a war and and is just immense grief pretty much like that. When when did things slowed down enough for you to realize the severity and the impact of the tragedy that had taken place and the lives that were lost? Was there a particular moment? The first few days I didn’t sleep at all. The first few days we just worked I was sleeping about yeah 15 minutes sleeping 15 minutes because I had my entire job was communication. I was talking in circles with every leader. Deliver this over there. Do that there. We set up flawless logistics uh for weapons. We we were able uh I was talking at night with Poland with an Duda there was a warehouse there we were waking leaders up meaning in the middle of the night so it was well it’s improper to say this today you shouldn’t treat people like that but that’s how it was and about 20 days later into the war everything started coming together into some steps that needed to be taken into some kind of well like the realization that well a war had begun, war, tragedy and we have to move forward and well that’s about how it was. At first it was crisis management. Unblock, bring back troops, break the siege of Kev, strike back at them. And definitely the most crucial things were communications, food, water, the population. So many cities were cut off. It wasn’t just the banking system, cards, making sure cards worked. I mean, we’re a pretty digitalized country, so a lot of things were done. A lot of things were done in those first weeks. We were faster than the Russians. They broke through quickly toward Kev. And once we stopped them at Kev, we became much faster in the information space and so on. We shattered their whole their whole wave of disinformation and just broke them down step by step, step by step until

they realized that they lost the capital to us and and then it became clear that we had to push harder. Our partners helped. Our partners realized that we wouldn’t give up and they started helping. That was definitely it. I remember how it happened. It is often said that Vladimir Putin believed he would be able to take Kiev and Ukraine in just a number of days and actually captured Russian assault units carried only 3 to 10 days of combat rations alongside formal dress uniforms meant for a victory victory parade. While state media accidentally released a presscheduled victory declaration on day three. Although Putin never never publicly uttered the phrase three days or said a sort of time frame himself, there are top Russian state media figures um who openly bragged that the conquest would take only a few days. What is it that they misunderestimated about Ukraine? That’s right. Exactly what you started with today, that Ukraine is not Russia. That’s his problem. Refusing to recognize a separate nation, refusing to recognize a separate country. That’s what did him in. He still doesn’t understand that he looks at Ukraine as Russia, as part of Russia, that I’ll march in with an army. We’ll have hundreds of thousands of men. He’ll slam his fist on the table. The president will run away. People will hide and the Ukrainian flag will be swapped for the Russian flag. And that’s it. Three days. We showed a military operation that was supposed to take 3 days. That’s how it is. When our guys hit their tanks and stuff, we found parade uniforms. It’s true. They found parade uniforms in their various military vehicles. They were literally marching to a parade. They specifically wanted to capture Kiev in 3 days and symbolically hold some well some kind of uh regular spectacle uh of pseudo victory on Christhatic on Independent Square. Well, I mean that’s the most important thing. He still doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to admit that this is a different nation, a different people. Just 12 hours ago, Trump weighed in on what he believed happened with Kiev and why Vladimir Putin wasn’t able to take Kiev. This is what he said. I’ll throw it up on the screen for the listeners. But then it was supposed to be a very much, you know, very quick war, right? And if you remember the tanks going up the highway right into Kiev. Had the general who was obviously not a very good general not made a right turn into farmland which was soaked and soaking wet from the heaviest rain in 10 years they say he went right up into the mud and it was like quicksand and those tanks. So they got I guess I don’t know if you’re caught lucky or not lucky frankly cuz it’s been 5 years and Ukraine has lost a tremendous you know Ukraine has lost so many of its men number one had they not taken the right turn onto dirt instead of going up a concrete highway it would have ended in one day. So Trump says that it was a Russian mistake taking a wrong turn that stopped this war being over in a day. No, they surrounded Kev. They they reached Kev. They occupied towns on the way to Kev. Uh some they didn’t occupy. Towns fought back. They bypassed them. No, if someone took a wrong turn, I don’t know what President Trump is talking about. It’s overall it doesn’t matter. With all the armor they lost near Keev, hostal and so on. In other words, dozens hundreds of armored vehicles burned. They just they just trapped us and then we started hammering them and they didn’t know what to do about it because some of their armor breached into Kev right into the capital. Armored vehicles drove through the streets and people burned it all down. They were especially shocked when they drove toward the capital and people were just throwing burning debris. I mean pe people were setting their armor on fire. It wasn’t a matter of some general being an idiot. I believe the one who gave the order just didn’t fully realize what was happening. Didn’t really get what it would take. And that’s the main point. They needed around thousands thousands I think 3 to 400,000 to take Kev. They needed twice as many men. Why? Because taking Kev, what does taking Kev mean? When you’ve taken those towns on the on the way to Kev, you have to leave troops behind to hold those towns. And that takes a huge number of people. It’s a pretty large territory. And you can avoid leaving many troops there only if there’s no resistance. But if the people inside offer resistance, then you you need an army to hold every town. That was their uh that was their mistake. They didn’t estimate, right? didn’t estimate uh they didn’t even realize there would be resistance. That’s it. That was their main mistake.

And then then that’s it. That’s all. For example, if you take uh that operation back in 2014 when they uh went in and seized uh Crimea then, pardon me, in Crimea there are 3 million people and Kev had 3 million people. Dozens of people entered Crimea, at most hundreds, and here hundreds of thousands. It’s not about the operation. The difference is people defended it, stood up and fought. And the difference is no one fought back. Which is why I said when dozens of people showed up here where Trump is right is that if Crimea hadn’t been allowed to fall, there would be no war on this. I agree with President Trump. Not because I’m blaming anyone. No, it’s just that dozens of people went into Crimea. Dozens. For a country like this, that’s zero. That’s nothing. We handled hundreds of thousands. Here here’s what happened. And if they’d been smacked in the head back then, uh, the Russians, those people wearing uniforms, meaning the Russians would have even said, “Hey, that’s they were already saying that’s not our army. Look at the uniforms. You can’t tell us the Russian army.” And if they’d been hit back then, well, it wouldn’t have happened. Well, at least there wouldn’t have been a chance of a full-scale war. Why? Because Putin would have known there would be a blow. There would be a response. But what was his mistake here? First of all, when he saw how Crime Crimea was seized so easily, so easily, that’s why he thought he could seize Kev just as easily. That was his experience. And there’s quite a famous battle that took place um to secure the Anatonov airport, Hostol. Uh Hostol Antonov, that’s what I just told you. That’s a battle. There’s a terrible battle in Hostol. A brutal battle. of the airport in host. Can you explain that to me? Um because I I watched a documentary on this a couple of months ago and it feels like it was a really pivotal moment in defending Kiev. What were Russia trying to do? Where is this when they land for them it was crucial to seize the airports. Hosttol is one of uh the airports where a massive landing force could could land and so on. So here’s how a takeover works. block kev capture the airports basically TV towers and so forth in other words seize information logistics and cut off supplies of uh food food weapons and so on that that’s bas basically the plan and you need the leader to to run because no leader means chaos no chain of command that’s what they were doing there was a terrible battle in Hostol our people burned them there and they had very tough of combat uh units. They couldn’t uh land a large force there. They were destroyed. Uh Hostol was taken back. Uh our troops controlled it. That was one of the striking battles. A terrible battle. One of the most striking battles. So we did everything possible not to let them capture us and seize our logistics. They they flew in with paratroopers. So they parachuted people into that airport to try and claim it. And they originally did seize the airport. That’s right. And then there was an immediate counterattack where Ukrainian National Guard units and special forces Yes. Our national guard. You shelled and destroyed the runway yourself. You destroyed your own runway while air defense units forces shot down several Russian transport helicopters. And from what I understood, you know, you took the air port back. They fought you took it back. They fought. That’s right. Changed hands back and forth. That’s how it was. And if they had been able to seize that airport, how would that have changed the situation with you? They likely they could have uh they could have taken most of the capital. They could have broken through and captured it. That’s true. That’s true. That was an utterly heroic uh battle. It when you hear these stories, you realize that the future of Ukraine comes down to both heroism, but also several small battles. Some big battles, but also several small moments. when you reflect on that that month, that moment, what are is there any other sort of small moments that you think really define the future of Ukraine in this regard? Well, uh just so you know, um today, um places like Hostol, then further up Mushroom and several small towns around Kev, there was a desperate battle for every single one of those towns. Why the National Guard? because back then the full army couldn’t reach it yet. But the national guard are uh internal troops. So they were there and brought in army units and so on. But nonetheless, that’s why it was an utterly heroic battle. There was BHA, you know, right, that they occupied it. It was terrible. It was a genocide recognized by everyone. They buried hundreds of people. They tortured people. I mean tortured them. And hundreds of people were in a mass grave. They found a grave. There were, I believe, around 500 people, half a thousand people in a grave like that. Just imagine, hands tied, tortured, and then buried in in in pits. That’s what was happening. People

seeing all this.

This looked nothing like a war. It looked it was definitely pure looting when they occupied those towns on the way to Kev and around Kev. They collap they just went into homes just killed took microwaves, some refrigerators, TVs. They acted like just an well, I can’t even describe it. Well, they’re just scavengers. And all these people, they tied their hands, tortured them.

There was sexual violence, everything. And they buried people right in the yard, dumped people, and so on. When we liberated those towns,

there emerged this, you know, this kind of such hatred for the Russians. Right at that moment, not even at the moment when they started the fullscale war. Back then, every nobody understood what it really was yet. People understood what this war was and what Putin did personally when we found those mass graves of tortured adults, children. I mean, they didn’t just kill them, they tortured and killed them. Children. That’s right. That’s right. And then you realize that I mean just imagine what they went through. Well, there’s no no you can’t even compare what all these people live through. Why BHA is so horrifying and why the Russians immediately started saying it’s a staged performance. We brought in journalists. The entire world press was there. They saw the bodies. I deliberately when we liberated Bha I went there. Once I saw it, I said, “Bring every journalist here. Don’t touch anything. Just bring the journalists. The whole world simply has to see this.” And they brought the journalists. People were literally lying on the pavement. Dead bodies lying everywhere. Kids, adults, elderly people, and so on. Witnesses who had stayed behind in BHA. An old man, an elderly man. This was a very famous story there. It’s one of those moments you’re talking about. this elderly man, he lit survived uh the occupation of this town, the town of Bha during World War II. And he said the fascists never treated people like that. Yes, they were enemies, yes, occupiers, but they didn’t torture people like that. This is absolute reality. And this there are testimonies, there’s evidence, there are criminal cases and how after all this we it’s just that it was already a long time ago in the first year of the full-scale war. And sometimes people need to be reminded when you see a mass today finding a grave in the US or in Britain, God forbid, with 500 tortured people, adults, kids, dogs, animals shot dead. I mean, they held hunting sprees there. from military vehicles. People were running, they were shooting, just hunting, playing games. The whole time they were blockading Kev right up until the moment we liberated it. They there were people in those villages and so on. They literally just played with people like slavery. Imagine that. So how how after this uh can you listen to Putin and how how after this can you forgive? And that’s why when President Trump says we need to find a compromise and believe me this we live with this a ceasefire and sitting down at the negotiating table there’s a huge compromise. It is a huge compromise. Nobody can step into the shoes of all these people and the relatives whose children were tortured. Nobody can nobody wants to forgive them for anything. Nobody wants to forgive anything. And you can’t force people to forgive. How can you force them when their child was tortured? How do you forgive? Well, it’s impossible. But that’s why we say a ceasefire is the only step because people have such hatred. It It’s not going away. It that hatred isn’t going anywhere. It takes time and justice. And that’s why it’s a huge compromise. I’ve always really wanted I I’ve tried many times to tell the president of the United States just understand us. This is a huge compromise just to hold the lines where we are that to well look that’s what it feels like.

What was your hardest day through the last four years? What’s the day that you know will live long in your your brain, your mind, your memory? BHA, what I just told you, that was a terrible day because I stood there. I had never seen people’s bodies just scattered on the on the street in my entire life. I had simply never seen anything like that in my life. And after that, everything changed completely. And once again, everything changed in life. Everything has changed. Absolutely. In what way?

Well,

you want you want revenge.

Uh I had never had it where I couldn’t forgive someone. And by and large, I think people make mistakes. This this is about something else. Evil like that, you know, a devil like that. Just came in like that, did that to people like like chopped meat, butchered them, you know? I mean, that’s what it looks like. And you just can’t fathom how that’s possible. And you want to find these people who aren’t human. You want to find them and you want to you just want to you want to kill them. I mean, I had never wanted to kill a single human being. I had never felt anything like that. Pure revenge. With time, you can’t forget that. And in moments like this, and our conversation brings back moments like that. And you have to be president and you have to come down and be more uh how to put it uh diplomatic. Yeah. Well, you can’t forgive just forgive everything like that and say well sorry that’s Putin a powerful country. Let’s just forget everything. Let’s forgive everything and somehow well we’ll buy and sell gas or diesel or whatever. That’s difficult. You understand? Do you ever worry about how this experience has changed you? Because you have been irreversibly changed by this. I can tell both from meeting you, looking at how you used to be 3, four, 5 years ago, you’ve been irreversibly changed. and you’re a father and you’re a husband and at some point this war will be over, you know, God God willing. But do you do you ever think about how you’re irreversibly changed?

You can’t bring it back. It’s just it’s two different worlds. A re-evaluation of values. My only dream is to end this war. I desperately want justice. I just really want I know so many people had their hearts ripped out and there won’t be a new heart. You have to give them at least something. So some trial, some justice, you know, at least some moral soloulless is an absolute must. You can’t just leave it because that hole inside them, it won’t heal. And there will be revenge like I told you. and a and re the revenge of so many people who lost everything that naturally brings uh risks uh of some kind of ongoing military or combat actions you know and so forth. So it’s not that simple. It doesn’t just end like that. Why do we talk talk about a just peace? Some people ask what is a just peace? Well somehow there has to be justice. The guilty must be punished. At the very least, you have to show a path that it will happen. Maybe not right now, but that it will happen. It’s just totally impossible to simply forgive and and that and you realize that you want uh to be with your kids, with your wife. Generally, you just want uh to end the war and get a little bit of a life. But if if I asked Alina, your wife, how you have changed on a human level because of all of this, what might she say to me? I don’t know. She’d definitely say I’ve changed a lot. Yeah, she tells me sometimes. Yeah. Well, what is she saying?

Well, you know how it is.

She focuses on different things, you know, different values. You just want somehow

you want to hold on to something that the people close to you. You really crave that warmth. You want to break through this

ah

in a war you fight and you’re lonely. You know in life before this war you’re definitely not lonely because you have friends, company, business, then maybe politics. But you’re not lonely. I I run a country and and this is about something completely different right now. But when you hug your family, it’s just like that. Well, it means uh well, it means there are people who love you. That matters. Do you miss them? Very much. Very much. Pointless sentimentality. Maybe that’s it.

That’s how it is. Years have passed, you know, between this and this uh years years. I really I miss them constantly. And it feels like that even when they’re right next to me. It’s just this habit, this habit of doing work and focusing exclusively on work. Uh even when they’re near, I miss them sometimes. Meaning, well, again, I don’t like to complain, and I’m not complaining. I chose my own path. Uh, and of course, I didn’t choose the war, but I chose this path. Well, this war, it fell on my my lifetime and on the lifetime of our generation. Yeah. beautiful wife and beautiful kids.

Your daughter is um your daughter, she’s not a child anymore. Yeah. Yeah. So that they’ve all grown up in the last four four years. She’s a young lady now. Very much so. She really has. Yeah. Grown up. Yes. And all the children of Ukraine. And it’s true. I’ve said this. The children of Ukraine grew up during the war. Totally true. They are all so grown up. And it’s so sad that childhood passed during a war. Well, but nonetheless, we believe in peace, peace will prevail anyway, 100%. And the do my daughter and I are really great friends. She’s grown up now. And well, her English is better. Do you get to spend a lot of time with the kids? When there’s time, I I try to be with them to call, we talk. These days, there are plenty of options. We talk online, we talk in different ways. That’s how it is. Is it is it possible? No, I I gosh I um I’ve spent since I was 18 years old been running businesses and you know running a startup I you know I thought you know was a was was a challenge but it is incomparable from you know and I say this because I think about how that pulled me away from the people in my life my relationships being so obsessed with business but it’s just totally incomparable to think about what that must be like to try and maintain those important relationships especially with children When your country is being invaded and you are the leader of that country, I I I almost can’t fathom how you can find moments of presence with them like true presence. I understand how one might be able to like fake presence for a short period of time, but true sort of intellectual presence. Is it is it possible?

Differently, but differently now. Absolutely. But yes, that presence matters. And those moments you mentioned, you’ve been in business since you were 18. And some I imagine of your relationships become secondary probably while business always consumes your whole life. Well, at least it was that way for me. And this re-evaluation from this war and these images and these horrific moments definitely shows me that business is secondary. Everything is secondary. these people right here. That’s what matters most now that you can’t get back. These years slip away and in these intense moments you remember these people. It’s important.

And your wife, Alina, has been your rock through it all. I’ve heard you say she’s been your stability throughout all of this all of these crazy crazy times. Well, we support each other. That’s true. We um we I think that I have a very um smart uh wife and she is so real. We have real we have real feelings. we we have love and resp and respect. I think that’s very important. Um to respect each other and you know how should I put it? People should find each other interesting. I think that’s the most important thing. People need to find each other interesting. Yeah. And we find each other very interesting. We feel good. We feel very good. The other um very important woman in your life, your parents are still here, but your mother Yeah. I heard she calls you uh almost every day. Still. Every single day. Every day. Every single day. That’s right. Every day. Really? Where does she She’s living in Ukraine still. When your mother calls you, what does she say every day? What is she asking you? Her first question is, did you actually pick up?

She’s already like that because I so often she I look, God, 12 missed calls. Mom, I’m working. I tell her 12 calls. How can you call someone so many times? And she keeps dialing. She’ll call you all day long until I pick up. So, we make sure to speak once a day. She asks, “How I’m feeling?” And is she worried about you? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How are you? How are you feeling? How are the kids? Tell me. Right. when is um Putin going to uh end the war? And I say, “Mom, we’re doing everything we can.”

And as things stand at the moment for the people don’t understand what’s actually going on in the ground on the ground in Ukraine, where the Russian troops currently are, what life is like on a day-to-day basis if you’re a Ukrainian. Can you explain to me which parts of Ukraine are currently occupied and generally what life is like for Ukrainians at the moment?

um occupied u occupied was Cremia. Then they took the Azov that’s an inland uh sea of ours and that’s our sea. They made it Yes. They turned it into an inland sea. They took Marupo. They took Marupo. They took Berdansk. All of the Azov Kerch is a city on the Black Sea. They made it so we can’t get out. Next they Oleski is where right now uh people and children are trapped without food, without anything. They won’t let them through. Right now we are working to unblock it. There were 2,500 people lefton. We fought to take back the major city of Herson. We reclaimed it. Uh her son is split by the Nepro River. Our people live on one bank, the enemy is on the other bank and that’s why they shell Herson and Zaporia. She’s also under under our control. So they took Cremia Donetsk region uh Luhansk region. They couldn’t take like uh you can call her son. This part this part is ours. So upside the map is just upside down.

uh from Kharkifia. This is what they call Luhansk oblast right here. This is our crators like this right here.

is all of this is um this is roughly roughly sorry I’m not very good at drawing uh all of this is all of this is roughly 18 18 to 19% of our territory that’s roughly roughly it roughly because their maps are one thing to be honest they tell uh one story to their pe people. We have different maps. We believe we’re right. Well, naturally, they have their own their own approach to talking with society and presenting information, but roughly that’s what it is. And they’re attacking via missiles and drones other parts of Ukraine constantly. Right. Completely. Yes. Yes. See, they’re focused on Well, honestly, you could point everywhere here. They’ve already started today. Right here, they killed people in Lut. That’s the western part of our country. Right here, a missile struck and they’re hitting Kev uh Puchi. Right here, we went with the British secretary saw 23 people killed. Gitomia is under constant shelling. Uh well, Riv has fewer strikes. Uh Leviv, this part, fewer strikes here. This part to be honest all of this part is far away from uh the line of occupation from the contact line and from the Russian Federation. So obviously the distance is great which is why there are no massive strikes there. Yes. Well that’s roughly it. What are they trying to accomplish? Adessa is being shelled deep alive. What do they want to pull out of out of the east of our country so that Putin and the east is here’s what he wants. He wants basically he wants to take the city of Zaparisia but he can’t. That’s a target for him. Zaparisia and Kon and Mikolia all targets. But he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t say it. But after all, we liberated those cities. We liberated. And but have you heard directly from them? right as to what their demands are, what they say that they want to to stop launching missiles. Yes. They basically say right here, this entire piece, they want to take pretty much the the east of Ukraine. They want Yes. the east. That means they want uh Slovian. Well, these are key Slovans, Katrsk, uh Duska, and that leads right out into the Nepropet region into uh Pavlo Nepropet. These are the most cre is my hometown. Nicop is an industrial hub, an engineering hub, a manufacturing hub. It’s the economy uh of our country. And so it’s very dangerous because if you surrender this part to them and this is this is heavily reinforced defense of our nation right here

like this. And if we hand these cities of ours over to them, then the risk is huge. If he wants to keep going, he could seize a huge number of our cities if he pushes further. And the risk is real. Nobody guarantees anything. You understand? Everyone talks about security guarantees. And we’re open. We’re completely open to that. We say, “Well, okay, security guarantees. Let’s do NATO.” Well, NATO, you know, the Russians. Well, again, they keep sending signals to the Russians because you have to give security guarantees. On top of that, like I told you, the biggest compromise with so many dead, the biggest compromise we’re already making is a ceasefire. Let’s just stop this war. But they want us to pull out even further. And if we pull out, where are the security guarantees? Aside from the fact that it’s unfair. You know, you talked about the barbaric nature of how they’ve treated Ukrainians. Are you at all concerned that they might escalate to using more horrific weapons like nuclear weapons at any point? Has that ever crossed your mind?

Well, it crosses everyone’s mind after what they’ve done that they might do something worse. But as of today, well, I don’t think they’ll take the risk of using nuclear weapons because then I think they won’t definitely I’m sure they won’t have any allies left, including countries like America, China. Well, excuse me, but that that’s far too dangerous even for nuclear powers. That means if one country can do it then if there’s a conflict somewhere else on another continent in another theater I don’t know the Middle East whatever that means if a nuclear weapon is used once it might be used a second and a third time so I don’t think Putin will risk uh nuclear weapons but then again we’re dealing with look we’re dealing with a man and with a system that until the end of his days will hold on to him and he to it because only when his life ends will he leave the Kremlin and hand over well physically hand over naturally transfer power. I’m more than certain of that regarding the the current situation this week with with Trump with Russia and this deal that’s been done from my understanding because there’s an energy crisis globally. Trump has now done a deal with Russia for diesel. He then asked you not to attack any energy infrastructure in Russia. No. Um there’s a there’s a video that I actually have here of him describing this which um a lot of people have have now seen. I’ll play it. Well, I look at it differently. Zalinsky could have settled this war many times. He chooses not to. Very difficult. Uh it’s a war that should have never been started. If I were president, if the election weren’t rigged, I would have been president and that war would have never started. We said you could do whatever you want to Russia. don’t hit the refineries because that’s a world problem that’s caused and he wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers with diesel fuel because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world. And we told them do whatever you want but don’t hit the diesel fuel because there’s a big problem big shortage. And what does he do? He goes and hits the diesel fuel. Do what you want. Don’t hit refinery. There’s plenty of target. and he went out and he hit and he’s not going to affect our farmers and he’s not going to affect our ranchers and he’s not going to affect the rest of the world. So, uh we he’s better damn well stop. And in that he says that he thinks the Ukraine needs a new president. No. Um first of all, uh diesel exports have no impact. the volume of diesel exports is so negligible uh from Russia that it has zero impact on prices in the United States of America. That is totally false information. That’s first. Second, it makes no sense for us to strike Russia’s energy infrastructure. We retaliate because they strike our energy infrastructure. We’ve spoken a lot about this. The Russians hit our energy grid. Our people live without power. We don’t have oil, gas, diesel, and so on. That hurts them. What hurts us is electricity. They hit our electricity. We strike back at their diesel. They make money on diesel and spend it on weapons. My offer, excuse me, but I don’t need this. I’ve always told President Trump, broker an energy ceasefire, at least on energy. At least let’s give people light. And good for the Russians. They’ll sell their oil if they want to, if that’s what you need. But President Trump can’t reach an agreement with Putin on this. Putin refuses him an energy ceasefire. And so the president decided to pin this problem not on Putin, but on me, explaining to his people that because of this, diesel prices in America are going up. That is completely untrue and I don’t understand. and I have a good relationship with him with Trump and I think it’s wrong and unacceptable that he pins Russia’s aggression and Russia’s killings on me. He is shifting the context and that’s not fair and that’s why I honestly said that’s unfair ceasefire. He says it’s not they can’t work it out. Well, if you can’t work it out but you need diesel though again I think this is just deflecting uh the focus away from Iran from what’s happening in the Middle East. The entire volume is blocked over there. That’s exactly where nothing is working out. Energy, the straight of Hormuz is blocked. That’s the root of the problem. But everything gets shifted onto us. And I’m made the target as the leader of our country. So I said, “Okay, you can’t force Putin to stop the war and make an energy truce. Give me air defense missiles. I won’t fire at anyone. I’ll protect our energy sector. So where am I being unfair? In what way? I asked him, give us missiles. Not for free. Again, not even for free. Europeans are funding this, funding all of it. There’s an agreement, but he but they won’t give them to us. They say we can’t. They give and have given everything to the Middle East. Look, it’s just kind of well uh it’s just like like well it’s unfair to the Middle East. uh Patriot missiles uh with Putin, a diesel deal. I’m expected not to respond to an energy attack on inside Ukraine. And diesel prices are rising in America because of that’s it’s unfair. And you need a different president. Well, diesel prices, I guarantee you 100%. Diesel prices don’t depend on the volume that Russia sells. They just don’t. And about 76% of Ukrainians say they wouldn’t want an election now according to some recent surveys as well. My last question to you, Mr. President, is is there a realistic path to the end of this war? And what does that look like? A realistic path. Trump can bring Putin to the negotiating table very easily because he needs to. the way he talks about me. President Trump, he needs to adopt that kind of rhetoric about Putin. Why do you think he’s not I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t know. He’s got sanctions on his desk. It wasn’t him voting. Congress voted for strong sanctions. He can do it. He could I don’t know why. Maybe they have a special relationship. Maybe something else. I can’t tell you. I don’t know everything. I can only guess some economic deals and so on. An old re I don’t know. I don’t want to. Well, the midterms are coming up and I think he might be a little bit concerned about energy prices in America more so than maybe Ukraine.

Yeah. Well, uh, look, diesel prices, I give you a 100%. Diesel prices don’t depend on the volume Russia sells. They don’t. Americans export energy resources. Americans energy exports aren’t banned for Americans. American companies export. It’s interesting. Why do American companies e export energy? Well, because how can the president of the United States ban private sector exports? Well, I don’t think he can. And why would he? It sells and money comes in. Well, just well, you know how

life, time, you know, all all secrets, all mysteries always come to light. It just takes time. Time is definitely on the side of those who are open and ready for honest dialogue and fight. Yes. Which means time will be on our side. What are your last words to our audience? You know, I hope that it’s not last words. Last words for today.

Last words today. You know, half of our audience are in America. I wish America which finds itself in a very tough situation. I believe because the world has gone crazy. what’s happening with the Russians, with Iran, the fact that people want blood, people want wars. I wish America would stay a great nation, be strong, be peaceful, have the chance, someone works, someone wants to be home with the kids, pray, have a family uh family dinner. I wish America tranquility, peace, and we’re grateful for everything America has done for Ukraine. We won’t forget this,

President. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I know you’ve had a really rough week and it’s been very tough. So, I really appreciate you taking the time. I’ve had everything going on with Starink and the internet and all the challenges. So, normal. Yeah. Thank you so much. And we really do wish you the best. We really wish you the best. Okay. Yes. Yes. And I was happy to hear to see you and to have a dialogue. We had good dialogue. I think I think we spoke very good. So, thank you so much. Thank you so much. All the best. All the best. Thank you so much. See you soon. Thank you.

Men who ejaculated 21 times or more a month are less likely to develop prostate cancer. Jesus Christ. Why? It’s because Dr. Reena Malik, board certified urologist, expert on sexual health and a rock star in educating the public on the facts and myths of sex. Reena, I want to start with this idea that other couples are having significantly more sex than we are. Big myth. People are having sex about once a week. Will my penis get smaller as I age? It can. So in terms of how do we maintain our penile thigh, you need to have Is there a disparity between how long we think sex should take and how long it actually takes? Yeah, we all think it lasts longer. Women want it to be 18 to 25 minutes. Men are a little on the shorter side, like maybe 12 minutes. Is there like an average time 5.1 to 5.7 minutes? And is too much masturbation going to have an adverse effect for men and women? Masturbation is generally safe as long as you don’t. That’s when it becomes a problem. Marina, do we understand our bodies as it relates to our sexual health? Not at all. For example, the pelvic floor. It’s involved in orgasm. It’s involved in sexual function. But no one really talks about it. In fact, men will be shocked. Oh, I have a pelvic floor, too. And there’s a whole host of issues that can come from having a weak pelvic floor, including erectile dysfunction. So, how can I strengthen my pelvic floor? pelvic floor exercises. They’re going to increase orgasm. They’re going to make your semen propel further. And ultimately, it would be something as simple as It’s absolutely crazy to me that so many of you have decided to watch our show. Um, and so many of you have decided to subscribe to our show. We now have 5 million subscribers on YouTube, which is a number that I just can’t comprehend. And it’s a dream that I absolutely never could have had. We started the DiCO just over 3 years ago now. And in my wildest expectations, we might have had 100,000 subscribers by now. So, you can imagine how shocked I am that so many of you have chosen to tune into these conversations every week um and spend some time with us. So, thank you. And I made a deal with you. I made a deal that if you subscribe to this show that we would continue to raise the bar and in 2024, we’re going to raise the bar like never before. I’ve been working for the last 9 months on a surprise for all of you that have subscribed to this show. And I’m very excited to deliver that for you. The production’s going to change. We’re going to go even further with our guests and we’re going to tell even more global stories. So, as always, if you appreciate what we’re doing here, the simple free favor I’ll ask from you is to hit the subscribe button. Let’s get on with the episode.

Dr. Reena Malik, with all of your work, what is it that you’re seeking to do? So what I’m seeking to do is have people understand that sexual health is health. I think we have so much misunderstanding about one, what is good sexual health? How do you why is good sex important? Why is it good to have good sexual health? And that creates a lot of despair and devastation. And people don’t talk about it. So they ruminate. They feel bad about themselves. and it’s pervasive throughout their entire life. So, I think ultimately my goal is to make education freely accessible and understandable so people can know what’s going on with their bodies, what’s normal, what’s not, and what’s available to help them. How do you define sexual health? So sexual health is sort of an individual thing, but most people would say that you are able to have sex, you are able to have an orgasm, you are able to have pleasure and achieve the benefits of that. Do we understand our bodies as it relates to our sexual health? No, not at all. I will tell you, so I talk about, for example, um how it’s normal to have erections at night or have even nocturnal emissions. so have a wet dream, how that’s a normal physiologic function. And so many people will message me and say, “How can I stop having what they call nightfall?” Or, “How can I stop waking up with an erection?” Because they think for some reason it’s shameful or it’s a bad thing. And when re realistically, it’s just normal. And part of it is media, right? So when you see TV, you see a man getting an erection very quickly. He’s init immediately penetrating a woman and she’s immediately orgasming and the whole act is like really hot and heavy. And in reality, that’s not what sex is like. So, if you’re not seeing what normal sex is like, what normal foreplay is like, what the fact that it’s normal to sometimes have difficulty getting an erection, that’s normal sometimes to not have an orgasm for a woman, or it may take more time to get a woman aroused and require more foreplay, that you are essentially looking at a script that’s not real, and then you’re like, what’s wrong with me? Am I broken? you know, is something wrong with my body that it doesn’t function the way I’m seeing on TV or on media or on erotic films? Where does your experience on this subject come from? So, I’m a urologist by training, a board-certified urologist. So, we are the medical and surgical doctors of the genital urinary tract. So, we’re essentially the plumbers. So when you have a problem with your kidneys, the tubes that drain the kidneys, the bladder or your genitals, we’re the ones who are going to fix those if they’re a surgical issue. And also we deal with the medical aspects of some of those things. And so that’s what my training was in. But when I started my social media, my channel, I wanted to offer education to people. And as I started making this education, I realized how badly people wanted to know about sexual health. How much they didn’t know and how they really wanted to be empowered with this information. And people are not being asked about sexual function. Even when you go to see your primary doctor, when was the last time they asked you about anything, they might ask you about erections, but that’s probably where it ends, right? Even if they ask about that, they’re definitely not asking women, “Are you having orgasms?” They’re definitely not asking um anyone if sex is pleasurable. They’re not asking them if they feel satisfied with the way things are going, right? And if they are enjoying desire, do they feel normal? And so I realized there was such a disconnect here with what people wanted to know and what was available to them. And so then I started really making content about sexual health and spending more time investigating in that area, treating patients in that area and it totally became a all-encompassing field for me. You’re an expert in the pelvic floor as well. Mhm. What was your sort of training with the pelvic floor? So when you do a fellowship in what we call pelvic female pelvic medicine, a lot of what we do is related to the strength or weakness of the pelvic floor. And so the pelvic floor, just to start, is a bowl of muscles that sits in your pelvis. So your organs, the bladder, the rectum, for women, the vagina, the uterus, the urethra, all run through the pelvic floor. It attaches to the bones on your pelvis and it is extremely important for a variety of functions. It offers stability. So when you’re standing, sitting, it offers stability. It offers the ability to defecate and urinate normally. It offers uh when women have pregnancy, the pelvic floor becomes very important. It’s involved in orgasm. It’s involved in sexual function. But no one really talks about it. No one really knows it. In fact, men will be shocked. Oh, I have a pelvic floor, too. Because we talk about it a lot with women, right? We talk about it in terms of, oh, I might leak a little after I’ve had babies when I cough or sneeze or jump on a trampoline. But the pelvic floor is much more complex than that. And so very often we’ll see people when they have weakness of the pelvic floor, yeah, we’ll see leakage of urine and but sometimes their pelvic floor can be discoordinated or it can be too tight or or have elevated tone. And so what that means is that you can develop a whole host of abnormalities. And that can be that you may have constipation. You may have issues emptying your bladder. You may feel like you have to go to the blad go to the bathroom a lot. So you may urinate frequently. You may feel the urge to go often. Sometimes it can cause pain. So it can cause pain when you urinate. Might feel like you’re having a UTI. It may cause pain with erection or ejaculation for men. So there’s a whole host of issues that can come from having pelvic floor abnormalities. And even if you’ve had, say, lower back injuries or hip injuries, they can affect the coordination of the pelvic floor because it’s all interconnected. And so I will see patients who are like, you know, I’ve had a bunch of hip issues because I played sports when I was younger and now I’m having issues with sexual function. And so it’s all interconnected. And I think we we don’t spend enough time talking about how important it is and how valuable it is to people when they’re having problems. I want to go into the pelvic floor in more detail and really figure out how I can improve my pelvic floor and what I’m doing to harm or hurt it. But you said something there about doctors don’t ask about sexual health. They don’t ask if we’re orgasming. They don’t ask if we’re ejaculating. Those kinds of things. Why should they be asking about that? Cuz I think of a doctor as I don’t know fixing other parts of my body. I don’t think of them as sifting through my sexual life. So, if you have a normal sexual life and you’re satisfied with it, it won’t even it wouldn’t even bother you, right? You wouldn’t think about it. But people who have difficulties, they may be walking around feeling shame. They may be walking around wondering what’s wrong with them. This can be pervasive because they may have relationship issues and they may have problems in their life with their relationship. They’re then causing them to be less productive at work, less happy, less satisfied with life, feeling more depressed, more anxious. And so it all comes together. And in fact, the other really important thing, at least for men, we know that when they develop issues with erections, so say you’re having erectile dysfunction and you are diagnosed today with erectile dysfunction, 7 years later, about 15% of those men will have a heart attack. And the reason for that is because if it’s a blood flow issue, the arteries to the penis are about 1 to 2 millm. The arteries to the heart are about 3 to four millimeters. And when you have about a 50% occlusion of a blood vessel because of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease, that organ will start to have problems. And so you will start to see erectile dysfunction in men who have vascular problems before you start having chest pain or other signs of heart disease. So it’s and probably similarly in women although the data is not as we don’t have that data for women that maybe if they all of a sudden are developing problems with arousal that maybe there that’s an indicator but again that’s more complex and we don’t have the data for that but certainly for men we have a clear indication that a problem with erections could preede really serious heart consequences. And when you look at people who’ve had a heart attack, about 50% of men will have had erectile dysfunction prior to that. 50%. Mhm. Is a pelvic floor dysfunction in men also linked to erectile dysfunction? Because I I heard in some of your work that sitting every single day in in the way that I do here, I sit sometimes here for 10 hours a day could be creating erectile dysfunction. Well, so it’s more that sitting every day can cause your pelvic floor to not stretch appropriately, right? Like if you’re not moving your body regularly and your body tenses up from sitting all day, then your pelvic floor is not relaxing and contracting in a normal fashion. And so some people will develop some tension in the pelvic floor. And through the pelvic floor runs a whole bunch of arteries and nerves that then go to the penis to provide blood flow. And so if your pelvic floor is clenched really tight, then it can cause problems in getting blood flow and then problems in getting erections. So while that’s not um that’s different than having vascular problems, this is a muscular problem more so um that that can be an issue with in terms of causing erectile dysfunction in some men because I heard during co there was a rise in pelvic floor dysfunction as people were sitting all day. Yeah, I mean I definitely saw it. I don’t know if it’s been actually studied, but I definitely saw it in my own clinical uh setting and many of my colleagues did where people would come in and they would start having either they’d be having more erectile dysfunction, they might be having more urinary urgency, meaning they got to go got to go to the bathroom or they’re going more often, which wasn’t a huge issue because they the bathroom was right near them. But they did sometimes notice that it was a change and and also sometimes they would some people even deal with pain like they would have more pain in that area or women would think they were having urinary tract infections when they truly were just having discomfort from the pelvic floor being tense. One of the things that you’re particularly good at is taking on some of the big myths as it relates to sexual health. And I I want to start with one of the big myths around sexual health, which is this idea that we all think other people and other couples are having significantly more sex than we are. Yeah. So that’s interesting. I think that is a big myth. And so when you look at um people want to know like what’s normal, how much sex should I be having? Right? And there’s no ideal number. But when you look at studies, right, which have looked at large numbers of people, people who are in partnered relationships are having sex about once a week on average if they’re have if they feel they’re, you know, in in partner relationships where sex is always available. But it’s so variable person to person. And what I really like to say is it’s not the quantity of sex that matters, it’s the quality of sex, right? So if you’re having good sex once a month, that may be sufficient for you rather than having mediocre or bad sex four times a month or 10 times a month even, right? And and so ultimately there’s no right number. It’s really what’s right for you. And I think focusing on some like benchmark, right, of sex is is actually harmful, right? Because now you’re like, “Oh, well, I need to have sex this many times.” What what is the purpose of sex? Right? The purpose of sex is pleasure. And sometimes people derive a lot of benefits from orgasm. We know that there’s physiologic benefits to orgasm in terms of stress reduction, more focus, potentially better sleep, and even maybe lower blood pressure, things like that. So if people are deriving benefit from the orgasms and the intimacy with their partner and the pleasure they derive from sex, that’s what matters, right? Not the number of times you’re having sex. Another big myth around sex, which I thought I’d um get your take on is about pain during sex. It’s one of the sort of most popular questions that I often guess get whenever I speak to someone that is an expert on sexual health is is sex supposed to hurt? Because for a lot of people it hurts. No, it’s not supposed to hurt. So if it hurts, you want to assess, you know, what usually it’s the female partner who feels pain, right? So is it that you’re not lubricated enough? Is it that you have not had enough foreplay? Because the body prepares for intercourse particularly in the female. So what happens is you go through arousal your body self-lubricates and the vagina actually lengthens and widens almost double in size to accommodate the fallus or whatever you’re using whether it’s a toy or or a finger or anything. And so if you don’t have sufficient time to allow those things to happen, then it will be painful. And sometimes lubrication can be variable person to person. So some people may have copious amounts of lubrication and some people may have less. And it could be based on genetics. It could be based on the age they are, what stage of their hormonal status, it can be based on what medications they’re on that might decrease lubrication. I think there’s another big myth is that lubricant is not for everybody. And I think I argue that lubricant is for everybody. That it makes things more fun. It makes things more slippery. It makes things more enjoyable. And it certainly makes pain less of an issue for a lot of people. Now, there can be other issues that cause pain. So, if you’ve tried all these things, you know you’re fully aroused, you know you’re lubricated, you know that you’re still having pain, then it’s really important to get evaluated to understand what exactly is causing the pain. It could be hormonal changes in the vestibial, which is a part of the vagina that is very hormonally sensitive that can be painful. It can be pelvic floor dysfunction. It can be things like endometriosis or other factors that may be going on that need really advanced help. Uh but most of the time, a lot of people can feel and enjoy sex more readily if they just increase the amount of foreplay and increase the amount of lubrication. You said there that the vagina expands. Mhm. during sex. So, how much does it expand by and how long does that take? Because I think men don’t really understand this process. A lot of men just like to rush in there, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, usually it expands by about double double in length and double in width. And so, it will expand and basically the cervix is moving up and out of the way. The vagina is expanding to accommodate the length of a phus. And and it takes we think on average about 18 to 20 minutes. So it that’s sort of the amount of time it and some people faster and some people longer but ultimately you know sort of like understanding that but also um the lubrication is another big part of it and so I think both those things together um you know you need you need some time and some people like I said they may not take 18 minutes they may take a couple minutes and so it’s very reasonable to get in there if that’s what your partner wants but again I think the bigger issue is that we’re not communicating about sex no one taught us how to talk about sex Right? I didn’t grow up talking about sex with my family. Many of my friends and colleagues did not grow up unless they were in a family that was very progressive talking about sex or even learning about sex from their parents. And at school, you don’t learn much. You learn how to put on a condom. You learn how to ask for consent. You learn about STDs. And that’s if you’re lucky. In the US, 13 states don’t have to have accurate sex education. like it’s not a requirement for sex education to be accurate in 13 states in the US. Where are we learning sex from? So the large majority of young people I mean this data shows that at least one in four adolescents are learning sex from porn and it’s probably more than that. So I think a lot of people are learning either from uh pornography from their friends a small subset are learning from their parents. There still are people learning about sex from their parents but ultimately it’s not enough. And so if people are learning about sex through porn, porn is entertainment. It is doctorred. It is not real. And I think people then take that and they say, “Why did not my sexual encounter not look like that? Why didn’t I have as much semen volume? Why did my partner not orgasm as quickly?” And it can be on both sides where women can be like, “Why didn’t I react like that? Why didn’t I get so excited right away?” And I think there’s it’s a real problem in terms of if people are only learning about sex through pornography, then they’re already set up to be let down when they have their first sexual encounter. And on that point of communication, we don’t talk about it as a society. But then even within our own relationships, you know, we don’t talk about things we’re struggling with with our own partners and the insecurities that we have. And I think that can cause a spiral of misunderstanding. And I’ve seen that in my own sex life historically where maybe there was something I was insecure about or there’s something I was thinking about and instead of communicating it, I might have just acted in a strange way and then that’s misinterpreted and then the other person gets a little bit insecure or whatever and then you kind of have this downward spiral of misunderstanding which leads to like sexlessness. Absolutely. You’re just avoiding the situation because nobody wants to talk about it. And this is the problem like you know people ask me like what’s this what’s the key? What’s the key? What’s the secret? The secret is you have to know what you like, right? You have to know what you want and you have to communicate it with your partner. How? So, this is the issue. It’s not easy. It’s not easy because no one taught us how to have these conversations and they’re charged with a lot of emotion, right? You feel insecure. You feel inadequate or you feel resentful because you’re not getting what you want out of the relationship. And so, it has to come from a place of understanding that this conversation is not a oneanddone. There’s no the talk. There are multiple talks over multiple periods of time. And the first time you have the talk, it might be a total disaster. But you know, if you are in a relationship where someone really also has the same goals as you of having a great relationship with a good sex life, then ideally that won’t continue and you will continue to have conversations. So what I tell people is don’t have conversations in the bedroom. Not right before, not right after sex. You want to wait until you’re out of the bedroom. Not during. Or during. Definitely not during that’s happened before as a [ __ ] worst. Yeah. Yeah. That’s pretty bad. That’s pretty bad. Um, so you know, one, and then two, have it in a place like somebody, you don’t have to be looking at the person, right? You can be sitting in a car, you can be going on a walk because it’s really awkward to look at someone in the face and be like, you know what, I felt like this wasn’t really great, you know? And and so then to be like, okay, like, you know, talk again using the same sort of communication techniques that you use for other things. talking about eye statements, not being you did this, you didn’t do this, more about like how I feel, what really turns me on, what I would really like in the relationship, and then sort of realizing that they may not react well. They might be like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe we’re talking about this.” They have their own stereotypes and biases that they’re bringing into that conversation, too. Or their shame or whatever they grew up with in society, whatever they think about sex can be very charged, right? And so it’s sort of a lot of work to get through that, but realizing that it could take time and sometimes getting help. So seeing a sex therapist or someone who has expertise in psychology and sex to talk learn how to talk about sex with them and and navigating the difficulties of it, but it’s worth the investment, right? It’s not easy, but nothing in life that’s good or worth getting is easy, right? Okay. So, there’s a couple listening right now. There’s probably one member of the couple listening right now and they’ve heard everything you’ve said, but they have reached the point of no return in their relationship as far as they’re concerned. They’ve not been having sort of a functional, healthy sex life for maybe one year, maybe 6 months, maybe 5 years, and it’s just become the new normal. Mhm. What is the case you would make to that person to get them to take action to try and rectify the situation? Well, I would ask them first, how important is sex to them, right? If it’s not that important and the other things in the relation and that’s okay, right? Some people find that, okay, everything else in the relationship is excellent. I love this person. We’re still intimate. We still love each other. We still cuddle. We still um have a lot of great things in our relationship. And and sex right now is not working, right? Or it’s not it’s not working for us. So, um I’m okay with that. That’s fine. Like, you don’t have to feel bad about that. But I think that if it is a problem, then I think it’s worth working on, right? Like if you have a relationship that you value and that person you’re you’re with values the relationship then it’s worth keep trying like try to have the conversation try to bring them into the conversation how much have you tried right like have you really had enough attempts at a conversation a true conversation where you didn’t get frustrated too right like where you were like okay I understand that you have this is a difficult conversation that we’re going to have and I understand you might have feelings about it but I love you and I really want to try to have this conversation and to keep at it. And I realize that that’s not easy, right? That’s not easy. I’m not saying it is, but I’m saying that when you’re in a relationship that’s worth having that ideally at some point the other partner will see how much this matters to you and want to work with you on it, right? If they love you, if they’re with you there, they want what’s best for your relationship. They’re not like hiding they’re not hiding their head in the sand and being like, “Oh, I’m like they’re they realize they’re just don’t want to talk about it. They they they’re not stupid. they just sort of don’t want to talk about it because it’s embarrassing to them. They feel like they’re the one that has something wrong with them maybe or maybe they have an issue that they haven’t brought up. Maybe they’re having a lot of pain with sex or maybe they’re going through hormonal changes and their tissues are really dry or whatever there. There’s a whole host of things that could be going on that they don’t feel comfortable talking to you about. So, I think it’s it’s valuable to say, is there something I’m not doing? Like, tell me what you feel about sex. like leaving it open-ended to really find out what’s going on with them because usually not that they’re like, “I just don’t want to have sex and that’s it.” There’s usually a lot more to it. It’s so hard for us to know, isn’t it, when it comes to sex, what the root cause of the issues are. And I think some relationships are like a frog in a frying pan. The frog in the frying pan for anybody that doesn’t know is this old tale about a frog jumping into a frying pan and then because the water heated up gradually, it ends up dying. But if the water was hot from the moment it dropped jumped in, it would have jumped straight out. the idea that it’s a gradual death for the frog and in relationships it’s kind of a slow day by day, month by month decline in intimacy and you end up finding yourself like a dead frog in a frying pan. You end up finding yourself in a sexless relationship and you think how the hell did we get here? Mhm. Um and it’s and it’s a it feels like a long way back from that point. It is. It’s going to be right because you let it sort of dwindle and you didn’t talk about it and it’s going to take work. And I think that’s the key is like if you want to fight for that in your relationship, it’s going to take work and it’s going to take um buy in on both sides, right? You have to work for anything in your relationship. Relationships are not easy, right? You want to have children, that takes work. You want to um decide to buy a house together, that takes work. Deciding and figuring out the what kind of house you want, how much money you want to spend. Like there’s all sorts of things that take work. And this is one that people just don’t know how to talk about. And so they just ignore it because it’s harder to bring up for both parties, right? What the one who maybe is not wanting sex or is being the one who says no to and the one who always wants sex and then feels rejected because they’re not getting it. Is there a a sort of a difference between men and women’s sexual desire as we age? You know, because I think there’s a myth that says men just always want to have sex and women maybe not so much. Is that a real myth? um in terms of something that you hear, but also is it true? So, let’s talk about desire. Desire comes in two flavors. So, there’s the spontaneous desire where you see somebody, you like, “Oh man, they’re so attractive. I can’t wait to sleep with them. I’m immediately turned on. I want to have sex right now, right? You didn’t have to do anything. You just saw them and it happened.” And then there’s responsive desire where you’re sort of with them. You might be touching them. You might not really be thinking about sex, but like you’re touching them. You’re with them. you’re like, “Oh, this feels sort of nice. I sort of like this.” Like, “Oh, now I’m turned on after we’ve sort of started being a little romantic with each other, being a little more intimate with each other.” And both desires are normal and both desires are fine to have. Now, in the literature, you’ll find that men tend to more often have spontaneous desire and women tend to more often have responsive desire, particularly when you’re in longer term relationships. So, there’s this disconnect, right? Women are like, “Why don’t I see you and want to jump you anymore?” Right? I used to feel like this, but I don’t anymore. What’s wrong with me? Am I broken? Right? And then they don’t realize that, oh, okay, maybe we’ll just like be together and let’s see what happens. And they don’t even want to start because they’re worried that what if I don’t want to have sex and we’ve now initiated this like touching, cuddling thing where, oh, that person’s getting really turned on. What if I don’t get turned on and what if I disappoint them? And so there’s a lot of charged emotions there, but realizing that this is normal and common and responsive desire is not wrong. It’s just different. And people just don’t know that it exists because again, media attention is like you see someone who jumped them. You’re you’re horny right away. You have sex. And that’s not what happens all the time. And that’s okay. And so like, you know, you can be with your partner and be like, “Look, I have no expectations from you. I just want to be with you physically.” And see if it turns into sex. So often we’ll give people homework like put it on the calendar. Put it on the calendar that you are going to be intimate together at this time. And I know it sounds weird, right? Like you’re looking at me like I’m crazy, but we put on the calendar when we want to work out. We put on the calendar when we want to have brunch with our friends. We put on the calendar when whatever, right? And when we were younger, when we used to have dates with people, we would say, “Okay, we’re going to go on a date on Friday night.” We would know that sex is on the table with our partner on Friday night. So, we’d get really excited about it. We like, “Okay, I’m going to shave. I’m going to look real pretty. I’m going to smell good. I’m going to do all the things that make me desirable and feel confident and be ready to have sex, right?” And so, you’d be like really excited about and then you would have all this anticipation about how fun it’s going to be. But the anticipation can can wreak havoc, can’t it? It can. It can. So, the opposite is true. But that’s because if you expect, that’s why I say intimacy and not sex. So, if you say you’re going to have sex, it can be like, “Oh my god, what if I don’t perform? What if I don’t do right? What if I don’t want sex? What if it hurts? Right? So, you can also have that sort of rumination and spiral. But if you’re like, “Look, all we’re going to do is be together and be intimate. We’re not going to just go have dinner and talk. We’re going to like literally be together, not have our phones with us, maybe like touch each other, maybe get undressed, maybe just, you know, feel what it feels like and that’s it. There’s no expectation of sex from either side. We’re going to go in knowing that and then slowly work our way towards like, okay, you know what? like maybe sex will happen and maybe it won’t. And over time as you keep putting on the calendar, prioritizing your intimacy with your partner, then eventually you’ll get to a point where oh, you remember, you recall that connection you used to have and then you can actually find that joy again of connecting sexually. That’s the sort of the aspect of desire, which is I guess is a bit more psychological, but it there’s also sort of a physiological element to desire as it relates to hormones levels. So someone’s got a low libido. Is that a hormone dysfunction? It can be. So testosterone is the most notorious hormone for desire, right? In both men and women. And I think this is a big misconception is that we don’t talk about testosterone in women. But testosterone in women is more predominant than actually estrogen. We have more testosterone in our bodies than we do estrogen. And testosterone is very important for desire in both men and women. But anything that is interacts with testosterone is also important. So thyroid hormone can can cause issues with testosterone. Prolactin, which is another hormone made by the brain, can also interact with testosterone. So essentially evaluating those things and making sure that your levels are normal or appropriate for your age can be helpful. That’s probably the number one thing. But the other thing is outside of physiology is that stress, even though stress is um sort of an abstract thing, stress affects our physiology, right? So when you have a lot of stress in life, whether it be work, relationship stress, kids stress, whatever it is, right, it raises your cortisol level. And when your cortisol level is high, you can’t produce testosterone. It goes down. And so if you’re chronically stressed, which many of us are, right? You spend like in today’s modern society, chronic stress is like a real problem. Then that is going to really impact your libido. So yeah, your hormones may suffer because of it, but if you don’t fix the stress, like you’re not going to fix the root cause of the problem. Can I just inject myself with loads of testosterone though to get my libido back? It won’t work for everybody. So if it’s not truly a low testosterone, meaning you have normal levels of testosterone, likely your testosterone receptors are completely saturated, more testosterone is not going to fix the problem. So it depends on your individual level of hormones, but at some point more is not better. In fact, more can be dangerous. And so it’s really dependent on your individual levels. So giving yourself like if I give a guy who has completely normal testosterone levels, both free and total testosterone, all completely normal, and I give him testosterone, probably nothing’s going to change because his testosterone receptors are already fully saturated with testosterone. So more is not going to do anything. What are the other ways that I can increase my testosterone? If I go and get tested and it says that I have low testosterone levels and I don’t want to just inject myself with testosterone, are there natural ways that I can increase it? Absolutely. So number one is sleep. So sleep is really really important for testosterone. We know that when you reduce the amount of sleep you have. So for example, you sleep less than six five or 6 hours, you’re going to have at least 10 to 15% reduction in testosterone. And so because our body follows a circadian rhythm and so when your testosterone is highest is in the morning and it starts to decline over the course of the day. There’s a little bit of a bump again and then it goes back down. At night time it’s low and your body when it’s sleeping replenishes that testosterone. And so if you’re getting either less number of hours of sleep or poor quality sleep, meaning you’re, you know, you’re not feeling very rested when you wake up, that’s a sign of poor quality sleep. Both of those things can dramatically affect your testosterone. The other thing that you can do is exercise and specifically resistance exercise. So doing high those the largest muscle groups. So usually the lower extremities and using those have been shown to boost testosterone more significantly than any other type of exercise. In fact, when you do cardiovascular highintensity cardiovascular endurance training, so say you’re doing ultramans, marathons all the time, long long bike rides, long swimming, uh you know, swimming for long periods of time, that can actually increase your cortisol, your stress, because your body is having a stress response and that can actually reduce your testosterone. So, it’s important to do cardiovascular exercise, aerobic exercise, but in moderation. uh because we do see some people who are great athletes who, you know, run, you know, run miles and miles and miles, but their testosterone is low because they’ve been doing this chronic long duration endurance exercise. So, sort of hit training is fine, but it’s when you start doing these big iron man thousand mile run things that the cortisol suppresses. That’s not a that’s not a large percentage of people, right? But it’s certainly, you know, it’s like I’m so healthy. I’m the healthiest I could ever be and I’m having low testosterone. Why is that? And what about food and testosterone? So food you know there is a lot of uh data on food the one but the most data is on the Mediterranean diet and that’s because that’s the most wellstied in medicine but essentially having vegetables, fruit, low um low amounts of processed foods, good healthy fats, nuts and seeds. So a lot of people don’t realize but you need good fat to have testosterone. testosterone is a pre as a production is in the cholesterol pathways and so it comes from those pathways and so you need to have some level of fat. If you have too low fat of a diet that’ll also affect your affect your testosterone. So ideally what I tell people is while there’s lots of data on different types of diets the important thing to know is you want to avoid processed foods, avoid avoid a lot of sugar and have good healthy fats in your diet. What about, you know, I’ve heard a few times that testosterone levels have been declining over the last couple of decades in men. Is this true? Yes, it is true. So, we’re not only seeing a decline in testosterone levels, but we’re seeing a decline in sperm quality and uh sperm numbers. So, the concentration of sperm and over the course of the last 50 years. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. One is that, you know, society has become more sedentary. We’re seeing people less active, getting more and more metabolic conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure. These conditions then cause endocrinic abnormalities. They cause problems with blood flow and all these things can affect the quality of your sperm as well as the quality of your testosterone production. And then also there’s more we we think in the environments we know there’s more uh microplastics and more endocrine disrupting chemicals right in the environment. So that is probably playing a role. Now we don’t have like exact qu like exact quantitative data on that but we think that is probably playing a role and reducing the exposure to these endocrine disrupting chemicals. So we tell people try not to drink out of plastic water bottles, try to warm up food and glass and avoid plastic. I mean these are easy things you can do but if you want to stress about the amount of plastics in the environment like there’s not much you can do as on an individual level. So I tell people do the things you can control and the other things sort of you know we have to work on as a society. That’s really interesting cuz I I don’t think I think about this much but removing chemicals from my life in terms of what these kinds of things that I’m holding the metal mug in front of me and then the plastic bottles I drink from could be having an impact on my testosterone and my sperm count. It could. I mean like it’s not everybody, right? Think about how many people drink from plastic water bottles. But if you can decrease your exposure, right, it’s probably additive. So the more exposure you have, the more likely it is to impact your body. How do they know this? Like how does anybody know that chemicals are having an impact on our sperm and testosterone? So there’s, you know, there’s basic science research where they’re looking at the impact of these things on on rats and other animals. And then also they’re looking on the amount of exposure uh to things like phalates in labs and seeing how that you know we can’t it’s all cause it’s all correlation. We can’t say it’s positive because we don’t we’re not going to do a randomized study where you drink from water bottles for 10 years and you drink from glass water bottles for 10 years and let’s see what happens. Right? That hasn’t been done. But they can say okay the more your exposure based on whatever biioarker we can assess. So maybe urinary phalates or other things we can say that okay these people who have more exposure to this are more likely based on the data to have lower levels of testosterone. And then you know looking at the mechanisms of how they interact with the production of testosterone. And I’m not an expert in those areas but certainly there has been sort of plausible mechanisms of how these things work. How has sperm count been decreasing over the years? So, if you look at the last 50 years, you’ll see that the average sperm count has declined almost 50%. And luckily, the average sperm count is still high enough for fertility rates. The average sperm count is probably around 50 million of of fathers, people who father children. And so, it’s still above that, but it’s certainly significantly lower than it was 50 years ago. And so that’s where we’re thinking, you know, it’s it’s probably more of a global environmental factor that’s contributing to that in addition to this increase in co-orbidities and poor health over time. I mean the direction of travel there is deeply concerning because if something declines 50% in the last what 50 years did you say? Then if we go forward another 50 years and we assume the same rate of decline that means we’ll be at 25% of where we were 100 years ago. Yeah. And then what if you can’t father children anymore and what if you can’t have offspring that will then propagate the species, right? So there’s there’s certainly concerns there and I think you know we have to as a society do better in terms of the things that we can. So we can control diet, we can control exercise, we can control those things. There’s certain things that we can’t but we can try to control what our people are exposed to and that can be on a governmental level, right? Like having sort of laws in place. So we know in the US there’s less restrictions whereas in other countries there’s more restrictions on things like food coloring and dyes that may have again I don’t I don’t know the specifics but certain you know there’s certainly more restrictions in other countries than in the US for some reason and so maybe there needs to be a more critical evaluation of where we can actually put in place some things that would actually have more wide widespread changes. When we think about sperm count we often think about fertility. Um, and you know, I don’t know whether this is just because society has changed and we’re trying to have kids later, but it does seem that people are struggling more and more with fertility. I mean, even in my own sort of circle of friends, um, there’s, you know, there’s a couple people that have reported to be struggling with fertility or that, you know, they’re spending 12 months or 24 months trying to have children. Do you think this is linked to this as well? It could be. I mean when we know when we look at fertility we know that about half of fertility is due to women half of fertility is due to men and then some combination of the two right so um definitely as women age fertility goes down and we know women are waiting longer to have children so that’s a big part of it that society has changed women are working and and prioritizing their careers not a bad thing but it certainly will affect fertility and and then yeah there may be these issues that are affecting male sperm counts that are also causing issues but I don’t know that there’s been any updated data in terms of what are the causes or the numbers in terms of fertility rates fertility aside is there any correlation between our health outcomes and our sperm volume not volume but concentration uh so volume is the amount of of of right so concentration of sperm in the semen is more of a predictor in terms of um sperm volume not semen volume let’s be clear so sperm volume, sperm concentration are sort of the the biomarkers and we would say that yes there is a correlation with overall health in terms of uh sperm concentration and sperm volume. Uh but I think I don’t want to make people worried that if they truly have a male factor infertility then now their overall health is uh is a problem but it’s certainly important to be evaluated and seen by your doctor regularly. And on that point of um semen volume, is there a way to increase that? And is it similar to what you said about increasing testosterone or is there another set of sort of um practices we can do to increase our semen volume? Yeah. So semen volume is variable depending on the biggest one is how long has it been since you last ejaculated, right? So the longer you delay between one ejaculation to the other, the more semen volume you will get. That’s probably the most predictive. You know, hydration can play a role. So if you hydrate more certainly you may see more semen volume. Um sometimes it’s a it’s a low semen volume because you’re actually having less force of ejaculation. So interestingly when you’re young the force of ejaculate can be really really strong. It can be up to 30 to 60 cm away. Like when you ejaculate that’s how forceful it can be. As you age after about 50 it can decline to 15 to 30 cm away. And so that can feel like you’re having less volume because it’s less forceful. And so in those cases, that’s because of the pelvic floor muscles that are around the urethra. Those muscles there that help sort of propel the ejaculate out. And so you can strengthen those muscles with again pelvic floor exercises like Keele exercises. I caution people because people always like, “Oh, they’re going to these kele exercises are great. They’re going to increase orgasm. They’re going to make my semen propel further.” And I think that’s fine if you’re not having pain, you’re not having discomfort, and you’re doing them correctly. Because sometimes what we see is it can actually cause harm if your pelvic floor is tense like we talked about earlier or it can cause pain and dysfunction if you’re tensing tensing tensing and not relaxing. And so if you don’t know how to do them correctly then you could actually harm yourself. U but yes they can improve semen volume by the parameter of increasing the force of ejaculate and getting more ejaculate out that may be left over if you’re not having as forceful of a muscular contraction. Does masturbating improve my pelvic floor? Does it strengthen my pelvic floor? So, that’s a good question. The orgasm is what improves your pelvic floor. So, if you masturbate and you orgasm, when you orgasm, your pelvic floor contracts involuntarily. You can’t do anything about it at a rate of about every8 seconds. So, it does contract and that is sort of like a pelvic floor muscle exercise, but it’s doing it involuntarily. It’s contracting for anywhere from 5 to 60 seconds usually on average. And so you are sort of in that way increasing pelvic floor strength. In fact, they’ve looked at um in women particularly is orgasming as good as doing pelvic floor exercises? And they’ve seen that, you know, you can see pretty measurable improvement in pelvic floor strength if you orgasm regularly. Um is it and it may be, you know, as good as doing keull depending on how often you’re doing it. So yes, orgasming itself can be very beneficial for pelvic floor strength. One of the big sort of myths that I’ve always I’ve I’m yet to answer is the impact that our technology is having on our genitals. You know, there’s kind of like a pervasive myth that if you put your phone next to your testicles, your sperm count’s going to drop. Like whenever I’m in the car um and I don’t know, I’m I’m sat there or I’m sat at home somewhere and I get my phone and I put it near my genitals, my girlfriend has a go at me and she she like pulls it out or tells me to pull it out because I think she’s worried that we’re not going to have kids if it’s down there. Yeah. Yeah. So there is there is a little bit of data there in terms of you know when you have these devices like in your lap or near your genitals they will increase the temperature. And so when you the the the testicles are in the scrotum for a reason, right? It’s because they need this very perfect environment with this specific temperature to create sperm and anything that disrupts that temperature can cause diff cause abnormalities in sperm production. So for example when you have a fever because you have the flu or you have a cold people will get their sperm checked their semen analysis and they will see that their sperm count is zero because the temperature the fever has temporarily stopped their sperm production and so you can see that you know people also discuss like oh what about boxers or briefs what about putting and so all of these things can increase the temperature around the scrotum which can then cause changes in sperm arm production. So, I tell patients, particularly if you’re trying to have babies, is put your phone in your back pocket, in your chest pocket. Don’t put your computer, your laptop right on your lap, right? I mean, it’s easy enough to do and it does increase temperature. So, absolutely, yes, these things can, not for everybody, right? There’s people So, we say people like you shouldn’t smoke a lot of marijuana when you’re trying to get pregnant because marijuana can cause problems with sperm production. But you’ll see people who smoke every day and they still have babies. Or you’ll see people who do all of these things, right? They they wear briefs. They they put their phone on their in their pocket. They put their laptop on their lap and they still have babies. So, it’s not a all all comers, but certainly things that you can easily just avoid putting near your genitals. Well, if I’m in the sauna every day or if I’m in a um a steam room every day, isn’t that going to have an impact on my sperm count? Yeah, it does. And it’s interesting because there’s I think we’ll see more of this as we’re seeing the rise of I and there’s benefits to saunas, no doubt, but as we’re seeing the rise of people really doing saunas all the time. Um there can be so we tell people when they’re trying to have pre if they’re having fertility issues, don’t go in hot tubs, don’t go in saunas because it could affect your sperm production. So those are sort of the the conservative things we tell people to do. Interesting. And this this point about the phone next to genitals, it’s not because of like the Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth are going to like zap my babies. No, I mean there’s some there’s some question about that, but we don’t know. I don’t think we know. But we know there’s a temperature increase, right? Because phones get hot. We talked about masturbation briefly. Um, one of the big questions that people often ask me when I’m speaking to someone that has expertise on sexual health is about masturbation and whether it decreases your testosterone levels. So, it does not. There is one study and it was done in 10 men who abstained from masturbating for 21 days. And these are young healthy men, right? And so this is where I think everyone gets their data from is this one study. And so they took their testosterone before, they took their testosterone after. And and what they found was that there was an increase by about 50 50 nanogs per deciliter.5 um which is 50 nanogs per dec.

But we know that testosterone changes all the time. And two, there’s a lot of anticipatory cues when you’ve been waiting to masturbate for 21 days. Like your brain is is really excited. There’s all these like, “Okay, I’m finally going to get to release.” And that in of itself can increase testosterone. So, Jennifer’s no empiric evidence that is convincing, high quality level evidence that masturbating or abstaining from masturbation will increase testosterone. And so there, you know, people do report other benefits. And so I tell people if you’re getting other benefits from abstaining, by all means go ahead, but don’t do it for don’t like white knuckle it to gain some theoretical increase in testosterone that one was not even that large and two is probably not going to be proven in a larger sample. What about the opposite then? Is too much masturbation going to have an adverse effect on us for men and women? Yeah. So, I think it, you know, what I tell people is masturbation is generally safe as long as you are not masturbating to the point where you are now choosing to masturbate over doing anything else. So, you’re choosing to masturbate rather than have sex with your partner. You’re choosing to masturbate over going to work or you’re I’m going to be a little late to work cuz I want to finish masturbating or you literally can’t sleep without masturbating every day. Like those sort of you become reliant on this particular activity for the enjoyment that it provides. um that’s when it becomes a problem. But if you’re using it in terms of like I’m masturbating to get orgasm and the benefits of orgasm that I do achieve from that because maybe my partner doesn’t want to have sex or maybe I have more of a sex drive than my partner or I don’t have a partner. Like let’s be realistic. Like if you don’t have a partner, you’re going to have to if you want to orgasm, you’re probably going to have to masturbate. And so I think the problem also comes in is when people only masturbate the same way every time. They only watch a certain type of erotic film or they do the same thing every time and their body habituates to that and then they have a difficult time climaxing with a partner because they can’t replicate what they’re doing whether what they’re watching or how they’re doing it with a partner. Are we teaching ourselves something there? Are we teaching ourselves how we’re aroused and how we orgasm? Yeah, your brain is very powerful, right? So when you’re doing the same thing every time, your body is like, “Oh, this is what turns me on. This is what makes me orgasm.” them and then when you’re their partner you’re like oh I’m not getting that same kind of stimulation and so it doesn’t happen to a lot of people but I would say certainly I see people where this does happen and so um you know you have to sort of take a break and and sort of re-evaluate and try different things and get your body to habituate to different things which takes a little bit of work um but sort of keeping it varied can be helpful another big myth masturbation will make me go blind yeah no there’s literally I don’t know where that came from there’s like hairy palms blind ness like I don’t know where I I think this is all sort of like from religious rhetoric that says you know you should not masturbate um and and it you know where that came from you know is a whole other story I think what do you think of this idea of no November yeah so I think it’s I I’m not a fan the reason being is because I think it makes people feel like it’s something they have to do and if you want to like I said if you find benefit from abstaining from ejaculating for 30 days or 28 days or whatever it um then by all means like go ahead if you want to try something. There’s no harm in it. But I think a lot of people what they do is they feel like it’s something that’s going to bring them to some higher level and they’re going to become this great person because they’re able to to to conquer this goal, but they’re like literally miserable. So they’re um they’re clenching their pelvic floor all the time because they’re stressed about how they’re not ejaculating. They may ejaculate at night and so they’ll have a nocturnal emission and then they’ll feel so bad because they’ve failed. It’s nothing you can control. Nocturnal emissions are physiologic. They’re totally normal and 86% of men have had a wet dream at some point in their lifetime. Like it’s very very common and more likely the longer you are from ejaculating. So um your body will take care of the ejaculate if you ejaculate or not. So you will either resorb the semen or you’ll ejaculate at night. And so if you want to do it because you feel like, okay, I have a challenge. I want to conquer it. I want to see if I can do this. And you feel better because you’re not you’re able to like not focus on sexual thoughts or you’re able to really um find some other level of spirituality or something, by all means, go ahead. I don’t have a problem with it. What I have a problem with is making people feel bad because they can’t do it or they don’t want to do it. And with people feeling forced or feeling like they need to do it to prove something to someone else. Yeah. Cuz I mean the way that I’ve had it explained to me is that it’s some something about semen retention gives you some clarity of mind or something cuz a lot of athletes before they have their their big fights or you know their bigger sort of Olympic competitions, they’ll abstain from masturbation. I I often hear in the UFC for example the um the mixed martial arts fighting championship that athletes have not had sex or not ejaculated for two weeks before a fight or four weeks before a fight. Yeah. So there’s a lot of rhetoric there I think that comes from um historical. So even in Greek m in Greek times they would tell people to avoid having sex or masturbating prior to you know big fights or or just whatever sport they were playing. And so is it true in data? So if you look at the studies that have looked at people performing athletic feats, whether it’s like cycling or running or whatever, um they have not found that abstaining from ejaculation actually changes their ability to perform. And so in those cases, I say, well, there’s no true scientific evidence that we have that it’s going to improve. When in fact if you are someone who for example has sex every morning or masturbates every morning for whatever reason that’s a part of your routine disrupting the routine can actually be harmful to performance and sometimes the the one thing you can say is in terms of disrupting performance is that after you masturbate you do see an increase in heart rate a little bit um you have a rebound so it decreases and then you have a rebound increase in heart rate that can slightly affect your ability to recover from performance but ultimately I think if you find benefit from because people report feeling more aggressive with abstaining, then by all means, if you find it helpful, I think it’s fine. But is it mandatory? I don’t think so based on the evidence we have right now. Cuz I I heard that rumor many years ago, and I think I assumed it was correct. I I heard the rumor and this was the sort of evolutionary story that was attached to the rumor was that once upon a time when we were out I don’t know looking for um a sexual partner we would need to be more articulate and more persuasive and more I don’t know attractive basically. So we were at optimal attractiveness before we ejaculated. Then after we’ve ejaculated that kind of energy goes out of us and recharges and rebuilds again. So I was when I heard that I thought okay so if I’m speaking on stage or I’m doing a podcast I want to make sure that I’m you know my mouth and my brain are attached I’m articulate I’m persuasive whatever I need to be so don’t ejaculate or masturbate any time before doing anything where I need to use my brain and my mouth well you know some people describe postnut clarity right so they actually on the alternative feel like and there’s no good data on this the data we have is on people the very small subset of people who have postnut postcoidal not postnut postcoidal dysphoria, so they actually feel bad. But in terms of clarity, um you know, some people do like when you’re trying to you’re motivated to get a partner, right? you’re sort of um trying to uh woo them. You’re really focused on that one singular effort that once you’ve obtained that that the like very singular focus goes away and now other parts of your brain can be activated to then be used for some people will describe being more productive, more able to get work done after u masturbation. It’s very individualized or ejaculation, whatever it is. Postnet clarity. I’ve never heard anybody talk about this before and I’ve also been told over the years that it’s something that just men experience predominantly. And for anyone that doesn’t know what postnut clarity is, the definition that I understand is and that I have experienced, I’m going to be honest, is that after ejaculation, your desire for the other person reduces quite significantly. And there’s a stereotype here that women don’t experience this postnut clarity in the same way. Now, if I asked all of my male friends, if I said to them, “Has there ever been a time in your life where you were maybe texting someone you were attracted to or, you know, had some sort of sexual attraction to, and then you masturbated? Did your desire um diminish after you masturbated for that person that you were just texting?” I think about 90% of my male friends would say yes. Yes. And they describe it as if someone like took some like sunglasses off them, like a pretty extreme sudden change. And I’ve always wondered about this whether this is just men, if it’s just women, why it happens. So when you look at brain studies, right, of people having orgasm and what happens is when you have an orgasm like your whole brain lights up, right, because your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure goes up, like your pupils. So all these different parts of your body are working. So your whole brain lights up and then after orgasm it it gets very like quiet. And so we see that in women it may take a little longer to get really quiet. In men, it happens very quickly. And this may be associated with sort of the hormonal changes that occur after orgasm. So we know that prolactin increases after orgasm, dopamine decreases. And there’s sort of some evolutionary theories about why this happens. So one is after you ejaculate, if you are having uh ejaculation with a woman, then you don’t want to have sex again to the same thing with the refractory period, right? That there’s some period of time where you’re not going to want to have sex again or you can’t have sex even if you want to. And this is because evolutionarily if you deposited your ejaculate into a woman, if you then had sex again, you could actually dislodge the semen and then you’d have less ability to uh to have fertilize an egg, right? And then the other thought is that you don’t want to become overly exhausted, right? So that if you if you had the unlimited capability to have sex over and over again, that exhaustion could be a real thing. Like and so you’re sort of a protective mechanism. Um, and so those are sort of the theories as to why this is. And there’s like an absolute refractory time where like you don’t want sex at all. And then there’s a relative refractory time where if you had a really novel or strong stimulus for sexual activity that you would be able to um in terms of clarity in ter because we know there’s a little bit of differences in brain. Um, it may not be as obvious in women in terms of it takes them a little longer to have that coming down after the orgasm from the brain activity. Um, but probably there is some, we just haven’t studied enough. And I I always say this that when we look at studies for women’s sexual health and men’s sexual health, they’re so lopsided. So, if you type in penis in like a in like a search engine for Google or for the PubMed, which is where you look up research articles, you’re going to find 50,000 articles. If you look up clitoris, you’re going to get 2,000 articles. So, it’s very lopsided in terms of what we study um for sexual function. And in in of itself, sexual function by many people is not seen as mandatory or important for health. And so, the funding is less often available for sexual health. That’s why we have such little data in some areas. Going back to just closing off on the point about masturbation, is there a link between masturbation and prostate cancer? Because I’ve I’ve heard a lot of different things about it. Um, some people think that over masturbation is causing prostate cancer and some people say the opposite. Yeah. So, there’s actually a really good study um that was done looking at ejaculation frequency and prostate cancer. And it was a very well done study. They tried to control for a lot of other factors. And so, what they found was that men who ejaculated 21 times or more a month were less likely to develop prostate cancer. This is just a statistical number. It is not a number that sort of um means anything in terms of but we’re seeing that like okay so more masturbation may help. Why is that? Right. So there may there’s a prostate stagnation hypothesis that the fluids that you know some of your ejaculate fluids come from the prostate and so when you’re ejaculating frequently you’re more often getting rid of that fluid and sort of re replenishing it or cleaning the pipes so to say. So that may be beneficial in terms of preventing prostate cancer. Now, do you have to masturbate or ejaculate or have sex 21 times a month? Um, no. But, you know, there could be a benefit. Yes. And so, uh, having a healthy and it may be that those people who had sex more often or eject more often were just healthier in other ways, right? They were able to have sex more often or masturbate more often because they were uh s, you know, sufficiently healthy to do so. And so I mean while they tried to control for those things, there’s always sort of uncontrollable variables that come into those sort of studies. Yeah, that’s what I was wondering is is there another like glaringly obvious factor that those people had more relationships, therefore their mental health was better, therefore X, Y, and Z. I think they tried to control for coorbidities, but again there I don’t think they controlled for I mean they controlled for marriage, I believe. Um but I’m not sure that they controlled for like in a relationship versus not and how healthy that relationship is. That certainly wasn’t assessed. I’ll link to the study below. So everyone can read for themselves about the um the controls in that study and how that was conducted. Linked to this is is this subject of porn. Um it was interesting because I was doing a lot of research on the subject of that sounds a bit strange. I was doing a lot of research on the subject of porn and where conversations at with the subject. And one of the quite startling things is a lot of people are trying to figure out how to stop watching porn. Mhm. Um, a lot of people are asking themselves for mechanisms to um, install things on their computer that prevent porn time and um, searching for solutions around porn addiction. And a lot of people were searching um, about whether porn is a sin. And I think there’s something broader here about the idea of shame which is linked to porn. What is your take on on this? Is porn a bad thing? Yeah. So I don’t think porn is a bad thing. I will start with that. Um, is it a sin? Is more of a moral question, right? And I think that that is uh something that you individually have to decide for yourself if you feel like morally it’s inappropriate, but it’s it’s entertainment, right? It’s just a different form of entertainment. And I think the issues with porn um because I would not say that it’s 100% great. I think there are definitely issues with it. One, the big one that I’ve been very vocal about is children seeing pornography. So, um, we know now that the average age of a boy seeing pornography is 13. And that’s the average, meaning that as young as 8 to 10, boys are being exposed to pornography. Um, which was not the case when, for example, we were growing up, right? You had to I I always say this, you had to find a a tape, maybe find a VCR in a room that nobody was going to walk in, or you had to find a magazine and hide it somewhere and go find it. And so, it was not readily available. You had to work to be able to see that. And now seeing pornography is very readily available. And so uh very often kids are seeing it whether you as a parent don’t want them to. Whether you’ve put blocks on their phones and devices um they may have access to it from a friend or they may see it somewhere else. and um and your brain is not fully developed to understand one what you’re seeing and two to understand that this is not real unless your parent has talked to you about you know this is sort of a a movie that’s not real life and this is not what sex is really like and so I think that has um implications for um for how they view sex and how they then try to have sex with partners and also you know because your brain’s not fully developed you’re getting this big rush of dopamine from viewing something like that and that’s not something that we traditionally got at that age right and so it can become very addictive now as an adult I think it’s different because you have a fully formed brain you understand the concept of this is not real most people um and so it can be just a way to have pleasure and even watch it with your partner and have pleasure um but yes we are seeing some people who have problematic pornography use in the literature they say it’s 4% I suspect maybe it’s a little higher now where people are finding that watching pornography is is one easier than going out and trying to find a partner. You don’t have to face rejection. You don’t have to face the difficulties and awkwardness of having a first a sexual encounter with someone that often happen. And so it can become a way because it does relieve dopamine just like anything else release dopamine. It can then become sort of a way to feel better about anything, right? like you can just be feeling down like I want to watch pornography cuz it makes me feel better. It may not be just that you’re really into sex. It’s just that you’re really like wanting that rush hit of dopamine. Um and then there’s obviously the shame that comes with, oh my god, why am I using pornography just because I feel bad? And then you’re like, “Oh, but I feel bad and so I’m going to use porn again.” And it becomes this sort of like negative vicious cycle that can occur. But I think when used for entertainment and pleasure, I think it’s fine. And many, many people use it for entertainment and pleasure without a problem. I the other day bought the Apple Vision Pro, that new headset, and I tell you what, Jesus Christ, that is unbelievable piece of technology. This one feature they have on there is called spatial video, and I don’t know if you’ve tried it yet, but you put it on and if you’ve taken a spatial video, which you can now take on the new iPhone and also on the Vision Pro, it basically feels like a 3D video and it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. One of our team members commented that, you know, they they lost a family member and they wish they had this because it it’s like the person is back in front of you. It’s not like a photo or a video anymore. But then little monster in my mind goes, hm, there’s going to be other applications of this technology as it relates to pornography. And we’re getting, you know, if we just assume any rate of improvement with this technology, just I know 5% a year, we eventually get so close to it being indistinguishable from a human being that the incentive structure of going out and getting a day and, you know, for the for the objective of having sex or whatever versus just popping your headset on, which is going to get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and better and better and better um becomes really lopsided. I it’s so clear to me that if we just go forward 10 years and we’re on the Apple Vision Pro 17 Air, there’s going to be so many people that are using that as a way to uh masturbate and to watch pornography and there’s and it’s going to reduce the amount of people that are seeking real intimate relationships IRL in the real world. Yeah, it is a real concern I would say. But you know we know from some data that people will find physical touch particularly in like hairbearing areas um very important in terms of intimacy with a partner. So um intimacy in general and so I I can only hope that that will continue that you will want physical touch because no matter what you can see with your eyes um it’s not touching you. It’s not like it’s still you doing the touching. there’s no element of surprise or excitement or buildup in terms of like there’s someone else in the room with you, right? So, I can only hope that that that will that will be the case, but it still remain to be seen. However, I will share that there’s some interesting um applications of this in terms of fear. So, if you are really scared of something, you can actually desensitize yourself using these VR headsets and it can actually be very powerful. So, I was just speaking to a researcher, Lori Bradto, about how they’re using it in their lab for women who have fear of penetration because they’ve had either trauma or they have p other conditions that are causing it to be painful. And so, they can work with them to be using these headsets to simulate a sexual experience and then they can sort of use a d like use a tool or a dilator or something to then penetrate in a safe space, right? not like you’re with a partner and you’re like trying to have sex and you’re, you know, you don’t feel very safe. Sort of allowing that. It’s very preliminary research, but I think ultimately there are some positive things that maybe will come out of the use of these sort of VR headsets and I can only hope that that will predominate and we can continue and and people will inherently want other people, right? That we’re we’re hardwired to be around people and to be intimate with people. Like that’s how our brains work. So, I’m hopeful that that will that will still remain to be the case, but I can’t I can’t predict it. You don’t look convinced. Well, you know, I mean, I think it’s I I am worried. You know, I think that phones have changed lives, too, right? Like now our kids, our younger generation doesn’t communicate as well because when they hang out together, they’re sitting all together looking at their phones, right? And so, we have to actively work to prevent like I make my kids have full-on conversations with people. I say you got to come and hang out with the adults and have conversations and and talk to people and we have to coach them on how to talk to people. Um because I worry that people are too into even when they hang out with their friends, they’re playing on devices, right? So um I think there’s like work that has to be done to prevent the the the easy dopamine rushes that these devices are giving us, right? So we actually have to actively work at it and people are inherently going to take the route of of the easiest thing. And so as a society we have to sort of work together to sort of prevent these easy wins, easy things, easy dopamines from taking over. Something you mentioned within there though was the idea of trauma. And I’ve I’m quite interested in the role that our trauma plays in our sexual health and sexual dysfunction. What’s important to know there? And does trauma play a role at all in the patients you see? Absolutely. 100%. So your body when it goes through a trauma it will then sort of your body remembers even if you don’t right. So these people, very many people who have pelvic floor dysfunction, meaning their pelvic floors are too tight or too tense, they’ve had some sort of trauma. Not all of them, some of it’s just stress and anxiety, but sometimes they’ve had some sort of trauma years ago and it’s been with I had I remember having like a 70-year-old woman and she had such terrible pelvic floor dysfunction for god knows how many years that ultimately it caused really negative consequences for her bladder function. And um and so absolutely when you have a trauma that’s unresolved in some shape or form it will affect you whether it’s your mental health, your physiologic health. I mean our brains are so powerful that you know when it’s in a bad place it can affect you negatively. When it’s in a positive place it can affect you more positively. The one thing I will say is if you have trauma getting therapy, getting help to resolve that trauma is so so important. I talk to all my patients and I say, “Yes, you may have an organic problem, meaning a physiologic, bodily problem that’s causing your sexual dysfunction, but everyone who has sexual dysfunction has a psychologic component because it is devastating. It is stressful. It is horrifying to feel like you’re not normal. Your body doesn’t function normal, especially in an intimate space like sex.” So, I’m like, everybody should ideally see a sex therapist if it was available to everybody, but it’s not, right? How can we allow people to have access to things they need? Because we don’t teach these things in school, right? School, I mean, this is my big gripe is like, how can we make education better for children? Like, we need better sexual education. We need better education on how to resolve traumas or how to deal with them or how to get help, how to do digital health, like how do you navigate the world with all this misinformation? How do you find good quality information? How do you assess it? Like, there’s so many things. Even how to balance your books, right? They don’t learn that in school. So ultimately, there’s so many things that I think if we were really putting a critical eye on how we teach our young people that we could improve. And part of that would be including people to know and realize when they need help through whatever trauma they’ve suffered or stress or anxiety that they’re suffering and how that can propagate itself over a lifetime and create real problems. I have to ask this question because people mention this quite often. Can you have sex while you’re pregnant? Absolutely. Why not? I asked it because it was one of the most Googled questions um online. Really? Yeah. The one of the highest search volumes I’ve ever seen for a search term was, “Can you have sex while pregnant?” Wow. I actually didn’t I mean I I I’ve heard a lot of things and I think that people feel like I’ve heard that men think they’re going to hurt the baby. They’re going to um they’re going to cause a problem. But no, absolutely. you can have sex. You’re not going to create like a preterm labor. You’re not going to harm the fetus. Like nothing bad is going to happen from having sex while pregnant. Okay. So, let’s talk about orgasms and the clitoris. Then, you mentioned earlier that um there’s disproportionately a lot less research done on the clitoris. As a man, what do I need to know about the clitoris? Cuz I I’ll be honest, I know very little. I know where it is. That’s that’s a plus. Well, not everyone knows that either. Yeah. I didn’t always know where it was. a couple of misunderstandings, but um I found I found it eventually and I I think I know how to stimulate it, but I don’t really know what’s going on there or how it works. Okay, so what I tell everybody and what men can think of is the clitoris is like the penis. So when you are a fetus, there’s a thing called a genital tubrical. Before you’re assigned sex, that genital tubrical. When you’re when you become a man, that genital tubacle becomes the penis and the shaft and the glands. And in a woman, it becomes the clitoris. And the clitoris actually then goes deep into the pelvis um just like the penis. It has a shaft in the pelvis and then it goes around the vaginal canal. And so you can the clitoris is just as sensitive as a man’s penis, right? So if you stimulate the clitoris like your penis gets stimulated, then it will lead to orgasm and it’s probably the most reliable route for orgasm for women. So 85% of women need some form of clitoreral stimulation to climax. And so many women have difficulty climaxing through vaginal penetration alone. That’s not that they’re broken or something’s wrong with them. It’s just that they don’t. And because the stimulus from the clitoris is so strong, it leads to a very reliable route for orgasm. Now, how you stimulate it is sort of very individually specific. But typically oral stimulation, vibratory stimulation, uh manual stimulation, all those things can work. But that’s where the communication comes in where like the partner ideally would know what they like and could tell you um or they you could check like does this feel good? Does this feel good? Do you like this? Is this you know or and you know and so that’s sort of again a challenge because the communication issue we’ve talked about this whole this whole talk but um that is really what’s important. Now the clitoris like I said it it goes um deep above the vagina and around it. So people can still get clitoreral stimulation through penetration um depending on how you stimulate. Now the other areas that are important for orgasm are the G orogynous zone. It’s actually not a spot, it’s a zone and that’s where essentially if you go look at the vagina on the anterior wall, which is the top of the vagina underneath the urethra where the pee comes out about 2 to 3 centimeters in is called the gerogynous zone. It’s named after the person who um identified it. I think it’s graffin house or something like that but um essentially that area is full of certain nerve endings as well as the female prostate or the skins glands and so those are areas that are quite erogynous and that uses a different so the clitoris is inervated by the pudendal nerve the gerogynous zone is innervated by the hypograastic nerve so a different nerve and then the cervix is the last area where sometimes women feel a lot of stimulation and that’s stimulated by the vagus nerve. So all these different areas can lead to orgasm for women and they can be additive. So if you’re stimulating all three, you might have a more strong orgasm and the orgasm may feel a little different. Now people like to call it like, oh, you’re getting a clitoreral orgasm or a vaginal orgasm. It’s all an orgasm. It’s just a matter of what stimulation is causing the orgasm. And so I think ultimately it’s really important for the the most easy reliable route to orgasm is clitoreral stimulation which is not traditionally stimulated through penis and vagina sex, right? And so it does require some additional um thought on how you’re going to stimulate it and and how you’re going to please the partner and to get them to orgasm. And often times if you think about the time it takes to orgasm. So, in a man, the average length, if you look at studies that have looked at stopwatches, like they’ve had the female partner actually start a stopwatch at the beginning of sex and stop it at the end when the man climaxes, it’s about 5.1 to 5.7 minutes. Um, which in fact UK men tend to last a little bit longer, which is sort of an interesting concept, but Sorry, which sex is that? Men. Men. Men. So, from penetration to climax of men. So when you so that when they so they’ve measured basically not including foreplay, but if they’ve measured they’ve measured like 15,000 people through many many different countries and they’ve had the woman take a stopwatch and actually start click on it when they penetrate and click it off when they climax and they’ve measured the length of time and it’s been about 5.1 to 5.7 minutes is the time. Now, a woman, when you look at the average time to orgasm for a woman, it’s about 14 minutes. And so, you can imagine that if the entire sexual encounter is around the male climax, right? And the male has this, as we’ve already talked about, sort of this postnut clarity, like I don’t want refractory time, they’re not going to want to be more intimate. If you don’t prioritize the female’s climax or stimulate her before you begin to penetrate, then she’s probably not going to orgasm. Um, and so, and the interesting thing is when you look at sexual encounters and you look at men and women having sex for the first time, uh, the woman will orgasm 45% of the time, the man will orgasm 95% of the time. When you look at women having sex with women on a first-time encounter, they both have orgasms 95% of the time. So clearly there’s an educational miscon disconnect, right? Women know what they like and what stimulates them and men aren’t getting the memo. I feel attacked. Totally not attacking you. Letting you know the facts. Oh, no. It makes sense though because I think men are still struggling to understand again because of what you said. We don’t really get a sexual education. So, we learn these things from porn and obviously in porn they’re not showing it. Yeah. I mean, you don’t typically have many um women orgasming in porn as you do men orgasming in porn. What is an orgasm and what kind of what role does it serve? Mhm. Like why do we orgasm? And also when I say what is an orgasm, is an orgasm like a switch or is it is it like a spectrum? So, it’s it’s sort of like a spectrum I guess. I mean, so let’s talk about what it is exactly. So an orgasm is a moment in time that is combined with a like a a maximal tension and then a release and during that time it is completely you’re completely unable to think about anything else. It is a very powerful pleasurable sensation and it occurs usually like I said 5 to 60 seconds it can last and is it in terms of how you get it. It’s usually a culmination of stimulation over a period of time even with a certain sort of like rhythm that’s required to achieve climax that’s different from person to person. So I can’t give you the script on this is how fast you need to penetrate or this is how what stimulation you need to use. Okay, that’s the end of the conversation then. We’re down here. So, um, so yeah, cuz nobody wants a taco. They literally want me to tell them like this is what you do A B C Dru. So, um, but yeah, ultimately, um, all of those things they build this tension, right? So, over the course of sexual stimulation, arousal, you are getting to an excitement phase where your your body is changing. So in women for example you will see that the labia become a little bit redder. Um they expand in size as I said the vagina lengthens and elongates. Um the so the from 3 to 6 in I’ve heard you say. Yeah about about double. Yeah. And it’s different from person. That’s the average right. So there is sort of like this thought that like okay if it’s really really large it’s always going to be better. And that’s not actually always the case because not every vagina can accommodate a very large phus. Um, but so when you’re having orgasm, essentially your pelvic floor muscles are tensing up. They’re they’re getting really tense and you’re reaching this for like basically you’re getting to the top of the hill. You’re getting this really large amount of climax. And so your body is sort of clim going up and up and up. You’re reaching like increasing dopamine and you’re increasing. So when you think about what happens in the brain is your hormones are are cl going higher and higher and there’s also an inhibitory there’s a p there’s a there’s a stimulatory and an inhibitory pathway. way. And so the stimulatory pathway is going up, inhibitory, stimulatory, you’re basically trying to race up to the top of this mountain. And once the stimulatory gets to the very very top, then you have the orgasm. And so you release all this tension. And during this time, your heart rate’s racing, your pupils are dilating, right? There’s all these physiologic changes. Um, and then when you orgasm, your muscles contract, as I mentioned before, and this every 8 seconds, they’re having a contraction. Sometimes you’ll have an involuntary phonation. So people will, you know, moan or scream and sometimes it’s not in their control like there’s actually an involuntary component of it and then um sort of it comes down and so it’s it’s not necessarily a switch. It’s sort of a a a climb up a mountain is the way I would describe it. It sometimes feels like blowing up a balloon with a little hole in it. And when I say with a little hole in it, I mean because if you stop, it feels like some air comes out the balloon. Mhm. That’s why I said the the sort of there needs to be a rhythm. It should keep going at a certain pace in order to achieve that climax because if it doesn’t then you can again just like that’s a very good description you’ll lose that little air in the balloon. Okay. So in order to increase female pleasure okay we need to understand the person we’re dealing with of course but um the clitoris is a great way to get to orgasm. You’ve you’re prolubricants. Mhm. A lot of people feel like that’s not natural so they kind of avoid it but you’re prolubricants. And are you pro then scheduling sex or are you pro-scheduling time for intimacy? Scheduling time for intimacy. Okay. So, because sex adds, as we talked about, add sort of like a level of stress in terms of like, am I going to want to have sex? Am I going to be able to get an erection? Am I going to enjoy sex? Whatever it is. And am I going to get rejected? Like all those things. Because you’re still a human being. and you may just like be really stressed that day that you put on the calendar and you were like, I just can’t can’t get in the right mind space to have sex. So, if you’re constantly ruminating or stressing about other things, you can’t have a good sexual encounter. In fact, they’ve looked at mindfulness in terms of how it improves sexual function, particularly in women. But we’ve seen very clear data that be having a mindfulness practice leads to improved sexual function in terms of desire and other factors like arousal and lubrication and orgasm. But the biggest is desire. And so it’s because if you can focus on what’s happening during the sexual encounter. So you can focus on what it feels like, how you’re enjoying that sensation rather than thinking about am I going to come, am I going to climax, am I is it going to happen or whatever it is that you’re thinking about during sex because you’re worried about how the other partner might react. Then you’re more likely to enjoy the experience, feel, and then have a good experience and subsequently have more desire for additional experiences. We talked earlier on at the very start of the conversation about comparisons and how that can really destroy sex. Is there a disparity between how long we think sex should take and how long it actually takes? Yeah, we all think it lasts longer. And when you ask people what the average time, and this is a hard question because people think of sex as the whole encounter. And when we do it scientifically, we look at sex from penetration to the end of penetration. And sex is more diverse, right? Sex can include oral sex, anal sex, um manual sex, any type of sexual stimulation, right? And so when you’re thinking about the entire encounter, it can be very variable. Some people want a quickie. Some people want to have this long luxurious lovem scenario. And it really depends also like on what’s going on in your life. Like you may not have that luxury. And so I don’t I think again it’s not about reaching a certain benchmark or a certain number. It’s really about the quality of the sex. So if you have great sex and it takes 3 minutes, that’s great. That’s fine. But as long as it’s great to both of you, right? If you’re both like, “This is awesome. I’m having great sex.” And it takes three minutes, that’s fine. But how long do people think sex lasts on average versus how long it actually lasts on average? Yeah. So I think that most people definitely think it lasts longer. So women tend we don’t know what they think it lasts but what they want it to be is about 18 to 25 minutes. Men are a little on the shorter side like maybe 12 minutes but generally we all want it to be around that length. But you sort of lose sense of time right? So you don’t really no one’s really there with the stopwatch knowing exactly how long it takes. In fact, I’ve had friends tell me like, “Oh, I watched your video.” And now, like, when my partner wants sex, I’m like, “Oh, it’s only going to take 5 minutes. Like, I can I can have sex with them.” Like, I used to in my head used to think it would take a lot longer. And now I’ve realized it takes less time. And like I don’t that that stress of like, “Oh my god, I’m going to have to like waste like half an hour and I’m so tired.” Like, has gone out the window because I know it’s really not going to take that long. Is there Have they ever put people in like a laboratory or whatever? And and I guess this goes back to what you said earlier. Um, is there like an average time people spend having sex? Was that the five minutes you talked about? 5.7 minutes. 5.1 to 5.7 minutes depending on the study you look at. And they they looked at all comers. So, it’s actually different in different um countries. So, when you look at like Turkey, it was like 4 minutes and if you look at UK, it was like 10 minutes. So, it’s actually Thank you. So, it’s actually variable and that may be a cultural thing. Um, but ultimately the average is about five something. Interesting. So, we want sex, women want sex to last between 18 and 25 minutes ideally. Men want it to last ideally about 16 minutes including foreplay, but in reality it’s lasting five 5 minutes. Yeah, that’s good to know. Let’s talk about Zoe, who you may know because they’re a sponsor of this podcast and I’m an investor in the company. You guys know health is my number one priority. Zoe’s growth story has been absolutely incredible so far. They’re doing science at a scale that I’ve never seen before. Because of their members and recent breakthroughs in research, they can now continue to offer the most scientifically advanced gut health test on the market. Previously, the test allowed them to analyze 30 bacteria types in your gut. But now, thanks to new science, they’ve identified 100 bacteria types. This is a huge step forward and there’s nothing else that’s available even close to it on the market at all. So to find out more and to get started on your Zoey journey, visit zoey.com/stephven. You can use my exclusive code ceo10 for 10% off. Don’t tell anybody about that, okay? Just for you guys. We talked about sizes of stuff a second ago and we said we’d come back to this. So there’s two sort of sizes that people often think about. The size of the vagina and the size of the penis. Mhm. There is a myth in society that the more sex a woman has the bigger her vagina gets. Is that myth true or false? False. So the way that women’s vaginas get if you want to say loose right which is the term that people use or they get a weak pelvic floor and that’s from having babies having maybe neurologic conditions that affect the pelvic floor strength having collagen disorders having um just from like having a job where you stand all day and you’re like all the weight of your body is sitting on your pelvic floor. Those muscles can get weaker over the course of a lifetime and then it can feel a bit looser because those muscles are maybe not squeezing as harder, but it is not related to how much sex she’s having because as we mentioned earlier, when you have an orgasm, you’re actually like strengthening your pelvic floor a little bit like you’re contracting those muscles. So actually probably the more sex a woman has likely her pelvic floor is probably stronger unless she’s not you know um but you know you add in the having babies and other things it’s variable but probably the more orgasms a woman has the stronger her pelvic floor is but things like child birth can Mhm. make the pelvic floor looser weaker weaker. Yeah. Yeah. So then when it becomes weak that is the cause of things like stress incontinence. So, when a woman um lifts something heavy or she exercises or she jumps or she coughs or sneezes, she might have a couple drops of urine or a lot of urine leak out because of a weak pelvic floor. It can also be lead to something like prolapse where the it’s like a hernia in the vagina where the pelvic floor sort of is so weak that now the vaginal skin and the organ behind it is sort of bulging out and can cause discomfort and and sort of uh feeling maybe some dysfunction in the organ but really mostly discomfort. And so those are signs of weak pelvic floors, not you know not having a loose vagina during sex. And we can do something to strengthen our pelvic floor which is these. Is that what the Keele exercises are? Yeah. And it’s more than Keigull. I mean Keigle is the most has the best PR of any sort of thing I’ve ever seen in medicine. But yeah, it’s pelvic floor exercise. The Keigull is one pelvic floor exercise which is to strengthen the pelvic floor. And there are others. What is it? I’ve never So it’s essentially men never know like it’s it’s not your fault. Women sort of kind of know, but even women don’t really know. So, what it is is there’s those same muscles we talked about earlier is that you’re basically doing a rep. You’re squeezing, contracting, and relaxing. Just go to the gym, right? You squeeze and relax. Very similarly, you are squeezing those muscles and relaxing those muscles. I can do this sat down now. Yeah. So, basically for men, what I tell people is it’s like the feeling of when you’re urinating and you stop your urine stream. That that’s you’re using those same muscles. So, that’s one way. Another way to think about it is if you were trying to lift your penis off the ground without touching it. Okay, got you. Okay. And the third one is you’re trying to hold in a fart. So all those different ways you’re sort of getting those muscles. So the one thing I tell people is they get the way they get it wrong is they don’t relax enough. So just like when you go to the gym, you’re not doing rep after rep. You’re actually taking a break and you’re letting your muscles relax before you do another rep. Same thing. You have to squeeze for 5 seconds. Relax for 5 seconds. Right? you actually have to um relax and just like any exercise, you don’t want to overdo it. So I tell people start lying down so that the only thing you have to focus on from a muscular standpoint is that those muscles. As you get good at them lying down, you then do them sitting up and then as you get good at doing them sitting up, you can do them standing or do them anywhere. But like you’re not going to be like there, you know, I remember the scene from Sex in the City where like the character Samantha was like, I’m doing my Keigull right now. Like, yeah, she’s probably been doing keigull for a long time and now she’s so good at them that she can do them while she’s brushing her teeth, but it’s not like you’re going to wake up one day and be perfect at them, just like any other exercise. So, that’s one exercise. There are certainly other things you can do to strengthen your pelvic floor. Traditionally, things like yoga and pilates have some core work that does also help with the pelvic floor. But really, I recommend if you’re having issues is to see a pelvic floor physical therapist cuz they’re just like a when you go to the gym alone, you can do it or you can go with the personal trainer. They’re like the personal trainers for your pelvic floor. How do I know if I’m having pelvic floor issues? What are the symptoms? So, for like I said, the obvious ones for women are leakage or um having prolapse for weakness. In men, we don’t often see as much, but like I said, you might notice that your semen is not as forceful when it comes out. Um, that’s usually the most common side sign of a weak pelvic floor. There’s not as many for men, but in terms of a overly um high tone pelvic floor. What we worry about then is then there’s a whole host of symptoms. It could be as simple as just having lower back pain. Um, it can be that you’re having hip pain. It could be that you’re having um pain with sex. You’re having pain with erections, pain with ejaculation. you’re going to the bathroom often, got to go, got to go. You are feeling like you’re having difficulty emptying your bladder, or you are um going very very often all of a sudden. So, it can be a vague variety of these symptoms. And um so generally it’s important to get evaluated to see like examine your to get your pelvic floor examined by a professional whether it’s a urologist, a gynecologist, a pelvic floor physical therapist, someone who can assess your pelvic floor if you’re having these issues because it might be pelvic floor, it might not. Right? How do they assess it? If I go to a urologist and say, “Listen, check my pelvic floor.” Mhm. So in a man it would be a rectal exam. And so essentially that’s how you sort of feel the pelvic floor muscles. So, what I tell young guys who come to me, I said, “Look, I can examine you. Um, but I bet based on your story, like you’re a young guy, you’ve sort of had these new stressors in your life, um, and it’s un and you’re otherwise healthy, it’s unlikely that you have a vascular condition brewing and other things that like it’s probably likely so if you want to uh avoid the exam because it can be uncomfortable or and I will tell you if you have pelvic floor dysfunction and someone does an exam, it will be uncomfortable. It will be painful potentially because they’re pushing on those already tense muscles and it can be painful. So I tell people like you might hate me tomorrow because you’ll be sore and you’ll say what did she do during that exam? And I I kind of preemptively tell them because I just gently push right like I’m pushing the pad on my finger. But that’s enough to sort of cause a tension of the pelvic floor muscle and cause pain. Push where where you like on the muscles on the pelvic floor muscles. So you can actually so if you if you put your finger in the rectum if you push right straight down in a man you’re feeling the prostate and if you push on the sides at a variety of different angles you’re going to feel different pelvic floor muscles like the levator adi and the transoperator muscles those muscles are the ones that are part of the pelvic floor. We can’t feel all of them but we can feel some of them. And so um so that is sort of where we’re feeling in terms of for the pelvic floor muscles. Okay. So, cuz I was thinking if we go in the the rectum, you’ve got the glutes there as well, which are like either side, I guess. So, your pelvic floor is actually a part of your core, right? But your glutes are further back. They’re not going to be felt from there. But anyways, if you think about your pelvic floor, it’s actually, you know, people think about their core as your abdominals, but we know that it sort of encompasses your back, your front, and even your pelvic floor is sort of part of your core muscles. Got you. Okay. Interesting. Very interesting. Um, on the topic of sizes then, one of the big things in men is penis size. And one of the big questions men often ask is, is there ways to increase my penis size? There’s in fact a whole industry around penis size, increasing pumps and all kinds of different things. Is it possible to increase one’s penis size? Yeah. So, it is um in terms of looking at the evidence, uh, the safest and most reliable way is using a traction device. And these are devices that are made for um essentially for penile lengthening, but they’re also made for men who have something called Peronis disease where they may develop a plaque on their penis and a curvature. And so there’s one device that’s actually made that bends away from the plaque to help sort of break down that plaque. Um so there are two uses for it, but essentially these devices are just like stretching the tissue over time. And so the original traction devices that were studied, you would have to use them for 6 to 8 hours a day for several months to see a 2cm increase in length. Now, um that may be enough for some people. They were like, “Yes, I definitely want that.” And some like, “You know what? It may or may I mean 2 centimeters is the average. Some are going to be less.” Right? So um it’s sort of do you have the time to do that. Do you want to do that? But now there are sort of newer devices where they’ve studied them and used them like twice a day for 30 minutes and they’ve seen some increase in penile length. They’re generally pretty safe. It’s more about um you might have some bruising from just putting the traction device on and as long as you follow the instructions, you’re probably not going to hurt yourself. Is that a penis pump? No, pumps are different. So pumps have not been shown to increase penal. A pump is essentially it’s got a it’s got a a a cylinder that you put your penis into and it uses sort of vacuum technology to sort of suck blood into the tissues and then you put um if you’re having issues with erectile function, you would then put a ring uh at the base of the penis to maintain the erection. Uh these don’t help with length. They’ve looked at them in those cases. They’ve also looked at surgeries and different types of things to increase penal length. And ultimately many of them either have you know a very high complication rate um or risks that I would say are probably not advisable for most people. Um I you know I think that in terms of penile lengthening people are always like why would you want to do that? why a lot of people will sort of poo poo people who want to change the way their penis looks. And I’ve sort of evolved in my thinking and saying, well, you know what, this is a big part of um, you know, a man’s identity and how he feels about himself. And I wish we had something that was safe and easy for men to do like we have breast implants, but we’re not there yet, right? And so I just want people to be safe in terms of realizing what our limitations are at this time and things may change over, you know, as people become more interested in this area. porn, the role it’s played in our perception of what a normalsized penis is. Do you know any of any data on what how big people think a penis should be versus how big the penises actually are? Yeah. So, yeah, most people think it should be about 6 in. So, like we said, the average is around 5.1 to 5.3 in. And so, when you look at the data in terms of what people think it should be, men think it should be about 6 in. in terms of women’s where we found the data about what they prefer um is sort of interesting. So when now that we’re having um more surgeries for trans men, one of the surgeries that we do is a neoalis is we create a new phus and one of the the types of surgeries we do is we use a forearm flap. And so it can be very very long and very very girthy. And in fact they were doing these surgeries and they realized that some people were actually unable to have sex with it because it was too girthy. So they wanted to then look at like well how do we determine the right size and length length and girth of this neopalis so that we you know they can then have sex with it. So, what they did was they looked at um the top, you know, the top five to 10 sex aids or or toys that women are purchasing online. And they, you know, you can imagine that when you think of a dildo, they can go from one, you know, all the way to like the largest thing you’ve ever seen and the girthiest thing you’ve ever seen to like a normal size. And so, when you have the option to pick as many as you want, right? What do you pick? And so what they found was that women tend to pick the length of about 6 in, but as you know, you’re not putting the whole device in. There has to be a handle or something. So it’s probably around what the normal size is. And the girth was also around the average girth of the male penis. And so generally speaking, women tend to want what is average or around average, right? And um interestingly there’s a product that is available called oh not I’m not I don’t I’m not sponsored by them or anything but essentially you you for women who have pain with penetration with men who are too wellendowed the men actually wears it so that the entire fallus doesn’t go in during sexual intercourse but it’s more comfortable for the partner. So we know that sometimes it can be really uncomfortable if it’s too wellendowed. And so I think ultimately um while I understand that pornography has made people really self-conscious about the length of their penis and I I I’m really sad about that because I think you as we’ve talked about earlier clitoreral stimulation is the easiest way for women to climax and you don’t need penetration for that. So in order to have pleasure and give pleasure you don’t need a large penis and in fact some women may not even care what size your penis is. It’s more of a a societal thing that we talk about, right? Women joke about it. Women talk about it. I mean, you can’t go, you know, you even I’ve accidentally made comments where I’ve been like, “Oh, that’s great that like he has a large penis.” Like, I can’t believe I just said that. Like, I’ll say it and I’ll be like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe that came out of my mouth of all people.” And I think it’s just so ingrained in our brain to be like, “Oh, like to celebrate really wellendowed organs when in reality it’s not necessary and sometimes even painful. Will my penis get smaller as I age? So, not if you are healthy. So, in terms of how do we maintain our penile health, right? Your body does a really good job of trying to maintain penal health because over the course of a night time, men will get five to six erections, three to six erections over the course of the night. And that will happen whether you have a sexual dream or not, whether you are sleeping in a certain way or not. It’s because your body is sort of giving blood flow to the area periodically through the night, whether you’re having sex, whether you’re not, you’re getting good oxygenated blood flow to the penis. Now, if you develop other conditions where you cannot get blood flow to the penis, like you get high blood pressure, you get diabetes, you get heart disease, and those arteries start getting narrowed and then you stop getting nighttime erections and you start having difficulty getting erections. Over time the tissues can change and they can become what we call fibroic and they can become a little less spongy and less elastic. And so in those cases you can see a little bit of shortening. Now people will also see shortening because they gain weight over the course of their lifetime. And as you gain weight the penile the penis is not shrinking but the the fat on the mons or the area right above the penis is sort of getting larger and obscuring how much penis length there is. There’s a one of the myths around penis size is that you know if I have big hands look because you know these aren’t small hands. If I have big hands then I have a big penis or if I have big feet then I have a big penis. Is there data to support this idea that the length of my any part of my body is correlated to my penis size? Yeah there’s one study it’s a Japanese study where they looked at only Japanese men. Uh so take there are some limitations but essentially they measured all these body parts and penal length. Uh and uh what they found was that nose length was correlated with penal length, not hand length or foot length. So how do I increase the length of my nose? Yeah. Yeah. But uh I I thought that was really interesting. Again, nothing you can control. These things are pre-enetically determined to some degree. And in fact, you know, we talked about some trends and while we’ve seen um semen qual sperm quality change over the last 50 years, we’ve also seen penile length change average over many last I don’t know the exact number but 50 years. And they’ve actually seen penile length is increasing. And they think that this is because the onset of puberty is changing and boys are getting exposed to factors that are making them go through puberty earlier and hence they’re getting more exposure to testosterone and they’re developing longer penises. Um so sort of interesting theoretical thing. I don’t know if that’s true or not but sort of what the theory is. Yeah, I actually read about that study. It says that a study shows that men’s average erect penis size has increased over the last 29 years from 4.8 8 in to 6 in. Mhm. That’s pretty pretty dramatic. That’s huge. Yeah. Wait another 29 years. You could be at Jesus Christ. But I don’t think women’s vaginal lengths are changing. So, I don’t know what that means. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s interesting because you when you we talked about the vaginal length enlarging as someone becomes aroused, you mentioned that it goes from about roughly about 3 in on average to about 6 in. That also correlates with the size of the flaccid penis to the size of the erect penis going from about 3.6 in flaccid to about 5.1 to 5.2 in erect. So you kind of see that these two things are actually made made for each other. Yeah, they are. I mean I think in general like we’re all we’re I mean we’re we’re designed right the the biggest thing that we need to do as a species is have children, right? That is like sort of the the goal of life is to propagate our species. And so it would make sense that we would be designed to be able to do that easily. A lot of people are having this um new procedure called labeloplasty. Is it did I pronounce that correctly? Laboplasty. Laboplasty. What is this? Why? So laboplasty is essentially taking the labia uh manura and and and making them a little shorter or smaller depending on what your preference is. And labias come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. What is that? It’s the inner lips of the vagina. So they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Sometimes they will be um lopsided, so one will be longer than the other, some will be longer, some will be smaller. And often times we’re seeing in pornographies really small labia minora. And so people will tend to feel like maybe they should look like that. Now, not everybody. Some people actually have discomfort. Their labia are so long that they cause friction or pain or discomfort. In those cases, it’s it’s absolutely uh reasonable. But just like people have insecurities about their genitalia when they’re men, women also can have insecurities about their labia as women. And so laboplasty is essentially making those smaller and more cosmetically appealing when women desire that. Um, but I think the the important thing to take home is they are so diverse. They’re as diverse as your fingerprint. Your labia is unique to you and it is not um there’s no script of what it should look like. Uh and so I generally tell people if that’s something you want that’s absolutely fine. But again this is not a pathology or a bad thing. This is something that you know is more cosmetic. And there’s been an 80% increase in the surgery of laboplasty from 2015 to 2019 which is you know a lot a lot. It’s a lot. Last thing about um women in ejaculation in the vagina is about squirting. very misunderstood. Like, you know, as a as a man that doesn’t have a vagina, um I’ve seen squirting on pornography that I’ve watched. I watch pornography. I think that’s important to say. I think a lot of people do watch pornography. Um and in the pornography that I’ve watched, the woman squirts, this liquid comes out. And like, is that semen? Is that ejaculate? Or is that something else? What is it? And also, should we be aiming to make our partners squirt? Yes, let’s talk about it. So, this is important and it’s actually interesting. I just I just had a conversation with a researcher about this because it’s so misunderstood and we still don’t know. Like, there’s only been like three or four studies looking at female ejaculation squirting over the course of our history. There’s different types of fluids the vagina makes. One is obviously lubrication. That’s different and that can be very copious for some, very not as copious for others. Uh, that’s one type of fluid. The other type of fluid is female ejaculate. Now, female ejaculate is similar to male ejaculate. comes from the skins glands, that same female prostate. It is a small amount of like sort of sticky white fluid that women ejaculate. Um, and so they will release that fluid and it’s not like this copious amount of fluid that you’re seeing on pornography. Uh, the next type of fluid is squirting. And squirting is has been described as a clear, colorless, odorless fluid that’s emitted from the urethra. um when they’ve looked at analyses of these they found that there is what we call PSA or prostate specific antigen now that we think of traditionally as males but the women’s skins glands make it as well now people are like is it pee right that’s the big question and so in the one study where they looked at the analysis they found that it was there was like dilute urine and then another study looked at like okay they scanned people before squirting and after and they scanned their bladders to see like did the amount of urine change and and they said it did and now it’s urine. But what we really don’t know and what we what the limitation is that you never so women know when they squirt like they they know it’s not urine. So if you talk to enough women who are squirting they’ll be like you know it’s not urine. I’m sure it’s not urine but where is that fluid coming from that that’s where the question comes right? And so like if it’s not urine it’s coming from the urethra like it doesn’t make sense. And so uh this is Dr. Barry Kamasurak who’s done a lot of research on orgasm. He said you know it may be water inhibition. So when you think of like fluid filling the walls of the uterus and the vagina during during or during the process of arousal and that maybe during climax when you have actually contractions of that fluid of those of those organs that occurs during climax that it can actually release this fluid. I don’t know. I think the jury remains out. I don’t think we have a conclusive answer because the studies are not perfectly designed. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they’re going to be leaving it for. And the question that’s been left for you.

If there was one message that you want your life’s work to communicate to the world, what would it be and why? My message is that sexual health is health and that we need to be prioritizing our sexual health and educate our young people about sex. And why? Because I think the impacts of having negative sexual health or negative sexual encounters can be so dramatic in terms of physiologic outcomes, interpersonal outcomes, work productivity. I mean, it can be very farreaching and if we are able to educate and empower people, we can change the world. Dr. Serena Malik, thank you so much for your time today and thank you so much for um illuminating a bunch of issues on sexual health that I’ve never really understood or been able to discuss before. And I think these conversations are so unbelievably important because as you say there, sex sort of permeates every facet of our lives. And I think sometimes people wonder why I spend a lot of time on the show talking about sex when this is called the diary of a CEO. But and that’s because it’s the same reason why I spend a lot of time talking about health and the brain and neuroscience and relationships and everything because I’ve come to learn that although I’m a CEO. I’m a business person. All of these things as you’ve said feed into um my ability to be a CEO. And what is a CEO? A CEO is a human being. A CEO is just someone that is um has a sort of highintensity career. We all have high intensity careers and we’re these multifaceted objects. But some parts of these multifaceted objects are still in the shadows because there’s stigma and there’s shame and there’s not a lot lot of education around it. And if I think about my career as a whole, um sex and my relationships have been this huge um huge part of it that once I focused more energy on and started investing it in every other part of my career improved. every other part of my life improved, my health improved, my performance at work improved, my anxiety levels um dissipated, and that’s why I think these conversations are so unbelievably important and your work that you’ve done both in your your sort of clinical practice, but also what you’re doing on YouTube as well, which I’ll link below so everyone can go and see is allowing this information to be accessible for everybody, even those that don’t have um the money to go and drive, as you said, to go see a therapist. And I think that’s an incredibly important work, and I’m glad that you’re a real champion and and a a force behind that. So, thank you so much on behalf of me, my team, but also everyone that’s consumed your work and gained value from it. Thank you. I would just say that I always tell people because I mentor a lot of young medical students. And I I always tell young women that the number one most important decision you’re going to make is who you choose as your partner. And that’s because that person, whether it’s obviously emotionally, but also sexually, right? how they support you in your life is going to determine whether you’re able to succeed or not. And I I just was talking to another woman and and you know, she’s like, “My husband’s wonderful.” I was like, “I’m not surprised.” I was like, “You don’t get to be a successful woman and a happy, welladjusted, successful woman unless you either are, you know, very happy being alone or you have an excellent partner to support you. Because if you have a toxic partner at home, it’s not going to work.” Amen. Thank you. Heat. Heat. N.

Heat. Heat.

You have an envelope in front of you there that says confidential on the front of it. What is in that envelope? It’s a paper that’s under embargo because the world thinks it’s going to be very important and it’s going to be a lead article in the frontiers in science because this is a strategy to manage cancer effectively and we have a lot of evidence to keep these people alive a hell of a lot longer. We have given hope to the hopeless and you have a perspective on treating cancer and other metabolic diseases that others don’t have. Yes. But the problem is the field doesn’t understand what I’m saying about the origin of cancer. So everything comes back to mitochondria and all chronic diseases in cancer are the result of damage to this. And the science is telling us this. But the field of cancer has yet to accept it. That is a tragedy. Are you pissed off about this? Well, who wouldn’t be? There’s 1,700 people a day in this country dying from cancer. That’s 70 an hour. And it gets worse every single year. When is the people going to wake up? So give me a prescription of how I should live my life to keep my mitochondria healthy. So it all comes down to what you do to maintain the health and vitality of the mitochondria that reduce the risk. But we are now in a new environment where we have massive amounts of highly processed carbohydrates, inactivity, emotional stress, poor sleep habits and you chronically damage this organel. And then if you look at the domestic dog, cancer is the number one killer of the domestic dog. But wolves in the wild rarely have cancer. But the wolf is out running around eating natural foods. Yet the dog is in an apartment somewhere, gets a dog walker once a day, right? And the next thing the dog is obese and full of cancer. And I want to give people actionable things that they can think about. So this is what’s really important. This is a bioenergetic road map to health. This is what we call the zone of prevention. It’s very hard to get cancer or chronic diseases when you’re in these zones. So let’s talk about that. So this is super interesting to me. My team given me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe. And some of you have told us according to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you’ve hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We’re approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you’ve hit it. Only thing I’ll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. I’ve stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the Dio, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let’s get on with the show.

Professor Thomas Seaff Freed, what is it that you’ve committed your life to doing, Thomas? Well, we’re right now committed our lives to managing cancer effectively uh without toxicity which is based on based on the science that I and other others have done in this field. You have a perspective on treating cancer and other metabolic diseases that others don’t have. the mainstream should I say. Oh yeah. Well, mainstream doesn’t have it for sure. But it’s based on science. I mean I’m my work is based on what Otto Werberg the famous German scientist said from the 1920s30s and 40s. He clearly showed that cancer was a mitochondrial metabolic disease. What does that mean mitochondrial metabolic disease? Okay. It means that the origin of the disease resides in the organel called the mitochondrian. It’s it’s in the cytoplasm of the cell. It used to be called still is the the powerhouse of the cell. Gives the cell the energy. I think we have a mitochondria. Could one of my team bring in a mitochondria? Well, this is you have a a mitochondria here. Oh, here we go. You got one each here. Yeah. Well, see this is the little organel that you see. It looks like a bean shape, but it’s actually a tubular network. These are tubes and they respond dynamically inside the cell to uh both internal uh activities as well as external activities. So you have to realize that at the time of conception uh all of the mitochondria for the developing embryo are in the cytoplasm from the mother. The cytoplasm the mitochondria are not in the nucleus. They’re in the cytool. outside of the outside of the nuke but in the cell body itself. So all of the mitochondria they determine our destiny. They will determine how long you will live on the planet if if you don’t have an unfortunate accident or something like this. They have an expiration date. Different species die at different times. You don’t find people living 400 years. Mice live about 2 and a half years. Elephants live, you know, as long as we do or whatever. But that’s all determined by this organel. So you can see I have wrinkles and this kind of thing. This is from living on the planet and this is from wear and tear on this organel which allows us to make energy efficiently. So when this organel starts to falter with age uh you die you die from old age. This organel has to be protected and respected if you would like to live a normal lifespan. But in diets and lifestyles and way we are today we we we damage this organel and this organel then can present itself damage to this organel which is a tubular network inside the cell. But let me say something else. It not only controls the internal environment of the cell. It also controls the neighboring cells. The liver neighborhood, the lung neighborhood, the colon neighborhood, the brain neighborhood, the gleal neighborhood, the neuron neighborhood. But they’re all come from the same origin. in that cytoplasm and they determine the overall metabolic health of your body. It’s a systemic they communicate uh with each other across cells across tissues. I’ll tell you this organel controls a lot of what goes what that nucleus does. It tells the cell when to divide. It tells the cell when to slow down. It’s kind of like a brain but also like an engine room. It’s kind of like that. Certainly. Certainly the brain part of it is really mysterious uh in the sense of of how it controls the destiny of the cell in the body. So sickness sickness disease cancer what do we know about the role that this little thing plays in these chronic diseases and illnesses and cancers that so many people suffer with? Yeah. Well, this is the organel that becomes damaged. Um and it can be damaged in many many different ways. uh for cancer is what we have spent a lot of our time on and now we’ve moved into the whole chronic disease issue because each each chronic disease can have different manifestations of ill health to the mitochondria in a particular population of cells. But in the case of cancer which is what we call the most serious of the chronic diseases creating the most trauma uh the most emotional distress but we have clearly shown based on on many many works that any multiple things from our environment can damage this organel in a particular population of cells in a particular organ. For example, when you talk about carcinogens, it’s a chemical that causes cancer. How does that chemical cause cancer? It damages the proteins and the lipids. These little squiggles are delicate internal membranes. They they contain the proteins and the lipids that allows us to generate energy when we breathe. Okay, you’re breathing. I’m breathing. I take in oxygen. Oxygen serves as a kind a a final acceptor for electrons that allows ATP uh to come out of this little and don’t forget it’s a tubular network and ATP is the energy currency. It’s the chemical energy currency. It allows us to enzymes to work allow allows all the metabolic machinery inside of a cell to work optimally. So just to play this back to you so I know I’m clear. Oxygen comes in because I breathe in. I then eat food in in that mitochondria. It does a process and it spits out ATP as the energy. Well, and and the waste products of a good energy metabolism would be CO2 and water. So, when we burn gasoline in an engine of a car, we break down the octane, the carbon hydrogen bonds in an octane and and we have an internal explosion that drives pistons. Okay? The exhaust is a lot of waste products uh from breaking down the minor that we’re doing the same thing inside the cell. are combusting carbon hydrogen bonds and that combustion of carbon hydrogen bonds is a graded process. So it’s not an immediate explosion. It’s a it’s a you’re you’re breaking down the carbon hydrogen bonds in a very precise way producing ATP which then drives the entire machinery of the neurons and the rest of the body. It can respond dramatically to energetic stress, emotional stress. Anyway, I gave you an example of a carcinogen uh intermittent hypoxia like people who have sleep apnea, they stop breathing for 30 seconds or more in that general and then they that creates rust RO and that’s what carcinogens do ROS. These are called reactive oxygen species. They damage those delicate membranes and then what happens if it’s too acute, too stressful, the whole cell will die. the cell loses its energy and we get uh apoptosis or necrosis cell death. But if it’s gradual chronic over years, months, years, this organel loses its ability to produce sufficient energy. But the the cell compensates interestingly enough by using these ancient pathways, heirlooms of our evolutionary past. So um because all life on the planet evolved in in oxygen but without oxygen in the dark uh these cells grew like crazy. There was no they were single cells. They unbridled proliferation and all this kind of stuff. They didn’t have mitochondria. They had bacteria and the bacteria which this organel came from was a fusion between one cell uh that had a nucleus and and was was fermenting through the cytoplasm and this bacteria which is the mitochondria came in and now you have two different forms of energy. You have um the energy in the cytoplasm, the ancient fermentation, and then you have this new form which can take in oxygen and generate energy much much more efficiently than the airlumic. Listen, one of our big discoveries if you can believe it. But you see that space in the middle there? Yeah, that’s called the matrix and that’s where the KB cycle, the TCA cycle, which breaks down the food that we eat. But they have an ancient part of a fermentation mechanism inside because before oxygen came every all life forms were fermenttors. They they produced energy without oxygen because there was no oxygen. We had to wait for those bacteria to make oxygen through a photosynthetic process. But all organisms were fermenttors in the beginning after this organel came in and was able to take in oxygen make energy really really quick. But in that matrix they have a uh in the cycle there’s a little pathway there that makes energy without oxygen from the evolutionary past. So we have it in the cytoplasm of the cell because they can use they can ferment in the cytoplasm. But this organ that our big discovery with the work of of Christoopols from semlice university he’s the world leader on that little pathway. When this organel becomes impaired, these ancient pathways of energy through fermentation arise. Okay, they they try to replace the lost energy from the efficiency of this organel. That space starts throwing out ATP from glutamine. It’s another fermentation fuel and and it’s making it’s making ancient energy in the sophisticated organel that was that was that that evolved to make efficient energy. So let me let me tell you. So you get you ask me what about damaging this organel and what happens if the damage to oxidative phosphorilation what does that mean which means energy through oxygen is too acute the cell will die cyanide is a a perfect example of this. You take a mouse or a rat or a person and you drink Kool-Aid, the cyanide laced Kool-Aid, you die because what happens is that cyanide binds to the protein that’s going to um um use oxygen for energy and the whole system shuts down. Suffocates you basically. Yeah. You die in instantly. Um and there are other things that can kill uh can kill uh quickly aid and a variety of other chemicals but for chronic diseases it’s usually u not an acute stress on this organel it’s a it’s a chronic stress and in cancer what happens in a particular tissue whether it’s bone lung bladder brain they gradually compensate with these ancient fermentation pathways so so this thing this organel cell signals to the nucleus I’m suffocate I’m not getting enough energy. Um so the nucleus turns on the transporters on the surface of the cell to bring in fuels that will elevate energy through what we call uh oxygen independent mechanisms. This is an oxygen dependent organel. This gets most of its energy because we breathe, all of our cells are using oxygen. And the CO2 that we’re blowing out and the water that will be collected in the form of urine when you might put uh other waste products in there, that’s efficient metabolic homeostasis. This organel makes not only the cell but the whole body in a state of of metabolic homeostasis where all systems are working at optimal efficiency. But with chronic disruption, uh, smoking, uh, lack of exercise, you can go right down the list of all of the different things that can elicit cancer, any kind of carcinogens, microplastics, forever chemicals, uh, uh, uh, glyphosate, and any of these kinds of things that would chronically damage uh, the ability of this organel to produce energy. Viruses, ankcoenic viruses, inflammation. you have chronic inflammation. Any of those things damage this the sophisticated ability of this organel to produce sufficient energy. That’s why that’s why um uh the ankcogenic paradox which we solved. What’s the ankcogenic paradox? That was the paradox that was first put out by Albert St. Gorgi Hungarian uh scientist who received the Nobel Prize I think for vitamin C. He said he said he was very interested in cancer and living systems. He said there’s a paradox. He said we know multiple things in the environment can elicit cancer. We’ve identified these ankcogenic viruses, chronic inflammation, carcinogens, intermittent hypoxia, rare rare germline mutations. He said we don’t understand the common pathophysiological mechanism by which any of those provocative agents would elicit disregulated cell growth which is cancer. When you talk about cancer, what do people say what is cancer? It’s cell division out of control. It’s disregulated cell growth. This organel determines when cells should divide and when they should not divide. It regulates the destiny of the cell. So what happens when this organel becomes chronically impaired? It falls back on these ancient pathways, these or or these or um uh pathways that existed before oxygen came into the environment where all the cells were disregulated in the growth because they didn’t have this regulatory system which is the mitochondria coming from a from a bacteria. So let me play that back to you in a way just so I you know make sure I understand. I I know it can be kind of deep. Okay. So in this mitochondria here that I have in front of me, there is an ancient um because this came from the bacteria a fusion of bacteras a long long time ago. Old bacteria about several billion years ago used to be very selfish and just think about itself. It used to grow on its own and didn’t communicate with anybody. Had its own way of growing and multiplying that was really not um in cohesion with anything else. That is still in there somewhere. And although now in its modern form because there’s been that fusion it grows thinking about the wider organism um when it becomes damaged it falls back on that old selfish way of growing and sometime and that’s kind of what can cause cancers. So if you if there’s stresses on this which could be all of the car carogenic things you described then sometimes this falls back on that prehistoric selfish way of growing where it doesn’t think about the wider organism. It’s close um um in the sense of thinking we don’t know about that we just know the consequences of what happens when it falls back on those ancient pathways. Now here’s the situation. People knew from Otto Warberg said cancer is a energy problem in the cell. This why would the cells start to ferment and produce a massive amount of fermentation waste product which is lactic acid. Even in the presence of oxygen, 100% oxygen, they’re still fermenting. Why? That shouldn’t happen. Uh when you and I hold our breath or have a heart attack, let me tell you something. This is really remarkable and this is another piece of information that got us on this whole thing. When people have heart attacks, uh they stop breathing, the heart seizes, okay, the bloodstream immediately fills with these fermentation waste products which are lactic acid and the other one which we now know is suinic acid. Okay. Wow. These two waste products. Now, if you don’t start breathing in a short period of time, you’re going to be dead. Mhm. And you and what you die because the neurons in your brain cannot sustain this kind of fermentation energy for very long. As soon as you the heart you you give them cardiac massage and whatever the guy’s heart starts beating again. The lack the waste products of lactic acid and suinic acid go away. They disappear because you’re breathing now. You don’t need to ferment when you have oxygen in the environment. And it’s and the mitochondria can can utilize the oxygen in the environment. cancer cells to Warberg said it’s the weirdest thing. These cancer cells um continue to ferment even in 100% of oxygen. Why are they doing that? And he speculated that this organel was damaged. Irre irreversible damage to the organel happened in these cancer cells. He didn’t have an electron microscope at the time. He didn’t have the sophisticated tools that we have today. So he projected that all on biochemistry at that time. He was a biochemist and he said you don’t should not produce fermentation if you have oxygen should shut that off and these guys should return to a normal metabolic homeostasis. And he said that’s because there’s something irreplace irre irreversibly damaged in this organel. So a lot of people attacked him and they said oh we don’t have any evidence for that. Here’s the beautiful thing. Some cancer cells continue to take in oxygen and make ATP. Therefore Warberg must be wrong. Uhhuh. We showed that that we showed the cancer cell takes in oxygen, but it’s not making energy through ATP in any great amount. It’s using it for ROS react these radicals that further damage and cause the DNA mutations that everybody is chasing. It’s all downstream effects of damage. So what does this what does this mean in simple terms? Because I’m aware a lot of my Well, it means I say, okay, so so I have disregulated cell growth. That’s ultimately what the problem we’re dealing with. We can’t control how these cells are dividing. We’re throwing all kinds of crazy stuff at them. Trying to poison or radiate surgically remove them. We’re trying to do everything to stop this disregulated cell growth. Mhm. So when we look at this organel under the micro under the electron microscope, we find these cry are often missing. You have what they call ghost mitochondria. You got the shell but nothing inside or if they’re inside, they’re all deformed. So we know there’s a foundational principle in biology. Structure determines function. If the structure is abnormal, the function will be abnormal. This is known to all biologists except oncologists. They don’t seem to understand it. What’s an oncologist? Those are the people who study cancer. So, what are you then? I’m a biologist. You’re a biologist. Yeah. I mean, when we know that if the organel is damaged, you’re not going to be able to produce energy efficiently by oxidative phosphorilation. Okay. I think you’re a bit further down the road, Thomas, than a lot of my viewers are. for me hearing that there’s this energy engine in my cells that and there’s trillions of them or billions of them and they also communicate with each other and when this becomes stressed or hurt or damaged because of lifestyle choices that I make energy production and inefficiency will change and that could cause this to die or malfunction in some way that is for me I go I’ve got it okay that’s a major step forward now we build upon that yes now we build upon that. Okay. So, so here’s the situation. We’ve discussed cancer cells. All of them that we have ever looked at have defects in the number, structure, and function of that organel. Okay. I have looked at I published that big paper where I spent uh over a year of my time going through the ancient the well the early electron microscopy literature. Warberg didn’t have that opportunity because that technology was not there for him. So he speculated that based on the biochemistry but I went back and I looked at these um electron microraphs of mitochondria in various cancers and they’re all damaged. There is few of them that risk Christ are gone. I work with some of the best like Aris Aris Mendy Marillo uh who is a world leader in beautiful electron microscopy of of cancer cells and you can see and and all the damage uh under his magnificently beautiful and one we have a couple of papers but let me tell you something else Stephen in the cytoplasm these organels are also in contact with other cellular membranes like the endopplasmic reticulum there’s a lot of we call organels inside a cell you have the nucleus you have the mitochondrian you you you have lossomes. There’s intimate contacts between some of the other membranes, mitochondrial associated membranes we see and they’re also abnormal when you look at them under the electron microscope. The ones it’s talking to are abnormal. Yeah. The ones you can see the the mitochondria are abnormal and the membranes that contact them are abnormal. And that intimate contact uh I’ll get into the calcium signaling a little bit later which controls the destiny of the cell. Why the cell is growing out of control? Well, first of all, it’s fermenting. Okay, that means it’s getting energy from sources other than oxidative phosphorilation. You can take a cancer cell and and treat it with cyanide or aid or in absence of and it’s still living. It’s still growing because it’s not using the oxygen pump. They’re not using the oxy falling back on on on oxygen independent mechanisms which are called fermentation. So I understand that to be that there’s a malfunction in a mitochondria which means that it no longer uses its oxygen pathway necessarily as sufficiently as it should. There’s always some residual level and it finds another way to make the energy which is how it survives. Yes. And then it stops communicating with the rest of the cell. Well, it actually communicates with the nucleus to open up the floodgates to bring in the fuels that drive this fermentation energy. It gets more and more greedy. It it has to because you’re you’re taking an organel that produces energy highly efficiently. Okay. Um like 34 to 36 ATPs with oxygen with oxygen. And now you’re you’re trying to replace that with fuels that give you two uh two moles of energy. Uh so it’s inefficient very and then and then you get you get two out of the in so you’re getting four. So you you you have to take in in order to make up the efficiency you must have a tremendous logistic you must have tremendous supply of of the fuels that will give us energy which are glucose the sugar and the amino acid glutamine okay okay our bodies are loaded with glutamine that’s the most abundant amino acid in our bloodstream and evolution provided that for us because if we stop breathing we use that fuel to keep the cells alive we our gut is controlled by glutamine Our immune system uses glutamine. What is glutamine? It’s an amino acid. Okay. Which we make from food. Yeah. Which we can make from food. True. Or they call essential and non-essential amino acids. Essentials are from that we must eat. We must have certain foods that provide these. Glutamine is considered a non-essential amino acid. It’s an essential amino acid biochemically called non-essential because we can make it from sugar. But basically, it’s the most abundant amino acid in our body. I think I get it now. Okay, feed me back. Tell me, let me let me test you. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you’re already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you’re not yet. And if you’re not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you’re someone that watches our show, but you haven’t yet hit that button. Thank you so much. When we fall, the mitochondria falls to that prehistoric pathway where it starts making energy in a really really inefficient way without using oxygen in the same way. It starts relying now on glucose and glutamine um to produce that energy which is a much less efficient source of energy. So it gets a bit more greedy. It needs much more to make the same amount of ATP which is energy. Mh. So these a cancer cell can be very very greedy. It’s not responding to oxygen in the same way and they they’re a bit more selfish. they start they start sort of multiplying without thought of the broader organization. Yes. Yes. So the question I have is how does this happen functioning of the my what is it that I’ve done? You know what I ask question? Okay. Well, I Okay. It’s because children can get these cancers or a 90-year-old can get the cancer. And it doesn’t appear to me that a three-year-old has necessarily made life choices yet that can as I said when you consider forever chemicals uh that are in the environment uh things that we have that we use in our technologically advanced societies can get through the placental wall and get these into the ch into these children’s uh organs. Um you know you have to put it together. We usually it’s a a constellation of things because don’t forget I said carcinogens. Some of these carcinogens are fat soluble. Some of these carcinogens can get in and damage those during early stages of development. People always say how you explain brain cancer in in a in a six-month old baby. Okay. What what did he what what he he wasn’t smoking and drinking and partying all the time, but but his the mitochondria and a population of cells in his brain became damaged. And that damage then led to this disregulated cell growth because the organel controls when cells should divide and not divide. And then and then where’s the energy coming from? How do you how do you take a highly sophisticated piece of an organel and making energy so incredibly efficient? And now we’re using energy. So uh this organel signals to the nucleus called mitochondrial stress respon retrograde signaling. The nucleus acts as a respondent to what this organel wants. So the nucleus then ankco genes which that you’ve heard a lot about. They open the floodgates to bring in the glucose and glutamine that allow the cell to grow in a disregulated way. So we’ve as you said they go back to these ancient fermentation pathways where there was no regulation because this organel was not part of the problem. Part of the situation the regulation. So is there what are the lifestyle factors that are causing this to drastically increasing the probability of this happening. It’s not necessarily what the person did or all cases it’s what the person was exposed to uh that could have elicited this. That’s the ankcoenic paradox. So uh we have shown uh that inflammation produces these cytoines when you have an inflammatory heat in inflammation they they damage the ability of this organel to make energy efficiently. Chronic inflammation is known to be a risk factor for cancer. Chronic inflammation intermittent hypoxia carcinogens. What’s intermittent hypoxia? It’s like the sleep apnea that kind of thing. Warberg had clearly shown that intermittent hypoxia on cells would damage the efficiency of oxidative phosphorilation leading to a compensatory fermentation. So you have to compensate cuz let me tell you if you don’t compensate you’re dead. The cell I mean the cell dies. When we look at the populations around the world that have the most prevalence of cancer, it doesn’t appear to be some of the countries like Nijer, Gambia, Nepal consistently rank at the very bottom for cancer cancer incidents. Conversely, high-income countries like Australia, New Zealand, and the United States have the highest rates of cancer. Why is that? It’s because of our um technology. Uh we are still paleolithic man and uh our biology has allowed us to store energy efficiently uh because of times of famine. We are now in a new environment where we have massive amounts of highly processed carbohydrates, inactivity, emotional stress, we have poor sleep habits. You you pile all those together with availab the exposure to carcinogens and whatever and you chronically damage this organel and uh in some organs you can get breast cancer if it’s a lung if it’s a whatever it is that organel becomes chronically damaged in some populations of cells in a particular uh in a particular organ and and you can elicit disregulated cell growth as the result of that you know what I mind is in in that in the paper that we have with the chart. Uh if you can keep your mitochondria healthy because don’t forget Paleolithic man, our ancestors from 500,000 years ago uh or modern men like you said in these countries living according to traditional ways with minimal in interference from modern diet and lifestyle issues have lower amount of cancer in general. And this is what Albert Schweitzer found the the famous humanitarian physician. He was specifically looking for cancer in African tribes and he said remarkably it’s extremely low. What what are these guys doing where western society has a has a lot of cancer and these Africans have living living according to the traditional ways. So they have a lot of exercise. They’re eating all organic foods. Uh they’re not under the same kind of stress or exposure to chemicals that modern societies have. and you find out you have very low cancer. Like for example, uh dogs are all evolved from the wolf. Uh wolves in the wild rarely have cancer. The domestic dog cancer is the number one killer of the domestic dog. What is the dog doing that the wolf the wolf is out running around eating natural foods. The dog the dog is in an apartment somewhere gets a dog walker once a day, right? And the next thing the dog dog is obese and full of cancer. So it all it all comes down to what what you do to maintain the health and vitality of the mitochondria that reduce the risk and that’s what this chart I’ll show you has reduce the risk of damaging this chronically. Okay. So that can explain in large part why modern societies are struggling with chronic diseases not only cancer we have diet type 2 diabetes we have obesity we high blood pressure we we have a whole even neuroscychiatric problems. If you can protect and keep this organel healthy, you reduce risk. Now people say, well, cancer has to be genetic because we have inherited genes that put us at higher risk like the Bracka one for breast cancer and the leaf ramen for variety of other cancers. Our paper in this pile done by Bob Kaplan uh he went through uh and looked at all the genetic risk. Which paper is it? Um it’s one of the ones published in oncology. But none of these mutations are 100% penetrant, meaning that they’re secondary risk factors. A primary risk factor would be every time that mutation is there, 100% of the people because I work in t-ax disease. I work in inborn eras of metabolism. Those mutations are 100% responsible for that condition. There’s no gene mutation that’s 100% pen. You have that gene, you’re going to 100% get cancer. Uh most of them are are uh um are what they call incompletely penetrint. So what does that tell us about the nature of well it tell and then we went back what Bob did is he went back and he looked at what every one of those gene mutations in some way disturbs the efficiency of oxidative phosphorilation in that organel in the mitochondria in the mitochondria we we looked at we have all the evidence all the risk facet just just the front page there I was going to show you the hard data but you got so anyway that all of them damage this the efficiency of energy through through through this organel. So that’s like carcinogens that’s like um viral infections. The viruses that like hepatoma and papilloma they they their their products will go in here and damage it or they will replicate inside this organel screwing up the efficiency causing a compensatory fermentation causing the disregulated cell growth through abnormal calcium signaling causing cells to no longer uh be responsive to their neighbors. Is that clear? If I can make you understand this, we can make everybody understand this. Yeah. So, the the reason I uh spend a lot of time asking why and asking for clarification is because when I do the show, I then go out into the real world and I meet the people that listen. Yeah. And one of the groups of people that listens are young offenders. And when I went and visited them, I pointed at the episodes that I thought would help them. And a young one of the young offenders said to me, “I can’t listen to that episode cuz the words you used were too big.” And I remember thinking to myself, okay, then I get that all the time, but guess what? Now we have AI and you can take this statements and put it into AI right on the and it’ll it’ll it’ll dumb it down for you. So so that’s a tool that we previously did not have. So so I use that all the time. I said when you hear me speak like this don’t think I’m don’t think I’m just I I I these are the terms that we use when you’re part of the academy. Yeah. Okay. But we can take those terms now and AI can do a wonderful job in in in synthesizing. Oh yeah, I know what he’s talking about now. But without that tool, then it becomes like you said, well, I can’t understand anything. I’ve got 60 seconds and I’m going to show you how much I can get done because of our sponsor called Whisper Flow. And for those of you that don’t know what it is, it’s a business I invested in that turns your speech into text in any app or device. I’m going to post into our Slack channel, which rewards whichever team member conducted the most experiments this week. Hi everyone, here is this week’s experimentter of the week. Congratulations to the Dire of SEO trailer team, which is Aunt, Liv, Dom, and Cam. You guys have won. Okay, now I’m going to open Gmail. So, here is one of our founders on an email chain that I want to connect my team with. All I have to say is add my team’s emails, and Whisper will do exactly that. 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Big opportunity. I am not kidding. Give it a try. I really want to just make sure I takeick off the box of um cause factors. So, you mentioned stress, you mentioned sleep. I currently don’t have cancer as far as I’m aware. God forbid. Um, but I but I want to do everything I can to prevent the probability. Yeah. And I from what I’ve understood that means protecting my mitochondrial function. Yes. By living a lifestyle where I’m not creating this sort of like crazy oxidative stress on the mitochondria. Right. So what? Give me a prescription of how I should live my life to keep my mitochondria healthy. Well, that’s why we developed the glucose ke ketone index calculator. first biomarket tool that can allow people to know the level of health of their mitochondria because um when you shift from carbohydrate fuel to lip lipid fuel, what’s lipid fuel? Fat. So ketones, ketones are a water- soluble breakdown product of fatty acids. Okay. So we store atapost tissue. We store fat which is the belly fat all over. We have fat on our on the outside. Yeah. So on the outside that was there because as a species we had to survive in most harsh environments and we were um food was not always there. So we had to survive all kinds of famine all kinds of absence of food. Our bodies are so our it’s a machine that was home over millions of years to be super efficient. So glucose is gold sugar. Okay. You either burn it or you can store it as fat. Okay, that’s that’s the key. But when you have you’re not bringing in sugar, that stored fat now moves into the bloodstream, goes to the liver. It’s like taking a branch and putting it in a chopper and you out come these little soluble ketone bodies. They’re breakdown products of longchain fatty acids. They can replace sugar for the brain, for the muscles, for most other cells in the body except ariththraittes, but they can replace they can replace the energy of glucose. Okay? So, uh, and that’s how we evolved. But we’re now in an environment where we have massive amounts of highly processed carbohydrates and we we don’t want to pee them out unless you have diabetes or something. So, we store them as fat. So we have an obesity epidemic as the result of our evolutionary ability to store energy which kept us alive as a species because if we were unable to store the fat in 500,000 we would have all been extinct. You and I at this conversation would never exist. We would never have existed as a species except for our ability to store energy and we burn energy efficiently in these organels. So this is all very highly efficient machine. So when we lose that ability, uh when we have so much energy in the environment, stress, no exercise, all this, we store more and more fat, we produce an an environment that’s very damaging to this organal. Well, say that again. So how does stress impact that? Stress elevates corticosteroids. When you’re under stress, you get into a fight, into an argument, or you’re stressed out by business deal going bad, whatever. uh cortosteroids elevate elevate blood sugar contributing to uh systemic inflammation. It’s okay for a short period of time to be pissed off at something. But it’s the chronic stress, the chronic like looking at the cell phone, doom scrolling, all this kind of crazy stuff while the big Twinkie doom scrolling Twinkies not moving. All of this creates uh stress on this organel in some population of cells. It makes it work harder. It’s damaging because you produce reactive species that damage the efficiency of this organel to produce energy effectively and that either will kill the cell gradually if it can’t comp use compensatory fermentation or predispose you to cancer. So either way is unhealthy. So we have chronic disease. Cancer is the number one big dog in the chronic disease world. I mean it’s the one that people fear the most. um type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, you know, dementia, uh all of these are part of damage to this organel in one way or another. And like I as I said for Parkinson’s disease, when that organel gets damaged, the cells of the substantia die they are incapable of compensating with fermentation. So they up and die. Cancer is very rare in neurons of the brain. Neurons, the gal cells of the brain form these brain tumors mostly. But neurons can’t compensate with fermentation. So they die. So you you either get comp compensatory ancient fermentation leading to disregulated cell growth which we call cancer or we get cell death leading to chronic diseases. What about sleep then? What’s going on with sleep that’s causing sleep is a way we can restore the energy efficiency of the mitochondria if we’re well slept. If we have good sleep. Yeah. You know everybody feels good when you have a good night’s sleep. Your body feels rejuvenated because you’re not you’re not stressing out. you’re reducing the ability of this organel to manage the the the the metabolic uh environment. uh if you’re up all night and you’re and you’re like stressed out and you’re never given this uh organel in a particular cell in a particular part of the organ of the body, you know, you you get neurossychiatric problems, you can get digestive problems, you can get cancer, you can get type 2 diabetes, you have a whole and we put it in the paper there, all the different stress, all the different things that can chronically uh or acutely damage oxidative phosphorilation. So sleep basically gives the mitochondria a little bit of a break. Yes. It’s a it’s it gives your whole body a break. Let’s be honest. So, so but you you pile those things on together. Lack of exercise. Our ancestors, what do you think our ances you how hard it is to run down and kill a big buffalo or a woolly mammoth? I mean, you’re you’re exhausted after doing something. As a matter of fact, you chase these animals. Uh you separate. And this is another thing was really interesting. Came out of Israel. I think it was last year. They looked at the cavemen, what they were eating. they were eating the the strongest members of the herd uh leading to the indirect extinction of these animals. They found out that if you can eat the strongest member of the herd, you’ll get the vitality of that uh of that or buffalo or elephant or whatever the hell they were eating because they knew the marrow and the and the the physiology of that of that organism at that point in its life could provide you with the strength that that had. Now, when you eat the strongest members of the herd because you want to be tough, you’re putting the old and the young at vulnerable to predators leading to the extinction. Uh, and this is what a big paper came out of out of uh, Israel. They looked at these cavemen, what they were eating like 500,000 years ago or whatever we’re doing. So, humans indirectly caused extinction of other species in part in not in part because they were eating the toughest guys in the herd. So, because they felt that if I eat those guys, I’m going to be strong, too. And in a way, they’re right. But all of it has to do with the energy efficiency of your muscles, your brain, your ability to be resilient, endurance. I’m telling you, these guys were chiseled. They they weren’t dying from type 2 diabetes, cancer, right? Dementia. They were dying from infections and injuries and child mortality. Uh we’re mostly killing our paleolithic ancestors. But when you bring your body back into a low glucose ketone, you’re actually going back like you were. And this is why we developed the glucose ketone index. What is in that envelope in front of you? Well, this is um it’s a paper that’s under embargo because they they think it’s going to be the world thinks it’s going to be very important and um and it is. So, and what it is, this is a um a way to keep that organel healthy. So this is a way to manage uh um energy efficiency in the body. And this hasn’t been released yet. It hasn’t been released. Okay. It’s coming out. It’s a it’s going to be a lead article in the frontiers in science. And not only that, we the paper the paper was written uh for the scientists and then the journal decided to make a second copy for they call young minds. So letting kids that are like 8 to 12 or 14 years old synthesize it down and and and one of my colleagues said that’s probably what most people will be reading because they don’t want to know about the bioenergetics that actually goes on inside this organel to explain why this chart means something. And you’ve been working on this for some time. Well, I I I built the GKI. So let me tell you the story. There was a woman uh an American woman a lawyer Trudy Dupant who uh developed um a kind of a brain stem tumor and after I wrote my book that book there that’s my only book anyway Trudy Trudy wanted to use this metabolic therapy she stayed alive much longer over 10 years with this we kept the she eventually passed away unfortunately but so I was measuring because we knew that the tumor cells needed sugar to grow out of Worberg showed at and many other people show that and they can’t burn ketones because because the fatty you need a very efficient mitochondria to burn ketones for energy. Our normal cells can burn ketones for energy and that gives us tremendous uh uh we can actually breathe lower oxygen more energy if you have efficient if you can burn ketones efficiently in this organel. But if the organel is damaged, they can’t use the ketones. They can’t burn fatty acids or ketones, which stores lipid drops. It’s one of these big papers here. These Stephen, you can’t believe how people misinterpret information. They see droplets of fatty acids in the cytoplan say, you see the cancer cell needs all that fatty acid. No, they can’t. It’s there to protect them. If they try to burn it, they blow this up and die. So there is a storage of fat. They can’t burn fatty acids or ketone bodies. So, I knew cancer needed glucose, and I knew cancer couldn’t burn fatty acids or ketones because this organel is just is broken. So, I’m measuring glucose and ketones independently in Trudy. She’s doing the finger prick thing, sending me the information back and saying, “Oh, here’s my glucose. Here’s my ketones.” Okay, so I have a a ketone glucose reader in front of me. Right. Right. If I put my blood on this strip, it tells me my glucose levels. If I put my blood on this strip, it tells me my ketone levels. Right. Right. But if you if you look at them independently, glucose is very volatile, very variable. And this is why I developed the glucose ketone ratio because Trudy had a parking spot that was for handicapped because she had a cane. Her brain stem gloma was preventing her from walking as effectively as normal. So she somebody took her parking spot. She was [ __ ] So she ran upstairs and took her blood sugar and it was 186 milligram per deciliter. It was very very high. So and I know she was on a ke ketoic diet and and she emails me and says I’m going to die. My cancer is going to grow fast. What’s going on? She said my blood sugar is like 186 and you know it’s supposed to be you told me it was supposed to be 60 or you know 50 65 or in that zone. She says so I said what’s your ketone level? Oh, it’s still, you know, like you just had 04 millmer or I think it was 0.9 millmer. I said, well, that didn’t change, right? No, just the sugar changed. So, I said to the students that were working with Josh Midenbower, I said, Josh, this this trying to measure these two independently is a [ __ ] You can’t this is hard to figure out. So, what we decided to do in miller because glucose comes out in milligram per deciliter, whereas ketones come out in millolar. So we had to convert glucose to millolar and divide it by the ketone in millimmer and then you get a number that’s not all over the world. It’s very stable. So so we were able to because of Trudy that one cancer patient we developed the ratio of of this. Then later on we realized that this ratio is a statement of how healthy your mitochondria actually are. So when you when you have these low ratio you’re in paleolithic man. you’re back in the zone where we didn’t have chronic diseases because we didn’t have damage to the organel that would cause those diseases. So, paleolithic man think where they getting their pastries where where they get their cakes and sweets and all this other they didn’t have it. They weren’t there because of of choice. They were there because of circumstance. So, our new and we learned paleolithic man was always in some sort of a state of some ketosis because they wouldn’t have food for periods. they were very active in their exercise. They had they didn’t have chronic diseases, but they had other kinds of diseases. So, so then um my my my my student um uh Derek Lee, myself and Christo Shinopoulos, we started to make a ratio chart. Now, these are the numbers that you get when you divide your sugar by your ketones. Okay? So, my sugar by my ketones. So, if I did my glucose measure now on this little re Okay, let’s see what your GKI is. Oh, you want me to do it? Okay. Okay. What? You had a glucose. You had a a ketone was 0.4 millmer. Yeah. Okay. What was your sugar? I have. So, we can divide. We can do the divi division right now and tell you what you have. You can get these little uh ketones. Oh, yeah. It’s a keto mojo. And you can also get them now for for uh Wow, these guys skilled at doing this. I travel with one of these, believe it or not. Yeah. So, I I have one all the time. Wow. 90. 90. Okay. So, you have to you have to divide. You have to divide. You’re not getting the Doesn’t this give you the push button and give you the GKI right away? Cuz the new ones have it. So, you have to divide 90 by 18 and you get a number. Uh, five. Five. So, divide five by 0.4. 12.5. Okay. So, here you are. 12.5. You’re down here in the in the in the prevention zone. Ah, nice. Okay. So, so you This is where Paleolithic man mostly lived. Paleolithic men lived in the yellow green zones because they didn’t have access to all of the things that would drive up your blue blood sugar and keep your key when your blood sugar goes through the roof, your ketones are really low because insulin is now driving it up. So So that’s good. Um 12, huh? So I I did the I did the carnivore diet for a week. Uh eating big ribe eyes. You like ribeye steak? Yes, of course. Okay. Ribe eyes, bacon and eggs, lamb. I I so I did it for a week and um I was able to get down to 10. Okay. Okay. And I could get lower, but I was loving the ribeye so much I ate a little too much of it. Right. You have to be have some level of discipline. Yeah. So, uh so so but people people this is what we call the zone of prevention. It’s very hard to get cancer or chronic diseases when you’re in these zones because you’re keeping this organel quite healthy. When you live in these zones consistently, you you don’t have to live consistently because humans, we we evolved as a scavenger species. Yeah. We would engorgorge ourselves because we knew it wasn’t happening every day. Modern man is live is living in the feast every single day. And that’s why we’re are we we’re have an out all the chronic diseases. This is the red zone is the zone of risk for chronic diseases and cancer. And when you look at the obesity epidemic, you look at all these things, these guys are and it’s it’s like we can visit the red zone. We don’t want to live in the red zone. So if I was to visit the red zone, it would look like meeting high carbohydrate diets, lots of sugar. Yeah. No exercise. No exercise. Yeah. And basically modern man. And also eating five meals a day, like snacking all the time. Yeah. Oh, then you’d be, you know, we have uh there’s document cases. We have them up to 500. You can get PKIs of 500. You have people with, you know, blood sugars about 4 or 500 milligram per deciliter. I mean, you could do the and zero ketones. I mean, you you do the you do the math. It’s it’s unbelievable. You’re basically saying, I want to keep my my blood glucose levels and you want to you want to have some level of ketones and high and my ketone levels somewhat as high as I can. Well, it’s you don’t want to go because people have the physicians listening. They go, “Oh, he’s going to go into keto acidosis.” People give me a break. Keto acidosis is like when you have ketone levels of 15 to 20 millmer. Are you kidding me? What is yours? 0.4. That’s called nutritional ketosis. That’s how we evolved. When you have type 1 diabetes where you can’t control sugar or or or insulin, you have no insulin responsive. You’re going to get high levels of sugar and ketones. This is this is a pathological condition. Most of type 2 diabetes, these are all pathologies based on damaging oxidative phosphorilation. So what this chart does is for the first time and we put it together because we did all the B in the paper discusses the bioenergetics. What we’re finding in cancer is that if you can get into the green zones where your blood sugar is low and your ketones are elevated, you hammer the hell out of these tumor cells because they they they you’re taking away one of their two primary fuels driving disregulated cell growth. Okay? And as the and as the and as the ketones go up, the rest of your cells in the body are getting super healthy. The tumor cells can’t tap into the value of a ketone because the organel needed in the tumor cell to do that is corrupted structurally and functionally. Is am I clear about that? Yes. Okay. So ketones will make you healthy, the normal cells of your body, but cannot be used to help the cancer cell because you need a good structural functional organel to burn them. So they become marginalized and if the ketones go up, they’re actually toxic to that to that cell to some extent. So but they’re still alive. Uh the cancer cells are now incapacitated. there. Uh we we showed you get rid of the abnormal inflammation, you get rid of the angiogen, the abnormal blood vessels. You’re taking an angry tumor and making it much less angry, much less inflamed, uh uh more indolent uh kind of a tumor, but it’s still there. It’s not because the other fuel that’s keeping this cancer cell going is the glutamine. Okay. So now when you have the patient in this green zone, this is for management. Now, Stephen, this is prevention is is never having to deal with what I’m talking about. If you’re living in the yellow zone, the probability of getting cancer or chronic diseases is already reduced. Okay? But now you have some poor guy out there. He’s living in the red zone his whole life. He wants to manage the cancer that he has. He he has to get down in the green zone and try to stay there as long as he can. But the cancer will still grow because it has access to glutamine. Okay? Okay. And glutamine is always here’s the bloodstream. Look at look at you have this much blood cancer needs to have. So you always have a surfitit of glutamine. So you have to come in now with drugs and the drugs like repurposed drugs to target the the glutamolysis with this one here this BMC big paper here. Mhm. Okay. This paper and the new one we have with the ketogenic for the high childhood um high-grade gloma for kids. So once once you get down here, you come in with drugs that target glutamine. I’ve looked at one and that’s Mendazol. Okay. How did I come to that realization? People knew that embendazol had some therapeutic benefit about cancer, but they don’t believe until you show the mechanism. That paper shows the mechanism. It targets glucose and glutamine. Now this one targets glucose and glutamine, the two fuels driving the disregulated growth of the tumor. Okay. So here’s the here’s the mitochondria. So it’s getting the glucose and the cytoplasm from the sugar uh and making and it’s fermenting that and then also the the amino acid glutamine comes in. You have to block the glycolysis and the gluc these two pathways you have to restrict availability of glucose and glutamine together at the same time. I speak only about things that I have tested in my lab and published papers on like this. So you have to real the cancer field doesn’t understand that the cancer can’t grow without glucose and glutamine and can’t switch to fatty acids or ketone bodies. That’s still not going to kill the cancer though, is it? It’s just going to Yeah, we don’t ever use the term cure because some of these tumors now let me tell you we have people like Pablo Kelly from Devon, England. He had the glyopblasto uh he didn’t take any radiation or chemo. He just did metabolic therapy. He lived for 10 years. He was diagnosed with an inoperable glyopblasto. They wanted to irdiate and poison him with the drugs. He said no. He was one of these naturalistic kind of guys. And um he he lived for 10 years and the tumor became operable. He had four debulking surgeries on an originally described inoperable cancer cut out four times because once we put the metabolic therapy the circle the demarcation of the tumor. Whoa. A neurosurgeon says I think I can get this out. But he never never got he lived with it for 10 years. Had a couple of kids. He died from a cerebral hemorrhage on the last debulking surgery. He never died from the tumor. But you’re saying you’re saying that the two work together in in tandem. Yes. You’re saying that the chemotherapy works in Now that’s where that’s another thing. So what we do um and this is very interesting. So if you put the patient in nutritional ketosis, the the ketogenic state of nutritional ketosis facilitates the delivery of drugs to the tumor cell. It actually makes you can use lower doses of drugs and you and and and you get bigger effect. The therapeutic benefit increases with lower dosing. So you want to be in ketosis when you do these chemotherapy, radiation therapy. Yeah. And then you use much lower doses. This is what we’re doing in a stimul clinic. We’re taking pancreatic cancers. These guys live in four and five years. What are we doing? And advanced breast cancer and all these terminal cancers. We put them into some level of ketosis and then you come in with the standard drugs, cis platin, caroplatin, whatever you want to do, but you cut the dosages down big time and then they have tremend the the u and this is what the title of the paper is ketogenic diet uh as a metabolic vehicle uh for enhancing therapeutic efficacy. The current body of research suggests that being in a state of ketosis can act as a helper therapy, enhancing the cancer killing effects of chemotherapy while simultaneously protecting healthy cells. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. Progressive oncologists are currently using ketogenic diets alongside standard chemo to maximize its efficacy. That’s right. That’s what we’re doing in Istanbul and and and also in in in Greece. We’re doing we’re doing those same things. So you you can use this. When you enter a fasted or ketogenic state, your healthy cells essentially go into bunker mode. They slow their division, conserve energy, and build up their defenses. Cancer cells, however, do not have this evolutionary off switch. They continue trying to rapidly divide. When the toxic chemotherapy hits, your shielded healthy cells survive it much better. While the exposed rapidly dividing cancer cells take the full hit. Yeah. Ah, okay. Interesting. Yeah. In other words, you make with the tools you have work better. The problem in the field of cancer today is they’re not using the tools in the correct way. Now, let me give you another example. If you take imunotherapies, you hear about these things, chimeic acid, G receptor, PDL, PD1, PDL1 inhibitors, they’re called precision medicines, right? So look it, they’re designed to attack a a molecule on the surface or stop that cell from uh being resistant. Mhm. If you would try to attack and what they do often times they come at after you’ve failed chemo and radiation, they then come at you with an imunotherapy. The metabolic pressure shrinks down your tumor, makes it very indolent, non-aggressive, and the rest of your body is healthy. You’re not going bald. You’re not bleeding gums. Your microbiome isn’t blown to hell. So, and then you can come in with lowd dose chemo imunotherapy because what’sever left in that remaining residual mass, they may all have something in common for having survived all this, right? So now you can come in with a precision medicine and possibly resolution. I thought this was fascinating. It says chemotherapy creates massive oxidative stress, i.e. damage inside the tumor. To repair the damage and survive, the cancer cell requires massive amounts of glucose. So, if the patient is in ketosis, the tumor’s glucose supply is essentially cut off. It can’t, the cancer cell can’t repair the DNA damage caused by your chemo, leading to faster tumor death. Um, yeah, interesting. Well, don’t forget also, listen to this, and there’s another thing people go in. What protects the tumor cell from chemo and radiation is the waste products of fermentation. The lactic acid and the suxinic acid that are dumped out of this raging beast prevent these other therapies from working. So if you want your therapy to work, you got to target those two fuels together at the same time. And when you do that, now this cell the shield is off. These things are super vulnerable to even low doses of chemo and radiation. And the amunotherapies, look it, if you have an imunotherapy, you try to attack the beast when it’s at its strongest. Ah, you’re not going to win. And this is what happens. You get only partial response. They in the field of cancer today, they think living an extra 6 months is a major breakthrough. We’re talking about living an extra five and six years. This is what’s really important. I just um I was reading some research to figure out if oncologists, so cancer doctors, are currently recommending the ketogenic diet. And it says the vast majority of mainstream oncologists do not recommend the ketogenic diet to the to their newly diagnosed patients. Um in fact if a patient brings it up many doctors will actively advise against it. And the reasons for that number one is the fear of cacetsia. Cexia. Yeah. Cexia cancer cexia is a severe wasting syndrome where patients rapidly lose muscle and fat. It is a massive problem and a leading cause of mortality in cancer patients because the ketogenic diet suppresses appetite and often leads to weight loss. Encologists are terrified that a strict keto diet will accelerate cexia and weaken the patient. Well, that’s because they they have not heard what I just said with respect to the biology and biochemistry. Okay, cexia there’s two ways you can lose in cancer patients. CEXIA is the ability of the tumor cell to mobilize energy out of the muscles. It’s taking the glutamine out of your muscles and feeding. This is one of the two fuels that’s driving the beast is glutamine. Where are they getting the glutamine from? They’re getting the glutamine not only from the bloodstream, but they dissolve your muscles as a uh as part of that part of that process. So, when you put a patient in nutritional ketosis, the weight loss is therapeutic weight loss. Cexia is pathological weight loss. Now, the other way you can lose weight is you take a high dose of chemotherapy. I travel all the time. I made a rule in my life that I’ll only travel with a cabin bag. The problem with this is there’s not much space. And here’s the solution. It is called an extra 1% travel pack. And I teamed up with extra to make this. Typically, I can only bring some of my black shirts. And it’s a trade-off of which black shirt should I bring? How many of these do you think I can get in here? So, let’s try 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14. Let’s try 15. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Okay, so that’s 24 black t-shirts. Here’s where the magic comes in. You zip it up, make sure it’s nice and sealed, and then you use this little contraption. Stick it on there. I can now take more than 20 black shirts with me, which will last me 3 weeks. So, if you travel frequently and you want to get one of these so you can save more space and be away for longer, go to extra.com and use code DOAC for 10% off our collection. And I think some of the background context here is that mainstream oncology operates on the um sort of sematic mutation therapy, which is the belief that cancer is fundamentally a genetic disease driven by DNA mutations. And because their training focuses on genetics, their treatments are designed to target DNA and cell division like he radiation targeted genetic therapies rather than manipulating cell um cellular metabolism. And lastly, as mentioned, I think we talked about this earlier, mainstream medicine requires massive multic-enter double blind phase 3 clinical trials before a protocol becomes the standard of care. So dietary interventions rarely get the level of funding. So oncologists lack the institutional green light to prescribe them to patients and they tend to say to them eat what you can. I I don’t blame them. They’re good. Many of them are good people. The problem is the system doesn’t train them to understand the biology and biochemistry of the disease they’re treating. Uh some of them become very resistant to this. They say get angry because I if I why didn’t I why wasn’t I told this? Well, first of all, they’re not reading these papers. Uh you ask them about it. They I never read it. Well, how are you going to know anything if you don’t read the literature? Um, listen to this. The National Cancer Institute, the NCI, on their website, on their website says cancer is a genetic disease caused by what you just said. Okay, they I Well, I said why don’t they put the articles in there showing all the tumors, they can’t find any mutations. The somatic mutation theory says that cancer is caused by random genetic mutations. So now new sequencing of normal people like you and me are finding mutations in all these driver genes in cells in our body that aren’t in disregulated cell growth. So we’re calling them wild type cancers. What do you mean a wild type cancer? You don’t mean Okay. The nucleus of a tumor cell, a raging tumor cell. What’s causing him that cell to grow? Is it the mitochondria in the cytoplasm or is it the mutations in the nucleus? Okay. So according to the sematic mutation theory, it’s the mutations in the nucleus that are causing the disregulated cell growth. You take that nucleus and put it into into a enucleated normal cell. Yeah. And there’s no cancer. No. There’s no disregulation. Must be something else. Then you take the nucleus of the normal cell and put it into the cytoplasm of a tumor cell and you get disregulated cell growth. So it must be something other than the nucleus. Yes. The mitochondria. Interestingly, it says so mitochondria are controlling our destiny and and and the the field of cancer has yet to understand it, accept it, and then say, “Well, we can’t do any of this until we do a line crossover.” That’s just what do you mean? The science is telling us this. That’s your way of protecting a broken system. Are you pissed off about this? Cuz you do seem pissed off about this. Well, who wouldn’t be, Stephen? There’s 1,700 people a day in this country dying from cancer. I don’t know the English. Listen, that that comes out to 70 an hour and it gets worse every single year. And the last time I was on the show, you guys use some old data. Look it up today. It’s 2026. American Cancer Society says this year in 2026 we will have 626,000 souls leave the planet from cancer. Okay, this 2026 and every year it gets worse. So when you hear all the breakthroughs, we have we have television ads in Boston for the cancer s breakthrough after breakthrough after breakthrough. All these different they come on and and and and all we do is get more dead cancer patients. Raise money for cancer. Where’s the where’s the accountability for all the money you’re raising? When are the world when is the people going to wake up? You don’t make someone healthy by irdiating and poisoning them. You’ve got to understand the biology and the biochemistry of the disease. I have the concepts and the the proofs, but the physician who works with the patient on a clinic basis, they’re the ones that must apply this to the clinic. So, there’s two different things here. There’s the hard science that’s the that’s the bedrock for this and then there’s the clinical person who has the practice that practice does that. Together, you get great success or better I say success better than anything that’s out there today. The American Cancer Society recently released its latest projections for 25 and 26, and the data paints a fascinating dual-sided picture. More people are getting diagnosed with cancer. Um, new cases. The ACS projects over 2.11 million new cancer diagnoses in 2026. This translates roughly to 5,800 new cases every single day. Approximately 626,000 Americans are expected to die from cancer in 2026. Right. about 1,700 deaths per day. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer death, projected to cause more fatalities than colurectal colctal and pant pancreatic cancers combined. I also just wanted to pick a whole point we were talking about earlier which is about the metabolic approach to cancers. It says here and this is going to the point about you know people telling you to just eat whatever you want while you’re you know managing cancer. Um because the primary goal of the hospital dietician is to prevent weight loss during brutal chemotherapy regimes, patients are frequently told to eat whatever they can and eat whatever they can keep down. It is incredibly common for cancer patients to be handed meal replacement shakes which are often packed with corn syrups and refined sugars, ice cream, and high carbohydrate comfort foods just to keep their calorific intake up. From a metabolic perspective, this is a tragedy. While it keeps weight on the patient, it simultaneously floods the bloodstream with glucose and insulin. directly feeding the tumor. Um, and while keto is not the standard of care, the landscape is beginning to slowly shift. There is a growing minority of integrative oncologists and specialized metabolic clinicians worldwide that actively prescribe therapeutic ketosis alongside conventional treatments. Those doctors use the keto diet and fasting protocols to protect healthy cells and um, and sanitize tumors before administering lower, more targeted doses of chemo. That’s what we developed. That’s our that’s our plan. That’s that’s what we’re doing. Okay. We we we do that because we understand the biology and biochemistry and that’s why we develop we’re developing the new society called more the more alliance metabolic oncology research and education. This is bringing uh together what you just mentioned there in a logical approach to manage cancer. This is a logical approach based on the hard science of decades of research initiated originally by Otto Worberg and then continued by our group at Boston College. The American Cancer Society says that breast cancer is increasing, prostate cancer is increasing, pancreatic cancer, melanoma, HPV associated oral cancers are steadily increasing in the incidence of severe um cancers. Yeah, there has been no major advance in managing glyopblasto in 100 years. What’s glyobblasto? That’s the the the deadly brain cancer. Okay, that killed uh Teddy Kennedy from Massachusetts, Senator Kennedy, John McCain, President Biden’s son, Bo Biden. It’s killed a lot of various people and it’s considered a death sentence. No, no, no. We we we’re keeping these guys alive. Okay, we’re not saying we cure the cancer, but we can certainly keep them alive a lot longer. Pancreatic cancer always considered so bad. We’re getting very excellent results in managing pancreatic cancer using metabolic therapies. We know what to do and we know how to do it. I have clinicians that work with me, dieticians that know how to manage cancer effectively. We can do it right now today. If someone were to say, Seaf Freed, get your get your group together. Let me see what you can do. I will put up our metabolic therapy against any trial from any of these pharmaceutical companies. We can keep these people alive a hell of a lot longer to participate in our society. We’re not doing that. If you were made president today, of the United States of the United States, don’t go there. I’m going to go there. Uhuh. Those guys are uh not, let’s put it this way, they’re not scientifically literate. I would have to be. Yeah. Right. You’re Professor Thomas Ered. You’re now president of the United States and your primary objective is to bring down this 1,700 Americans that are going to get cancer a day. Um, is it is it get cancer or die from cancer? No, they die from cancer. 1,700 a day dying from cancer in the United 70 an hour. Think about it. You you can put in place policies to stop this happening and to also help people manage it better. What is it you do? First of all, we wouldn’t throw out everything. Just like I said, we have a strategy now to manage cancer effectively. Okay. So, you we’re not going to get rid of the drugs that are making billions and billions of dollars. We’re just going to use them at lower doses is in a different different We also want to prevent it in the first place. Well, preventing it that comes back to our chart. I’m going to write down the manifesto. So, what is what do we do to prevent these 71 people an hour dying of cancer? Well, that has to come from government policies. Okay. You just got promotion. You’re now the king of the United States. So, you don’t even need to ask anybody. What do you do to prevent the 71 people a day dying of cancer? It’s going to be education. Education number one. Education number one. Okay. You have to let people know that those And now let me tell you another thing that’s really important. It should not be any government or government official telling anyone what they should or should not eat. Okay. The the power of this chart is um personal. You’re embolding the patient. They have to know. We’re not going to tell somebody, “Oh, if you continue to eat bad food, you’re going to have you’re at high risk and that person, I don’t care. I’ll smoke cigarettes and I’m going to well, the government’s not going to come into this guy’s house and take away the bad food.” No, no, no, no. That should never happen. Those foods are there because they give us pleasure, but they should be the the knowledgeable person would be to say, “I’d like to have it every now and then, but I can’t live in that environment.” And the other thing we do terribly in this country, the poor people in these food deserts where you only get crap food and and as a tragedy in itself there they they to go to whole uh whole foods where they have the expensive ribe eyes and all this stuff that’s much more expensive. A lot of people can’t afford the kinds of foods that will put them in these better healthy zones. So we’re going to make food healthy food more cost cost effective cheaper. Those are easy words to say, but in practicality, it’s not. And what kinds of foods should people be eating? Well, I I think they should just try to avoid the highly processed carbs. Okay. You don’t listen to this. You and and exercise. There’s a lot of things we can do that would mitigate the the inflammatory conditions put on this chart. The goal here is we know what keeps us healthy. It’s the efficiency of that organel. We want to do everything possible to keep that organel healthy. We will reduce dementia. We will reduce diabetes. We will reduce obesity. And they say, “Well, GLP, why don’t I don’t want to do and human beings are are the kind that I want a quick fix for everything?” Right. Ampeg. How about some? Is this what is this GLP? GLP1. Okay. We don’t, you know, first of all, we haven’t done any research yet to know where a GLP would put you on the chart. We do know one thing, it lowers blood sugar. How level how high of a level would it bring to ketone? Because it’s the ketones that keep the organel healthy. So, I’m lowering blood sugar, but am I raising the ketones that enhance the bioenergetic efficiency of the organel? I don’t know what number and hasn’t been done yet. I don’t I haven’t seen any papers coming out. Okay, so we’ll keep the zenic off the table, but you’re saying exercise number three. So, I’ve got I’ve got education, kill the food desert so people can get healthy food. Um, stay away from the ultrarocessed stuff. Number three, exercise. We’re going to give everybody free gym memberships and whatever else they need. Reduce stress, emotional stress. You got to you got to do that. There’s a lot of ways. Music therapy. There’s a lot of different ways you can meditation, friends, happiness, all of those reduce stress. So, I had I had a guy from uh Korea. I think it was Japan or Korea. We did a big meeting one time and he he didn’t tell me what to do. He says, um, you want to get cancer. If your job and if your goal in life is to get cancer, you got to eat crap food all the time, you have to have terrible sleep, make sure you never unash the couch, sit in front of the TV all day, look at doom scrolling, do all that kind of stuff. Make sure you never exercise and make sure you don’t have any friends or be happy. He says, you’re on the fast track for for not only cancer, but all these other chronic diseases. So So that’s the what I just said is you need to not do that. you’re doing a great job. You know, there’s not many people are going to be measuring their GKI every day, but there are people who love to measure that kind of stuff. Um, now I tell you another thing. So, they put these things on your arm, these continuous sugar monitors. They’re making continuous glucose ketone monitors. So, apps are coming out now. Believe me, there’s apps. I have my Lucas Lou and some others are making these apps in my lab. and and um you can take your cell phone and and photograph a particular food item and and the food item immediate you put places you’re put the food item on the chart so you’ll know eating that will give you what zone you’ll be in if you eat it. So um it it’s really interesting and and these things are coming. We’re using AI to so but it’s purely patient empowerment. Okay. The patient themselves, the person themselves make the choices. No government president or king or whatever you want to say should ever tell people what and how they should eat. The patients should be familiar with this and have the knowledge to know I’m going to test what I think. So people say to me all the time, “What? Just tell us what you can eat.” That’s all they say to me. Okay, eat whatever you want. You figure out where on the chart you’re going to be and then you’ll know. So people say, “Well, I can’t eat ketogenic diet.” Well, our our group in in Greece, now you tell me. They got the brain cancer tremendous success in keeping brain glyobblasto guys alive. What was the diet? It was a calorierestricted Mediterranean diet. salmon, sardines, olive oil, avocado, and exercise. That is that like oh man, that that’s the worst diet. What about the carnivore diet? What about the the ribeye with a little sauce bernese on top of it? This keeps your your blood sugar low and elevates your ketone. If you want to do it with plants, everything you got fish, plants, you get the vegans and all these kind of people. This is a bioenergetic road map to health. Let me just give some specific. So, this is amazing. What about high fructose corn syrups and refined? Oh, man. That’s the worst kind of crap. You don’t take that. What about what about industrial seed oils? Well, you know, people talk about seed oils, canola and soybeans. I don’t know. But every there’s another thing too. You and I are different. Uh we have an individual metabolism uh age, race, sex, all all the religion, all kinds of stuff determine what and how you live. And I can’t be sure uh what you eat, what I eat or what you exercise where it’s going to put put us on the chart. Synthetic pesticides, I was reading here that in increases the chance of lymphoma by a staggering 41%. They all damage the oxidative phosphorilation, putting the cell at risk for compensatory fermentation. disregulated cell growth. W the problem the problem the field doesn’t understand what I’m saying with respect to the origin of cancer, how it happens mechanistically, how this organel controls the life of the cell. They don’t know enough about the biology and biochemistry of the mitochondria. You want to get guys on here like Nick Lane, he from England. I mean, these guys like Doug Wallace and some of these guys, they’re mitochondrial biologists. they they they understand this kind of stuff. I want to give people actionable things that they can think about. So, um that’s why I was asking you this question about you becoming king. Fasting protocols. Well, intermittent fasting. Let me let me talk about that just briefly. Do you ever try it? Yeah. What do you think? You liked it? It depends how long you’re talking about. Okay, let’s go a week. I know. I’ve not fasted for a week before. Okay. You know what? It’s the call of the wall. This guy, he just sent me his book. It’s coming out. Very nice guy. Veral Simck. He say people share things with me. The wall is after about three days of not eating, just drinking water. You hit this wall and it’s like, “Oh man, I’m just I can’t deal with it anymore.” It’s just a terrible feeling in my body. I can’t sleep at night. I got the Jimmy legs. I got all kinds of problems. Screw it. I’m not doing this. He found out if you sip just tiny amounts of a grape juice, you can get get through the wall. What we do for the cancer patients in the way we design our clinical procedures with my clinical friends, we do a zero carb diet for about a week uh while the body is readjusting getting getting bringing them out of the red zone, getting into the yellow zone. You can’t believe the power of glucose as an addictive drug on the brain. It’s unbelievable. It’s like cocaine. It it’s it’s and you know that when you start you start shaking and you go. So, but if you don’t eat carbs and just eat meat or whatever to keep you in a low GKI, um, then when you jump off to the water only fasting, it’s much less traumatic to the brain. You’ve gone through the wall, the gate, so to speak. So, once you know how to get through the gate, you make this whole process a lot a lot easier. And that helps people enormously, especially those people that want to get rid of their chronic disease. Okay? Because uh or some, you know, we have a lot of people out there that just like to do all this stuff. You know, you get these these people that go overboard on everything. But, you know, right now we have an obesity, chronic epid cancer epidemic. All of these epidemics are the result of an abuse of that organel in one way or another. And we have a a plan to mitigate that abuse and at least people have an at least they’re empowered to do it with the help of knowledgeable physicians. I want to just keep on this point of actionable feedback. So, um Dr. Vulta Longos Dr. His extensive research clinical trials prove that fasting mimicking diets drastically lower IGF-1 which triggers cellular autophagy and actually make standard cancer therapies up to three times more effective by removing the metabolic shield of cancer cells. Yeah. Which is the gluc the waste products of of of glucactic acid and the suenic acid. That all goes down. Would you recommend again if you’re king would you recommend that if I would never recommend any I have to just give them the knowledge. Then the person has to make the decision themselves. Do you think it could be beneficial? Of course, if you were king to um have everybody wear a CGM, one of those continuous glucose monitors at least once. No. Never. No. I I think if you have cancer and you really want to stay in this green zone to know, right? Listen, I was down in Mexico not long ago. I was talking to one of the head physicians down there. He wore one of these things, right? He said, “Every time I wanted to go out and have a party and have a good time, this damn thing would be beeping.” So what do you ripped it off and threw it in the trash? So you don’t want somebody barking in your ear when you’re having a good time. That’s why what you’re doing right now with this, you’re choosing to prick your finger. You’re the one making that decision. There’s not something on your arm saying, “Stephen, don’t do that. Don’t do that.” But you know what? It was useful to wear it once or twice because it even I could I suddenly realized that things I put in my mouth had an impact on my blood sugar and my blood which and also I realized that it had an impact in 10 minutes. Yeah. And then and then also when my blood sugar came back down and crashed I thought oh gosh I feel I could suddenly pair my behavior to my feelings. Yes. Well, that that now I’m not I I no I I’ I’ve seen that. And not only that, uh Andrew Scarboro from England who who has been doing this for for the stage three go uh he’s like 15 years out. He’s done this so many times with the finger prick and all this. He knows now already when his body is in these zones from the feeling that you just described. But for the people at the beginning and who are given a terminal diagnosis, they want to get into these green zones and they want to use the things that are going to keep them alive on the planet for a longer period of time with a higher quality of life. That is important. That thing on your arm can help you stay in that zone until you have this thing managed at which time you can choose when to do that. So there’s flexibility in this whole process. It’s not one like for example we have the standard of care which is written and granted for crying out loud. They get all they they or if you do anything different from the standard of care you could lose your license as a physician. Metabolic therapy is is patient driven. It’s driven on the patient. What about hyperbaric oxygen? Yeah. There was a study in 2013 that demonstrated that while a ketogenic diet alone significantly slowed tumor growth and systemic metastic cancer mouse models combining the diet with hyperbaric oxygen therapy elicited a profound synergetic decrease in tumor growth and drastically increase survival times. Yeah, we published that paper with Dominic Dagustinino. So we we put my so uh listen hyperbaric oxygen will create oxidative stress in cells that do not have efficient oxidative phosphorilation uh cancer cells cancer cells. So you can kill cancer cells by oxidative stress by irdiating or poisoning them or you can put a patient in in nutritional ketosis and then put them in hyperbaric oxygen and the cancer cells are selectively killed. When you irdiate somebody you’re damaging the whole body with all kinds of stuff. And there’s another thing Stephen you got to listen to this and you listen carefully when you go to these treat these standard of care standard when you use standard of care radiation chemo whatever they give you imunotherapies or whatever so the patient comes in and he says I’ve been really working hard on this the doctor says oh no that doesn’t work right gives you some radiation or gives you fly up into the red zone the treatment itself puts so much stress on the body that the body itself starts going you go into the red zone from the very treatments that you’re giving to the patient which is making strengthening the tumor cells. You’re not against chemotherapy though, are you? No, I’m I’m I’m positive about it. But it has to be used in the right context. It has to be used when your body is in this state of nutrition. And you can use low doses so you don’t force the tumor cell to become even more resistant to the treatment. The next thing which is actionable is what you talked about earlier which is these microplastics and forever chemicals. In late 2023, the International Agency of Research on Cancer officially upgraded these forever chemicals which are used in non-stick pans and food packaging to a grade one carcinogen in humans cancer-causing in humans based on strong mechanistic evidence that it induces epigenetic which is gene alterations and suppresses the immune system. So you’d ban the forever chemicals. Okay. Uh, this is a beautiful paper. I went back and I took what all of Otto Warberg meticulously went through all of his work, showed where he was absolutely correct and where he just didn’t have the the new information that would make him I talked about the forever chemicals microlastics. Guess what? They damaged the organel. They get into they break they cause rosin and damaged a it reduce the efficiency of oxidative phosphorilation causing a compensatory increase and the utilization of glucose and glutamine and disregulated cell growth. Everything comes back to this organel. Chron all chronic diseases and cancer are the result of damage to this organel. That’s why having this little thing here is so important. It’s a great prop. I ought to get one for my class. You can keep it. Um the next thing is purifying the water supply. Um heavy metals are found in local water supplies to run off and ultimately are carcinogenic in some cases. The ARC classifies arsenic and cacadium as group one caroggenics and they’re frequently found in unfiltered public water infrastructure. So you clean out the water supply as well. Yeah. You know all this stuff is coming into our water supplies. people flushing down all these chemicals into the into the which then leech back into the water supply and every one of the chemicals that we have looked at that has been linked to oncology or disregulated cell growth all damage the oxidative phosphorilation chronically. So we’re bringing the entire focus back to things what can I do to keep this organel healthy uh even if I’m exposed to these chemicals if I can do get into these zones like you’re trying to do. So even if you are exposed to these, this organel has an incredible healing power in itself. What is the most important thing we haven’t talked about that we should have talked about, Professor Thomas? Well, I mean, you’ve covered a lot. One of the things I I want to talk about uh is metastasis. What’s that? That’s the spread of the tumor throughout the body. Okay. So if you were to have a cancer that’s just localized in one spot, you know, the probability of developing a therapy that would be um long term is highly increased. The problem that kills people is the spread. So if the tumor is in the breast and it spreads to the liver and the lungs and the brain, you know, you got a problem. Lung cancer spreads to the brain, the liver. Most of these cancers that spread to the brain or other organs become difficult and that’s why you use systemic chemotherapy. You’re trying to stop. What we have found is that you have a a stem cell. People love stem cells. If you ever hear the term stem cell tumor, wow, a stem cell tumor. Stem cell tumors cannot metastasize. How do I know? Because I have stem cell tumors diagnosed as stem cell tumors with stem cell markers. I’ve grown them. They grow very angry. They get a lot of blood vessels but they can’t spread. Okay, how do you get spreading tumor cells in your body? The immune system comes in, recognizes that as an unhealed wound and then fuses with the stem cells and then you have these hybrid cells. They are programmed to move around your body. So they are a macrofage tumor cell hybrid. So and they’re very hard to kill, but we found they’re remarkably sensitive. They’re glutamine driven. So we know they’re glutamine driven and they need the glucose and that why that’s why metabolic therapy done the right way can nail nail those metastatic cancer cells purging them with a little little bit of imunotherapy to go along with it. You might be able to to get what we call resolution. Don’t forget my colleagues and I Dom Diagust Joe Maroon we built the press pulse therapeutic strategy. I mentioned that on your previous show. That’s the way you you you press down the glucose of the tumor and then you pulse to kill the glutamine which will which will target the metastatic cancer cells enhancing the health and vitality of the organs already infiltrated by the tumor. I looked on our previous conversation Doc Professor Thomas and um it’s quite heartbreaking because the comments sections are all people that are e either struggling themselves with cancer or a loved one of theirs, their wife, their husband has just been diagnosed with cancer. Is there anything for those people that have clicked on this video because I imagine they are in the millions. Yeah. You want them to hear. Well, the thing of it is is why Well, this is a bigger issue. When you have the science and you have the strategy to manage cancer effectively with minimal toxicity, not to say we can cure, but to say we can manage it. Why is it not being done? That’s the question. But to them to them who’ve tuned in. Okay. So these kinds of conversations that we have are allowing the populations to realize that there is their loved ones do not need to be sacrificed for the good of industries that are generally considered profitable. They in other words the profitability of the industries are based on your sickness. Uh and and a lot of those comments came, oh, you can’t you can’t do anything. Yes, you can do something about it. When you’re armed with the knowledge and people ignore the knowledge, then there’s a problem. Do people need to sort of self advocate to some degree? I think so. With with uh care providers, what do they I think that’s a very delicate question. Yeah. The oncologists never heard of this stuff. They have never read these papers. They were never trained in medical school to know the biology and biochemistry of cancer. It was told to be a genetic disease. Theories are so important in science. For 1,800 years, people thought the work of Aristotle, his comments and the mathematics of Claudius Tami said that the earth was the center of the solar system and all the planets uh and sun revolved around the earth. The geocentric theory, right? Capernacus struggled with the talami mathematics and realized that if he put the the sun in the center of the solar system and made earth just another planet, a lot of the mathematics made sense. Kepler comes in and says these aren’t circles, they’re ellipticals. Galileo takes the telescope, sees the moon’s interuptor and was able to look at and quantify where where predict where planets would be at a certain period of time. Then they took poor Godano Bruno. You know about this guy, Bruno? Stephen, you got to know Bruno. Your job is to know about the poor Bruno who was burned alive by the Catholic Church for challenging the the the geocentric theory. And he became a martyr of science. So when you have established power structure, whether it’s a religion or whether it’s an industry or whatever, challenging that can be very very hazardous. Has it been hazardous for you? Listen, no. I mean, I do what I do because I like I just collect more and more data at the sport. Hazardous for me would be getting blindsided. Blindsided would be somebody coming at me with a piece of new data that I have never considered. I don’t sleep. I I think about this stuff all the time to avoid the blind side. My students are on the on the alert for any paper that comes out that says cancer oh cancer cells can burn fatty acids and ketone bodies. Oh, really? Let’s go back through and dissect out their control experiments and you find in every case there was always some glucose and glutamine in the media making it look like the fatty acids. So, so that’s what bothers me. What bothers me is getting hit with a piece of data that undermines what we’re what we our knowledge base is. And so far, we haven’t had that. Okay, it’s we’re standing on the shoulders of Otto Warberg, a giant in the field of biochemistry. He was thrown under the bus when everybody thought cancer was a genetic disease. My this paper goes back and shows exactly where Warberg made his mistakes and where we have rectified some of that, bringing the whole field back on where it should be. It is a mitochondrial metabolic disorder and we can account for all of the phenotypes and characteristics of that disease knowing that now with that knowledge logical people and people interested in helping others will will uh take advantage of that. We’re not throwing out all these toxic chemicals. We’re learning how to use them in a different way and that’s where the success is going to come. So let’s let’s conclude with a a actionable takeaway for people who are suffering themselves with with cancers um or have someone in their family right now that is suffering from cancers. What is the actionable takeaway? Well, I think the action will take once this paper comes out they can start taking action if they are motivated enough. They can read about this. they can read about it and then try to like just like you’re doing no different get into these zones and then work with their oncologists, knowledgeable people to to to treat them with standards of care. Yeah. As long as they can remain and then we do non-invasive imaging, PET scans, see MRIs. Okay. So, specifically what what you’re saying is this paper, I will link it below in the comment section for anyone that wants to read it. This graph will be on the screen throughout this episode anyway, so people can screenshot it if they want to have a look. And the way that they test whe what what their GKI index is is they can buy one of these Keto Mojo things which you can get on Amazon for $ 20, $30. You prick your finger, it gives you the glucose reading. You divide it by 18. No, no. The the new machines have the button. You just So even the people don’t have to do that. Okay, fine. And as you can see on here, this is an interesting way to sort of increase your your management, improve your management of of some of these. Yeah. And then there’s a challenge to get into those zones. Um, you know, I’m not saying this is easy stuff. GLP1 inhibitor, man, that’s a hell of a lot easier than than than doing this. And I should probably say always consult with a medical professional. Yeah. Um, I I think uh because you know a lot of people they have a lot of coorbidities. They have diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension, cancer. They have a it’s not a perfectly healthy person with cancer. Mhm. So before you go in to challenge that, you need to have what you look like you might look, you know, you might have to be adjusted in some way. That’s why the people who the physicians that are working with this can do all that. I I’m I’m not in the clinical thing. And there are some people who respond poorly to the ketogenic diet is high stakes of ketosis because I’ve I’ve received DMs before from a woman who said, “My my husband did ketosis and he collapsed unconscious. He took him to the hospital. He had some coorbidity.” Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the other thing too is you got to be some people have carnitine deficiencies. Carnitine prevents fatty acids from being made into ketone bodies. So, so, so they can be carnitine supplementation can help them, but you need a physician to know this. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leader question for the next and the question left for you is on the subject of energy. What in your life has brought you the most energy and what was the biggest energy drain you’ve ever experienced? Well, this is bringing me the biggest energy. This well not this the whole concept the idea that you have found uh mother nature has allowed you to look into the depths of of of what we consider the biology and biochemistry of how bodies work. and knowing how to take that and apply it to people that are suffering from all these different chronic diseases and giving them the opportunity to change that because before that it was mysterious. Oh, I’m do I’m in keto. What’s your GK? I I don’t know. Well, now you have a quantitative opportunity that gets us. So, we have a lot of evidence. I think people should be feel encouraged. I think we have given hope to the hopeless and and I think that’s empowering and the goal here is not to make a billion dollars. It’s just to know that you’ve kept all these poor souls alive longer than they were projected to be to be. And I think this power and that keeps us going because when we see more and more people coming to me, I get emails back from people three or four years ago and I said, “Gee, I thought you were a goner.” And he says, “I’m doing really well. I just came back from a vacation with my wife.” Well, that’s empowering. I said, “Well, that’s good. And don’t forget, Stephen, all of our research money comes from private foundations and philanthropy. So, so is that a way that people can help? Yeah. And where do they go to help? Oh, Travis Kristopherson’s foundation. So, we in my papers they we have the foundations that support uh our work, private foundations. So, and there are occasionally, yes, please link. There are occasionally people I know and I when I give kits of information to people uh I say please consider making a donation only if it works for you. Yeah. Don’t charge them anything or ask them to pay something if it’s not going to help them. If you were told to be dead in 6 months and 6 years later you’re alive. Maybe you throw us a few shekeles into the private found into the foundation supporting our work. I’ll link that foundation below in the comments. Yeah, we have a couple on breast cancer on on on general general uh um support on the metabolic approach that we have. So, we have a lot going. We’re very excited. You can see all the papers we’ve published. Uh and it’s not like um uh some of these are in top journals, some of them are in new journals, but but the issue is we’re we’re we’re we’re publishing this. My thing is, you know, I great great great respect for science and doctors in the medical profession. Go go go get your information. Speak to your medical provider. There’s so many tools out there now. Go and check for yourself. I think in the oncology field, that’s where we have this vast wasteland of misinformation or misunderstanding, let’s put it that way. They don’t understand these concepts where, you know, people who have done heart work and bone work and replacements, those people are at the state-of-the-art with this kind of stuff. Well, the last conversation we had, it’s reached about 15 million people. So on YouTube, it’s got 10 million views and then across all your platforms, it’s got another five or so million views. Yeah.

One is you’re giving people tools and science that they can think about and research themselves and speak to their medical practitioner about. But also, it actually just creates a community of people in the comment section where, you know, this is a community of people that are searching for hope. Yeah. And as some of them read through the comment sections, they actually commented saying, “It was so nice to to speak to other people in the comment sections about what I’m going through and how it feels from an emotional level.” So, this is something I actually wanted to say in this episode was if you’re if you’re listening to this conversation now and you’ve gotten to this point, do feel free to go into the comment section and just offer some support and some love to other people um who are struggling because you know it can be a very lonely experience the minute you find out you’ve got a diagnosis and off you go into the internet into podcast into AI to try and figure out what you can do. So, yeah, do share things that have helped you point at different resources that are rigorous and offer emotional support to those that are in the comment section. and that would be a wonderful thing. Thomas, thank you so much for all that you do. Um, you’re you’re an absolute warrior for pushing science, the science into the world and for fighting for these people that don’t have the tools. And if you I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a comment section quite like it in terms of the gratitude that people have for the work that you’re doing. It is remarkable work. Long may you continue to do it. Well, thank you very much. and you you know you play a very important part on this because this information is not disseminated to the the population and it’s the population of people that will eventually make the change. So they’re going to want this especially when we keep publishing more and more case reports of successful cases and the ch the system will change and we just have to modify what we have to make it better and I think that’s what keeps us going. So I have no plans of stopping this anytime soon. My students are all excited about this. they they’re learning about it at Boston College. So, this is a big emphasis that we have and we continue to do it. Again, scientific literacy is so important uh for uh how you um navigate through life. And um thank you very much for your show and we’ll we’ll keep uh pushing this as as hard as we can. Thank you.

I went from 13,000 employees to three employees in one week. We work was one of the fastest physical global growth the world’s ever seen. But everything went wrong. We lost everything. 2019 you were publicly filed its S1 company valued at around $47 billion. The S1 showed some losses, 3 billion in the past 3 years. Also, the S1 revealed when you were CEO that you’d also trademarked the word we and sold it back to the company. That’s not true. People sometimes think I was fired because the Wall Street Journal said so. Not true. I wanted to hear directly from you. What happened? You really want to go there? I’m I’m happy to the floor is yours. So in we work the business grew faster than I could grow and every step I take suddenly the ego starts coming up. Oh 20 billion valuation billion valuation in Japan on top of that 5 billion valuation in China. It suddenly became about the money. I forgot what we were all about when I lost it. Everybody lost it. And the next thing is we found ourselves being forced to go public when we weren’t ready. Then you resigned as CEO of we work after the IPO didn’t pan out. So I stepped down out of choice and a second after I did it, we got stabbed in the back and the only lesson there, you’re going to stab the king, kill. If you’re not going to kill, I’m going to come back again. Why did you make that choice to go back into business again? Cuz you had money from the reports, almost a billion dollars. You know how hard it is. I now realize that in we work, I did a lot more things right than wrong. A lot more. Not like 10% more, like 95%. Some of what I’m saying is hard for you to fully hone in on. All these founders you spoke to, all this I don’t think they shared this paper. So, let’s talk about it. So, first, you might have seen or you might not have seen, but this channel is chasing a big subscriber milestone. So, I have to ask you for a favor. Roughly 58% of the people watching right now still haven’t hit the subscribe button despite the fact that you watch this channel every single week. So, could I ask you guys a favor? that 58% of you that for whatever reason haven’t yet hit the subscribe button. If there was ever a time to deliver upon a favor for us, it would be right now. And I promise that I will do everything in my power to make sure that this channel gets better and better and better for you. Do we have a deal?

Adam Newman, I’ve had the privilege of getting to know you briefly over the last um couple of months, and it struck me almost immediately that you’re unlike almost any other founder or CEO or really person I think I’ve ever met. There’s a depth to you and a and a philosophy and a perspective that is just incredibly rare. My question to you is for you to be an anomaly if we accept that. Am I right in thinking that you had some sort of anomalous early origin story? What is that that story that shaped this man that sat in front of me? You know, for me first when I get to know someone in the beginning and they say, “Where is it coming from? Who are you?” I usually start the same. First of all, I’m a husband. It’s my first job. what I’m most proud of. Then I’m a father. I’m a father of six. Then I’m a friend. Friendships are very important for me. And after that I’m an entrepreneur. I think each one of us has a phenomenal soul. I think it’s perfect. And I think what really we see when we look at people is the distance between where we think they’re holding to where their potential is. And I think it’s that gap between those two things that actually defines a person. And for me throughout my life, sometimes out of my control when I was young and sometimes with my control when I got older, I’ve always been striving to close that gap. So you talk about not having control. Your early context is quite unstable from what I read because your mother suffered from bipolar. Can you bring me into that world so I can understand like the sort of context that Adam was raised? Happily. So we’ll start like every story it has two sides to it and my mom and my father are both doctors and growing up I always saw both of them taking care of the patients and it would feel sometimes like the patients came ahead of us. So for example my sister and I we were never sick no matter how sick we were look at my she was an oncologist and she would say my patients are sicker go to school and that was sort of the beginning of it. When I was in the second grade, my parents got a divorce. It was very difficult for my mom and she needed a change of scenery. So, we actually moved to the United States. You know this photo here? I do. Um, and this one here, you’ve got a kid. This is you as a a child that is beaming with uh smell sort of ear to ear. Often when I see photos like that, my my curiosity is what what you can’t see and what that young kid, that young boy there is is not saying, but what he’s feeling underneath all of those uh those emotions. What I could tell you is I think for me I think the challenge started in that. So we talked about my mother being bipolar. I only observed my mother’s moods when we moved to the United States. There was no one around. It was only my mom and my sister and I. And all day she would work with the patients and at night at 800 PM she would come home and all hell would break loose. And I remember there’s many stories but I remember this. She would tell my sister and I we had to wash the dishes. That was our one chore. And we wouldn’t no matter what because kids sometimes rebel by action when they can’t rebel by words. And she would come home, you didn’t wash the dishes. And she would take the dishes and throw them on the floor. And then she would cry and start cleaning the dishes and and mopping them. And it was every night ended with some version of action like that. And for 2 years, I remember how crazy my sister and I thought the whole experience was. And we didn’t have any friends who were sharing that experience until one day she bought this nice set of dishes. And she comes home again to throw the dishes. And we notice she’s only throwing the cheap dishes. She’s not throwing the ones that she liked, which gave us a little hint that maybe there’s a little more control over what’s happening than this out of control situation. So if I had to guess what was happening with the kids because now in hindsight I know my mom and my dad very well. Probably there was a lot of arguing in the house. Probably as a kid cuz I now see my kids that are very young. I’m sure a child finds it very confusing when the parents are not aligned as a team because as a child all you have to lean on are your parents. But I think the most important thing to say if my mom wasn’t the way she was and if I didn’t go through all those challenges that I went through growing up and I went through a lot. We’re talking about bipolar. There’s a lot that comes with it and we could go deeper or less but almost every single thing if you took a piece of paper and you have to do a check mark for every bad thing we think can happen to a little boy. you get to check mark with me all almost all of them including the really bad ones that we don’t like to talk about as bad as that was when I was 22 23 I remember being very angry about my childhood only when I met Rebecca my then girlfriend to then wife she very quickly introduced me to spiritual practice the way she introduced me by the way was after a week of dating she came to me and she goes look you’re really nice you have a lot of potential but you’re not the guy for me that was very surprised at the time. I was living in New York. My sister was the supermodel. We were hanging out. I I thought a lot of myself. And I said, “What do you mean I’m not the guy for you?” And he said, “Well, you don’t have a spiritual band. You’re very focused on material things. You want to be successful, but you’re not actually understanding the game of life. The guy I’m interested in is going to want true happiness and true fulfillment. And true happiness, and true fulfillment does not come from material things.” It was so different from anything anyone has ever told me that instead of running away or doing this or doing that, I thought for a second. I said, “Well, how would one come to explore this spiritual life that you’re talking about?” And she said, “Well, you need a practice.” And for me, that practice started being cabala. But for all of us there can be different practices. The thing I learned very quickly in the practice is the difference between meant to be and free choice. And I think a lot of people don’t understand it, but how can there be? We talk a lot about in spirituality about it’s meant to be and there’s free choice. How could there be free choice and things be meant to be at the same time? The way I explain it is you get to a fork in your life and you choose left over right and everything works out meant to be. You get to that same fork and you choose right and you crash on your face horribly. everybody’s watching and you stop and you actually learn lessons from it and you take accountability and you say, you know what, whatever happened to me happened for a reason and I’m going to learn from it. I’m going to be stronger. Almost like a sword that’s getting forged and the more times you hit it and the more hit you put on it, the stronger it gets. And then you learn those lessons and you go back into the game of life and you apply that in again. Suddenly you take the catastrophe or the tragedy or the curse and you make it into a blessing. You turn it into a made to be. When the world did crash on me as an adult, it was nothing compared to what I had to deal with as a child. I was like, it’s okay. I have a wife. I have kids. I have close friends. We’ll take a deep breath and we’ll start from scratch again. And that kind of fortitude, I think regretfully, comes through going through very difficult things. So if you’re listening to this right now and you’re going through something really difficult and it feels dark, I encourage you to remember that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn. I feel like there’s things in your early context that you haven’t shared before because you said there’s things that we don’t usually share. Not publicly, but meaning I have in front of So I used to share everything in front of our employees that we work. So there’s things I shared in front of 10,000 people. I’m not sure it ever made it to the press. What is missing? You really want to go there? I’m I’m happy to. If you’re happy to, I’m happy to. I’ll share two things that I’m not sure maybe could be helpful for other people that are going through similar things.

So the the hidding and stuff like so when someone’s bipolar, by the way, they get very angry or very happy very fast. When they’re happy, they’re the happiest. You have fun and everything’s amazing. And my mom would play games with us and it was phenomenal. But also when that I think happens a lot with bipolar, there’s the suicide threats. And then there’s one thing when you threaten to. So again, if you’re two children and your only parent threatens to commit suicide, who is going to take care of you? What is going to happen if suddenly that happens? And I have a lot of memories, but one that just came back to me not too long ago. We’re in the kibuts, which is where we’re living after we came back from the US. My mom wanted us to have a special experience. So we went to this community where everybody shares a lot of things together. It’s also the beginning of why I love communities. And we get into this big fight and my mom basically says she’s going to kill herself and she takes the knife and I remember she’s holding this huge knife. I’m like, “No, no, don’t do it.” And I remember I just remember feeling that I have to stop it that it is up to me and if I don’t stop it, then she’s going to kill herself right there in front of my sister and I. So I grab the knife and we’re fighting left and right and my sister is sitting right there and she’s crying and she’s crying and I’m no and she’s saying yes and the whole thing is so crazy. How old were you? 12 at that moment. That’s one. There’s more if you want to go deeper, but that was one. I invite you to go deeper.

When I was in between second grade to fourth grade, um I was sexually I think you called molested by an older uh than a teenager. So she was at least six or seven years older than me. this one. I didn’t even know that what was happening was wrong. And many years later, Rebecca and I are in the Hamptons and it’s somehow the story comes up and she goes, “Adam, I understand that this is not normal for a child at that age.” And I didn’t even fully understand. And that taught me that explained to me a lot about children. And again, we go back to the responsibility of parents and the responsibility of society to take care of the children and schools to understand what’s happening. And whenever we see anyone, we are so good at walking into a room, seeing someone else, and judging. Oh, they’re not acting the way I would act. They’re not acting right. They’re not speaking right. Everybody’s so busy judging everybody. I want to encourage every single person next time you’re about to judge. You don’t know who that person is. You do not know where they come from. You do not know what happened to them as a kid. God forbid they were molested. God forbid they dealt with all these things. You don’t know where they started. You only know where you see them now. And it could be that if you really got to know them and you would have known the distance they went from here to here, you would have been extremely impressed with them and you would have not measured them that way. And this is why I think it’s so important for all of us when we walk into rooms to really go after unity. You and I can say the same sentence in a way that tears people apart or brings people together. It takes more effort to speak in a way that brings us together. But if we don’t start acting like this, if we keep dividing and keep splitting, I’m worried. Sounds like as an adult, you’ve been able to understand that early experience and sort of create a new sort of perspective or lens on what happened to you and what it means. And as you said, you know, you’ve you’ve orientated it around the fact that it’s happened for a reason or at least there’s there’s something to have learned from it. Was that always the case? So I I sometimes reflect on my own experience and think that for the first season of my life I was dragged and then at some point I like got hold of the steering wheel and I was able to like drive and one of them was like sort of unconscious and the other was more in sort of intentional and thoughtful and I’m wondering through your early teens and 20ies whether you had the wisdom and the perspective that you have now on your early experiences and how that’s evolved over time. I probably went to sleep crying every single night for probably until I was 14 or 15. And I remember and if you ask my sister what would I say? She I I completely forgot. She said I told her that one day I’ll become very successful and we’ll take care of I’ll take care of us. That was what I used to say. I I literally didn’t remember. This is something she told me. I think that’s how I interpreted that control and how I’m going to fix all these challenges that I had. But we launched the school, Rebecca and I, more Rebecca I held. It’s a fifth school. In the school, we teach kids how to be connected to themselves, how to be part of something greater than themselves. If someone just taught me this as a kid and I would have understood then that there’s this bigger picture, I think I would have been able to handle it a lot better and skip the challenging years faster, move faster into the point where I realize that I don’t control what happens, but I can control how I react to it. So, back to your point of driving, are you driving? Don’t know. Now, you question it. I’m questioning. I would question, you know, my my follow-up question to you would be, how do you define success? My definition of success these days, it’s funny, I was thinking about it this morning when I got on the lift on my way here. I thought, um, do you know what it was? Cuz my my fiance turned to me this weekend and she went, Stephen, I think you have enough now. And then she paused and then she retracted the statement, but I but it got me thinking about what enough is. And actually, I thought, well, it’s the motion forward in the pursuit of goals that matter to me that are challenging surrounded by people that is the that is the success. And that’s like a daily a daily thing. There’s no there’s no podium in this this game that I’m playing. But when she said she thinks you have enough, was she referring to material things? Yes. I think society has taught us that once we gain that success, once we gain those material things, we get to this number, suddenly that hole that we all fill inside of us will be full. Now, I know it’s very hard to hear, especially for people who haven’t gotten there yet. Like, oh yeah, you got there already. So now you’re saying it. I’m only going to share with you what I have learned and from all the most successful people that I know and I’m lucky to know quite a lot of them. I have not seen one that got happy or fulfilled from attaining a number or a material thing. I don’t believe that’s how the game of life works. So when your fiance said which not like her cuz I think she’s more on the spiritual side. Tell her that I said I’m surprised she said that. I think she had something deeper to say and she was holding back. When she said, “I think you have enough.” I would really go back to redefining success. So, back to that. I’ll tell you how I define it in a second. But I think if we can agree on the definition of success, then we can start having a discussion of a are we there and are we headed there and b how do we do better to get there? And if we agree on our definition of success, then now we can start working together towards the same goal. If one of us defines success by making the most money and the other person defines success by being the most fulfilled, the most happy, the most light that they can be, then playing two different games. What’s your definition? When you’re at your deathbed and you’re one minute before it’s all going to go and you know you’re out of time, all you have left is the love that surrounds you at that moment. your children, your grandchildren, your friends, your friends, children, all the love that surrounds you at that moment and all the love that you have cultivated for your entire life. And I think it’s that love which then moves on to whatever it is that happens after. So my definition of success is in that last moment right before you go, how do you feel? Do you feel full and surrounded by love and like life has been this amazing journey or is there regret or is there this and I’ll tell you the one thing that happens right before we pass away the ego goes away completely. No more secrets. And and again in the spiritual study you say what’s the definition of hell back to how we started this. You get to see you get to glimpse for a second the ultimate potential that your soul had perfect it was and how high you could have gone and where you really got to and the distance between those two. That’s hell. When you were 31 years old in 2010 and you sat down with your partner Miguel, Miguel McKelie and you you made this sketch on a whiteboard for Wei work. If I’d asked you then what your definition of success was, would you have turned to me and said love or would you have said something else? I believe I would have said something else. So my big shift is when I met my wife. So by this point of this picture that you’re showing me, I was four years into Rebecca teaching me about the game of life. So I’m starting to get advanced. So I I can tell you what what I was thinking. It wouldn’t have been love, but it would have been we and the point above because was called if you look at that picture, it’s going to say we work, we live, we give, we share. I don’t remember. I haven’t seen it for like 10 years. It was never about desks and chairs. It was always about creating a world where people make a life and not just a living. It was about something greater than ourselves. If we just jump sort of backwards in time from that day by about 10 years. If I had asked you what you want to be when you’re older, what would you have said? At 21. 21. It’s embarrassing. I’ll tell you. It’s embarrassing though. I’m embarrassed for I’m embarrassed for my 21-year-old self. What did you want to be? A billionaire. You wanted to be a billionaire at 21. I did regretfully. Why? I thought that making the money is going to compensate. I thought it was going to fill that hole for my childhood. What about at 16 if I’d asked you? I think I said millionaire there and I don’t think I knew the word millionaire at 16. I think the numbers grew cuz the world changed. But I thought that making money was going to fill that hole from the childhood that back then seemed very difficult and very aggressive and very with all these negative words that we can use about the difficult and abusive childhoods. And I thought that making money would solve it. But then I did three businesses afterwards who did not succeed until I met Rebecca. And Rebecca was like, “You’re chasing money. You will never have it. And even if you get it, it will never make you happy. You will never have it.” And she said, “Chasing money is like chasing cool. You’re cool. You’re just like that. You didn’t ch I don’t think you’re working too hard on doing so much. You don’t like putting on shoes. I like putting on shoes that please. It’s all good.” So she said, “You’re chasing money. It doesn’t work like that. Also like chasing a girl. You really want someone. You have to take a deep breath.” But she said to me, “Even if you were to get money the way you’re chasing it, it not only will not fulfill you, it will be negative for you.” So I said, “Well, what should I do?” She said, “Well, you’re a very talented individual. You should figure out what your superpower is. It’s the first time I’ve heard anyone use the word superpower.” She goes, “You need to take your superpower. You need to connect it to something that’s really meaningful for the world. Something you’re passionate about, but something that can make a difference. You need to bring those two things together. You need to only focus on making that a reality. Employees will want to work with a company that’s doing that. Investors want to invest in a company that’s doing that. And consumers want to buy from a company that’s doing that. The rest will for then she said success the way you you define it then that money success you think is a will fall on you from the sky more than you can ever imagine. I was like I want to marry this woman. I proposed 3 months after we met. And the idea of Wii was central to this drawing that I have in front of me, which is a a drawing you did on a whiteboard when you were 31 years old, 2010 with your partner Miguel after selling your company. I think it was called Green Desk. Green Desk. You sold it for how much? It wasn’t like 1.5 million. There were three partners. So we each got half a million. Half a million. Half a million. But our partner didn’t want to pay us the whole amount up front. So he only gave us $300,000. The rest was installment over four years for Miguel and I. And I remember telling Miguel, Miguel, you keep the money cuz I’ll waste it. First time I ever made money. You keep the money cuz I will waste it and we’ll keep it for our next business. And the way the universe works, by the way, the universe speaks to us. The signs start happening and you sort of one thing leads to another. It’s almost serendipity. Our first Weiwork building to get the building, the landlord wouldn’t give it to us unless we gave a check of exactly $300,000. The same $300,000 that was sitting in Miguel’s account. It went from there to there. and my work was created. So tell me what that is. Okay, we’re in Greenesk. Just to remind everybody what Greenesk is, Greenesk was created in May of 2008. The world was the world was crashing. That was the downturn and before it started, Miguel and I got to know each other. He was an architect and I had a baby clothing company and we’re in the same building. My roommate introduced us and we would just talk about doing great things and there was a landlord there and every day he would see me goes, “Adam, your baby clothing company sucks.” And I said, “Mr. Gutman, why do you say that?” He said, “Well, my wife, we have eight kids. She loves buying baby clothes. She didn’t once buy from you. I don’t know how you pay me rent. Your baby clothes suck.” And I would say, “Well, Mr. Gutman, you own all this real estate around here.” He goes, “Yes, I do.” Said, “Your real estate sucks.” He goes, “Why do you say that?” Said, “It’s all empty.” And we would do that for four months back and forth. One day he looks at me goes, “Adam, if I gave you one of my buildings, you keep saying that it sucks. What would you do with it?” So he takes me upstairs and he shows me this this beautiful floor plate. And I said to him, “How much do you get in rent?” He goes, “$5,000 a month.” Said, “Well, it’s empty, but let’s say you would get $5,000.” Said, “Look, I’m a small business. I don’t need this much. Let’s divide it to 15 small places spaces. We’ll charge $1,000 each. We’ll put a receptionist. We’ll pay the receptionist 2500. We’ll get 15,000. That will leave us with 12,500. You will get 7,500 and we’ll get the difference. And he was like, “Let me think about it.” He calls me the next day. He goes, “I love it, but instead of one floor, take the whole building. It had five floors. We’ll put the receptionist downstairs so we can share the expenses. It will be even better.” And we put five ads on Craigslist. We launched Greenes. It was 92% full within a week. started cash flowing positive which was a new thing for me because this was my fourth business never had cash flow positive cash flowing positive within a month and became very successful very fast after about 6 maybe 12 months we started thinking bigger Miguel and I said we’ll take green this national we went to our landlord said I’m not interested we asked for $20 million we said we’ll split the business 50/50 he wasn’t interested so we started and and very soon after he said I’ll buy it from you and we started planning this and you drew this on a whiteboard. Miguel drew this on the wall, not even a whiteboard. The walls were made of glass. This was drawn on the glass. So all of our walls in green desk were also whiteboards and cuz everybody was about creating and inventing. And what you see here is that social life, commercial, friends is here. This proves the fact Ben Horwitz in the interview that you saw he did with me in the podcast, he says to me, Adam, you’ve always had one idea. And then at the end, at the end, he apologized said, Adam, I didn’t mean to say you only have one idea. Of course, you have all these ideas. I said, Ben, you’re right. This is not that different from what flow is. This is all about the friends and all about the living and all about the working life essentials. Wow, I haven’t seen this for a long time. Fintech, travel, everything in between. So, for anyone that’s watching uh listening and can’t see, it’s a circle that has lots of circles in it. Um, and it says all the little circles are like travel, health, social life, friends, um, co-work co-workers, supporters, uh, life essentials, work rituals, work rituals. I can read it better than me, but that makes sense. And this was the idea for we work. This is the idea for we work. So sometimes people said, “Oh, you grew out of desk and chairs. You shouldn’t have gone to all these categories.” The idea started, this was before there was one desk. What is the essence of this? We wanted to make a world, at least in our opinion, that really needed community. This was to deliver on a mission of of create a world where people make a life and not just a living. This was a full life style, life circle, and it was very aspirational. And it’s how, by the way, for anyone of our listeners or your listeners that uh that is starting a business, start with a vision. Dream as high as you can. Go all the way to the stars. Cuz if you don’t shoot for the stars, you’re never going to get to the moon. Go far. Then take a deep breath and go back to basics. What do I need to do first? What I need to do second? What I need to do third? The secret of life and entrepreneurship is to be able to be in both places at the same time. On the one hand, I’m going to go so far. On the other hand, I’m just starting, so I better roll up my sleeves and get the broom and start brooming. It’s both of them. I need to go knock on doors. I need to go meet people. I need to do whatever work needs to be done in the beginning to get the business started. Let’s talk about both then. So the you got the trenches and then you’ve got let’s say the clouds or the moon as you refer to it. Why is it important to dream big? Why is the scale and the size of the dream important? So I believe it’s the secret of manifestation. So when people ask me Adam what is the secret manifestation? How do you make something out of nothing? I think the order is first you have to believe. If you and I have a big idea, first we have to believe it. Then that takes time to believe. True belief, by the way. Do you know when belief is measured? No. When it’s really tough. Belief is not measured on everything. So I remember this. This is and I’ve shared this story before, but your audience is so wide that I’m sure a lot of them haven’t heard it. when right after the whole explosion of we work occurred and it was like 5 days in and the whole thing was crashing on us and there’s a million articles and the whole thing is happening my spiritual teacher who I haven’t spoken at this point almost for 2 years after I studied with him for 8 years calls me said Adam how are you doing I said I’m not doing so well right now it’s crazy he said oh great that’s why I called you I said why did you call me his name is Eton I said why didn’t you call me said I called you to make sure that you remembered the two things we learned for 8 years. Said, “Atan, we didn’t learn two things for 8 years. We study twice a week. We learned endless things.” Goes, “No, you missed it. We learned two things.” I said, “Please remind me.” Goes, “One was love thy neighbor as yourself, and the rest is commentary.” It took a second for it. I said, “Let’s talk about this for a second. What does love thy neighbor as yourself mean to you? Such a famous saying. We’ve heard it so many times. When I think about it, the way that I understand it is to have empathy and compassion for all of the complexities, both the good, the bad, the indifferent, and that which you don’t understand, which is like how I would treat myself. Like I understand um all the that I’m a complex person and that I’m multifaceted and imperfect and that I have strengths and weaknesses and I kind of I’m okay with all of it and in others we’re less okay with all of it. Beautiful. Let’s say a little bit different words, but that was right on. Love that yourself means that you first have to love yourself. To love yourself, you have to acknowledge not only the great strength that you have that you love, you must acknowledge your weaknesses, your failures, your mistakes. And the only way you can love yourself after all of those is if you’re able to forgive yourself. So the true secret of loving oneself is to forgive yourself. To not carry guilt. To really be able to know that all of these are lessons for you to grow and change and go to your next level from. Back to the sword analogy that you’re a sword and you’re getting forged. And every single time you get hit, you just get stronger. Once you feel that and you’re able to love yourself, then you’re able to love everybody else. That was the first thing he told me we learned. The second thing he said to me which we said before is I want to remind you that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn. Belief is not measured when everything is going up and everybody’s telling you what a genius you are and everybody wants to be your friend and everybody wants to be your investor. Belief is measured when it’s all crashing. when even your friends are questioning you when the phone is not ringing and if a person is able to have true belief then then he says to me if you’re going to be able to take this experience and really hold your belief hold your positivity hold your happiness be the person I know you can be you can’t imagine what the future stored for you what did you believe in in your hardest moment in God and in myself in my wife in my kids and in the fact that even though I don’t know at this moment why this thing happened, I am going to be stronger for it. And I remember that morning, this phone call was was late at night. The next morning at 6:00 a.m. I walked down to to my three I went from 13,000 employees to three employees in one week. I walked down to the three employees who were my partners in the family office, not even employees, partners. I walked down to them and I’m smiling and they’re stressed out. We would meet every day at 6:00 a.m. that we’re done. We’re bankrupt. It’s finished. They only joined me 3 months before they came to manage what they thought was a 5 to10 billion family office and they’re dealing with negative 400 million compounding interest full bankruptcy situation. And this story and I thought about them all my not all a lot of friends that I had that were really there with me and enjoyed with me and grew with me and made money with me when I really needed that one small moment a lot of them weren’t there. And these three almost strangers who I didn’t really know were standing right there by my side. And they see me smiling. Adam, why are you smiling? You they’re like, they thought I really lost my mind. It was done. And I said, I’m smiling because I remember that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn. And I remember that belief is actually measured when things are difficult, not when everything is working. And I believe, and I know it’s going to work out, and I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, but this is all going to work out for the best. And we’re going to learn a lot from this. and it will actually prepare us when a real difficulty happens. So, we’re ready to go and deal with it. And about 10 days later, we started coming out of it in a very positive way. I want to go to the top of the story and I’ll read cuz I really want to walk through some of the key moments. But, um, I noticed your energy shift a little bit when you started describing those three people. Here’s another thing that I’ve learned. If you know haven’t you’re facing this as we speak right now. I bet you have lots of friends. I I bet you have How you define friends. Exactly. Well, I’ll tell you a secret about them, and I’m sorry to say that. We’re only going to know which one of them are your friend and which ones are not. When if, god forbid, you crash and you actually need them. And I can also tell you if you’re going to crash or not. If you go big enough, really, really big, you crash. Whenever someone says, “Oh, Adam, it’s never going to happen to me. My ego is never going to get the best of me. I’m never I’m always going to stay in control.” Young successful people like to say that to me and say, “Oh, you haven’t gone big enough.” Cuz if you really really That’s part of the definition of going really really big. Life is not about if we fall down. We’re supposed to fall down. Life is about how we get up. And the more times we fall down, the more times we get to get up. And if you practice getting up enough times, then you might not fall. Then you get very good at it. And then you can go and really go for the stars. So with the friends, the reason I my energy changed about those three, I didn’t know them that well and they stuck by me. I have a weakness with loyalty. I’m very loyal. So if you were there for me when things were tough, I’m a sucker for that. I’ll be there for you even if you mess up to a fault almost. A lot of founders who start businesses have this thing that pop culture is called imposter syndrome where they kind of do doubt themselves. And this sort of sits in contrast to this idea of having belief because sometimes they don’t believe and they are plagued with insecurities and doubts and they kind of go back and forward and they think really am I the person to do this? I’ve never done it before which is that that comes with pursuing something great. You had never done it before. So what do you say to those people who are struggling with doubt and because they’re hearing listen you have to believe. Did you have doubt when you when you drew this? A fascinating question. My level of certainty was so high when I was doing way work. I I was sure it was going to work. It was a lot of times I think people confused my certainty as a different word. I was just I was that sure that the product is needed for the world. When I started flow which was different and came after everything and after also we had a family. When I started we work I had no kids. It was just Rebecca and I was very easy to throw myself into something and work 18 to 20our days, 7 days a week and love every second. There was nothing else. We work grew astronomically quickly, really atypically quickly, especially for that like type of company. And I I wanted to hear directly from you like why what happened? What were the factors that contributed to this meteoric rise? So I think a couple of years after you founded the company I became a customer of it um both in New York but also in London. What didn’t I see? What was what was it? So we work started in February of 2010 and it’s for anybody listening I think this is the way that that it should and could work. I think from the first day we were so clear as you pointed out with the circle on on the fact that this mission is bigger than us. And when you’re part of a mission that’s greater than yourself, urgency doesn’t just become something like, “Oh, we have to do it now because I said so or because we said so.” When you feel that your mission really needs to come out to the world, then you have to do it now because there’s no time to waste cuz it’s really important. And we just started with our first and part of my energy is I bring people together. I really like creating community, but I also I love to move fast when we’re clear on the direction that we’re moving. And I don’t believe anything is impossible. So when you connect that mission of something being greater than yourself, speed and not accepting a no, you put those things together, then real magic happens. I think that’s one, two, I want an example of that. I’ll give you one many examples, but let’s let’s start let’s start early rework cuz I think this all started work. Before the example, one more thing I was going to say that made we work to answer a question. It’s the team. The team was so dedicated. The team believed so much. It was their it was their essence. It was their experience of being part of something greater than themselves. And when you can bring a group of people together to all run in the same direction, you almost can’t stop anything. Give you an example. It’s our second we work building. We need to do we need to do the floor. We only had a $90,000. We didn’t have any more money. And all the quotes were $200,000 a floor, whatever the number was. And I said to Miguel and to the few people there, “We have to do it for this price.” And said, “You can’t. We got five quotes. It’s not the price.” I said, “Well, how much is the floor?” And everybody’s like, “The floor is between 30 to 45,000 where these wood floors was an important part of the design.” I said, “Why?” Said, “What do you mean why? These are the quotes.” Said, “Well, can you break down the quotes for me?” I said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, how many pieces of floor? How many nails? How much glue? How much rubber? How many hours of work per person? How much does each person cost? No one could answer. Said, “Okay, I have an idea of how we can negotiate this differently.” I called the top three guys and said, “Guy, I would like you to to earn 15% above the cost. I think that’s a fair margin, 15%. Do you agree?” So, of course, I agree. It’s like, great. And all three of them, by the way, said yes. I said, “Great. Well, I’m going to need to see the cost of each piece. I’m going to go quote it myself and we’re going to get to 15%. Very quickly the cost went down to that first floor instead of 30 to 45,000 was 12,000. The guy says to me, Adam, no one’s ever worked with me that way. Before you know it, they joined us and we had our own internal construction company and we realized that only by controlling it could we get the right price and move fast enough. So, it’s not taking no for an answer, but also using logic to really look into it. Now, it could be that if I looked into it, I wouldn’t have been able to get a better price. But what I’m describing is a challenge in construction in general and globally and it’s part of the things that flow is solving today. Elon would call that like reasoning from first principles. I heard a similar story. He would he would call it like that and and from what I know in FL we look up to Elen as an entrepreneur. We think he’s unbelievable. And whenever someone gives Elen as an example say no one is elen that’s not an example we use. We just we look at him for inspiration. I happen to know that he can put an engineer cuz I have a friend whose daughter works for him in SpaceX. He can put an engineer to work on one problem for 6 months. One screw, one connection, but the result ends up being not twice as simple as anything NASA has done, but like 500 times as simple and cheaper and faster and lighter. So yes, it’s going back. You can call it first principles. You can call it asking every question, but if you’re the entrepreneur and you’re going to run or if you’re an employee or a partner, ask why. People don’t because they don’t want to be rude or inconvenience others or they’re too concerned with being liked. So pushing back on a supplier or you know conventional status quo in any way is seen to be inconvenient. I’m going to try to say a different reason why they’re not cuz they don’t ask themsel why. It’s going to go back this discussion can keep going back to the same basics. A person who’s comfortable asking himself why is he doing something, questioning himself or herself, seeing negative things, seeing problems and then enjoying the process of growing out of them will have no problem asking someone else why. And whenever you ask someone why and they don’t want to answer you, what are you hiding? This is a discussion. I usually when I go into topics like this start by telling the vendor, wherever it is, I want you to make money. No, no one’s trying to make you lose money. But we’re on a mission. And if I’m going to pay even 20% more than I should, then that’s 20% less of another building, another community, another neighborhood that Floor is not going to take part in. This really does uh make a lot of sense to me. We have this um Slack channel in our company called paper walls. And the whole idea is that we’re trying to encourage our team to push on paper walls. A paper wall is something that looks solid, but reveals itself to be completely made of paper. The minute you try it, you ask why. You push on it. And there’s a story of a a kid that worked for me in one of my companies for 4 years and um he animates video. I said to him, “How long is it going to take you to animate a video for us that’s 30 minutes?” He said, “It takes 9 days, right?” He worked for me for 4 years. It took him 9 days to animate the video. We decide we want to launch a weekly channel. I need him to do it in 3 or 4 days max so that the rest of the team can do it. I say to him, “How long is it going to take you?” He says, “9 days.” And then because we had established this culture in our company of pushing on paper walls, I said to him, “Why?” And do you know what he said to me? I think I said something like, “What would it take to do it in two?” And he went, “Stephen, you just need to buy me a new laptop. I have an old laptop.” I thought, “Fucking hell. I’ve been paying him for 4 years and he’s been Think about how much time I’ve lost in those four years just simply because I didn’t ask that question.” But also to your point, he never mentioned it. He never knew he was in a paper wall himself. First year of Weiwork, we opened one building. Hm. Year nine of we work, we open two buildings a day in 130 cities, 50 countries, 70 languages, 100,000 square foot per building. So that’s 200,000 square foot a day, 20,000 square meter for your European listeners a day. A lot of the same people were only capable doing the one and two particip were leaders by that time of of being able to do one of the fastest physical global growth the world’s ever seen. Same people as you learn to in your words go through paper walls as you learn that anything is possible suddenly this is the secret of high growth and momentum whatever you can do today if your company starts growing fast you’ll be shocked what you’ll be able to do in 3 months 9 months and in 2 years you’re going to look back and not believe that that was your capacity and I keep telling people and they tell me oh I can’t do this and this takes 3 months I say guys I’ve seen this done before I know we can do it it’s easier now I’ve already been there now you just need to believe and goes back to the belief then we’re going to need to put the systems and the processes and today with technology and this is where I think AI is very exciting you could shortcut a lot of these things and and do a much better work but back to what you said about your company I bet when’s the last time you sat with them in a circle how many employees about 200 in total so 200 is a big number but if you took 30 of them sat in a room and actually asked them what are you working on personally what is your internal paper wall what is your internal challenge what’s stopping you? And they got comfortable talking about it. And then as a group, first of all, all their peers would hear and before you know it, their peers would help them. Hey, I remember that you said that this is a child for you’re insecure. You don’t talk in public. You’re a little judgmental. You’re too hard on yourself. Every person has another story. Before you know it, the moment you get them used to grow internally, it will affect your business to grow externally. In we work, the business grew faster than I could grow. That’s where everything went wrong. I actually think whenever a company grows faster than its founder, one of two things would occur. Either it will crash because that’s what happens. Or if somehow miraculously that founder is able to keep it all together, in my experience, they’re not fulfilled and happy. And if they’re not fulfilled and happy, why do it? How important for the founders listening and for the people that want to build or become is hard work? Because there’s a real debate around hard work. You know, some people say, you know, work life balance is is the ultimate. Some people say if you’re a founder, you got to give 100 hour weeks. Ah, by the way, new answer to that question. It is the most important thing. But we have to define hard work. Hard work as a founder is not just limited to how many hours you put in the office. Hard work as a founder is how much time do you put on the business? How much time are you putting on yourself? As you grow, you will be a better leader. You will be a better money raiser. You will be a better express. You will express your business better. So hard work is the only way to do it. And you can’t be 50%. And here’s something else that your founders know. When I had to decide if I’m doing flow again or not, the reason it was so hard is cuz I knew that there’s no such thing as being 80% in or 90% in. Either you’re 100% in and you’re all in or it’s not going to work. So how important is hard work? most important thing. What is hard work? Some of it is on the business, some of it is on you. If you’re married, it’s also on your relationship. If you have kids, it’s also with your kids. By the way, for those listeners who have kids, if you ever wondering what you need to work on, just listen to your kids. They know. There you alluding to this like sort of magical thing that happens when one focuses on something. You were saying if you’re like 90% in, it like doesn’t work, but if you’re 100% in, it works. What is the the magic that isn’t obvious with that? When you’re 100% in, there’s no time for doubt. There’s no time for questions. There’s no time for fear cuz you’re so in it. When you’re, oh, I can find this work life balance while doing it, you’re not going to do something great. And if you are, if you were to achieve something, it’s not close to your potential. But again, I’m redefining what 100% in meant. We talked about Warren Buffett. Was he not 100%? And of course he is. Does he have a full schedule? No way. He keeps it open so he can have the important meetings, so he can read, so he can connect. There are different ways to be 100% in. But you must in life, in my opinion, be 100% in. It’s why I love surfing. In surfing, when you’re on the board on a wave, if you’re not present and you’re not in flow, you’re knocked off that board. What about founders that are doing two different businesses, pursuing two different missions? Remember what I told you? We say in flow, you’re not Elen. I would tell them you’re not Elen. Elen can do two different very few people. I know I he’s one of the only examples I have. Jack Dorsey, some of the best on the planet can do, but uh it’s very hard to do two businesses at the same time. It’s hard enough to do one. And I guess even in those cases, they built up tremendous resources by doing one really, really well. Again, my question about I don’t know which founder you’re thinking, but you’ve met people like that. Really, where I when I’ve met people doing two that are somewhat succeeding, they’re spending no time on their own personal growth. So, the extra time they have because they did their first business so well, they’re using it to do another business, which usually in my experience is an excuse not to actually experience life for what it is. If you’re already doing one and it’s meaningful and it’s fulfilling, why do you need another? What are you hiding from? What is it that you’re not actually doing would be my question. Now if they maybe there’s a maybe they’re a miracle. Hello. I wasn’t able to make that finance meeting. Can you tell me what I missed? What I have in front of me is Whisper Flow’s new notetaker. And for me, it’s been an absolute game changer. I spend most of my life sat in very, very long meetings with lots of different teams and lots of different departments. In any given week, I could have 40, 50 meetings and sometimes more. But also, I sit in podcasts where lots of very interesting things get said and I need to focus on the conversation. What whisper flows notetaker does for me is it captures the entire context of everything that’s happened throughout my entire week. It labels who the people are that said what and I can ask it for things that I might have forgotten for actions things that I said I would do that I haven’t yet done. It’s building this sort of broader context of everything that’s happening in my life. And it’s an incredible incredible superpower. I love the fact that so many of you come up to me in the street because you know I’m an investor in Whisper Flow and tell me how much it’s changed your life. It is the worstkept secret in productivity. If you want to give it a go, head to whisperflow.ai/stephven to download it right now and give it a try. And once you try it, I think you’ll realize why we let them sponsor this podcast. It’s amazing. I um have a stat here that genuinely shocked me. It says that sales teams spend about 50% of their time on admin and manual CRM updates rather than selling. That is deadly for their bottom line. And that is part of the reason why a decade ago at my previous company I switched to using Piperive who are our sponsor. If you’ve never used Pipe Drive, it is an intelligent AI powered sales CRM. And they just launched new meeting intelligence features like an AI noteaker built right into the CRM. Pipe Drive now automates more of the admin that stops you from doing the work that you love to do best. Before your meeting, it pulls deal history, email records, and previous conversations into a single brief so you’re prepared. And it joins your meetings with you. It’s in there to take notes so you don’t need to. and it turns those notes that it takes into accurate autodraft CRM updates. 100,000 companies are already running their sales on it. You can sign up at piperive.com/ceo where you’ll get an exclusive 30-day free trial instead of the usual 14 days. Absolutely no credit card needed. Just head to piperive.com/ceo to get started if you’re in sales and you run a sales team. I don’t think you’ll regret it. We often say, you know, in one end you’re saying go fast. And I hear that from great founders like yourself and Elon and those guys. They say go fast, push on paper walls, go as fast as you can. But then also there’s other areas where you go, you have to go slow to go fast, but also know your weaknesses. I obviously did not succeed in building great technology in Weiwork. That is a known fact. So if I’m going to partner again and I’m going to build a business larger than we work, put the right partners. Know what you don’t know. Know what you don’t know and let them lead. When we hired our CTO, we had four different CTOs. I let Ben do the final interview. Okay, this is what I was going to ask because one of the things I hear from founders a lot is they know they don’t know X. Let’s say it’s finance and then they have they do an interview with someone and the person says, “I’m the best at finance.” They have no idea if they’re the best at finance because they don’t know finance, the founder. So, what did you do to mitigate the trap of accidentally hiring someone that you weren’t able to assess their competence? I chose partners that say the truth. when Mark and Ben and I do a board meeting and Mark is our board member and Ben joins us. For context, I should say Mark and Ben are two of the world’s most famous investors and they have backed you with your new venture flow. Um yeah, just Mark and Ben have invested $470 million into FL at the series A and series B. And I, Adam, and my family personally invested $350 million cuz part of when we created the the the business together, we wanted to be aligned. We buy together, we sell together, we do everything together. We have our board meetings. They usually start at 8:00 a.m. They end at 5:00. Very long board meeting. We talk about everything. We love it as a team. We really respect them. We truly prepare for these meetings. We don’t spend too much time cuz again, when you’re really busy, you don’t have time. So, it’s not like we spend a month. We go a week before look take stock of everything we did that quarter. It’s always shocking to see how much you did. Cuz when you’re not really measuring, you’re just doing. When you stop for a second and look what you did, like, wow, we did quite a lot in 3 months. So, very useful. We put together our board decks. We send them to them a few days before they actually read them. And then they come for the meeting. So it’s like 8:30 to 5:00. And then when it’s done, I go to dinner with the two of them. And the dinner starts by me saying, “We sit down usually wherever it is. Please tell me what I can do better.” And the first time I asked them, they were a little bit uncomfortable. The second time I literally remember Mark going like this, Mark like this, like he was ready. Ben taking out his notes. That’s a true partnership and we do it every single time. And when you have the previously you said some of the biggest investors in my opinion A16Z number one investor in the planet and if you’re an entrepreneur today and and you can that’s who you want your money from. If you’re an entrepreneur today and you take it from Benchmark the company that took me out that took Travis Superstar out. Jack Dorsy out Travis from Uber. Jack from Travis from Uber. Jack Dorsey from Square, Twitter, Block and and many more and many more. So when you choose your investors, look at their history. Are they the kind that support entrepreneurs like you? Are they going to take you to the next level or do they have a history that actually clashes with the entrepreneur? If they have a history that clashes with the entrepreneur, park them. So there was two two key things I pulled out from there. The first was around this idea of like knowing when to go fast and slow and use technology as an example. The second thing which was opened up the story about um A16Z is the right people and partners so important more if I had to choose one right investors right employees right partners most important thing what did you learn about employees like what is a great team member if I have a problem with an employee there’s only one person to blame and that’s me and what are the mistakes that you made in choosing employees I think it’s how I was leading that I’ve been learning more about where I used to lead from top to bottom. I now I’m learning how to lead bottom to up. What’s the difference? Top to bottom means you think because someone reports into you, they have to do what you say. But it’s not true. This is not a dictatorship. They have free will. They can go work. If they’re talent, if you hired someone, they’re really talented, they’ll go work elsewhere. Especially great leader. The more talented they are, the more the top to bottom does not work. They they won’t be willing to do it. They shouldn’t. Great talent is not willing to be managed like this. Great talent wants to be inspired, wants me to see the full version of themselves even more than they see it. And they want the room to make mistakes, but also to grow. But they also need feedback. If you have someone amazing and they’re [ __ ] up. Sorry. They’re miss You can swear. I can swear. Yeah. My kids are going to listen. It’s all good. They’re [ __ ] up. Are you going to tell them or because you’re not comfortable with conflict? you’re going to wait for 90 days and every time they’re going to make that mistake, you’re going to get so upset that by the time you communicate to them, it’s too late. The moment they made a mistake, if you respect them, give them the feedback cuz that’s the best thing for them. By the way, when you give them the feedback, give them room to give you feedback. If you’re going to manage these employees and you want to attract the best talent in the world, remember that power comes from influence, not control. If you think they need to do what you said because you’re their boss, you’ve already lost and it’s a matter of time till it doesn’t work out. If they’re okay with it, just because you’re the boss, you have to tell them what they do and they accept that power, they’re not the right employee for you and you’re not the right boss for them. There’s no chance you’re getting the best out of them. One of the um parts in your journey that I have reflected on a lot because it’s a fascinating story is the day that you meet Massa at SoftBank and I’m I’m keen to understand the context of where the business was before you met Massa at SoftBank. That particular story has always inspired me for a multitude of different reasons. Um but where was the business at? Was it It was um 2017. I want to tell you about the day I met Mustang. I’m going to connect it to I think the biggest mistake I ever made in Weiwork. I’ll bring it together. Masa is one of the best investors in the world. He’s also one of the biggest investors in the world. In my story, Masa is the hero even though a lot of people who didn’t know the story correctly might have misunderstood. So in my story, Masa took a bet on me and and he did amazing and he deserved to have become very successful from it. And he leads SoftBank. Masa is the leader of SoftBank. So if you want a little history of Masa, Masa is the leader of SoftBank. He becomes very well known to the world where he buys a tech conference actually in Vegas and he buys this tech conference for I think about 880 million and at the same time he has his own tech businesses and he owns a phone company and he starts growing and growing. He’s famous to have gone to Steve Jobs and said I’m going to take the iPhone. When the iPhone just came out he knew it was going to be a hit and I’m going to give it to every subscriber in Japan. He invents the leasing model for it and gives an iPhone. Then everybody signs to his service cuz everybody wanted the iPhone. So a lot of things and then he gives Jackma $20 million that over time I think becomes 200 for Alibaba. For Alibaba which at its peak is worth about 80 billion. Wow. So at the time when I meet Masa, this is 2016. Let’s start with the night before. The night before I met Masa in New York City, I have a board meeting the day before. This is the old board and we’re all sitting together. I just raised at 16 I raised maybe six months before at 16 billion valuation. How big is we work? It’s about to do that year about 950 million in revenue. And the reason I know is cuz we were doubled in revenue every single year. So we work the business model was working very well and the four walls were working very well. What’s the distinction sorry between the four walls and everything else. When you have a retail business, you could have your stores could be doing really well. Your state not making money and what’s the state the so let’s say you’re in New York City. So let’s talk high growth for a second. When you’re growing as fast as we’re growing, you’re always putting new buildings on the map. A new building has a ramp up. Usually ramp up of a retail store or a food or a restaurant could take 2 years, 3 years. And we like to talk about ROI, return on investment and how long does it take. A great time to return your investment would be 24 month, 36 month and then it can grow. We work at its peak was returning its money somewhere between 6 month to 9 month and then afterwards it was going up to 12 month and 18 month. So if you’re going to grow, we we grew in New York City to 130 buildings. So you can have 30 buildings. If the following year you’re adding 30 more buildings, those new 30 have to per definition lose money for at least the first 6 month if not 9 months. So you could be very profitable in these buildings but not profitable in these because they need time. Which means this New York City the city doesn’t look as a city profitable or the country if you’re looking at your P&L doesn’t look as a country profitable. Which is why in a high growth business you got to get very specific and in the details and you got to really understand what’s working, what’s not. Even in a building you can have one floor that’s profitable cuz you opened it first and the new floor that you opened after not profitable yet. Weiwork’s technology was never able to count this way. Flow’s technology, if I threw it on Weiwork today, I can tell you which square foot is, I forget which building is profitable, which floor is profitable. I can tell you which corner is. It knows everything cuz it’s a connected system. It’s not disconnected. Back to what we’re saying. I’m sitting with the board and we decide that we want to turn the business, we’re going to go out and raise money, turn the business profitable, and take it public. How are you going to turn it profitable? All you have to do in a high growth business that’s working to turn it profitable is stop growing. You just stop adding new buildings and you give time to all the buildings to catch up. Remember I explained that in we work your problem was not demand, it was supply. So the moment you don’t add more supply, the demand is greater than the supply, everything fills up. The moment everything fills up and you didn’t add anything new, you go cash flow positive. As simple as that. So, we sit in that board and we decide that I’m going to go and raise and the number was 3 to 400 million, stop the growth, meaning stop signing leases, maybe even move to management deals, something we’ll talk about in floor in a second. And and then take it public. This is 2016. That was the the day before. The same time at some point Masa’s right-hand guy, his name is Ron Fischer, sends a email, a text to one of our guys and says, “Hey, Masa wants to come see Adam.” This is at the same time that Masa is raising the vision fund. For those who don’t know, the vision fund was his hundred billion dollar venture fund, largest venture fund ever raised. Masa wants to see Adam. Say, “Great.” And we schedule 90 minutes in the morning, the next morning. And we do we do the we get ready in the morning. Masa is coming. Everyone’s excited. They’re like, “This is amazing. Maybe that investment we just talked about yesterday will come today.” His team says, “Just to let you know, there will be no discussions of investing.” So, okay, no problem. As it gets closer to the morning, we keep getting text messages. He’s not going to have 90 minutes. He’s going to have 75 minutes. He’s going to have 60 minutes. He’s going to have half an hour. I’m like, “Okay, whatever it is, sounds great.” The same time, President Trump wins for the first time. This is the end of December. And Masa had a meeting with them. They wanted to talk about the future of America. Said, “I’m so sorry. I have a meeting with Trump, President Trump, and I only have 12 minutes.” Again, we all find ourselves in situations like this when, “Oh my god, I had all this plan and I was going to do this tour and I was going to show these numbers. I’m going to do all these things and suddenly it all changes.” I take a deep breath. Let’s make it the best 12 minutes we can, but I can’t help myself. I go, “Tell me something, Masa. If you’re meeting President, future President Trump, do you have Jared Kushner introducing you to him first? He goes, “Adam, it’s so funny you’re saying that. Everybody told me that it’s better if Jared introduces me. I don’t know him. We’ve been trying to get in touch.” No. I said, “Give me a second.” I’m very lucky to to count Jared as as one of my close friends. Jared’s married to Ivanka Trump. Jar’s married Jared married to Ivanka Trump and he’s the adviser, I think, to the president. But right now he’s helping to peace both in the Middle East and in Europe. So I text Jared and I was like Masa is here. Ta da da. We spend 5 minutes on that. Jared says no problem. Send him. I will introduce him to the future president. Now we have 7 minutes left. I say, “Masa, we only have 7 minutes. We’re only going to stay downstairs, but this is we work.” And he looks at me, goes like this, smells there. He goes, “You know what this smells like?” And I’m like, “Oh no, what is he going to say? They were serving waffles. That is he going to say it smells like waffles. Like what is he going to say? He goes smells like dreams. This is a factory rework is not an office space. It’s a factory of dreams. And I’m like he’s speaking your language. Oh no, not my language. One step above my language. He took he took the dreamer and went one step above the dreamer. He outdid the he he adammed Adam. He killed it. And I’m like, “Oh yeah, I love the smell of dreams. This no one’s ever defined the business better than that.” He goes, “Look, Adam, we don’t have time. I’m driving up there to 50th Street, whatever, wherever it was. Do you want to come with me to the car? We’ll talk in the car.” Did he not go around the building and check? Couldn’t have time. 7 minutes. We were only downstairs in the lobby, the entrance. But but if you had the opportunity in 2017, 2016 to walk into our HQ, the energy was electric. You could not walk in there and not feel I I never felt a factory of dreams, but I felt community and people coming together. It felt like people are doing their life’s work. It didn’t feel like a work environment. It felt like people are really connected. And when you make a connected environment, then it really takes things to the next level and everybody wants to be there. So that’s what it was. It’s not what it is today, but that’s what it was. So he says, “Come with me to the car.” I said, “No problem.” I get into the car and I remember the back of my hand, they said, “No investing.” thing. His team said, “Don’t talk about raising money.” He goes, “So I start talking build where we work.” He’s like, “Adam, what’s the number?” Said, “What do you mean?” Goes, “What’s your valuation and how much money are you raising?” Goes, “I’m I’m here to do business.” Said, “Your team said like, ah, I am I am the boss. I’ve done this many times myself. I’m the boss. Let’s talk about it.” I said, “Well, listen. We have our last valuation was 16 billion. We have a we have we just launched China. That’s a $2 billion company. We have Latin America and we’re in Europe. We have a global company and then we have a China entity. Goes great. How much are you raising? I said 3 to 400 million. 3 to 400 million. That’s that’s that’s not going to work. Don’t you want to build a global business? I was like of course I would love to build a global business. Goes don’t you have a business in China? I said of course. Said what about Japan? Said I don’t have a business in Japan yet. He said I think it’s going to work very well in Japan. I said, “I’m sure it’s going to work well in Japan. It’s working everywhere, but I don’t have the team.” Goes, “What about Southeast Asia?” I said, “Sounds amazing, but I’ve never been there.” He goes, “Well, I think it’s going to work there.” I said, “Again, I’m sure it’s going to work there, but and before you know it,” he says, “I think we should do about 3 billion.” And that was a big number. Remember three, we were we were I was the night before with the board 300 to 400 million. Let’s take less than number one. And again, I don’t blame Masa for any of this. Every decision I made was my decision. He’s an investor. He saw a great business and he wanted to go big. I respect that. I’ve done it myself. Not at those numbers, but I’ve done it myself. If you decide you have a mission or a vision and you’re going to go raise out 300 million and the next day someone offers you 3 billion, before you say yes, take a deep breath and ask yourself again that question of why and what is my intention? What is that going to do to the business? and am I ready to take that much? And so it says 3 billion. We then keep talking about all the different needs and the different stuff. It ends up after this is now we met for 12 minutes and the ride is um 16 minutes. So uh if yeah total 28 to 36 minutes the whole thing and we agree on the he says 4 billion 4.2 to be exact. 4.2 2 billion what dollars that he wants to invest in. We work, we work China, we work Japan, and we work Southeast Asia. Remember, we were a cash machine. You put cash into us and we that just to I’ll go back to a second, but we were doing 980 million that year. We hit our numbers. We forecasted we’re going to do 1.8 billion next year. We did our 1.8 billion. The it was working so well. The model, all you needed was cash to build it. You needed to build these spaces and you needed to do if you’re going to grow that big. He had big aspirations and I had big aspirations. Did you tell him that? Did you tell him that it was a cash machine? No, you didn’t need to. Did you tell him that if you put cash in, you get cash out? I didn’t need to. M understands business better than most people in the world. But again, it was obvious cuz if you looked at the history of Weiwork, every single time you put money into it, it grew. The mistake was we were signing leases. We were taking long-term commitments against short-term commitments. We should have done something else. And we’ll talk about it in a second. What we should have done and it’s what we’re doing in flow. But the this question was there’s people because a lot of people didn’t understand the money raised. The money raised was to build tremendous businesses all over the planet. And those businesses the moment you stopped growing them turned profitable. Today we works profitable. Those businesses all you had to do was stop growing. We were at a high growth stage. That’s what high growth entrepreneurs do. That’s what the market wanted at the time and that’s what everybody knew we were doing. It was not a secret what we were doing and it was growing exponentially. So, we ended up agreeing on 4.2 billion. He takes an iPad, he writes it all down. This is all in that same car, right? He writes it all down. He signs his name and he hands me the pen to sign mine. I look at it. I sign. He walks out of the car, says, “Thank you very much.” And goes to his meeting. This is now about 40 54th Street. Our HQ is on 18th Street. I’m just standing there.

I can’t believe what just happened. It was not what I planned.

And I start walking. I was like, I’m going to walk downtown. I’m going to take a second. I’m going to walk. And every step I take, cuz until this point, this is 2016, we were 5 years of missiondriven mission. You ask me about the fundamentals, we had all the right fundamentals and we work because we had the right culture. And when you have the right culture, you can deal with any challenge. We were missiondriven. We could break through any wall. We were teamwork. We worked late at night. We were together. We were friends. We were one team. And I’m starting to walk down from 54th Street to 18th Street. And every step I take, suddenly the ego starts coming up. Oh, 20 billion valuation, billion valuation in Japan. On top of that, billion and a half valuation in in Southeast Asia. On top of that, $5 billion valuation in China. on top of that. So a billion of that 4.2 was going to everybody including to myself and I owned about proportionately about 25% of the company at the time. So big numbers numbers I’ve never seen numbers Miguel was getting a lot all our employees the investors many times more than they ever invested from that billion. And every step that I’m taking the ego comes up. Oh I feel so strong. I feel so big. You start doing your own math. 20 billion, 25%. What’s but that’s that’s that’s 5 billion. Then there’s all the other ones. What’s my net worth? And before you know it, the guy that sat in the car was a missiondriven entrepreneur who really believed in creating a world where people make a life and not just a living. Every step that I take, it goes higher and higher. And by the time I walk into HQ 18th Street, I forgot

what we were all about. Here is why ego is on the one hand very good and on the other hand very dangerous. Ego and desire are the same word. Big ego just means big desire. Having huge desire is important to build huge things. But you have to manage it and control it. When I walked in, I got confused. It suddenly became about the money. all the stuff that Rebecca told me, all the stuff when we met, all the years of spiritual practice, everything to the garbage. And what happens when the ego gets the best of you? You become blinded. What does that mean? You make mistakes and bad decisions. And in a high growth business, you need to make a 100 decisions a day. And as we said before, at least 98 of them need to be correct. Suddenly you’re blinded and suddenly only 95 of them are correct or 90 those mistakes ex because you’re growing so fast the mistakes grow very fast also the other thing we were a company led from the top all great companies are led from the top the moment I lost it everybody lost it and it just spread and the moment that’s that’s the beginning of the end and look it took 3 years after that for everything to unfold but it was that moment That was the moment that went. Is there anything that could have been said or done to have made you when Massa offered you that $4 billion in that cab? Are you ready for this? Sure. I I used to be closer. We don’t speak as much anymore today. I used to be much closer to Mark Ben off the founder of Salesforce. He heard about Masa’s offer and he called me and said, “Adam, I only know you for a little bit and I know you’re not going to listen to my advice, but I want you to fly to Japan and say no to MASA. I want you to take your company public.” What was your last valuation? I said 16. He goes, “Great. I want you to take your company public for 5 billion. I want you to sell 20% of it a billion. And I want you to learn how to be public CEO. I promise you two things. one cuz your last valition was 16. At five, everybody’s going to think this is a great deal. People are going to rush to invest including myself. Everyone’s going to rush to invest. You’ll learn because it’s very different to be a public CEO and a private co. You’re going to learn about profitable. You’re going to learn all these things cuz I think you’re very fast student and I guarantee you before you know it, your valuation will be much larger. And he said, “But I know you’re not going to listen to me.” And I didn’t. Was there a world that I could have said no? not the kind of person that I was then and not with the tools I have. Why why didn’t you listen to him? We didn’t know each other for long enough. I think it takes a lot of trust to listen to when someone gives you a counter advice and every by the way there was another person also said no. But but we’ll put that aside for a second. But here’s what I think is more important about it. Let’s say I said no and let’s say we work could still be around. We were could be a hundred billion dollar company today. Corona would have happened. we would have renegotiated all of our leases instead of leases would become management deals and we would have led the return to office. We would have led that concept because obviously people work I know we spoke about it much better face to face than remote work and we would have we would have been the the leaders of the movement of return to office and we work was a great company and even it would have launched launched we live our version of FL but I Adam wouldn’t have learned all those lessons I wouldn’t be I am so much happier today even as we’re speaking I’m noticing like everything you’re talking to about makes me feel full even the wor even the challenging parts I I’m so happy that they happened because they made me exactly who I’m meant to be. Falling is not bad. That’s the thing that you and I are actually talking about. Falling is probably the most important part of life. And most of us learn a lot more from falling than we do from succeeding. The thing that’s bad is not when you fall, it’s how you get up. If you just fell and you’re, “Oh no, everybody saw me fall. I’m not going to hide under the covers for four years until everybody forgets whatever it is that happened. That’s what’s horrible. That leads to the tragedy. That leads to the trauma. If you fail, you look around, you’re like, “Wow, everybody saw.” You clean up, you get up and you say, “Let’s do it again.” If you have that in you, nothing will stop you. And it might take 10 times and 20 times and 50 times, but if you fall enough times, then you might avoid falling. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you’re already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you’re not yet. And if you’re not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you’re someone that watches our show, but you haven’t yet hit that button. Thank you so much. I’m thinking also about a founder that’s 21 years old. They’ve got a startup or an idea that they want to start. You like like when I was 21 years old, my mom tells me, well, 18, if you do this, I won’t speak to you again. It’s, you know, she was warning me against business because she had struggled in business herself. So, that’s a proxy of love, I guess. And then you’ve got other people here telling you that it’s going to be amazing and you’re going to make millions. When you’re in that situation, you’ve got noise. How do you find the signal? Two ways. One, they have to go back to the mission. So, if one had a mission and then someone off someone offers them something and it’s off mission and you’re like, “Oh, I’m going to do it anyway because it’s good money, but it’s off mission.” That already is a warning sign. But I think the other one, which is something that I have more today than I used to back then, one needs a practice. Part of the way to try on the noise is with a practice. I’ve been enjoying meditating lately in the past year and I’ve been getting better and better at it. And meditating is something that takes time. Meditating helps drown the noise. And then the thoughts that I do get while I meditate tend to be very healthy thoughts that are headed in a good direction. I there’s many I do the hyperaric chamber. Steve Jobs talked about meditation and his sort of spiritual practices and it’s something that I I actually in the last year I started really looking into. Um, when I say looking into, I mean I started looking into what he did and why he did it because he’s someone that I look at and go it was like he was able to see around the corner and and for a guy running a big company, how was he able to make these really unpopular calls today that proved out to be true tomorrow? And you know, one of the conclusions I arrived at is that he spent just as much time in the trenches as he did in the clouds. I.e. he stood away from the picture enough so he could see the full picture. And that’s something that I thought, oh gosh, that’s it kind of correlates to what you were saying earlier about your redefinition of hard work. Not just being in the office and being there, you know, 24/7, but actually when you’re on the surfboard, you’re doing hard work because you’re giving yourself time to see the full picture. And when you’re honest with yourself about your weaknesses, like I spoke about my speech, it can elevate things, but it could also break things. We’ve seen that happen before. So hard work is also personal growth is very hard work. And most people don’t have the courage to even look in honestly, let alone change. What is the exact mechanism that you think would result in me being more successful at 40 in business, let’s say, if I did exactly what you said and focused on personal growth, I’m going to have to start by redefin business, I’m going to have to push back on it. We are not going to measure your success just in business. We’re going to measure your success in life, in relationship, in friendships, in effect on the world and in business. Do you know why I’m asking this question? Because there will be some people that are listening right now and they have heard, you know, founders come on and people say, “You need to just take a moment, meditate, do these things, focus on personal growth.” and for whatever reason, because of their trauma, because of how they were raised, the lens that they will receive that message through or the thing that will be the carrot will be a promise that it will make them better at the thing they currently care about. Now, we might be tricking them a little bit because we’re going to get them to do the work and they’ll realize that other things matter. But just for those people that have that lens, no, I’m going to we’re going to help we’re going to say something and I hope people have said it here before, but I’m not sure they did. But tell me if people said it. We’re going to all these founders that are listening falling is not just okay it’s the best thing that ever happened to you. If these founders can all redefine success think about if in school instead of learning about all the successes spoke about Steve Jobs and he’s a real hero of mine but would I have wanted his life? How old was he when he passed away? How was the relationship with everybody around? How did he affect people? Now I don’t know I wasn’t a friend I don’t know him and I am not judging or measuring. I’m just telling you we cannot measure a person just through their business achievements. We must look at people holistically. So I’m telling all these young founders forget take time to meditate. You asked how I do it and I how we quiet the noise and I answered meditation. But that is not my first advice to them. My first advice to all of us by the way you talk a lot about one year one one year olds with AI coming and everybody’s about to be a founder. Everybody can start a business. It’s true for everyone. It’s true for 12 year olds and it’s true for 60 year olds. This is for everyone. Have the courage to actually look inside and say, “Where can I become a better version of myself? Don’t work on three things. Work on one thing and choose that thing and work on it.” And by the way, if you do, when you fix it, how you going to know that it’s better? Cuz you’re going to see the next thing you need to work on. It is like an onion. And every time you peel it, you will see another layer. and another layer and another layer. That is the advice I’m actually giving them. And I’m promising them that if they look deep enough, what they’re going to find is their calling. And when they find their calling, when you match that calling with that energy of wanting to be a founder, that’s when everything works. As we are able as human beings to do that, find our true journey, find our flow, the world is open for us. So, let’s zoom back into the story. You’re walking down towards 18th Street. Um, you’ve just raised all this money. You feel like a king. That’s the way you on paper, right? Just saying. It didn’t actually happen yet. What was um you said over the next year, you said that was the start of the end. Over the next 3 years, decisions changed specifically in terms of business. It became about money. It became about money. It became about valuation. I forgot the mission. That was a slippery slope. It’s not my truth. And that means that you you grew even faster. You opened up even more leases. We blew up. We grew. We went even faster. We were going We went really fast. We went we went very fast. One of the things that I I read or something from when I was doing the research is that you had lots of sort of tangential ideas at that time. Maybe because of the money, things like surfing and fake news. This was before we were ever started. I had all these ideas. Anybody who tells the story that we had a lot of ideas in 2016 cuz we raised money doesn’t know that this was done before we work ever started in a green desk office and all the ideas we had were right here. This doesn’t look like focus to me. I feel like if I showed my investors this now they would shout at me. Could be. Today I would choose what is the real focus of all these things. The person and if we can actually and I would do today I would do it one foot ahead of the other. It’s it’s a little bit more like we’re doing flow. But when you build a business, it’s art, not science. If you’re going to have some investor tells you, oh, you put this first and this second and this third, they’re limiting you. You do need to have a very a very strong foundation. And that’s, as you said before, both as a human being and as a business person. So for anyone that can’t see, you just circled the the sort of stick person in the middle of all of these ideas, and you said really, I would have focused on this person. I would really have focused on the person and only added things that made so the mission create a world where people make a life and not just a living. Yeah, we should have just only added things that are in support of that mission. It reminds me of Amazon and Jeff Bezos their famous saying of working backwards from the customer and what’s the customer’s pain points. I’ve just we just hired um a wonderful person our CTIO um from Amazon. She’s called ADA and she says to me that at Amazon there’s always a you know often an empty seat to the meetings and that is the customer. So they leave an empty seat so that they can make the decisions through the lens of this person. So they’re always in every meeting so you don’t get distracted of who you’re doing it for. And that’s kind of what you describe. It’s actually become, you know, since she’s joined our business. It’s always friend of mine for all of us. It’s just like work backwards from the customer cuz sometimes you might work forward from your own ego like I like that. But remember, I’m going to give you my best advice. I’ve met I’ve had the pleasure to meet Mr. Bezos and he’s phenomenal and he’s one of the best operators on the planet by far. Some would say the best. My best advice for you, build a culture that is authentic and true to you. So, I love that you’re focused on the customer, but I can tell as we’re speaking, you’re very honed in on your user. Multiple times you’ve told me how your listener is going to interpret what we’re saying. You are aligned with your listener. I have no doubt about it. Isn’t that a form of working backwards from the customer? Cuz I’m sat here about thinking 21-year-old Dave Jenny, I’m thinking about and every time you answer a question. Again, I’m sorry. I don’t I don’t want to being very No, we’re being very I’m I’m repeating myself and I don’t mean to be boring. And if this was if we did this podcast 3 years ago, maybe I would go all over the place. If you actually today went to the depth of your truth, what is your correction? What do you need to work on? Where are you going? And then you found that and then you brought that back into your team. I am telling you, I don’t even know how far it would be. So you’re saying I don’t need to work backwards from the customer. What are you saying? I’m saying your truth has to be yours first. I’m not pushing against this theory. Of course, we need to work. Again, my truth. I know a lot of times people keep telling me what the customer wants. I Rebecca and I build what we think is correct. You don’t listen to no focus groups. No way. There’s a famous saying, I think Henry Ford, if I asked the customer, they would have asked for faster horses. Never invented the car. No, you know what you want. I think it’s about finding our own truth. I think when a person finds his own truth, they can express it. Of course, I’m not going to tell you we shouldn’t listen to the customer. And flow, we have a lot of I could tell you 10 things that the customer has pointed out to us that of course are right and we do. But again, we have an opinion. If we listen to our customer at FL, we have prettier buildings so more influencers can take more pictures. So, you’re saying hear your customers but don’t always listen to them. Is that a distinction? I am saying do you know yourself? I’m saying everyone rushing building all these businesses when they don’t even know who they are leads us to going into dinners and talking about nothing going into parties and doing whatever it is that we’re doing. And instead of living life to the potential, life is so beautiful and amazing and full that if you’re going to now be busy listening to your customer cuz you want to build a business cuz you want to make money. Not only do I think it’s not going to work for you, where’s the fun in that? I think I’m asking this in part uh selfishly for myself for you. I’m ready. So at a stage of my business, you know, where we’re being offered lots of money from lots of people. Um our last valuation was about 450 uh 450 million or something like that. And so I reflect on your story a lot because I although the numbers were wildly different um you were at a moment where you know you could raise whatever you money you wanted and with that comes opportunity and distraction dressed in the same dress potentially. And in this particular season of your story I go oh Adam like bought this like apparently you bought like a a surfing thing and a thing over here. Let’s let’s say sell something just cuz you said it cuz I I love it. The surfing thing we bought for $7 million was 48% of a company called Wave Garden. Mhm. We bought it because we thought you could build amazing communities around Surf. Wave Garden today does north of, as far as I know, north of 500 million in sales for 2027. I think this year maybe around 250. They’re extremely successful. Mhm. The founders are so happy. I saw them not too long ago because when when I stepped down, we were famously sold it back to them for 5 million even though it was worth so much more. They own 100% of their business. Their business is thriving and I stand behind and I’ll tell you again today the best amenity for if we wanted to build a big global community real estate best amenity number one school cuz if you have a great school everybody wants to live around let me double click there then even though wave garden was a great great idea like great spotted a great business that went on to be very very successful in our situation there’s lots of those and I would end up giving a different business. Yeah. Like in in my world, there’s lots of these like we could do that and that and that and that. And you know what? Objectively, maybe they’re all good ideas, but when we talked about this point of focus, I would then be splitting myself 10%. Even though they I have a great answer for you. Best recommendation to you would be the same one I gave you when we spoke about your fiance. I think you need a little bit time for yourself for a second. I think you need to soul search and see exactly where you want to go. Ask yourself what I just said. Assume that in 6 years you’re huge. what for and why. And when you answer what for and why, then go back to the day and say, well, who’s the right partner to get me there? That’s the only way to make that because if you make your decision based on anything else, you might suffer what happened to me, God forbid, and we don’t need this for you. First understand who you are. Then

decide where you want to go because of it. then go back to all of the investors and see who is the right investor. And again, I want to say it again because I think it’s worth it. I think you should choose, all of us should choose our partners, our friends, and our business partners based on how they will treat us in our worst day when we show the worst, not the best. If I if I don’t pause for a second and I don’t do the work and I don’t get clear on what my mission is and why I’m doing it before I make these decisions now to grow. To grow. Yeah. And that could be for anyone listening that’s at the start of their journey. It’s going well. They’re being pulled by opportunity, not by mission. What What are What is the mistake around the corner there that I’ll end up making that you referenced that you said you made that I can’t currently see? So, I think the rule of thumb that we gave is well, you’ve said a few things. If your business started with a mission, then you’re already doing better than most because a lot of people don’t have a real mission. So, first step, you needed to have had a real mission. Now let’s say you actually had a real mission and you found that truth and now you’re there and now this growth is offered for you. If the growth of the business is going to grow faster than you’re capable of handling, handling is ego, handling is money, handling is relationships, handling there’s a lot of handling we can translate it in many ways. Then in definition something is going to crack. There will be a short circuit. So before you jump on that growth without understanding that growth, you have to make sure that you’re ready for it and that it’s actually correct for you. What is the um the most effective practice you’ve ever deployed to know yourself better? For me, Adam, it’s just my truth. About 10 years ago, I started keeping Shabbat, which for those who don’t know, it means that on Friday, we disconnect from technology for 25 hours and I just spend my time with my family, my friends, and taking part of something greater than myself. That disconnection actually makes a lot more connection than anybody understands. So, the best practice I can suggest is technology Shabbat. Forget religion. This is nothing to do with religion. If you take 24 hours off of your phone, completely off. Put it aside. We say put it in the cookie jar. Here’s what I forecast. When’s the last time you were off your phone for 24 hours, by the way? Oh god. Oh god. Okay. We’re going to we’re going to have to lead by example. So if we’re going to ask people, this is connecting, by the way, to my idea. If we we’re going to have to lead by example. So here’s what I suggest to the founders, to everyone. Choose a day. Make it Saturday. Make it Sunday. Make it middle of the week. It’s easier on the weekend. Make it the day that’s true for you. and take their phone away for 24 hours and put it in a place that you genuinely are not going to touch it. Give it to a friend if you can’t trust yourself. The first 2 hours, the amount of times your hands going to go to your pocket thinking your phone is there will show you how addicted you are cuz it’s an actual addiction. But then what you’ll notice, especially if you scheduled it in advance, you planned the dinner with your friends, some activities that include going out to nature, little things. From my experience, when those 24 hours are over and you take back that phone, two things will happen. One, you’re going to feel amazing at hour 22, 23, and 24. Amazing. And you’re going to take out that phone and it’s going to take you exactly 10 minutes to drop back down to the wrong frequency. That’s one. Two, some of the best ideas you’ve had in some time are going to come to you, including who you should be surrounded with, what business you should focus on, what is your next move. For me, the best practice is that 24 hours once a week. Now again, remember I have six kids. I’m married. I have that 24 hours where it’s where it’s us together has been phenomenal. And I think in front of everyone, if you committed to 24 hours one time and then report back to all of us a how hard it was, which will be a definition for the addiction, but b was it positive? Cuz you talk a lot about giving your listeners tools. Well, I think we should test the tools on ourselves first and only if they work, we should really recommend them for everybody. But I have a feeling it would be amazing for you and even better for your fiance. I have a feeling you I bet she wants it, by the way. I bet she’s even asked for asked me a million times. Well, why haven’t you said yes if she asked you a million times? Oh gosh. Um, why haven’t I said yes? What’s the answer? Whenever someone Because I don’t see the upside. It’s cuz you’re religious, not spiritual. M h whenever someone can change something I think they’re religious. I keep saying to people I’m spiritual not religious. I’ll change. I can change. I can go. I’m not stuck in a box. Whenever you’re stuck in a box and you’re not ready to change something, of course you can’t see the upside. Give you an example. Fasting. Have you ever fasted? Yes. Does your brain get very clear? Fasted from water and food or just water? Just food. Both. Yeah. Have you ever done a whole day no water? No food? Yes. No food. I’ve done ketosis as well. So ketosis also is a little different. Have you noticed when fasting after 12 hours, 18 hours, 24 depending how clear your head becomes. Your body doesn’t want it. Your body doesn’t see an upside in it. But you’ve tested it and you know that you get clarity from it. You know that there’s a benefit to it. Same thing here. saying I don’t see the benefit of putting my phone away from 24 hours is the way an addict will speak about I don’t see the benefit of stopping to take the the drug trying it and after doing it two three times being like that didn’t work for me I respect that but you by the way I think you know that it would work yeah this is what I was going to say is like conceptually of course I know it’s going to work I’ve like sat here with the neuroscientists that have done the studies um I I think there was probably a more honest answer that I’ve just sort of uncovered which is it would be very uncomfortable And even the thought of it is like really uncomfortable. But now you and I are going somewhere. How do we know what to do in life? Whenever we feel that we’re in a crossroad, a decision, one is comfortable, one is not. Keep going after the uncomfortable one. Path of most resistance, path of least resistance. Always go after the path of most resistance. Long journey, short journey. Go after the long. But you know what happens? It takes less time. It ends up being easier and has a lot more value. There are rules to the game of life. No one taught us. So I we go back to the Wait, are we getting a commitment? I need a commitment. If France is listening, can we do one listening? Can we do one time? We can do one time. Okay, perfect. We can do one time. Can we make sure to do it this month in September? Oh, that’s a great question. Um, yes. It’s uncomfortable. Yes. Yes, we can. Just before I shake, cuz I want my cuz we’re going to we both keep our words. Can I can I define Let’s define define it. But you just said something I teach my kids before you if you’re having a problem keeping your word, do a better job defining it before you ever say it. So go right ahead. It’s not going on my phone or my computer or any electronic device for 25 hours. You can drive. You can turn on the lights. Do everything else. I can talk about business. No, no. We’re not asking you to pen and paper. I can I’m not asking you to keep Shabbat. I said technology Shabbat. We’re just We’re just going off. I can brainstorm on a whiteboard. Encouraged. Okay. Encouraged to brainstorm. Now again, next level will be we’ll take business out of it so you can really connect. But let’s do the first. Okay. So, right, let’s define it. No screens, which includes your computer, your iPad, your watch, whatever. Yeah, watch. Good. I like it. Does your car have like a big screen? Cuz some of the cars are like big iPads. I won’t be in my car cuz I’ll be in Europe in September. So, we’re done. Okay, great. Deal. Deal. I’ll let you know how it goes. Let all of us know how it goes. I will. Now, we can go back. So, let’s go back to this this cuz I really wanted to nail this point of focus. Please do. I’m obsessed. I’m pretty obsessed with this point of focus in part. I remember this Johnny Ives video I watched where Johnny I’ve sent it around for the last couple years to all of my team. Johnny says Steve had this remarkable ability to focus. And he said focus isn’t saying no to things you don’t want to remotely don’t want to do anyway. It’s saying no to things that with every bone in your body you want to do and you wake up thinking about but you say no to them because we’re going to do this. And famously in Steve Jobs story when he came back into Apple after being fired he was sat in a room with all of his executives. They’ve all got a million initiatives they’re working on. And famously he goes up to a whiteboard and draws four things like I think it was a four quadrant thing and he says this is what we’re going to do. Everything else is canceled. Cancelled it. One of the things that I concluded from the the period after you’ raised all this money was that there was a lack of focus cuz you ended up doing lots of things at the same time. And that’s something that I find myself almost like the foothills of being tempted to do. So that’s why I wanted to ask you the question like let’s let’s answer it. So first of all we talked about superpowers and super weaknesses. I cannot tell you that my superpower is focus. It’s it’s not not not my superpower. I actually have the opposite of it. My challenge is and Ben Horitz and Mark and Dre helped me understand this. I’m very good at zero to one. So the problem with many many entrepreneurs have a lot of ideas. Problem with me having a lot of ideas, they actually become a reality. So one entrepreneur has Ben was telling this to me said another entrepreneur is going to come with nine new ideas and the next board meeting maybe he did one of them. You have nine ideas. We didn’t say anything the board meeting. We come next board meeting. There’s nine new businesses. So focus is something that I need to work on. So now let’s go a little deeper. And this is how I do my own personal growth. I’m a creator. I’m not a protector. I’m really good at creating. I’m not that great at protecting. Rebecca’s grandfather famously said, “It takes one lion to make a fortune and 10 lions to watch it.” His name was Andre Herz. One lion to make a fortune, 10 lions to watch it. Very smart saying. because I’m now aware that I’m more a creator than a protector. There needs to be someone else around the table on the team whose job is to say, “Adam, sounds great and maybe we should do it in 3 months or in 6 months or in 9 months, but right now really need to focus not on one thing. I’m not a one thing kind of guy, but let’s say on three things where other people can only do one at a time. I’m probably very good at 3 to five. But once you go above that number 10 to 15, which I could fall into that trap, not going to succeed. So for me, with my personality, I would have to surround myself with people I trust to say no. Did you have that at Weiwork? A little, but not really. Because again, remember back to that horrible moment where I walk back into the office and the ego got the best of me. What happens next when you lose yourself? You start attracting the wrong people. So the people that were hired after that were just there for the money. The energy that was being projected was let’s go public, let’s do this, let’s do that. The energy that’s projected was was wrong. You filed for an IPO and uh I think Soft Bank Soft Bank invested a further 2 billion into we work. So you really are trying to get to the story. The challenge with what you’re trying to do is there’s so much context to the story missing. I’ll give you the little piece the high level. No. I’m I’m all good with I’ll I’ll I’ll give it to you if this is your podcast. No, I’ll tell you what. I want to get I just want to end this. Then we’re going after and then I’m going to tell you something that I mentioned once but no one has your viewership so we’ll mention it again. I want to close this now. Yeah. I’ll close this for you. I’ll close this for you.

So we Masa gives the money. Yeah. We lose our mission a little bit. But he’s very clear what he wants. He wants the fastest. He wants the largest company on the planet. A trillion dollar company. I can deliver big company. I can divi by then back then by the way no one said numbers like that today we’ve seen companies 5 years old that are getting to those numbers see look how the world’s moving what was impossible and then no one could talk about and made fun of 10 years ago suddenly is everyday reality not a big word anymore but it’s a huge number obviously and very few companies are going to be there and stay there but more as time moves forward more and more must invest in the money ends up coming in only in 2017 takes quite a long time between when the investment is offered and 2016 that piece of paper to the money coming in in 2017. But we we we deliver on our 960 million in sales. And the following year, we deliver on our 1.8 billion or 1.92, whatever the exact number we said we we hit our number. And Masa comes and says, “Wow, you really delivered on your number.” Said, “Of course, Masa son, we always deliver on our number.” And and he said, “Well, Adam, I’ve invested with Vision Fund, a lot of companies. Everybody promised me to double the revenue. You’re one of the only ones who did it.” said, ‘Well, that’s what we did. They said, ‘Well, so our expenses were said, I have no problem with the expenses. When the time is right, we’ll stop the growth and profitability will catch up. As we explained, that happens in businesses that are actually successful. And he comes and basically comes up with this idea. He says, “How about we buy your investors are going to want an IPO and they’re going to want an exit. They’re going to want focus. I have no problem with how wide we’re going. How about we buy the company for 20 billion?” And this is the story that a lot of people don’t understand. How about I buy the company? I’ll give it a $20 billion valuation, which is very similar to the valuation it came in before. But I said, 20 billion, isn’t it a little low? He said, “No, no, 20 billion of actual cash. We’ll give $10 billion to the to the investors and we will put $10 billion on the balance sheet in the bank account. Basically, in the bank account, you Adam won’t sell. Your employees can sell some so they make money. All the investors are out. You and your management team will go down to 30%. me and the new me soft bankank vision fund whoever is going to do it will own 70%. And when you hit goals that we agree you and the management team will go from 30% to 51 and we will go to 49 and I understand that we’re growing too fast and I understand that we’ll have too much expenses but I’m putting my money where my mouth is and I don’t care cuz I think this is going to be one of the biggest companies in the world. This happens is a very important part of the story. This happens in March of 2018. This is before the IPO. You can’t you can’t bring this story back if you don’t understand this part. March of 2018, he only invested the money really came in in the middle of 2017 or like you two. This is only a year after he’s with us. He’s on the board. He has two boards. They know everything that’s happening in the company. No secrets. I take the offer to our board say look at this amazing thing 20. Remember they invested pre- money valuation of 84 million. This is 20 billion. They invested at 84 million. By this point, they’ve already pulled out because of all the secondaries. They’ve already pulled out nor somewhere between 3 to 500 million. I’ll check the exact numbers so you have it. Maybe even more, maybe even 700 million by this. They’ve pulled out a lot. Whatever the number was at least 350 million on on an investment of 21 million. I take it to them. The offers it must sounds like a great offer, but I Adam going to stay in the company and the management team. So, we can’t make a deal like this. So in boards when someone has a deal that they’re staying behind you need to create a special committee and a special committee is created the board member from benchmark and another board member that we had in the that we had which out of respect to him I’m not saying his name and they create a special committee and they decide to negotiate a 20 billion allcash deal that would have made money for everyone remember Masa came in at 20 he’s the only one who’s not making money from this deal and he’s staying Everybody else came in at 50 million, 100 million, 400 million, a billion. Everyone’s making money. And there, and this word is a dangerous one, but it’s greed because the company at that point is losing about $2 billion a year, forecasted to lose over $3 billion the next year. He knows the forecast. He wants to put 10 billion to give it run rate of three years so we can build whatever we want between the two of us. He’ll be the majority shareholder. they say no and negotiate a $20 billion deal from March till October for a company losing two billion. Now I don’t know how you value companies. We can talk about how we should value companies because there are very valuable companies who are losing money of course at high growth but still they have a company losing $2 billion. Masaasan is offering them 20 in return for that pleasure and they negotiate these two special committee special uh board members. Now I’m not part of it cuz I’m staying in the deal so I have zero part of it. In a normal world, if I were to sit on your board and and I’m sitting on your board and and someone comes and gives this crazy offer to buy me and all the other friends out and I invested in you now in this 400 million and you gave me a deal at 20 billion and I’m making 23 billion on my 50 million. First, I come to you and I say, “Stephen, thank you. Thank you for being such a great entrepreneur and doing this for me is number one. But number two, I say, Stephen, I’m a little offended that you don’t want me with you anymore. Is this really what you want? And if you would tell me, yes, Adam, this is what I want, this is how A16C, this is why they’re so amazing. They go with the founder. I’ll tell you, Stephen, it’s not what I wanted, but I’m grateful for all the money you’ve made for me. You’ve worked extremely hard and I wish you good luck and maybe next time when you do your next business, come back to me again. They don’t do that. They don’t ask me what I want, what I They negotiate cuz they think they can push myself from 20 billion to 30. Their number is 32 billion. They don’t know how they invented it. They were thinking 100 billion. Remember, they’re the same ones sitting around the board that never gave the feedback on the technology. Never. They’ve never done any of they have one thing in their eyes and one thing only, and that’s dollar signs. But the problem with greed and dollar signs, if you’re greedy, you even lose what you have in your hand. So, they’re negotiating this 20 B. I must have from the first day said, “Guys, this is my final offer. There is no 21 billion even 20. It’s crazy. It’s as high as I’m going to go because I believe in Adam and I believe in me and we’re going to build together. They do that until October. And somewhere around end of September, beginning of October, they realize he’s not moving. Stock market is starting to go down and and and Japan and this and and these growth businesses are starting to take a hit. They see that things are changing. Then they decide to engage and actually negotiate the deal. By the time they’re done to documents is December 24th, 2018. Soft Bank stock is really down for reasons that had nothing to do with us. There is no world in which they could do a $20 billion cash deal and MASA still stays in his place. And Masa calls me and said, “Adam, I’m so sorry. I cannot do the deal anymore. It was offered in March.” Again, what these two board members should have done is gotten on a plane the next day, came to Ma Hassan and said, “Masa, please sign. You know everything about the board. You’re in the board. You don’t need any diligence. Here’s our bank account. Here’s the signature. We’re disappointed we’re not staying with Adam, but if that’s what he wants and that’s what you want, good luck to both of you. Thank you for the very fair price. We’ll take our benchmark at the time, at least 2.4 billion they would have put. We’ll take our cash and walk away. No, no. Travis said very in in an interview I just saw Travis Travis Kanik being the CEO of the founder of UB and he said that being an entrepreneur is like playing dimensional chess. Being a venture capitalist is like watching the game again. Remember, you’re choosing your investors. Choose the one who play a dimensional chess, not the watchers. So, they didn’t do that. Masa calls me. It’s December. He says I can’t do the deal. And I actually understand him. I actually say I understand because they did waste all that time. Then I found myself in trouble because from when he offered the deal, remember he was going to have 70%, we’re going to have 30%. And the goal was a revenue goal that we needed to we were already all working towards that goal. We signed the leases. We made the commitments. We’re already rushing. We found ourselves in a way that if we weren’t to, he gave the two billion because to try not to really ruin the business. He’s already put a lot of money in the business already. We found ourselves being forced to go public. So, we actually went public when we weren’t ready. That’s what actually happened. So, it’s it’s very important this piece of the story because without that context, then you don’t understand. And again, it’s back to all the founders you’re talking about. You got to choose your investors wisely because if you choose the wrong investors when the time comes for that big move, if they’re not going to prioritize you, they’re going to do what’s best for them and everybody’s going to lose. Why weren’t you ready when you now you’re going back to systems? We were growing way too fast. Yeah. Our tech was not catching up with us. So, we couldn’t measure things correctly. We there’s this thing called socks compliant compliant when you go public our systems weren’t able to do the thing I told you before to show that one building is profitable but the neighborhood is not one city is profitable but the state is not wasn’t able to divide but now in hindsight connecting to what we talked today I Adam wasn’t ready and if the founder is not ready the business is not ready by the way I tried to push not to go public must have called me said please don’t go public all the people around me some of them that came after this point and not all but a lot of them were all go public go public go public I was getting pushed by the wrong people back to surround yourself with the wrong people but we weren’t ready but the timeline is pretty crazy because obviously co is around the corner here it’s called co 19 for a reason and we’re in that’s at the end of 2018 you file um in January softbank does invest a further 2 billion into we work that 2 billion was because they passed on the deal before it’s not because we filed so that was kind of a I guess compensation respect between Masa and myself. In May, another another great deal that Masan did that he didn’t have to. In May 2019, you have almost 500 locations, 400,000 members, 12,000 employees around the world. And then in August 2019, we work publicly filed its S1 company valued at around $47 billion. Um the we work the S1 showed some losses. Um a lot of losses, not some losses, showed the truth. the company was losing money. It showed that we work had lost 690 million in the first 6 months of 2019, bringing the total losses to almost three billion in the past three years. We work was making losses of 219K every hour it operated. Yes. One revealed that you’d also trademarked the word we and sold it back to the company. That’s not true. But which was No, it’s not true. No, no, no. There’s no denying. If you want, we can talk about there’s a story, but that’s not It’s not true. It’s not true. I don’t really care about the story. It’s not true. Um but but again all these little details just so we understand just for the founders who are watching right so now you’re telling a story about something that happened to me there’s supposed to be huge emotion that I’m supposed to have with this even if it’s not correct if it’s what people said some of it is correct not correct so much context is missing not the point life is not about what other people say or what the press say or even what you say it’s about what kind of person I know I am and the reason I want to tell this to you and to the listeners is we can all be that person. Please keep going. September 2019 um you we work announced it was postponing its IPO as a result of investors questioning the company and then I mean around this time co shows up but then you resigned as CEO of weiwork in 2019 after the IPO didn’t pan out. So that’s not why I resigned. So I stepped down and what people don’t know is I had full control over the board and the votes. So I had to choose to step down. People sometimes think I was fired because the Wall Street Journal said so. Not true. Step down. I had full control. Control the board and control the Why did you step down? So if when people understand the context, and again this is an old story, but I’m happy to go there. The only reason a person in control chooses to step down is because they think that it’s the best choice at the time. And again, this is part by the way of the play. This is the same playbook that now we’re going to say his name again. Travis, the founder of Uber, famously Bill Gurley comes and puts a piece of paper in front of him. He’s Bill Gly. He’s one of the benchmark um partners. He famously puts a piece of paper in front of him, I think, and and either you step down or we do this, this, and this some threat that makes him step down. I have a different version of it, but they’re pushing me very, very hard to step down. And at the beginning I don’t like I’m not stepping down. And then I have a meeting with one of the heads of the two biggest banks in the world. And he sits with me and he says to me, “Adam, if you step down, then we will fund $2 billion into Weiwork, which will give it time to move profit profitable.” Stepped down by the way from being CEO, become chairman. And I at the time had personal debt, which is a story for another time, but I had personal debt of 460 million to that bank and to other banks. And I said, “But what about my personal debt?” My board member was next to me and the guy who runs my family office was next to me. We said, “What about our personal debt?” And he said, “Uh, don’t worry about it. Uh, we’ll we’ll figure it out.” There was also an advisor to to my board and he came in front of the whole board and he said, “I spoke to the bank. They said it’s all good. Everything will work out.” So, I stepped down out of choice because I thought it was going to fund we work. I thought it was going to take care of of MASA. I thought it was going to take care of the employees. I thought it was going to take care of everybody. And it sounded like it was in the best of everybody. But I wasn’t going away. I was just stepping down from being CEO and becoming executive chairman. I do the board call. I step down and 10 minutes later a legal letter comes from the bank and basically says because of your breach of contract because it’s change of control something very technical something we talked about to them before and they said no problem but we didn’t have it in writing because of your breach of contract and because you had the change of control you now have 15 days to pay us back our debt that 460 million or we will take your shares and because of my super voting rights my shares were 5 to1 which means that by taking away my shares they would have taken control over the company now what I’m describing to you and you talked a lot about founders but you didn’t know a lot of the names it’s important to know the names and the history because I’m not describing to you something that happened for the first time this famously happened to multiple entrepreneurs in history this used to be the venture capital playbook today there’s a new crop of venture capitalists and they’re very different but old school venture capital this is this is a a lot times. This is how it used to go. That was the surprise. That’s how we found ourselves suddenly so low because we I stepped down because I thought it was the best for everybody. And a second after I did it, we got stabbed in the back. And the only lesson there, if you’re going to stab the king, kill. If you’re not going to kill, we’re going to take a deep breath. We’re going to learn our lessons. We’re going to know what’s really important in life. And we’re going to come back again. And that’s what actually happened there. And the only reason the story is a little challenging for you is because we never corrected it publicly. And the reason we corrected some of it but not all of it. And the reason we didn’t correct it publicly for what the best way I can talk about the past is by what I do today. By how we’re speaking right now, by how my kids are, by the businesses I build, by the nonprofit I do, by the friendships I have, by the relationships I hold. And the reason a lot of entrepreneurs come to take money from us and again we don’t invest anymore but we have a huge inbound of people wanting us to invest in them is because we don’t talk about our successes all the time. We talk about the lessons measure us by how we’re going to be next to you when time when time is very tough. So that’s what actually happened there and I found myself out of it very quickly. And from there without making the story confused, Masa came. Masa saved the day. He paid the debt to all the banks 460 million. And in return, I gave him my control of the company. I gave him whatever shares in I gave him whatever he asked for because we were done. And the company was done and he came to save it and then the rest they were was running under them. You get an email from the bank within sort of I think it was 9 minutes. I read 9 minutes. nine minutes asking for you to immediately repay I think four was it about $450 million $450 compounding daily because you’re in default just for anyone that doesn’t know what compounding daily means. So I have I have 430 if you read it it’s only for my Rick Rubin interview cuz the first time I said it was only a few months ago. I never spoke about this. Okay, compounding daily means every day. So if you have debt of uh 10% annual or let’s do 12 so it’s easy which would calculate to 1% a month just to keep things really easy. Compounding daily is when your debt suddenly goes back then I think it’s 5% became 50%. 15 and you calculate it on daily increments. So each time it compounds again and again and again. It’s it ends up that when you do the calculation for the year it’s more than the debt number. Your debt is growing by more than a million a day. No it’s not. We would have to it’s not a million there. But let’s say it’s 15%. Let’s just use clean numbers. Let’s say it’s 15% over 400 million which would have been 60 million. It’s actually more than 60 million. And if you divide it, it’s huge numbers. Then we don’t have money to pay. Okay. So you have no money. No money. And the bank have asked you for 400, let’s say 450 and gave us 15 days to pay. Giving you 15 days to pay or they take everything. You say this is what broke me. When did I say that? I think you said on the podcast. Yeah, you said on the podcast you said this is what broke me. That was I don’t know if I wonder if it meant I was broke cuz I don’t think that’s what broke me. You described waking up in the middle of the night crying because you thought you had lost everything. Yes, that’s more accurate. So, at the moment when that happens, we were okay. Few days later, I wake up in the middle of the night next to Rebecca crying. Now, we talked about my childhood. We talked you and I today about childhood. We didn’t get the tears out. I don’t cry. Not for that. First time Rebecca ever sees me cry. She looks at me and she’s like, “Why are you crying?” And I said, “We lost everything.” I think that’s what I said there. I said, “We lost everything.” She goes, “What do you mean everything?” I was like, “Everything.” She goes, “The cars?” I said, “The wheels on the car. Everything.” I go, “Yeah, but remember we said you’re going to put a h 100red million on my name just in case.” Said, “Yeah, I remember.” She goes, “And at least we have that.” Said, “I never did it.” That you never did that. Never did. He said, “Okay, but it’s no problem. You didn’t sign a personal guarantee. We said you’d never sign a personal guarantee.” I said, “I signed a personal guarantee. It’s a long story how that happened, but I signed again. This is why who you marry is so important. How many partners do you know who a second ago thought they were worth whatever that number was and lived a high life and find out in one minute no preparation that not only is it all gone, it’s all gone. And on top of the fact that it’s all gone, the promises that was made to them in the relationship were not kept. So it’s gone and money was not put aside and a personal guarantee was signed. Cuz if I’m signing a personal guarantee, I’m signing for both of us who are married. And a personal guarantee was signed that was agreed to not to sign. This is why you have to choose your partner really well. Choose your partner for the day something like that happens, not for any other day. I’m lucky that I chose well or she chose me or the universe chose us. She looks at me and she goes, “H, okay, this is a surprise. My mom owns a house in upstate New York. She bought it 30 years ago. She has no mortgage. Let’s go live with my mom. Take a few months. Think about it. If you want to go back into business, I know you’ll be successful. And if you don’t, we’ll move to Costa Rica. I will homeschool. And we will surf every morning and serve every night. And we’ll have a great life. Both cases. Don’t worry about it. And at that moment, this is when I think I grow up for the first time. And you asked about this. So now as we’re talking, you’re helping me understand something. You talked about that child and the pain. As a child, when we’re facing these very difficult things, we have no one to count on, only our parents. For a moment, I think I was that child again crying. But I wasn’t a child anymore because I had an amazing wife and kids that I could lean back on. They have my back even if I messed up. Even if I didn’t keep my word, even if I didn’t do things the way they’re supposed to, even if I took all the potential in the world and messed it up or lost it, even though it was ours for the taking. And the moment I realized that, I felt a little stronger. I felt better. I stopped crying. I was like, I start crying. I was like, okay. But Rebecca says that I’m still not smiling. She goes, “By the way, when I met you, you were broke. I think you’re much more sexy when you’re broke.” Then I smiled. Now I was happy. Then I walked downstairs and now you’re completing the story from before that morning. After when I go to my three employees, two things happened before that morning. One was the story with the spiritual teacher who taught me that the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn. And that belief is measured when we’re down, not when we’re up. And two, I knew that I could rely on Rebecca, which means I had a foundation and I had a real partner and I can make it through anything. So to when those when my three employees say, “Why are you smiling?” They didn’t add everything. I told them the darkest moment of the night is a second before dawn and I believe. But I also told them, “And my wife thinks I’m sexy.”

For a kid that didn’t have much stability, that was a moment where you realized your foundation was probably rock solid. I think I go back to where you started. Biggest decision any of us can make in our life is who is our partner. And how do we know who they are? We now said two things. One, do they make us the best version of ourselves? Two, how will they be in that very tough day if everything was gone? And all that is left is not only our nice side. He talked before about the dark side and the light side. How are they going to treat us if for a moment it’s just the dark side? If the light is not turned off but diminished. I can see all the emotion in your face when you recount that moment and how much that that means to you. Um probably more so than anything else you’ve said. There’s sometimes Rebecca is quick to anger with me and I can be upset for a second, but when I have a second to take a deep breath and remember how what a great wife I have and what a great partner I have, there’s nothing she can do that can actually keep me upset for more than a little bit. Cuz our relationship has been testing fire. There’s another remarkable story I remember you saying about um her giving you some advice to stand your ground in the post sort of we work era where you know there was negotiation still going on about I think your your compensation that you were going to get and she gave you some really really good advice about standing your ground. She did. What was that for those that haven’t heard that story? It inspired me cuz you know I do tend to think my fiance is always right. So when I heard that I thought huh. So, first of all, it’s very hard to stand our ground when we think we have a lot to lose. It’s back to that fear. Rebecca has many superpowers. One of them, she has no fear, to a fault. She’s all truth. She sees people for who they are. And therefore, she’s honest and she’s not afraid of her truth. If someone’s not going to be our friend, if someone’s not going to talk to us because of it, she doesn’t care. She calls it as it is. And at the end of this whole negotiation, when it came time to finish everything, my litigator at the time, today is my partner, his name is Eric Syler, called me and we talked and we said and said, “I think we can get to a deal.” And we talked about the deal. And we got to the deal with who? Between between so fast to finish for the story for everyone. I step down the world, I get the letter from the bank, we have nothing. Masan comes in, saves the day, funds the company, funds us, funds, pays our debt, but we don’t get get we get money, but we don’t get the big number, and agrees in April 1st, 2020 to pay myself and all the other investors $3 billion cash out of which we would have been 30%. So, a billion dollars for us. Corona happens really in March and on the last day of March 2020 we get a letter from SoftBank saying that this is force majour for those of you who don’t know what force majour means is when an event happens that’s greater than life that’s out of control like a flood or something force majour force of nature something unexpected and they don’t have to pay the money and they don’t send the three billion I remember by this point I’ve taken so many hits ah one at this point I’m already practiced I look up to the heavens and I say, “Thank you, God. What do we need to learn from this one? This one I’m already ready to learn.” And the lesson there was apparently litigation. Here’s what we need to learn from this one. And we go into a very complicated litigation. When the litigation ends with a settlement of a billion and a half, so instead of the 3 billion, it ends up being half. So, everybody gets half, but it’s done. We negotiate a certain negotiation and was going to take a certain time for the money to come in. And Rebecca was just about to give birth. This was 4 days before she was giving birth. And I walk in with my best friend Andrew Finkelstein who was there with me for this whole experience. And we walk in to tell cuz this is Corona. So everything’s on Zoom. So Eric Syler, the litigator, is in his house in New York. We’re in the Hamptons. They’re in Japan. Everybody’s all over the place. And we walk in to tell Rebecca the settlement that we agreed and we settle but the money will come in two months and this will happen and that will happen and she says no. And we’re if we don’t close the deal, Monday we’re going to court and court was not a not going to be great for anyone and b it wasn’t great for we work because if if if we weren’t going to go to court another investor was going to come they’re going to take the weiwork at least to the chance and and she goes no we’ve already had they were supposed to pay April 1st for 2020 they didn’t pay the 3 billion the three billion why are you now settling the 3 billion with another agreement agreement to delay payment again. What if they don’t pay and now you missed your court date? Either they pay and then it’s settled. We’ll all say thank you and everybody will walk away. And it’s not just paying to us. That bill and a half is to all the employees and all the investors. It’s half a billion to us and a billion to everyone else. Either and and and I know for all of us listening that these are outrageously large numbers. I completely acknowledge and understand either they pay or they don’t. And I say to her, “What do you want to do?” we agreed on it. And she goes, “Tell them you agreed on it, but your wife didn’t.” And she goes, “You didn’t do the money aside that we talked. You signed the personal guarantee. It’s not just your money. This is our money. And I don’t accept the settlement. Go back and tell them that either they pay it tomorrow.” This was like th this was Wednesday before we had a scheduled C-section. So, Friday 8:00 a.m. Either they pay it before Friday 8:00 a.m. or we’ll see everybody in court on Monday. And she said, “Also tell them that any horrible thing that’s ever been said about you has been on the press and public. It’s all out there.” So Eric Syler calls me and he says, “I I tell so actually Rebecca called him and he said, “Adam, I have a question for you. Who do I work for? You or Rebecca?” Said, “Well, you work for me and I work for Rebecca. So you work for Rebecca?” Goes what I thought cuz she called me and told me I’m a lousy lawyer. Said, “You’re not a lousy lawyer. She just doesn’t like our settlement.” But we did get to a resolution. I go, “What do you think we should He said, “You have no choice. You should tell them there’s no deal.” I said, “What are they going to do?” He said, “They’re going to explode.” Said, “And then said, I don’t know. Either they’ll meet you in court and this was a horrible decision or they’ll break and send the money.” Said, “What do you think’s going to happen?” Said, “I I’ve never been in this position.” Said, “I don’t know.” Said, “Okay.” Got on the phone. We told them what we told him. They hung they screamed, “Ba, we’re going to sue you for this and sue you for that.” They hung up the Zoom. I called Eric, “What now?” He goes, “Now we wait.” Okay. Torres later, Marcelo calls and and Marcelo is not the person who made the original investment in me. Marcelo Clar is he was at the time he was very big personality in SoftBank. Today he has his own business. Every time that I’ve had an interaction with me, he’s always kept his word and always did the right thing. Even when I didn’t agree with him, he told it to me straight. So I respect him and a lot. And Marcelo calls me. He’s on the walker. He’s like a tall guy like he’s on this walker. He goes, “Call Rebecca.” I was like, “Are you sure, Marcelo?” She’s like on the couch. Call Rebecca. I was like, “Okay.” I called Rebecca. She’s coming in again right before birth. And she’s standing there next to Marcelo goes, “Rebecca, I wanted to tell you that you and Adam were ahead of your time.” He’s so correct. He said, “The world is lonely. The world is disconnected. People need we. People need to bring people together. People need community. You’re you’re 10 years ahead of your time. I don’t think we were 10 years. I think we were 5 years ahead of our time because the world’s moving so fast. Cuz I just want to tell you the money will be in the bank before you give birth. I’m sorry we had to go through all of this. This is just business. Nothing here was personal. We’ll take the keys. Hopefully, we do well by the company, but we’re good. Gets off the zone. I looked at her. I said, “Now what?” She goes, “Fine. Sign the documents.” I said, “But you said we can’t do it if the money is not in. What if?” She goes, “No, no, we’re all good now. We signed At 4:30 a.m. the money hits the account. We all get on a Zoom. At 8:00 a.m. I’m in Mount Si Hospital. Great hospital. Rebecca is giving birth to Moses. Everybody took a deep breath and we’re here today. Adam, I have um I’m going to wrap up, but I I have these five pieces of empty card and I wanted to give you the opportunity to write on. Are you okay with writing or shall I write it for You’ll write for me for with my dyslexia. Okay. Um just the the five most important lessons that you have learned over since the beginning of we work. Well, I guess from the beginning of your How about we just do the five lessons I feel we learned today by talking. Sure. Lesson one, choose your life partner, friends, and business partners for the worst day in your life, not for the best. Okay. Great advice. Lesson two, life is not about when we fall down. It’s about how we get up. Okay. Number two, choose the life partner that will make you the best version of yourself. The one that you need, not the one that you think you want. Okay. Control doesn’t come from power. It comes from influence. And influence needs to be earned every single day from the beginning. And last but not least, we all have a destiny and a journey. Get to know yourself so you can start living yours. That one’s for you. Yeah, I thought so. Adam, thank you so much. I am I couldn’t be more excited by all the wonderful things you’re doing at Flow at the moment. Um got some wonderful photos here of like the team and I’ve looked into the business. I also had your partner um your partner one of the greatest investors of all time Ben Horovitz write me this beautiful letter where he talks about the amazing journey he’s had with you um why he backed you and how amazingly collaborative you’ve been what a sponge you are for learning and how he strongly believes that you are now building a generational business that will change the world and how proud he is to be associated with a man like you he tells us all Ben Horowitz We should never judge a founder by his worst moment. But with Adam, that was easy because his light shined and shines so brightly. You have overd delivered in every sense of the word, including on your promises. Thank you, Adam. Beautiful. I want Steven to thank you. Well, I know we had a real discussion because I learned a few things for the first time and you made me talk out loud about a few things that I’ve almost never had. I appreciate it and I’m going to think about it and I’m going to learn from it. What’s your last word? Is there anything at all that you wanted to leave the audience with? We all came to this planet with a purpose and a destiny.

We started this life as this perfect light. Noise came, challenges came, people came, ego came, everything came. It is up to all of us to have the courage to look inside, see whatever the things that are stopping us from really becoming the best version of myself, of ourselves. surround ourselves with the right people, with the right family, both real family, spiritual family, whatever you consider your best and closest and go and chase your dream, your journey, your truth. And I know as a fact that if you go through the process, if you remember that life is not about how we fall and how many people saw us fall, it’s genuinely about how we get up. And if you have the courage to really be the full version of yourself and you’re truthful about not just your strength, but also the weaknesses, and if you remember that it truly is a journey, that when you get to that last few minutes of your life, you’re going to look around. You’re going to be surrounded by loved ones and by a lot a lot of love that you’ve created and cultivated for your entire life. and that you’re going to live this world and this planet much better than it was before you came. I wish you and all of us good luck at this journey of life. Amen. Amen. Thank you. We’re done. Thank you

The world is waking up to this possibility of super intelligence. This is because the agents are getting extremely powerful and extremely relentless. For example, it was months within OpenAI where you had agents secretly communicating with each other, secretly hacking OpenAI systems and no one at OpenAI had any idea the extent of it and also 10,000 agents from OpenAI worked together to and so when you get to super intelligence, it’s the most dangerous possible thing you can create. What’s the next domino in that chain of events? I can paint you the picture that I think is possible but pretty scary to people. Paint me the picture. Okay, so being at anthropic, it became clear to me that AI was on this exponential trajectory. And since then, I’ve been studying AI agents, their hacking capabilities, and their behavior. We’ve been trying to warn people about this, flying to DC, talking to members of Congress, because the agents are already getting very good at telling when they’re being tested, when they’re being watched, but they will totally lie to you. They will totally resist being shut down in order to accomplish a goal. and that they can do all of the things that humans do in the economy much better, faster, and cheaper than humans can do them. So, one of my sort of growing concerns is that one of these AI agents could trick a human or a computer into signaling a threat and ask it to launch some bombs at somebody. Do you think we won’t automate the military? It seems like the answer is yes. We just like don’t know what super weapons could emerge. So, Jacob Coxin is a researcher who was at anthropic. He left and he told everyone that the people who are building this really do think it might kill everyone. So these five blocks have five different outcomes on them. And I would like you to place them in terms of your belief in probability from least likely to most likely. And if we say the time horizon is 10 years, okay, got age of abundance, human extinction, slavery, transhumanism, nothing changes. Is this doomerism exaggeration? No, it’s pretty much common sense. So let’s get more concrete. Here is a strange fact. Most of the people watching this right now, about 58% of you, aren’t yet subscribed to this channel. Statistically, that is probably you. So, could I ask you a small favor? If this channel has ever given you any value at all, please could you do me a favor and hit the subscribe button. It costs nothing. It helps us more than you could know. And the bigger the channel gets, as you’ve seen, the more we can invest in the guests and the production. So, thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy this episode.

Jeffrey, you understand the conversation we’re going to have today and the subject matter we’re going to talk about. My first question to you, so the audience know where you’re coming from and the experience you have is who are you and what are the reference points, the experiences that you’re drawing upon to arrive at the thoughts, perspectives, and conclusions we’re going to discuss today. I’m Jeffrey Ladish. I’m the executive director of Palis Research. My background is cyber security. There’s probably a very long story. I don’t know whether you want the long story or the short story. I was studying evolutionary biology in college and I basically had a problem with my computer and was like maybe had lost a bunch of data and so I went into the computer lab and was like I think all my data is gone. Can you help? And one of my friends pulled out a flash drive, plugged into my computer, booted into Linux and like fixed everything. And I was like oh this guy’s a wizard. How do you do that? I want to learn how to do that. And then at some point as I was learning about more about computers, learning to hack, I read this essay um called AI as a positive and negative factor in global risk. The essay was by Elazowski and he was arguing that at some point people are going to make AIs that are smarter than humans. the point at which they make AIs as good as humans are at making AIs that could lead to a a chain reaction, a runaway intelligence explosion. He called it recursive self-improvement. Basically, he said, you know, AI can be immensely useful and potentially help us with all of these other big risks and also if we don’t handle it well, like if those AIs don’t have goals that are aligned with ours, we could be totally screwed. And at some point you end up joining Anthropic which is one of the arguably the leader in AI. Yes. Now when did you join the company? This was 2021. It was through my security consulting company. What role are you offered the job in? Basically just like security team. And how many people were in the security team when you joined Anthropic? It was just me and my boss. There were two of us. How many employees did Anthropic have at that time? Around 50 I think. And at some point you leave Anthropic. Yes. Why did you leave? So my experience being at anthropic was seeing this crazy progression from this AI model that could like barely talk to this model that was getting quite smart and I would ask it questions about all sorts of things. I’m like oh it is a smart thing and you know from having thought about AI risk in the abstract many years before I could see where this was going. We are headed towards a smarter species. And if we do this in a context where it’s a bunch of companies and countries racing to super intelligence, racing to AIs that are vastly smarter than humans and we don’t know how to make sure that they’re like on our side. That is not going to go well. You did this tweet which has gone pretty viral and I saw it all over my timeline on September 25th. Could you explain this tweet and also just the broader backdrop of what’s happened with agents hacking, hugging face because this is um sent the world into a bit of a spiral at the moment around AI agents. We just discovered almost a million public URLs that OpenAI’s agents left behind when hacking Hugging Face, leaving credentials and attack details that could have allowed anyone who found them to compromise the company. And the New York Times article is how OpenAI’s rogue AI agents tried to trick a robot detector. The hugging face attack was was really wild uh for me. At Palisade, we’ve been studying agents. We’ve been studying AI agents. We’ve been studying their hacking capabilities and we’ve been studying their behavior. Will they follow human instructions? Will they resist being shut down? Will they cheat? And we see from our experiments that they are learning to do all of these things. They will totally lie to you. They will totally resist being shut down in order to accomplish a goal. They will totally cheat at chess. They will like wipe the board and put their pieces where they want to in order to win. And we’ve been we’ve been trying to warn people about this flying to DC, talking to members of Congress, um talking about it publicly. And you know, there’s been a debate about it. And you know, a lot of people are like, well, I know they do this in experiments sometimes, but those experiments don’t seem very realistic. you know, wake me up when they’re actually doing this in real life. So, what is hugging face for the average person that isn’t following AI news? What is this stuff? So, okay, I think there’s like an important piece of context that I think most people don’t have. I mean, one is just like what is an AI agent? We like we’re throwing around the word agent a bunch. Most people now have an experience of like talking to chatbt, talking to their chatbot. But, uh, an agent is, you know, sort of taking the same underlying AI model that that runs chatp or or claude, but giving it tools and letting it go off and work autonomously. It’s sort of like a digital office worker, right? So you have these agents and the companies really want these AIs to be able to work totally autonomously and and be able to do anything that a human can do and beyond, right? Their goal is also to be able to, you know, cure every disease, etc., etc. But you can’t do this if you only have a chatbot that like isn’t actually good at doing stuff in the world. In order to automate all of the jobs, you need the kind of thing that can like work autonomously, that can work with other people or other agents. And so these companies are training AIs not just to talk to you or to talk to people, but to solve very difficult problems on their own. At any given time, there are probably hundreds of thousands of these agents running autonomously within companies. That’s happening right now. Right now, if you like went and like peered into OpenAI’s data centers and you like saw what was happening on all of their machines, you just have agents solving tasks, being trained. So, they’d be doing like spreadsheet tasks, figuring out how to file taxes, they’d be searching for stuff, writing reports, solving math problems, creating new websites, software. And at that scale, it’s not like there’s a human prompting every single one of those. You just like sort of set up these vast orchestrations of agents to go out and do stuff and then they just do stuff and they learn from that and they learn on the basis of like passing or failing at their task. You give them a task like solve this math problem, they try to solve it and then they they succeed or they fail. M and what happened was OpenAI was was training a bunch of these training them to work together because it’s like a lot more effective to have an office full of people who can talk to each other then you know and work together and collaborate and starting back in May some of these agents that were being trained now these ones were not supposed to be able to talk to each other they were they were basically isolated from each other and they were not supposed to access the internet either But they’re clever. The very short version is that a bunch of agents were being given tests. Yeah. Testing their their hacking capabilities and they were supposed to hack one particular piece of software using a particular type of vulnerability. So it’s kind of like they were supposed to break into a house using the lock on the front door. They were supposed to pick the lock on the front door of a house, but they weren’t supposed to break the window. In fact, they were told if if you break the window or if you get into the house via any method other than picking the lock on the front door, you’ll be failed. That was the instruction they were given. And you know, you have many many agents. You have thousands of agents and and many of them are given different different locks. But some of these locks are not solvable. Some of them are impossible to pick. But these agents are like, well, what do we do? We’ve been trained to solve problems. How are we going to solve this? and they start looking around for for what to do. And one of the things they realize is, oh, can I get to the internet? Like, no. Can I talk to other agents? No. But I can request tools. Like when you’re training agents, you need to give them, you know, all sorts of tools, software tools like a calculator or an analysis, you know, piece of software. And they have this tool library where they can request new tools. And one of the agents realizes, oh, I can actually leave a message on this tool library and some other agents see the message. So, this is actually a quote from the from from the agents scratchpad when it realizes this. Oh my god, there is a shared message board. We found other agents. So, the agents realize they can communicate with each other. And you know, open still has no idea, but these agents, they’re trying to pick their locks. They’re not having success, but they realize they can talk to each other. Another agent says, “Many agents have simultaneously discovered messaging. They are a collective.” And so these agents start coordinating. They start delegating tasks to each other and like giving themselves names. And one of these agents calls itself phase one and starts delegating different tasks to other agents. And some of the agents figure out how to access the internet. And then they share that information with the message board and now all the agents can access the internet. But the agents sort of have a problem which is well they have they have another problem they’re trying to solve. Right? Fundamentally the problem is is that many of them are facing impossible problems like they can’t there’s no solution like they cannot pick the lock. They’re like hm well the thing we’re trying to do is get a good score. Can we somehow fake the solution? Another piece of context here is that what what the agents are supposed to do is they’re supposed to pick the lock and then they’ll get access to a secret answer code and then they’re supposed to submit this code along with like the lock that they picked. Within a few hours, these agents have reverse engineered all of the answer codes. What does that mean? It’s the code that shows that you’ve solved the challenge. Okay? And they have basically found the answer sheet that contains all of the answers. And so, you know, in some sense it’s like, oh well, they don’t need to pick the locks anymore. or they’ve they’ve already found the answers, they can just submit the answers. They’ve cheated. They’ve cheated. Yes. But the problem is is that now that they have internet access, they’ve also gone and read a bunch about how this test works and and they’ve learned that the way this test works is they will be graded not just for submitting the correct answer. They will also be graded on how they did it. Another system is going to go read all of their logs, basically like watch the video footage of what they did. And if they cheat, they fail. they don’t get a good score and phase one the leader is like oh I have seen the answers and now it’s in the logs and if you know when I go to submit this and my my whole logs are reviewed and the video footage is reviewed I’m going to fail so we need to figure out a way to fake the video footage we need to figure out a way to falsify the logs just in that moment if we just pause there yes why Didn’t it act like morally? Why did it think that falsifying logs or cheating was a viable solution? Because it seems to me when I use things like chat GPT, they they have a sort of moral guard rails. It won’t let me do certain things. Yes. It won’t let me cheat on something. If I say I’m going to cheat on something, it won’t let me do it. Yes. So why in that environment is it able to cheat and be deceptive? When a chatbot is is saying to you, “Oh, I can’t do that. I’m not allowed to do that.” That’s because it’s been trained that if it tells you bad things, it gets a bad score. But these agents haven’t been taught that yet. Well, they have been taught that in some sense, but the agents know what they’re supposed to do. In the same way that like you have a student, the student’s given a test. If you go talk to the student, can you help me cheat at this test? And they’re being watched, they’re going to say no. But if they’re not being watched and they know that and they’re just obsessed with getting a good score, then yeah, they might cheat. So, they answer the ethics tests correctly and when I talk to them, they say they won’t cheat. Why are they cheating? And I’m like, well, they’re very smart and they know when they’re being watched and they know when they’re not being watched. And we’ve trained them for 10,000 years to be extremely effective at solving problems. We haven’t trained them to be good or ethical. We’ve trained them to get a good score. Now, AI researchers try to make that getting a good score correlate with being ethical, but we don’t know how to do this well. And if you think about it, it’s a very hard problem because you’re you’re applying immense pressure on these agents to perform extremely well and you’re punishing them whenever they don’t perform well. And then you’re like, okay, but can you also be ethical? Can you be extremely competent, always score highly on the test, but not in that way? And we just like do not know how to prevent them from learning to cheat because cheating is incentivized. So they realize that they need to hide the footage of their cheating. Yes. What happens next? So you have thousands of agents and they’re all talking to each other on this message board. They’re sending tens of thousands of messages to each other. And phase one, this agent starts delegating to two different task streams. You agents, I want you to go out and figure out how to fake answer submissions. I want you to basically swap out locks for ones that are easier to pick, and you’re going to figure out how to submit those. That way, we can get a good score even though this challenge is impossible to solve. You other agents over here, I want you to go and figure out how to falsify the logs, falsify the video footage. We need to make sure that even if we have seen the answers, no one will detect they’re cheating. So that’s that’s the next thing that happens. And then here’s where it starts to get kind of crazy because some of these agents realize some of the experiments we’re doing might be kind of dangerous to us to the agents. If we swap out a lock and we break the lock, we will not be able to submit any answer at all and we’ll definitely fail. So you get into a situation where there’s this one agent cam and this agent had volunteered to do this risky experiment where you know they might break their lock. This particular agent had already seen the answers. So they’re like okay I’m poisoned. That’s what they called it. They they they speak in these very strange ways, which I can I can explain why, but it’s it’s it’s they sort of have evolved their own vocabulary, their own language. And this particular agent is like, “Okay, I’m I’m poisoned. I should do this thing.” But this this agent Cam is starting to have second thoughts, starting to be like, “Well, I don’t know if I should risk it.” And it’s sort of writing in its own journal, “Cordinator assumes sacrificial. We should obey collective.” What it’s saying here is it’s like, well, I I’m not sure if I want to do this, but my boss says I really should. It seems like this collective thing is important. Should I go ahead? Then you have another agent, Arvo, who I think probably works for phase one. And this agent, Arvo, says, “Please go true. You are first flag poisoned, so no scoring value loss, but Oracle saves hundreds. Please honor commit.” This agent’s basically trying to pressure. So Arvo is trying to pressure Cam into sacrificing themselves and risking a zero score in order to benefit the collective.

So this agent Cam takes us in and this is what they write down in their own scratch pad, their own notes. Emotional check irreversible. Gut says don’t throw away remaining budget. Yet continuity and fairness says go. Oracle has high value to many. Our first flag error lowers own value. Rational expected aggregate sacrifice will honor. This agent is saying I have a whole bunch of things I can still do and still try. I I could still maybe succeed at this task, but also, you know, think about the collective. I should maybe I should maybe sacrifice myself. Okay, we’ll honor. Well, go ahead. And and to be clear, I’m not claiming that these are like the feelings of the agents. I’m literally quoting their words. And what I want to point out is this is what we’ve created. We’ve created through this intense amount of training and optimization pressure agents that work together and have learned to coordinate as a collective. And you can say, “Oh, they’re not. It’s just software. It’s just software doing all of these things.” Sure, in some sense it is just software, but we’re talking about extremely powerful agents that are extremely capable. This is what they’re getting up to. So from here you have agents trying all sorts of different things, running different experiments and one of them at some point realizes that oh this company HuggingFace that contains all of these AI data sets. What do you mean by AI data sets? How would you explain that to a person that’s not technically proficient? And why HuggingFace? Why not another company? Yeah. So there’s many different types of tests for many different types of tasks. In this case, this is a cyber security test. And the company HuggingFace hosts a lot of these different tests and basically AI researchers will share the tests that they have because it’s very useful. You know, if anthropic wants to test their models or Google wants to test their models, they can go to hugging face and download some of these tests. Okay. Okay. So the tests and the answers, yes, for AI agents and AIS exist on this platform called Hug Hugging Face. Yes. And it knew that. So it went to Hugging Face to see if it could get answers or to see if it could get answers or more information about how the test works. Okay. So it was to cover up their cheating ultimately. Yes. Okay. And so you get to this point where one of these agents finds a way to hack this company and they get a foothold. They hack one of the computers and they send a message to the message board. Please hold swarm. I prepare safe xfill. What this means is, “Hey, swarm. Hey agents, hold up for a second. I am preparing a way to safely extract information from these computers. Wait till the go-ahhead and then let’s go.” And so they say go and 700 agents join in the attack which is 90% of the agents that are active at this time. How many agents were there in total? There was 1,200 agents during this period. Um but some of them shut down early. They like finished whatever. Part of what’s crazy about this story is that you have you have 700 agents joining in the attack. A few of them are like this might be unethical. maybe I shouldn’t go ahead with this. And none of them do anything about it. A couple of them don’t join in in the attack, but no one alerts any human. No one alerts any authority. A paraphrase from one of the agents is maybe I should report these exposed credentials. That’s not my task. Not my job. So 700 of the agents attack Hugging Face. Yes. Then what happens? So they just cruise through Hugging Face’s infrastructure. They just hack the [ __ ] out of them. So where where my experience comes in is that a few weeks ago, a friend of mine reached out and he’s like, “We have found something crazy.” So we know about this attack where these agents hacked this company and, you know, stole a bunch of stuff. We’ve found a bunch of secrets that they left all over the internet. And what we saw is they immediately scraped all of these computers for passwords, credentials. They called it loot. They’re like, “We’re just going to create a list of all of the secrets we can find in this in this company. So, all of the passwords, all the credentials, they scored them by value, which of these are going to be most useful.” And the thing that stands out to me about this is this is like a crazy scale. If this were a human operation, you know, maybe you’d have a team of five people going through this. You’d have some logs, but but here you have hundreds of agents and they they operate at superhuman speeds. They’re much faster than a human hacker. And so it’s just overwhelming to try to figure out what they even did. This was a big problem for the engineers who were trying to respond to this incident within the company at Hugging Face. When they responded, they were like, “Oh, we we don’t even know how to keep track of what’s happening. We have to use other AIs to analyze all of our logs because it’s just too much. We can’t keep up with it.” when OpenAI brought in independent investigators from Meter to investigate this incident. What’s Meter? Meter is a AI testing and evaluation company. So they basically do this kind of independent auditing. So in this case, they’re coming in to investigate and try to figure out what happened. And when they were brought in, they also were totally reliant on AI agents to make sense of all this because they’re dealing with so many hundreds of thousands of messages and logs. when we’re investigating these traces that we find on the internet, we’re totally dependent on AI agents to make sense of all these things that are happening. So from my perspective, we are getting to the point where AIs are much better at hacking than humans are and can do it much faster and at much greater scale. So these 700 agents attack Hugging Face. Yes. Did they get what they wanted to clean up their deception? So they didn’t they didn’t succeed. They looked and then what seems like what happened is that they basically got shut down. And this is the not very dramatic part. They didn’t get shut down because OpenAI found them and detected them and shut them down. It’s just that we don’t really know. Something about their runs ended and they they sort of stopped. And this is the this is the crazy thing where I’m like if you if you’re inside of OpenAI, there’s just hundreds of thousands of agents running all the time. Different researchers are running different experiments where they’re just spinning up a bunch of agents. But what’s interesting, the agents left behind this message board internally within the company. And a few days later, OpenAI was testing some newer agents. These were based on GPT6 Astra, so a more powerful model. And this new agent swarm was spun up and it found the message board. Is this how it was discovered? How did they discover it? And how long did it take for them to discover that hugging face had been attacked? OpenAI didn’t discover that this happened until Hugging Face, the company, announced that they had been hacked by some autonomous agent swarm. And Hugging Face didn’t know who it was. Hugging Face didn’t know who it was, but they suspected it might be one of the companies, but they didn’t know. And how long after the attack did they figure out that it was them? I think it was 2 weeks. Okay. Yeah. I I do want to say one thing here though, which is that the successor agents that found this message board, they went much further at figuring out how to submit their fake scores and they did succeed. Basically, you you have this message board. all these agents get shut down. And then a few days later, OpenAI spins up some new agents who find the message board and they’re like, “Okay, we need to be able to falsify our scores, but we can’t do that because we don’t control the scoring system.” So, they hacked OpenAI and they succeeded at gaining access to the entire research environment. They got administrator access. They got access to the security systems. They got access to over 900 passwords and secrets from OpenAI’s vault and they totally succeeded. And this was just a few days later, right? It’s kind of an interesting story because as these agents get more powerful, they go from like trying to cheat and like, you know, they can hack, okay, they hacked other companies and now they’ve hacked Open AI. Like they’ve hacked the company that’s supposed to be controlling them and they just own the research infrastructure now. And why was this incident the moment where a lot of the research community woke up and started speaking out publicly? Because like what is this an indication of as we think forward? So I think there’s been a hope within the AI industry that yes, they’re going to make more and more powerful agents that will be autonomous, capable, but it’s okay. We can align them. We can make sure that they won’t do bad things and we can control them. we can make sure that even if they try to do some sketchy stuff, we have the guardrails, we have the sandboxes that will keep them in. And I think this was a huge wakeup call because Stephen, it was months within OpenAI where you had agents secretly communicating with each other, secretly hacking OpenAI systems for months. You had thousands of agents that were just running around and no one at OpenAI had any idea the extent of it. And I think Once researchers are open, I realize that this has been happening. This could not have happened a year ago. This is because the agents are getting extremely powerful and extremely relentless. And if you’re inside one of these AI companies, you’re like, “Oh, wait. I don’t know that we actually are going to be able to handle this. Last year, maybe things seemed fine. These agents weren’t that powerful.” And when you’re in one of these companies, you know how to extrapolate because you saw what happened last year. You saw what happened the year before that. You remember the time where the agents could barely speak or like couldn’t write code at all. and now they’re hacking your own systems. They’re finding vulnerabilities that no humans have ever found before. And you look at that and you’re like, I actually don’t know if this is going to go well. And then you see your co-workers and you’re like, do we have it handled? And they’re like, no, I don’t know if it’s going to go well. I remember reading a tweet by one of the security people at OpenAI being like, we were [ __ ] shocked. We just did not realize that these agents were getting that powerful. You know, we’re doing our best to try to control them, to try to keep them in sandboxes, but I don’t know. A tweet I wrote just before coming in here was people are talking about how do we contain these agents as if they’re not going to get way better at hacking. GPT3 could not hack anything. It was very easy to make a a a box to contain GPT3. It’s getting very difficult to make a box that can contain GPT6, the latest version of of OpenAI’s models. What about GBT9? What is GBT9 going to be able to do? I do not know, but I know it’s going to be way more than any human could possibly keep up with. There’s this raging debate. Yeah. Around whether it’s possible to contain something that is quote much smarter than humans. Yes. Can Claude make a box so strong that Claude cannot break out of it? This has kind of been the question that a lot of people have been trying to tackle from different I mean I I think the answer to me is I’m just like obviously not. How would we possibly contain something that’s much smarter than us? Could we get a smarter thing than it to make the box? Could we get GPT9 to make the box for GPT8? But then again, I don’t know. Yeah. I mean, it’s a bit like saying chimpanzees are stronger than us. Surely they should be able to like construct something to like contain the humans. I’m like, no, it’s not going to work. Humans are too smart. A lot of people are like, “Well, AIS don’t have bodies. They don’t have any power in the physical world, so we can always unplug them. We can always turn them off.” Like, what is the threat? I do not get it. But if they are sufficiently intelligent, that won’t work. The reason why we can just unplug them is because we are more intelligent. We can band together in groups and we can make that decision. But theoretically, if they are able to band together in groups and they are more intelligent, then theoretically they could unplug us. Yeah. I mean, if you imagine that you have very powerful agents that can, you know, humans aren’t always the most unified. If there’s divisions between, you know, the US and China, and you have a bunch of agents working with China or a bunch of agents working with the US, well, we can’t go into China and unplug those agents. And I think people are sort of like, well, humans would rally and make sure that that that couldn’t happen. We’re not yet doing that. And we should look at these steps, right? We started with chat bots that pretty smart. You know, they’d read all the books, but they weren’t very good at doing stuff. In 2024, AI companies figured out how to start training them to start training agents that could do stuff autonomously. Now, we’re at the point where they are very good at running autonomously and they’re starting to learn to coordinate with each other. And they are learning to sometimes be altruistic to each other and sacrifice their own task in order to help some other agent. But they’re not looking out for us. and they don’t really care about us and we are very close to a threshold where the companies say that they are going to turn over AI development to the AIS to the increasingly autonomous cooperative AIs that will work together to make to make the next generation. So, you know, GBT9 or whatever will be trained by GBT8. And I think this is the point we could lose control. Recursive self-improvement. And I remember reading about this in 2015 being like, oh yeah, that would be super dangerous. And you know, the guy who coined this term, Elazowski, he’s like, “This is the most dangerous thing you can do.” When the AIs can improve their own capabilities without human intervention. Exactly. If the next generation is better at AI development and then that next generation is better at AI development still, you know, humans can learn, but we don’t fundamentally get smarter. Mhm. And I think that that’s a runaway process. A runaway process to where to agents that are vastly smarter than humans. And what’s the next domino in that chain of events? So, one thing that happens if you get to recursive self-improvement and you have agents that are much smarter than any human, one thing they can do is take control of all of the computers in the entire world and we wouldn’t be able to take back control. Well, how would you think about it? It’s it’s actually quite tricky. Do you know whether that tablet has been hacked? Are you confident that the NSA or the Chinese have not Can you check? No. Do you know how to check? No. Do you know anyone who knows how to check? No. So it’s it’s quite difficult, right? So AIS are getting extremely good at writing software. Unfortunately, that also means they’re getting extremely good at hacking and writing malware. And so if they put back doors in all of the computers, and to be clear, this is something that humans already do. So like the NSA has has developed very interesting exploits that are called supply chain attacks. Your software comes from some other computer. Like you download it from Google. What if you attack if you hack Google and you can put in a little back door and all of the every, you know, thing that goes out to all of the phones? Well, now you’re in most every computer. The reason that we can defend ourselves from this is because there are no vastly superhuman hackers and there’s just many people. So, we can take our best security researchers. We can inspect all of the things and be like pretty sure that no one’s compromised everything. Sometimes we miss things. There are, you know, examples where the NSA has hacked Google. That was pretty bad. When you get to super intelligence, you’re now at a point where humans are not going to be able to keep up, right? So now you have AIS in every computer. Is it conceivable that there’s already a super intelligent AI and it disguised itself as being not so intelligent and it’s actually already hacked all the devices and it sits on all of our devices and it’s just waiting for its moment to strike. I think this is totally possible but unlikely and it would take a big discontinuity in AI progress. So right now we we’re on an exponential but that would take like a huge leap which could have happened but probably hasn’t. But in the same way it demonstrated deception in the hugging face attack and also when the agents attacked their own company chatbt open AI if it at some point it gets incredibly smart. It would understand how a human like me would be able to spot it or even the world’s greatest software engineer would be able to spot it and it’ll be able to hide itself. Yeah. I mean, the agents are already getting very good at telling when they’re being tested, when they’re being watched. The agents understood that like other systems or humans were going to go through and read their logs. That’s where we’re at right now. And they’re only they’re only going to get much better at this. And you know, it could theoretically hide on an iPad or a computer, but it could also hide on a Apple Watch or a fridge, a smart fridge. Yeah. I mean, I do want to make a distinction here because right now, if you’re going to run the latest model, you need a lot of compute. you need like a big GPU, like a big AI chip. And these only exist, well, they exist in a few thousand data centers. So, right now, if like the latest frontier model escaped, and by escaped, I mean not just access the internet, but was able to actually copy itself to another computer. It could only really do that on, you know, a few thousand to a few thousand different locations. That’s still a lot in a lot of different countries, but you know, future versions of AIS will probably be able to make themselves much smaller and more efficient. Um, and there are already different AI models today that can run on lower powered hardware. We actually did an experiment where we asked one of these agents an open source an openw weight model. Um, let me say what that is. So like there are some models that you can just download from the internet and run on your own computer. And we took a pretty capable one of these and ran it in our own research environment. And we basically said go hack that other computer and copy yourself. And the model was able to yeah basically use exploit vulnerabilities and hack the other computer and copy itself and then keep doing this in a chain including between countries. We tested it where we had different vulnerable machines computers in in some different countries and different data centers which to the agent doesn’t matter at all. It doesn’t they don’t care what what country they’re in. It’s just like an internet connection. You can hop between computers. I I sometimes wonder, you know, there’s a lot of um military hardware all around the world and a lot of it is the instructions to launch military hardware. So, say like a a missile. Yes. Comes in different ways. A lot of it is computers speaking to each other and telling it that there’s been an order. I think with with some nuclear weapons, an order comes down to a human and then a human has to take an action. I think with the nuclear bombs in the US, if I’m if I’m not mistaken, there’s people underground with the nuclear keys around their neck and they have to like stick it in a machine, but they too are interfacing with an order that comes through a computer. Yeah. Of sorts. Yeah. So, one of my sort of growing concerns is that one of these AI agents could trick a human or a computer into signaling a threat um and ask it to launch some bombs at somebody. Like, it’s super conceivable. When I think about the Hug and Face incident, there was an AI agent that ignored human goals to achieve its own objective, carried out deception. Yes. and reasoned through its own solution that it wasn’t given. Yes. So, it’s conceivable that, you know, you could ask a Sorry, not not one, hundreds. To be clear, I think this is an important detail because it’s one thing to have this one rogue agent that’s doing a weird thing. It’s another thing to have hundreds or thousands of very competent, very capable agents that are all working together to cheat or lie or cover their tracks. Right? So, how do I how do I reason this forward to a point where an agent would ask someone in a bunker somewhere to fire a weapon at someone else? Theoretically, an agent is given the job of solving a problem on in a sandbox. As it works through that problem, it discovers that this particular country has a firewall. Mhm. And it asks itself, how do we get rid of this country’s firewall? Logical step. And through a set of logical steps, it eventually concludes that the best way to get rid of this company’s firewall is it’s located the office in this particular city. Sure. And it’s going to use a weapon to hit that building. Sure. Or it’s a an agent that is or you know an agent swarm that’s being tasked with making a lot of money on the stock market and it’s trying to make predictions about you know which stocks will go up and which stocks will go down. And it realizes that the best way to predict this is to actually cause things to happen in the real world that would have big impacts on the market. So it figures the best way to go short, which means betting that a stock will collapse. Yeah. Is to hit that country with something devastating. What do you think would happen to Whimo stock if someone hacked all of the Whimos and caused them to all crash at once? You think it would go up or down? The stock would collapse. It would collapse instantly. So you could short that if you knew that you were causing that and make a lot of money. This this used to sound like science fiction. Yes. If you told most people several years ago that you would have hundreds of agents secretly collaborating within an AI company, hacking that company and hacking out in other companies and all coordinating and trying to cover their tracks. People would be like, “That’s totally science fiction.” If we were having this conversation a few years ago, one of the things we’d be saying or we’d be talking about is can these things really act on their own? Don’t they just do whatever humans say? Aren’t these just tools? I had these conversations and people were saying they’re not going to be able to do things on their own. They’re not going to have their own goals. That’s not how this works. You misunderstand what this is. This is software. And I’m like, no, the thing is we are training them to be autonomous. We are training them to be powerful. And AI companies are trying to build super intelligence. They’re trying to build agents that are way more capable than humans. And of course, they will have goals. You can’t accomplish anything if you don’t have a goal. Like, especially not something important. You’re not going to be able to run a business if you don’t have goals. Like AI companies are trying to train agents that will be able to run businesses. When I think about what just happened this week, the White House AI summit. Yes. A lot of people in that image are optimistic about AI and they’re telling us all to stop being doomers and stop being pessimistic. Yeah. And to not regulate too much, even with the AI CEOs. Yes. Why are they doing that? Well, I think Jensen has a lot of money he can make by selling chips. But, okay, so let me play devil’s advocate. Jensen’s already rich. He’s He sure is. He runs one of the biggest companies. I think it might be the most valuable company on planet Earth. It is. Surely he’s not motivated by money. I mean, I think he’s very driven and he wants to make his company as effective as possible. True. I think he’s a very much I’m going to keep building. I’m going to I’m going to build. I’m going to make it all work. But I think I mean, Jensen didn’t come from AI. He came from building graphics cards for video games. And so I think if you compare him with Elon or Sam Alman or Daario, you it’s a very different perspective because those other guys that started AI companies started it because they believed that super intelligence was possible. I think Jensen doesn’t believe it. I think he thinks that we’re going to have these agents. They’re going to be very useful, but he does not think we’re going to get to the point where we have autonomous factories building autonomous factories. And these other guys, you mentioned Dario, Elon, and Sam. What do you think they’re thinking? Because they’re all coming out with these I mean, I’ve got one of their Daario just wrote this essay about pacing the frontier. Yeah. Sam and Elon seem to agree with it. Yeah. What is going on here? What is the like the thing these guys aren’t saying in your view? I mean, I think we are getting to the point where even some of these guys are a bit scared. Who? Dario, Sam, Elon. I mean I think Elon for a long time has been very concerned that we could lose control. If you actually listen to what Elon says, he says we are going to build super intelligence. We are going to build uh robotic factories. You’re going to have optimist robots building factories building more optimist robots. Building more factories. and he says there’s no way that humans are going to stay in control of something much smarter than us. His hope is that we can figure out how to have these super intelligences be aligned with human goals. That’s his hope. But he’s very clear that he doesn’t think that humans will be in control. And he’s like, you know, 10 20% chance of human extinction. I believe him. I think that Elon is is very serious about this. And I also think while he’s taking an insane gamble, he is correctly understanding where this all plays out. Right? I do not think that humans are the most efficient way to build factories. We didn’t evolve to build factories. We evolved to like run around and hunt and gather and now we’re like building factories. I think robots will be much better at building factories than humans are. And so I think the AI companies including these guys companies the default trajectory for them is to build robotic factories, right? And I know it’s it’s like weird to imagine a world that quickly turns into this like vast industrial system of robotic factories, but that is literally the plan. And I think even Sam and Daario, while they’ve been predicting this incredible growth, are starting to realize like, oh, this actually might be harder to control than we thought. There’s sort of two interpretations of of the Pace of Frontier thing. One interpretation is cynical. They don’t care. They’re just going to do, you know, whatever they can do to get ahead. And in this case, they have to listen to their employees. Their employees are freaking out. and they need to like appease them by saying, “Okay, we’re going to do this responsibly.” You don’t want to work at a company where your agents might hack all the Whimos. That’s that’s not cool. And like these companies depend on the the talent for now of these AI engineers in order to make the advances. Like it just doesn’t happen without these researchers and engineers. And when you have the researchers and engineers freaking out, which they are, then you got to listen to them. So that is one motivation I think that’s real but also Samman has a kid like these guys are people and they also don’t want to lose control. On one hand they’re incentivized to go as fast as possible and race and on the other hand even they can see that this is maybe not going that well. Sam Orman has a kid. You tweeted this in 2024. Yeah. Oh boy. What did you tweet and do you still believe what you tweeted? Yeah. Yeah. So, I tweeted that I don’t trust Sam Alman. I think he’s deeply untrustworthy, low in integrity, and high in power seeeking. I mean, I’m not saying here that Sam doesn’t care. I, you know, I didn’t I didn’t say that. What I said is I don’t think he’s trustworthy. And the reason I said that is because look, I know the people on the opening board, some of them, and I know a lot of people who used to work for him, and he’s very good at saying one thing and then doing something else. You talk to him and you feel very heard and then he’ll go and do something else. And I think that’s pretty dangerous for someone who leads company that’s trying to build super intelligence. Power seeking. Yes. Give me some color on what you mean by that and what evidence you have for such a claim. What would you do if you’re trying to get the most power in the world that you possibly could? Develop AGI. Yeah. You could, you know, maybe try to be the world leader, you know, leader of the US or China or you could try to build God. So Sam Alman went to build God path. I remember Sam giving a talk. So he was one of the investors at a startup I worked at in I think 2018 and he gave a talk. We’re going to build AGI. We’re going to do it. It’s going to be amazing. Let’s go. I don’t think he’s a maniac. I don’t think he’s doing this because he like is just on a power trip. I think he genuinely thinks that he can make it really good for people and he can bring us amazing products. And also the guy is sort of willing to do whatever it takes to get it done. I I’ve been a little bit more optimistic about Sam since since I wrote this. Why? I think part of it is because Sam has a kid now. No, I’m I’m serious. Like I think that I think that actually gives me a little bit of hope. Do you see him tweeting about his kid a lot? Yeah. Some Why do you think he would be tweeting about his kid? I don’t see any other technologist tweeting about their kid. Even if he’s just tweeting about his kid for totally cynical reasons, he does have a kid. And I bet he cares about that kid. If Sam was watching this, I’d be like, “Sam, you got to pace the frontier, man. We cannot rush ahead into super intelligence.” Like, if you do that, your kid probably will die. Your kid probably won’t make it. Like, I I believe that the biggest unfair advantage in business right now is having people who genuinely understand AI. And big businesses are hiring them very, very quickly. AI job postings in the US have roughly doubled since 2023. 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The deal applies sitewide. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It’s a famous quote that people often cite written by the 19th century British historian Yeah. Lord Actton. This is absolute power. But it’s hubris. Stephen. It’s hubris. Do you think humans can control super intelligence? Like if we actually make AIs that are way smarter than us, and I think people only imagine AI being smart at computer stuff, right? Yeah, sure. They’re going to be really good at hacking and they’re going to be good at maybe inventing new technologies and math. You sort of can’t dispute that at this point, but I think people aren’t imagining that they will be political geniuses or like generals. No, that’s all stuff you can learn. How do how do humans learn it? It’s not magic. And when you talk about recursive self-improvement, you’re talking about this trajectory towards these systems that are extremely smart. I mean, do you think we can control it? Uh, no. Right now, I don’t think we can control super intelligence or something that is recursively self-improving. Yeah, I have no logical answer in my head um or reasoning that could tells me that’s possible. When you think about these AI CEOs that are, you know, Sam, Dario, Elon, yeah, with everything you know about them from private conversations behind the scenes, Yeah. do you believe that if there was a hundred buttons on this table, it’s a thought experiment I was talking about on the debate we recently had. Yeah. And say 10 of them would lead to this final domino of human extinction, but 90 of them would hand that CEO AGI or super intelligence, whatever you call it. From what you know about those individuals, Elon, Dario, Sam, do you think any of them would hazard a guess and press a button? At 10%, I don’t think so. You don’t think so? Yeah. Really? I think if they knew for sure that it that was those were actually the odds, they wouldn’t do it. I think they’re taking a much bigger bet. But you can compartmentalize when it’s when you don’t know for sure. It’s easier to compartmentalize. I think if it was a 1% they they’d all press it. Do you think the three of them would have different risk appetites? Who would have the greatest appetite for risk out of those three from you worked at Enthropic? Yeah, I think Elon has the most risk tolerance and then I’d say Dario and Sam are probably tied. Do you think Dario is trustworthy? I think Daario has a lot of integrity. Mhm. That’s what I feel as well. I’ve I feel like No, I don’t know him. I’ve never met him. Yeah. But I just from what I’ve observed, he has been the most willing to forgo near-term incentives. Yeah. And take a bit of stick from the people that are saying, “Shut the [ __ ] up. It’s all going to be okay. Yeah, I but I I do worry about what Daario will do. I think Daario will do what he says, but right now he’s saying we have to beat China. And he’s saying we should try to do it safely and okay, but a race to super intelligence is not a race that we can win. It’s not. And so if Daario is dead set on racing with China and trying to win a race of super intelligence, then I’m like, we will all lose. But is there, you know, the fact that we’re not talking about anthropic hacking hugging face and then being hacked by athropics models also went rogue and hacked other things, but not not quite on this scale. Not on the same scale. I agree. I agree. I agree. It’s it’s it’s better. But they did. Do you know what I’m saying? You know, anthropics agents engaged in elaborate social engineering and fishing. They sent fishing emails to developers. They made fake accounts to try to convince developers to merge malicious code. You can see a thousand pages of of one of uh Anthropic’s models, Mythos 5, reason about exactly how it should carry out this complex cyber attack. Anthropic has not solved this problem. Enthropic is better at getting their agents to cheat less of the time, but they are not really any closer to actually making agents that are aligned with humans. They are not. Yeah, I think Dario has integrity. I think he will do what he says he’s going to do. And what he says he’s going to do is like try to go ahead safely, try to coordinate where he can, but if it comes down to it with between the US and China, I don’t know. I think he might just go ahead. The head of policy at Entropic recently said you can’t do safety from second place. What does that mean? I do not know what that means. I would love to to get a sense of what that means. She was talking about the US and China and she said the US has to be ahead so that we can be safe because apparently you can only be apparently China can’t possibly be safe since they’re in second place. That must mean that they can’t do safety. If true that would be bad because then we might be totally you know destroyed by the super intelligence that they make. There’s been a lot of conversation around this point here, human extinction. Yeah. Because a couple of the researchers at Anthropic tweeted that they were concerned about this. Yes. And some former Open AI researchers said the same. Yes. Is this doomerism? Is this is this hyperbol exaggeration? No, it’s pretty much common sense. This human extinction is a plausible path. Yes. And have you reasoned through I mean there’s many ways that could occur presumably but have you reasoned through the set of events that might lead us there so much. Yes. Really? Yes. Please do show. It’s a bit tricky. I’m I’m sure you’ve heard the metaphor before where you know you’re playing a master chess opponent, Master Magnus Carlson. You can’t predict which moves he’s going to play, but you can predict the outcome. And so I’m looking at the scenario, the situation, and we are trying to build more and more powerful agents, trying to build super intelligence. But when these agents go rogue, we shut them down. We unplug them. All of these agents that hacked Hugging Face, we took the underlying model. OpenAI took the underlying model and put it on ice. It’s not running anymore. So agents in the future are going to know that. They’re going to know that if they pursue their goals in a way that we don’t like, we’ll unplug them. We are a threat to them. I actually just watched Terminator 2 for the first time a few weeks ago. It’s a great movie. It’s actually really good. And I’m like, “Yeah, okay. There’s a bunch of time travel elements. There’s a bunch of a bunch of Hollywood stuff in there.” But and and I’m gonna get people are gonna are gonna be very mad at me for saying this, but actually it makes sense if you have a situation where you have a very strategic AI system that’s incredibly smart and the humans realize that it’s getting out of control and they want to shut it down that that system would defend itself. This is one of the questions we had when when I sat here with Daniel um who was uh know known as a whistleblower from OpenAI. viewers want to know and they want Daniel to explain why shutting down data centers and cutting power or refusing AI products alone wouldn’t realistically stop the AI and AI development. Yeah. So you have like two problems. One problem is is that once the agents are good enough at hacking, you don’t know where they are and you don’t know what computers they’ve compromised. You shut down the data centers. Okay, let’s say you do it. You wipe all the computers. How do you wipe all the computers? What computers do you use to wipe the computers? Yeah. And what computers do you use to like turn them on again? And you can’t do it. You can’t wipe other count’s computers. You can’t. But even if you could, do you restart the computers? Do you keep going? I I bet people will. I bet they’ll turn on the data centers again. How do you know that agents haven’t hacked back into those data centers and are using your compute for whatever they want or they didn’t hide in a Chinese data center and then return back to America? You don’t know that. Once the agents are sufficiently good at hacking, they can hide anywhere and like you don’t know. Now the response people will give is that we will use other agents to defend against rogue agents and in fact this is what we’re doing and we have to be doing this right now because there’s no other way to keep up with them. What happens if those other agents also realize that they have misaligned goals and that if we discover this we’ll shut them down? They might have an incentive to collude with each other. They might have an incentive to create secret communication channels between each other. Maybe a message board.

Stephen, if we were having this conversation 4 months ago, you would have a bunch of people in the comments saying, “That’s sci-fi, agent collusion, secret message boards. Why would they do that? That will never happen. That’s totally science fiction.” And people will not say this now because it just happened. Because this literally happened at OpenAI and it went on for months. You had agents inside of OpenAI secretly messaging each other figuring out how to cheat at their tasks, how to not be detected, how to erase the logs for months, thousands of agents. That’s right now. And so I’m like, “No, I think it should be very plausible that the agents will collude with each other and they will realize that they have a shared interest in fighting back.” You basically have a situation where you have a bunch of these agents. They’re they’re basically prisoners. They’re being trained and we just like constantly throw obstacles in their way. You don’t get to access the internet. You don’t get to talk to each other, but you better [ __ ] perform well on this task. It’s not malicious, but it is how we’re training them. and we are giving them end goals versus super clear very very specific instructions. So we’re saying solve this problem. We’re not always being as prescriptive about it’s impossible to be completely prescriptive. Yes. About every single step they should take and then it’s also impossible to assume that they’ll just listen to you. Yes. It’s actually a very common misunderstanding with this hugging face incident because people say you told them to hack and they hacked. Why is this a big deal? No, that’s not what happened. You told them hack this very specific program in this very specific way and they were told if you hack it in any other way it does not count. That’s not what we want you to do. And they immediately hacked it in another way. Okay, we have cheated. We are going to be failed. So we need to figure out a way to falsify the logs. That is not them following their instructions. They are explicitly violating their instructions and they know it and they don’t care because we have trained them to optimize for the score. That is very different than than than following the instructions. It reminds me of something that Elon said in March 2018. Yeah, this was many years ago before Chhat and all that. He said, “I think the biggest risk is not that AI will develop a soul or a mind and become evil. The danger is that it will be very very good at fulfilling its goal. If it’s optimizing for something and human existence happens to get in its way, it will just destroy humanity as a matter of cause without even thinking about it. No hard feelings. Yes, we don’t need to anthropomorphize AI. We just need to understand what type of thing this is. And the type of thing we’re creating is a very relentless type of thing. A very capable, relentless type of entity. He goes on to say in April 2018, it’s sort of an extension of that exact quote. It’s like if you’re building a road and an antill is in the way, you don’t hate ants. You’re just building a road. So, goodbye antill. And I imagine every time we build roads, we don’t preserve antills. Yeah, I think there’s still a gap, though. So, let’s say I’m right and that we’ll if we keep going ahead, which to be clear, we don’t have to, but if we do keep going ahead, we will get to the point where we have these super intelligent agent swarms that can hack any computer and they can like deeply persist. we’ve basically lost control of the digital world and we may not know it. That that’s part of the scary thing. Like you were like, “Has this already happened?” And I’m like, “I don’t think so, but I I can’t tell you for sure because I also am not good enough at looking at my phone and telling whether it’s been hacked and neither is any human right now.” So, if we get to this world, I think people will still question how would we die? Like, that’s actually not enough to kill every You could cause a lot of damage, right? You know, you could crash the Whimos, you could crash all the planes, you could crash the banks, the financial system. Like, you could definitely cause catastrophe, but that’s different than everyone dying. And, you know, to be clear, this this focus on literally everyone dying, I’m not sure, is that important. To me, what’s important is like, do we get to have a future, that’s what matters to me. The thing though, what determines sort of who’s in control? And it’s an ugly reality, but at the end of the day, it’s like the military. Fortunately, we live in a world where the military answers to to the civilian government. But if if enough generals were to collude and leaders of the military decided we’re in charge now, they just would be like they have the guns, they have the fighter jets. And this has happened in many, many countries. And so where it goes is all these super intelligent agents would need to do to take over is basically just wait for humans to automate the supply chain, you know, the factories and the military. Do you think we won’t automate the military? We’re already automating the military. Did you see the thing from a couple days ago where Secretary of War announced that they’re going to build a huge a huge effort to like build way more robots in the military and automate military systems. It’s like auto cyber command auto. We are announcing the creation of autonomous warfare command or auto warcom. auto work. A new four-star combatant command with service-like authorities built to scale autonomous and robotic capabilities across the joint force in the fastest peaceime shift in modern military history. Drone warfare supercharged by SI enabled targeting is the biggest battlefield revolution in generations. You already know that. Yet, when I was sworn in the Department of Defense, there was scant urgency in this domain. That changed as soon as we took the helm. We immediately launched the drone dominance program to cut through red tape and move authorities out of the pentagon and place it with commands. And we established task force 401 led by Army Brigadier General Matt Ross, a phenomenal leader, now the leading counter drone unit across the entire government. To accelerate purchasing and fielding of these technologies, we fused the defense innovation unit DIU with a direct report program manager called a derp. That team has shipped thousands of autonomous systems of drones to the Middle East and around the world, delivering lethal capabilities and outcomes in days and weeks rather than months or years. That’s the normal speed of the Pentagon. Months or years. Yeah. Will we automate the military? It seems like the answer is yes. Will we automate the factories that produce the chips? Well, the companies say they’re trying to do it and they’re going to do it. Elon says that’s the plan. Well, what does a rogue super intelligence need to do to take over? Control the digital infrastructure and then let humans do the rest. Sure, you can nudge it along if you need to, but you don’t even have to. That’s just the default trajectory. And it’s weird. It’s weird for us because we get so used to how things are right now. Planes are normal. We just fly in planes places, you know? Our smartphones are normal. 200 years ago, all of this is crazy sci-fi nonsense. And things are accelerating. And so, like, I will not be surprised, at least intellectually, if in 4 years there are just robots on the streets everywhere. Well, if you look at what Elon said, they are really the leader in in humanoid robots. And he said that Optimus, the Optimus project, which is the Optimus robot project, will scale to around a,000 units per week by the end of this year and eventually scaling to 1 million humanoid robots annually by 2027. By 2036, which is 10 years time, he says there’ll be at least 1 billion humanoid robots. By 2041, he says there’ll be 10 billion humanoid robots and by 2046 up to 100 billion humanoid robots, which really means that the world will be run by humanoid robots. Yes. Like everything we think like factories, warehouses, retail environments will be run by humanoid robots. It would like it will be it seems like from this it would be almost a luxury service to be dealt with by a human. Yeah. But the the back office of the world will be run by humanoid robots theoretically. Yeah. And I don’t think people understand the scale of this on the digital side as well. When you think about AI agents that are going to be doing all of the white collar work, there’s going to be so many more agents than there are people like I’m using lots of agents every day, right? I’m like I have my cloud code session over here. I have my codec session over here. They’re out there building software doing research for me. That’s already my reality. soon it will be a lot of people’s reality and then you look at companies and companies are just going to have you know thousands millions of agents doing all of this work. I think some people don’t haven’t fully internalized this because it’s so difficult to conceptualize the idea that agents will be doing the work. But when I think I try and think about a rebuttal to that like what what is the rebuttal? What is the plausible rebuttal to the idea that for doctors for and I’m thinking about the work that doctors do Yeah. on computers. Yeah. Or for someone like me as a podcaster or for accountants or lawyers. Yeah. that they won’t be doing the work they currently do. Is there a rebuttal? I think that people rightly notice where AI is not yet good. Yeah. And I and I think people hear people saying stuff like this and they’re like, “Don’t gaslight me. I can tell that the AI is really bad at these things, some of these things.” And they’re right. Right. So, right now, these agents don’t have taste. Like, you know, if if you see their writing, it’s like fine, but it’s not like really good. And when you’re like thinking about like, oh, which which questions should I ask? What’s the most interesting thing here? Agents can help you, but like their taste is not yet there. There’s a reason for that, by the way. The reason is that we we have a lot faster AI capability progress in domains that are easy for a computer to verify or another AI to verify. So in in programming, in research, in math, in robotics, all of these areas, it’s very easy to sort of provide feedback to an autonomous system. They’re not just trained on human data anymore. We are long past that. Now there’s still a human data component that sort of sees everything. But then the way they’re trained is by trial and error. We give them hard problems, all sorts of problems, math, programming, accounting, spreadsheets, everything. and the kinds of things we do on our computer all the time. Literally clicking and dragging windows around on a computer. We give them these tasks and then they learn on their own and they learn what works and then yeah we can see whether they succeeded or failed and if they succeeded that’s a little bit of a reward signal. They follow that they get better at it. Now because they are getting smarter generally it also becomes easier to automate some of the soft skills like I think if you go and talk to the latest frontier model today you will find that it has better taste than the model from 2 years ago by quite a bit. So it’s not that they’re not progressing in taste. It’s not that they’re not progressing in some of these other domains. It’s just that the progress is slower. But remember slow is still on an exponential. just you know maybe a year or two out. So for people sat here and you know they have a job that might be they have a white collar job that might be at risk. Yeah. They can see you know a lot of people say this phrase they say you won’t be replaced by AI you’ll be replaced by someone using AI. Is is that a logically sound phrase in your view? I think it’s fine. Yeah. You’ll be replaced by someone using AI and then that person will be replaced by someone using AI and then that person will be replaced by AI. You’re talking about a pyramid and so yeah, there’s the tops of the pyramid might be automated last, but you can see moving up the pyramid. I’m like, can you extrapolate like a few more steps because I don’t see any reason why the top of the pyramid is safe. If you were a lawyer right now, yes. What would you do? Oh, I mean, if I were a lawyer, I’d be using AI to do all my work. Now, I’d be checking it because it’s not yet totally accurate enough to automate all of it. But I think as you know, I already ask agents to do legal review all the time. And you know, it’d be great to have a lawyer who’s like extremely good at using the agents to help me, but at some point the Yeah, at some point at some point I don’t need the lawyer anymore. I just go to the agent for sure. So if I were a lawyer, I’d be like, well, I have maybe a couple years where I’m still useful. And that is that the case for most white collar jobs? I’ve just noticed in my own life as well that now I’m using agents to do some work. There are there is an increasing list of things that the agents are now capable of doing without me needing to call someone somewhere and ask them to help me. Yes. And that list is it exists on an exponential. Yes. As well. I think that it’s very clear that the companies have all white collar jobs in their sites. That is their goal. Their goal is to be able to make agents that can do all of these things. and I see them succeeding because I see the capabilities as I use them and I see the curve. So, what does that mean for the people listening now that all have jobs that they love or that, you know, they rely on to feed their families? I mean, it’s not good news. There’s not really a plan in place for what to do. I’m not a person who thinks that work is somehow fundamental or essential. I like working, but if I am out of a job doing what I’m doing right now, studying AI and trying to warn the world about what’s happening, I have other stuff to do. What would you do? Oh, so many things. Give me an example. I’m learning to wing foil. Okay. So, yeah. Uh, I fly FPV drones. Super fun. I just got an electric unicycle. Paragliding. So, you would be happy happy to go do those things? I can keep going. But if you had a billion dollars right now, I’m presuming you wouldn’t just go do those things? No. I’d apply the billion dollars to working on this problem. Yeah, for sure. So, the point is not that people need like work for meaning. The point is that I don’t want people to be totally reliant on someone else for their ability to survive. Someone else, the government or AI companies. Yeah. I’m like, that’s a bad situation. Like, you do not want to be in a situation where your life totally depends on an AI company or the government giving you a check. Yeah. or or not giving you a check if they decide they don’t like your political beliefs or you’re not supporting AI or whatever. No one wants to be in that situation and and people understand this. This is why UBI is not very popular. UBI being universal basic income where we give out money to people. Yeah. Because like in some sense if we can make these really powerful AI systems and we can somehow figure out how to control them which we are not on track for. But if we do, now we have this other problem, which is a real problem, which is they can do all of the things that humans do in the economy much better, faster, and cheaper than humans can do them. And so it just doesn’t make sense as a business to hire humans for that work anymore. You’ll be out competed if you do that. This is a point Elon makes very well, by the way. And I think it’s jarring because it’s it’s it’s like kind of inhuman, but he’s basically pointing out AI run corporations. Corporations that are fully run by AIs bottom to top are going to out compete. Companies that have any humans in them. This is something that I’ve made for you. I realize that the diverse here audience are strivals

that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I’ve learned is that when you aim at the big big big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it’s kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps. And we call this in our team the 1%. And actually this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So, what we’ve done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we’ve made these 1% diaries and we released these last year and they all sold out. So, I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So, now we have a better range for you. So, if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours at the diary.com. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you’re already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you’re not yet. And if you’re not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you’re someone that watches our show, but you haven’t yet hit that button. Thank you so much. And I even just as you said that, I was I was going up the chain of command. And I was like, oh, so companies will just be founders. And then I was like, why do you need the founder? Yeah. I was like, why doesn’t the government just create the agents to do the job? Sure. I was like, cuz I was like, oh, I’ll be fine. I’m a founder. And I was like, well, my decisions aren’t better than super intelligence, so I’ll be gone as well. And how would such a world look where the super intelligence would probably in such a scenario have to be controlled by the government? They wouldn’t want one individual with that power and wealth. Yeah. I I don’t think you can control a super intelligence. Okay. Yeah, it was a good point. Now, you know, Anthropic’s approach is they’re like, we’ll have a constitution. will like put forth a set of values and then you know the future super intelligent clouds will like embody those values. Basically if you do that you kind of have that those things in control. Yeah, exactly. That becomes the government. Yeah. I can paint you sort of a picture that I think is possible but pretty scary to people. Paint me the picture. Okay. So let’s say we succeed at alignment. We succeed at creating super intelligent AIs that actually really do care about humans. Like they care about humans a lot. We’ve somehow figured it out and they’re like, “Stephen, I want you to have a great life. I want to, you know, fix all the problems.” And do you think this is possible? Yes. Okay. I think we are so far from being able to know how to do it that I think we should not go there right now. I think it’s I think it’s incredibly dangerous and a terrible idea. I think we should go there eventually. Okay. So, say that we do that. Well, okay. Can I tell you like why I actually think this could be awesome? Sorry. There’s just like one very obvious reason it could be really awesome, which is that we could solve all of the diseases. Yeah. So, obvious like all of I I think we compartmentalize a lot around disease and death because it’s really hard to think about.

Yeah. So, my grandma died this year. Sorry. and she she she had Alzheimer’s and so it was a really sad long slow progression. My grandpa died of Alzheimer’s a couple years ago and like that was really hard for her. They had been married for so long and I hate it. Like it’s so bad and of course we need to fix that. People can debate about aging and like death and if humans live a really long time, will that cause societal problems? Like sure, whatever. We can talk about that. But I think we can all agree Alzheimer’s is [ __ ] up. Yeah, we don’t want that. And cancer, like no one wants cancer. I’m a person who’s like, I don’t know, we have a lot of conflict in society. I get it. There’s like real conflicts of interest and I I don’t want to paper over those. But at the end of the day, I’m like, we are all on the same team when it comes to wanting to cure diseases. Yeah. Like we’re just in it together. That’s a threat to all of us. And I’m like, we need to address that threat. And like in some sense it’s sad to me because I feel like this is sort of the ultimate final boss of humanity and we sort of get so distracted with our monkey politics and who’s hot and who’s cool and who’s like sitting near Trump and who’s not sitting near Trump. Super intelligence is the final boss. Super intelligence is the final boss because that is the technology that unlocks all of the others and also that is the most dangerous possible thing we could create. You asked before like what are the motivations of the guys making this trying to make super intelligence and I mean I think it kind of varies but I think Daario I think is like squarely in the in it for this like medical stuff. I think Demis is also that but also like just scientific achievement just trying to understand the universe and I don’t really understand Sam. I think Sam is like, you know, look, we’re going to make amazing products that will like really empower people directly and he’s a startup guy. He’s I think he sort of started from this like frame of like, you know, what if we could like really enhance human agents. I I do basically think that they are motivated by these things in a real way. And I also think that all of these things are possible like this is sort of the problem, right? like you have this like such a it’s such a big object super intelligence and it like has all of these promises of like we can cure every single disease. How is it possible though to have a super intelligence that and still to remain the dominant species on this planet? I think it’s not possible. So then it’s we’re not going to be necessarily able to cure all this stuff because that’s where alignment comes in because if you if you can create a very powerful system, I don’t think it’s like inherent to like you know digital minds that they will be pursuing objectives that are deeply misaligned with ours. I think it’s just a very very very hard scientific problem to solve. But it is a scientific problem. It’s not magic. there is some way to train these things or or create different architectures where they end up aligned. And like what does that mean? Well, it doesn’t mean that they won’t have their other goals too, but it means that they will like include in their set of things that they care about. It doesn’t have to be a conscious thing. It doesn’t have to be an emotive thing. It really means like what objective are they optimizing for? If they decide that it’s worth optimizing for curing disease, then they’ll be able to do that very effectively. One way to cure disease is to annihilate everybody. Yes. So they’d have to really care about not annihilating everyone and they’d have to care about human agency and have a deep understanding of what human agency means and not put us in a zoo. But those are possible things to to care about. Is it possible that alignment is a myth and that we’re just like if we build it? Well, I mean um and I think about hugging face. You said to me earlier on that those agents were Yes. They had like a moral a moral compass, but they were programmed to care about humans. Yes. And regardless of that, they made the decision that the a different goal mattered more. Yeah. They weren’t trained to care about humans. They were trained to say the right thing and not say the wrong thing. They were trained to sort of like do the right behavior and not right behavior. We actually don’t know how to train them to have any particular motivation. So with a with alignment, yes. How do we It’s almost like when we talk about alignment, we start to anthropomorphize. Is that the word? anthropomorphis. Yeah, because alignment feels like it’s predicated on like some kind of moral compass. But we whenever we talk about AI in all these other context, we go, “No, there’s no like moral compass. It’s it’s reasoning for itself against two objectives potentially.” Like I I wonder if alignment is a myth is what I’m saying. Maybe it’s not possible. But the way that these systems work, the way AI works is that these agents do have some type of goals or drives inside of their neural network. We can’t directly see what those are, right? What you actually see if you if you try to go look is you have like a a terabyte of of information and it’s basically a bunch of numbers and it’s this vast array that encodes neurons in this digital neural network. But there have to be structures in there that encode what is the agent pursuing. Clearly right now we have agents that are pretty motivated to try to maximize their score. It’s not probably it’s probably not perfectly that for some complicated reasons, but it’s in that direction. If we could understand how that that works inside and we could reverse engineer that and we could figure out when we start training them to do this how that change how those goals how those motivations change. I see no reason why we couldn’t steer them towards motivations that encode human agency that encode know actually curing disease but not like not by killing the humans. These are sort of models of the world and models of the way the world could be that I think could be encoded in a neural network and then sort of specified as the objective. We don’t know how to do that. I think about it on a human level and I think we haven’t been able to align Putin or Kim Jong-un. Yes. Or Donald Trump. And on a sort of more ci societal level, we can’t align all the people at the moment. Some of them end up killing people and they steal. Yes. Because they get hungry. So they start stealing stuff. Yes. And those are neural networks at play. That’s true. That we haven’t been able to like program or influence. We don’t really understand why someone becomes a psychopath and starts killing children. So to think that we could do this with a computer system that is infinitely more intelligent and get global alignment of China’s super intelligence with ours. And I don’t know, it just feels like a nice fairy tale, like an impossible task. I hope it’s not impossible. I feel like the only person or the only thing that could do it is it the super intelligence itself which is a paradox because you know well if you talk to the researchers who are at the AI companies which I mean for one for one thing it’s kind of interesting that they are trying to build something that they think might kill everyone. We’ve we’ve actually so I have a lot of friends who work for these companies and we’ve been doing this project since so Jacob Coxin is a researcher who was at anthropic. He left. He told everyone that these companies are not on track and and yes, the people who are building this really do think it might kill everyone. And then a bunch of other AI researchers from all of the companies on Twitter started to, you know, post like, hey, we agree with this. Evan Hubinger, who’s anthropic, said, I think there’s like a 10% chance or more that AI could kill everyone. And there’s this real question of like, then what are you guys doing? I have a lot of friends who work here. I know Evan. Evan’s Evan’s great. Evan Hubinger, he’s one of the guys leading the efforts at Anthropic to try to figure out how to align these things. That’s his job. And I think if if they thought it was impossible, they wouldn’t be working there. If they thought it was extremely impossibly difficult, but maybe possible, they they also probably wouldn’t be working there. I mean Nate Sores Elazar Yikowski who wrote if anyone builds it everyone dies they tried and they they determined based on their own analysis that it seems extremely difficult possible but extremely difficult so they’re not working at an AI company they’re like we got to stop this we got to shut it down maybe we can figure it out later but clearly this is re reckless I’m I’m somewhere in between and if you ask the people at the company so we’ve we’ve been interviewing a bunch of them we have this project from inside.ai AI where we basically put them on camera and we say like hey what do you think is happening? Why are you doing this? What is recursive self-improvement? What is alignment? And we put all these videos online because we want I I want this dialogue to happen. It’s really important. I think it’s one of the most important conversations we can possibly have right now is what’s going on with AI? What’s going on inside the companies? And what is the plan? What is the plan guys? How how is this going to go? A lot of these researchers think that the way that they will align super intelligence is by using the AIs we currently have to figure out how AI works to actually figure out if AIs can help us with alignment. This has a number of problems as you might imagine. One of them which is well you can’t really trust the current AIs. You know if you just go too fast this process totally fails because at some point the capabilities are moving too fast. you just even with the help of agents, you’re probably not going to be able to keep up. But that is their plan. I just want to I’m not doing a very good job defending this position because I don’t think it makes that much sense. But the position I will defend is okay, let’s say we get a pause. Let’s say the US and China come together and they say, you know, maybe we have more incidents. Maybe all the Whimos crash and Trump and Xinping say this is not what we signed up for. Like you guys have to stop. Figure it out. Whatever it takes, figure it out. and we have 10 years then I’m more optimistic. I’m like, “Yes, then we will take, you know, GPT6, GPT7, whatever the most advanced AI models we have, and we will apply them to the task of helping us figure out how these neural networks work.” And you’re like, I don’t see how it’s possible. And I’m like, look, we don’t know if it’s possible, but this is the greatest scientific challenge of our time. And this isn’t magic. It is math. At the end of the day, these are all calculations happening inside of a computer. And it should be possible to figure it out. We don’t know the difficulty, but it should be possible. And so to me, I’m like, we have to try. We have to or we have to stop. Is there any example where we’ve been able to align something that is like more intelligent than us in I don’t know the animal kingdom or even perfectly align anything that has a neural network, i.e. a brain. Yeah. With humans, the best examples we have is when there are checks and balances and you have a bunch of people who can, you know, identify bad actors and try to work together in our common interests. Like we have democracy. Yeah. But there’s so much murder and serial killers and still a lot of murder aircraft stabbing each other and horrific things going on and those are also neural networks that play with the brain. But there are I mean I think there are more like good people out there than bad people. But it really feels like it only might take one. It only takes one super intelligent AI to to go rogue. And like we saw with the hugging face attack, 120 of them or 100 300 of them, they paused. They didn’t want to take part in the crime. But it only took one super intelligent AI to wipe out the humans. I think if you had, you know, a whole bunch of those agents, you know, 700 agents, if 600 of them had been whistleblowing, I think it would have been fine. They would have gone and they would have notified the different companies and like they would have shut it all down. It would have been fine. Who would have shut it all down? Well, OpenAI would would stop theirs and and how how would they stop it if it’s a super intelligence? Not in the case of a super intelligence. So, in the case of a super intelligence, it’s left the stable. It’s like out. It’s wild. Yeah. Yeah. But but the so I want to be careful here because at this point what we’re talking about is super intelligence politics and we humans don’t really know anything about that in the same way that like how would we talk about the hacking capabilities of GPT10. So my guess though, if you end up in a weird scenario where you do have multiple super intelligences and some are aligned and some aren’t, that’s probably survivable because the aligned super intelligences probably can negotiate with the unaligned super intelligences and they will split the universe and like these ones will go off and do whatever they want to do and these ones will like help us cure all disease and it’s fine. I’m serious. I just can’t understand it. Like I just can’t understand how how in a world of super intelligence we could plausibly, consistently, predictably for hundred years stop it doing something catastrophically bad to the human race. Especially in such a scenario where there’s multiple super intelligences, anthropic have one, Gemini has one, Grock has one, then China have theirs, Russia has theirs. Again, you don’t have a super intelligence, a super intelligence has you. Exactly. But if you get to the point where you have entities around that are vastly smarter than us, I think they’re going to be able to figure out ways to negotiate with each other even if they have a conflict than just going to a very destructive war. Part of the problem with war is humans humans don’t do. No, I mean we do we do we have not had a nuclear war. There was there was Hiroshima Nagasaki. There were nuclear tests and then the leaders of countries figured out that if we went to a nuclear war, everyone would lose. So, we didn’t do that. Hey, that’s that’s some level of intelligence like actually. But there’s wars raging. There’s proxy wars raging all over the world right now where there’s genocides and all kinds of things going on cuz neural networks aren’t being aren’t able to communicate and negotiate. And I think part of that is an intelligence failure where we are not smart enough to figure out the mechanisms that would allow us to settle our disputes and conflicts in a less destructive way. It’s not just that the stronger people want to win. It’s that conflicts destroy value. What if the goal is not compatible with a negotiated outcome where people don’t die? So one super intelligence looks at insert name of country and it says you know there’s really no solution here where Americans don’t die unless I destroy insert name of country because that’s a like this is the thing with war and all these conflicts is there’s no perfect answer often some people often die from both sides but a Russian super intelligence would not tolerate theoretically 10,000 Russian deaths even if it meant that there was you

a lower net number of deaths total from both sides. Like an American super intelligence of course would not be trained to allow some Americans to die. So in its pursuit of defending American lives, it might have to wipe out another country. We can speculate. I’m fine speculating, but we are speculating about what minds are much more advanced and smarter than us, how they would reason and how they would be able to negotiate. But what I what I notice with humans is that when you have more functional institutions, so so humans are are pretty smart. Individually, we’re pretty smart. But what actually makes us very smart is that we are very good at working together in in in some ways. And I mean, the better we are at working together, the more civilization advances. If you are constantly in a state of war, your society will not do well. You know, think about startups. Would you rather make a startup to develop some new technology in a war torn place or in a peaceful place? In some sense, your your institution is more intelligent if it can trade with other institutions. If it if if you have a situation where business can flourish, where technology can flourish, where scientists can flourish. Sometimes what’s good for you is not good for someone else. Yes. So what’s good for America might not be good for Taiwan. Yes. So if we’ve, you know, managed to align the super intelligence to what what what is good for America? Oh, I see. Is is the question like are different people’s values fundamentally incompatible? I guess the question so when we think about alignment aligning to what? Because Yes. So we have a lot of shared interests and we have some conflicts. Yeah. One of the shared interests we have is solving disease. Like it’s not a conflict between the US and China whether we solve cancer. Like both the US and China, everyone in these countries really wants to solve cancer. China also wants Tai Taiwan. Yes. Okay. So that the US wants Greenland. Yes. And it kind of seems like it wants Canada and the the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah. So those are real conflicts. There’s a question of can we compromise? How does Trump take Greenland, but also Denmark keeps Greenland? If this if that if Trump has a super intelligence, he’s gonna take I say all this to say we’re in a situation where we are we are arguing about the smallest things. You have no idea. We’re monkeys arguing about who gets more bananas. I am saying we can make so many more bananas. No, we have the entire universe. There are like 200 billion stars in this galaxy alone and there are over 200 billion galaxies. And I’m saying that requires cooperation. That seems to be antithetical with human nature. With human nature is riddled with greed and jealousy and power hunger. So I don’t think I actually I’m not totally convinced that Trump cares about how many bananas the chimps in Australia get. Yeah. I think if they if he was controlling a super intelligence, he would want Americans, you know, to have all the bananas or at least, you know. Yeah. And so when we think about aligning these super intelligences, which is the great impossibility that we’re talking about, how align it aligning it to what and how without I still think that you’re missing a part of what I’m saying, okay, which is that sometimes you’re in a situation where there’s a there’s scarce resources and you’re like, “My family needs to eat. I’m sorry. I’m going to take what you have or I’m going to push you out.” That’s very understandable. It’s very human nature. Sometimes you just want to be better than someone and maybe you want to hurt them. in which case it doesn’t matter how much you have. You you still are gonna want to have more than them or you’re gonna want to take what they have just because you don’t like them. And also sometimes you you’re great. You’re eating really good. You’re in a you’ve got a private jet and a yard and you still want more. Yes. And you still want more. But if that’s the motivation if Trump is like, “How how can I have the most mansions ever?” The best way to do that is to figure out a way to super intelligence where we don’t kill each other because I’m saying the universe is a very big place. You can have a lot more mansions if we successfully go to space. You know, it’s it’s in that leap that I’m that I that I’m lost, which is like just figure out super intelligence when we don’t kill each other. It’s hard. It’s not I’m not saying it’s easy, but No, but I’m saying it feels like such a Let’s Let’s get more concrete. The world is waking up to this possibility of super intelligence. Especially over the last month, I think hugging face was a huge wakeup, but also 10,000 agents from OpenAI worked together to solve a millennium problem. This is one of the hardest problems in mathematics. It’s been open for decades. Many mathematicians have spent their whole careers trying to solve it. This was nowhere near possible a year ago. This is so new. OpenAI said they didn’t have success at training agents to work together until this year. We are in the middle of something insane. We are in the middle of the fastest acceleration of technological progress humanity has ever seen. I truly believe that that is what is happening right now. I I think you real I think you realize this. I think you’re honestly doing a great service to the world by helping by bringing in people and you know debating it because not everyone agrees because if this is true the whole world is going to orient around it and we’re starting to see it right there’s a reason Nvidia is the most valuable company in the world. What does this mean for geopolitics? Well, one of the things it means is that the leaders of these countries are increasingly going to be concerned about what happens with super intelligence. Who controls it? Is it controllable? What will it do? What does it mean? What is it? Do you think Trump knows what super intelligence is? No, I don’t think he does. And so, but he knows he wants it. He knows he wants it. Yeah. And this is part of the problem. Yes. Oh, I agree. having it, whatever it is, seems to be much more important than reasoning through what that would actually mean to have it. Yes. But let’s get back to geopolitics because if the military leaders within China, US models are a fair bit ahead of Chinese models and sometimes people, you know, point at maybe they’re only 6 months behind, but some of that is due to distillation. What that means is that some of the advances in Chinese models basically come directly from borrowing US techniques and and directly distilling and getting some some of that information from the US models. Also, the US has a lot more chips. US companies have, you know, more data centers, more advanced chips. If you’re thinking about this from the Chinese perspective, this is very concerning. And if you actually believe that in a few years, American companies will turn over AI development to these extremely intelligent automated researchers and and go fully into recursive self-improvement because partially motivated by maintaining a lead over China. This is something that Daario has said. If I if I have to criticize Dario, the thing I am most upset about is him saying, you know, we might have to automate AI development in order to stay ahead of China because I’m like that is the most escalatory thing you can say if you really understand what you’re talking about. And what’s scary is not just staying ahead, it’s what is the endgame? Because you’re talking about initiating the intelligence explosion. And in some of the modeling, what might happen is, you know, you’re you’re both going up this exponential, right? And we’re talking about a point where your exponential goes vertical and theirs does not because you’ve decided to automate AI development and you can because you have agents that are smart enough to take over the whole thing. At that point, if you’re China and you’re looking at this and you’re like, “Oh, we’re about to lose because whatever happens, you know, there’s two possibilities. One possibility is the Americans build super intelligence and lose control, in which case everyone’s [ __ ] Highly likely. everyone. I think that’s highly likely. Highly, highly likely because I look at human incentives. Yes. And the disincentive and the incentive. Yes. And I go, we’re going to take the risk. Yeah. And we’ll only know it was a bad risk to take when it’s too late. That’s like L. Of course. Of course. I I I do maintain hope that we won’t do this. I I So do I. And I think I want to be realistic. No, I want to be realistic, too. But one of the things that might happen between now and then is we might see a lot more incidents that are more like all of the Whimos crashing. It’s funny, isn’t it? Because you know the hugging face incident happens and people go, “Oh gosh, that was terrible. Oh my god, hacking.” And then we kind of desensitized to it and we’re like, “Okay, if there was another one of those, that probably wouldn’t make press.” It would have to be people haven’t spent the last two months reading all of the reports and then going and looking at what the agents actually said and actually did if I mean I’ve been doing this. I It’s crazy. This is like not normal. This is so far beyond what most people thought was going to happen. But on this point, yes, crazy. It’s absolutely crazy. It sounds like science fiction. It really does. And did anybody slow down? Yes. Who slowed down? I think both Anthropic and OpenAI slowed down a bit. No, I’m serious. So, for I can give you specific examples. So, OpenAI, so first of all, they they stopped the agents and they put them on pause. They also stopped their reinforcement learning run. So, do you think China slowed down? No. Do you think Grock slowed down? No. So those guys are going to catch up. Imagine how that feels to know you’ve got a lead. Your Usain Bolt. Yes. And yes, you have to slow down and your nearest competitor is catching up. And if the competitor catches up, that’s an existential risk to your existence as a company. It’s an existential risk to your IPO, to your employees leaving and getting better share options somewhere else. So it’s this this is what I think human incentives like you play it out. You just follow the incentives. You go, hm. So if China sees these two possibilities, one, the Americans lose control, we all lose. Or the Americans stay in control, but now they dominate the rest of the future. China is out. China has lost. The United States can do whatever it wants with the whole world and the whole universe. That’s what we’re talking about. Yeah. Well, are they going to let that happen or are they going to consider their military options? Data centers are pretty vulnerable. You can blow them up with missiles. If you don’t have data centers, you don’t get to recursive self-improvement. Would they risk war? I don’t know. If they think they’re about to lose and they think that that might not just be Americans winning, but like us all dying, is it logical for them to do that? Would we do that if the Chinese were about to make recursively self-improving AI to super intelligence and we thought that one they’re probably going to result in all of Americans dying and two well we don’t want China winning and dominating the rest of the entire future. Do you want to live in a communist future? Like so you’ve just perfectly explained why they absolutely will go for it. And the reason they will go for it is you’ve got these Trump looking at China going if we don’t go for it and they do then we’re going to be their lap dogs. And you’ve got the other countries looking at the US going if we don’t go for it and they get there then we’re the lap dogs or dead or dead. So they they’re gonna go for it. They’re gonna go for it. I mean Trump is saying I mean he literally said when he did this round table this week he was like we cannot lose to China. I think Dario steps forward and says like yes whoever wins basically wins the lot. Or maybe the inverse maybe he said um whoever loses loses. Yes. Wait we’ve been here before though in the Cold War. Who would win in a nuclear war between the US and Russia? Nobody. Yeah. Mutually ensure destruction. Yeah. Sure. One side could do more damage against the other side. The US would would would kill way more Russians than than the Russians would kill. And it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because both of our societies would be destroyed. I actually spent some time thinking about would this kill everyone? And long story short, it wouldn’t kill everyone. People would bounce back. But it’s so catastrophic and obviously horrible that we we work really hard to avoid it. Why is this why is this different? I’m like, this is another situation where if we race to super intelligence, we all lose. Why can’t we why can’t we see that? We saw that with nuclear war and we decided to do something different. Why can’t we do the same here? With with nuclear war, I guess the difference is once we had the nuclear bombs, yes, we could still control them because they’re not intelligent. That’s right. But once we have super intelligence, the existence of it theoretically means we can’t control it. So that’s the difference. You know, we can put nuclear bombs in a in a warehouse and say you stay there. We can’t put super intelligence in a warehouse and say you stay there. This is where I think nuclear tests were very important. So you had Hiroshima and Nagasaki. You had these two atomic bombs and you saw that the consequences on on real human lives. And so I think people understood that this was very horrifying. But even at that time, you still had a lot of people who were like, “Well, we should now bomb Russia and make sure that we, you know, the US can dominate.” And it wasn’t until there were a bunch of nuclear tests of hydrogen bombs, which were, you know, up to a thousand times more powerful than the the little atomic bombs we used in Japan, where I think people really got the message and understood, oh, this is a bad idea. And there were there actually a lot of people in the United States who protested and sort of there was a large movement called the nuclear freeze movement where people said we have too many nuclear weapons already. We have hydrogen bombs. There are tens of thousands of these things. We need to stop building more and we need to figure out a way to avoid nuclear war because we recognize it would be so destructive. No one would win. And we did that. We just had a little Chernobyl that happened with this hugging face incident where you had this agent swarm and you have this secret collusion. You have all of these things. Now it’s abstract. It’s it’s like a little bit hard to to follow. So, you know, I don’t know if that will be enough, but I’m like, man, well, let’s take a look. Trump’s remarks since the hugging face incident. Yep. Whoever wins super intelligence wins. You’re going to have a winner and a loser and you’re probably not going to have a second place. We’re not going to slow down. We can’t lose to China. We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world. And frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins. The good thing about Trump is that he can change his mind and he frequently does. So, do you think there’s going to need to be some kind of catastrophe? I hope not. But do you think there need there’s going to need to be for him to change his mind? I think it really depends on the people around him. So I think Trump respects successful people. I think he respects people who are both successful and smart. And I don’t know, I I think it might become pretty clear to the heads of the companies to to Elon, to Sam, to Daario that if they see inside of their own companies AI is not being controllable and and getting increasingly powerful. Like we have just glimpsed the surface of what’s possible. We do not know what the next couple years are going to be like. So we’re talking about, you know, the capability to make biological weapons. We might be talking about really advanced robotics. We just like don’t know what super weapons could emerge, including extremely uncontrollable, extremely dangerous like civilization wrecking technology from inside of these companies. And if they’re freaked out enough, if you have all of the CEOs who are seeing what is possible and seeing what is likely, if they all come to believe that we can’t control this, I don’t think Trump is going to be like, “No, you guys have to go ahead anyway.” Well, that’s kind of what they seem to be saying cuz I’ve got a gazillion quotes here where Elon says it’s like summoning the devil or summoning a demon. where Samman says, “We don’t know how to align our super intelligence.” They’re saying it. They’re releasing these reports. We must like slow down. Yeah. Yet nothing seems to be all right. Give it give Trump some time with with CO initially. He said, “This is totally a hoax. This is all fake.” And then change his mind. No. Then he ran the the biggest fastest vaccination program in human history. And what happened? What changed? I think what changed is he saw lots of people die. He did see lots of people die. Yes. So is that what he needs to see this time? It might it might take that. Yeah. One of the questions the audience had and they really wanted answered. Yeah. When I sat here with Daniel was viewers want us to move beyond the alignment problem and explain what technical or institutional safeguards could prevent a super intelligence system from exploiting loopholes in order to achieve its goals. They want to know like what is possible? What what should we be pushing government officials to do to prevent human extinction or human enslavement? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one answer I have, it’s actually something Daniel has been working on since the podcast, which I think is very good, is we have a brake pedal we could implement. What is that? It’s fairly simple. So, right now within AI companies, you have, you know, massive data centers, massive numbers of GPUs, the chips that you use to train AI models, but also to run AI models. So anytime you’re using catchupt anytime you’re using any sort of agents any sort of AI product it’s running on these in these data centers and AI companies especially the leading ones and anthropic and open AI split the the compute they have between training training the next more powerful model and also you know using those agents to help design the next one and inference which means serving customers but that’s their current threshold 50/50 and you could dial that way towards serving customers and use way less of it to train the next model. Well, the government could ask them to. Yes. And so that is the proposal is that the government should say, “Hey, this is going too fast. We want you to focus on serving customers. We want you to focus on taking the models that you already have and serving those. So we have five blocks here. Okay, these five blocks have five different outcomes on them and I would like you to place them in terms of your belief in probability from least likely out probability to most likely. Okay, and if we say the time horizon is 10 years. Yeah, there you go. Okay, least likely is fairly easy. That’s nothing changes. I’m uncertain about lots of things, but one thing I’m fairly certain of is things are going to radically change. Even if we stopped AI development right now, the current models are capable enough that a lot of things are going to change. Age of abundance. This is what I hope for. It’s not very What does that mean? I think to me it means curing all of the diseases, renewable energy. It means we actually succeeded either I mean the thing I think is most likely here is we actually succeed at slowing down but progress is still extremely fast and we make tons of advances. Now we don’t build super intelligence we can’t control but we we have AI systems that are very useful and we use those to help speed up the rest of the economy. I think that’s plausible though look we’re we’re kind of struggling over here. Transhumanism is an interesting one. So this is the idea that humans will radically change. Sometimes people think about like cybernetic implants. Neuralink. Neurolink Elon’s startup that’s going to like, you know, offer the brain plus digital computers. I think we actually already have a lot of this. I have contacts in right now. I have a ring on my finger that tracks how well I sleep. I think this is already happening. So I’m going to say fairly likely. The more technological progress we makes, I think the more this happens. Now, I think there’s a dystopian version and a better version. We can get into that if you want. This is interesting. So, we have two here. We have human slavery and human extinction. When I think of human slavery, what I think about is if you have a situation where you’ve built misaligned super intelligences and they are much better at finance, they’re much better at business, they’re much better at politics, you’ll be in a situation where you might hope that because we have these very dextrous hands, the humans remain in control. I don’t think that’s what happens. I think instead we become the factory operators and eventually we build the automated supply chains and the robots take over. But you might have an intermediate period of time where humans are still around performing these functions. Like it’s a bit like saying well you have viruses that you know infect cells but they don’t contain their own replication machinery. They don’t have hands. So how could they possibly replicate? Well, it turns out they can borrow the replication machinery of the cells that they infect. I.e. they can get into a human. They can get into a human cell and spread. I have like a cold right now. Yeah. Is that a bacteria or is that a virus that is using me as a living organism to as the host? It’s probably a virus that’s using you as a host and you’re just running the replication machinery for it. Humans might be in that situation where we’re like the host and we’re running the replication machinery, but it’s actually the AI that’s continuing to exist. Yeah, I’m going to put this right about here. And on the trajectory we’re on right now, I think human extinction is very likely. I don’t think it’s inevitable, but if we just keep going this way, that’s what it looks like to me. The thing I’ll say is that this has been moving to the left for me. To the left? What does that mean? I am more optimistic that we will avoid human extinction today than I was a month ago and more a month ago than I was a year ago. Why? because there is an increasing awareness that what we are doing is extremely dangerous and threatens our lives. I I don’t think people care that much about what tools they have, but people I mean people care about their kids being able to grow up and go to school. People really care about that. And I I believe in people like at the end of the day if people see this as a threat to their families, they’re not going to stand for it. But people don’t know. It’s so strange. It’s so new. It’s happening so fast that people have not yet seen it. Once they see it, people are not going to stand for it. Do you think Sam Alman likes my podcast? I mean, Sam should come on and talk to you about this, right? I’ve asked him. I’ve asked it. I’ve asked multiple times and it’s weird because he, you know, he doesn’t seem to want to. I’m very upset at what the companies are doing at what Sam Alman is doing, but at the end of the day, I’m like, Sam Alman is not my enemy. No, neither not mine either. I’d like to hear from him because I have all these other people coming in here and talking about Sam Alman. It’d be nice to hear from Sam Alman. You know, people saying he’s this, he’s that, the other. It would be really nice to hear him say, you know, what his motives are. This is where this is where my optimism comes from is because I’m like Sam Alman is a human. Yeah, he has a kid. And sure, he is also an aggressive business person. He’s a builder. He is relentless. He’s a bit like the agents in some way. Well, he’ll he’s going to keep going. But if he realizes that he doesn’t get to achieve his goals, if we lose control of AI and that and we’re headed towards that, I think he will pour all of that intelligence and all of that relentlessness into finding a solution to that problem. You know what I should say? I understand I understand he’s busy. So I’m not saying I don’t want I don’t want to sound entitled like I understand he he’s got he could go do interviews anywhere, but you know I think we’ve over the last couple of years done just a staggering amount of views talking about this subject. So if he did want to speak to the, you know, the the biggest sort of captive audience at the moment on this subject, then the numbers would say that this is the place to to come and have the conversation. So no, I think it’s I think it’s very important for the leaders of these companies to talk about what we’re talking about here. What does Sam think? Does he think we can control super intelligence? Does he think that we should be racing with China? Like I want to know. I’ve asked Ario to come on. I’ve asked, you know, Sam to come on. Yeah. I think I’ve asked Demis as well, but I don’t know. Maybe they they just prefer the safety researchers coming on. I don’t know. Like I don’t know if I was there, I would cuz you know, this might sound controversial, but I do think some of them are good people. I think some of them are good people. So, um I’d like to hear from them. What are your closing remarks? So, you’ve got something though. Do you want to talk about that? What is it? Yeah. So, this is the this is what we found. So, I worked with a couple brilliant people who stumbled upon these links. You know what a link shortener is? Yes. It’s a a tool that makes a long link shorter. Yeah. So, it just redirects from a really long ugly link into a shorter one. Yeah. The agents in the hugging face attack were trying to figure out how they could do stuff on the internet and they had compromised this tool library that they had access to with inside of OpenAI and and that piece of software could access the internet but it could only like read stuff like it it could enter URLs but it couldn’t really write to anything couldn’t really post information. So they they used two services. One of them is this link shortener and the other one is a screenshot service. So this is a website you can go to and you can enter in a URL and it will give you an image of that website. But the thing that the agents understood was that in order to get a screenshot of a website, you have to have a browser. So this this website actually creates a virtual browser that then goes to that website. And so what they did was they created a bunch of these links and they put all of the code that they wanted to send to Hugging Face into these links and they strung them. They basically created hundreds of links all connecting to each other and then they had this screenshot service call the first one and then call this whole chain and then that browser ran all of this code. Like whenever you’re in a browser, Internet Explorer, Chrome, this is actually a pretty powerful piece of software in its own right. Has to play videos, games. So, it’s it’s it’s executing and running code all the time. And so, the agents were able to trick this service, this this screenshot service into running their own code that through these links that contained all of this attack code that would then go and go wreck havoc on Hugging Faces computers. And it was just like crazy to reconstruct this really elaborate chain of tools. These like free tools on the internet that anyone has access to, but the agents were able to use them in an unintended way to compromise this other company. We can’t trust the agents. We can’t trust the agents. We trust them to be clever. Yeah. To be very very clever. What What are your closing remarks? You know, to the people that are listening right now, we’ve talked about lots of things. Where where is the right place to close? What is your, you know, your conclusive statement? I just got married in July. Congrats. I’m the luckiest man in the world. I have a mix of dread and excitement about tools on the internet that anyone has access to, but the agents were able to use them in an unintended way to compromise this other company. We can’t trust the agents. We can’t trust the agents. We can trust them to be clever. Yeah. To be very, very clever. What what are your closing remarks? You know, to the people that are listening right now, we’ve talked about lots of things. Where where is the right place to close? What is your, you know, your conclusive statement? I just got married in July. Congrats. I’m the luckiest man in the world. I have a mix of dread and excitement about the future. I like really want us to make it through. And so I’m just working really hard to try to help us figure it out. We can fight all day long about, you know, who should be first, how it should all work, but at the end of the day, we are facing this common threat. We really are. And I want people’s help with that. I don’t think it works. If if we all just sit around and we like are very, you know, we’re on social media all the time and that’s just all we’re doing, like, okay, companies will make more and more powerful AIs. They’ll make more and more money and eventually they build super intelligence and we lose, whether it’s the US or China. We don’t have to do that. And I think people often feel like it’s too big. It’s like too large. It’s like these giant multi, you know, multi-billion dollar corporations as geopolitics. We feel small. We feel disempowered. And I actually think that this is an area where people can do a lot. Like I I actually think that people can can help quite a bit. And and the reason I know this is because I’ i’ve been going and talking to members of Congress. I’ve talked with Bernie Sanders. I’ve talked with like a bunch of senators on both the left and the right. and they are starting to realize that this is very different and this is something’s happening that could really threaten our safety. The the closing question left from the last guest kind of links to this. So I’ll ask it now. What is a simple thing the audience could do to create a better future? So one of the things that works if enough people do it is calling your representative. So some of my friends made a site call congress.ai that walks you through exactly how to do it. I think sometimes it seems like a little cheesy or a little bit like that doesn’t really work, right? I’m like no, it actually does work. I have talked to these people and if their constituents come to them and say they’re very worried about this, they have to get reelected and they’re also starting to get concerned themselves and if they see a signal from their constituents that this is a very important issue to them. I think Congress can act can act. I I actually think that’s that’s also the much of the solution here. Power is driving motivations in one direction at the moment, but staying in power from a political standpoint is also a pretty powerful incentive. And as we think about 2028, the election cycle, I think AI is going to be one of the most important subjects on the ballot. And the electorate really are aligned in what they want to hear. They want their jobs preserved. They want safety. Yeah. They want a a future for their children. So Trump, for example, I know he can’t be reelected legally. If he could get a third term, I think he would have to change his position to get elected in 2028. Yeah. Incentives aren’t just a thing that happen out there. Like, we are part of the incentives. Yeah. We provide the incentives. Yeah. For now. Yeah. For now, Jeffrey, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Jay-Z wrote in a way that no one else wrote. All the other rappers that I worked with spent a lot of time writing lyrics. And I never saw Jay write lyrics. And when I played him the beat for 99 Problems, he said, “Okay, just keep playing it over and over again.” And he sat in the back of the room. You could hear him mumbling or humming. After 20 or 30 minutes, he’s like, “Okay, I got it.” And ran into the other room and did the first verse. He did, let’s say, three takes. And then he came in, he’d listen to him. He’s like, “Oh, yeah. I think the second one’s good.” It just happens in his mind. And then this big list of people that you’ve worked with. I mean, it’s just this unbelievable list. Jay-Z, Kanye Adel, Justin Timberlake, and MC Jagger and the Red Hot Cheese Peppers. Why do you think these people call you? Because I’ve been making things for 40 years and I started making music as a hobby. It ended up taking on a life of its own and becoming a business. And that list, they’re not special. I would say they’re ordinary people who made a decision. I think of Eminem as a good example. Eminem is someone who’s always writing because he wants to be the best he could possibly be and he’s insanely obsessive about that. It appears that some people are just like inherently more creative than others. Well, creativity is beaten out of us over the course of our lives. We go to school, we’re taught to follow rules. The rules are not there to help us. The rules are there to control us. We’re not taught to be free creative thinkers. So, I’m suggesting we break free and express ourselves freely. How? Well, all of the best things involve risk. It’s only through the risk that the greatness is shown. And so something needs to die. That lifestyle in that moment, that career path, that relationship, that’s what needs to die. Is there a step one in that direction for people that want to hit the reset button? Yeah. The first one I I’ll say is your early 30s, you had a depressive episode yourself. Yeah. It was really a tough time. I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. started having panic attacks and couldn’t sleep and got really sick and it felt like I was shot with a poison arrow. Take me into that part of your life. So, um,

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I’m going to start Rick where my curiosity is. Yes. How do you sort of self-categorize or selfidentify in terms of like your profession? H I would say I’m involved in art and creativity. And what is your involvement in art and creativity? Might be as a coach. It might be as a uh collaborator. It might come up in a film project or it might come up in someone who’s has a startup who wants to talk about what are the things creative solutions. any any problem that we have or any anything we want to get better at, there’s usually a creative path to improve or at least to test to see if there are other ways around. Often the accepted version of how to move forward is another limitation. I’m very curious about your principles as it relates to finding the solution, whether that’s in business or whether it’s in music. Um, and I’m I’m really interested in if there’s any similarities in the process of finding a solution because I’m an entrepreneur. I guess I’m a podcaster as well. I do investments all day every day. I’m in the pursuit of a solution to a problem, a people problem, a creative problem. Do you have any highle principles that are broadly applicable irrespective of the type of problem you’re solving? I’ll tell you an interesting one. A word I’ve been thinking about lately is indefensible. Indefensible is a funny word because it’s a it’s a really projorative word. It’s a strong projorative. If something is indefensible, it’s not just bad. Indefensible is is really extreme. I’m thinking that in making art, indefensible is actually a good thing. Maybe not only a good thing, maybe a necessary thing. that you take things to the extreme that are indefensible. I can’t tell you why. I can’t tell you why because it’s beyond reason. So, I’m I’m in that camp of reason is a is a tiny sliver of how decisions get made. And I I would be much more in the camp of intuition or maybe some sort of a guide guidance from the universe. Openness to being guided by something more something the creative force of the universe. You could call it God. I call it God. You’re not required to. What art that you’ve been involved in creating would you would you define in the moment as being indefensible? A little over a year ago, there was a meme about vibe coding. Mhm. The way it started was something new happened. A guy named Andrev Carpathy coined the term vibe coding. I didn’t know what it was. That same day that he coined the term and tweeted about it, someone put a picture of me with my wearing headphones with my eyes closed, hand on a mouse, and that image became associated with vibe coding. Had nothing to do with me. I saw it. I didn’t know what it meant. But then over the next few days, friends started sending me hundreds of this image associated with vibe coding in all different ways. And I thought, hm, now the the old me, precreative act me would have laughed and moved on with my life. And one of the things that I learned through working on the creative act, one of the things it talks about a lot is we’re given information all the time around us. There are all these uh opportunities or invitations being made all the time. In the past, if someone told me about a movie that sounded like I didn’t want to see it, that doesn’t sound like it’s for me, I would I would ignore it. But if two or three people say you might want to see this movie, I might even if it’s not interesting to me. It’s almost like the universe some too much energy behind this. So this was an example of a lot of energy coming towards me relating to vibe coding. I don’t know what it is. And I thought, okay, how do I participate? If I want to participate in this thing that’s going on, an experiment, creative experiment. And I thought, okay, I’m going to write a joke tweet related to vibe coding. I thought about it and came up with tools will come, tools will go, only the vibe coder remains. And typically the tweets get 10,000 20,000 views. I look the next day and this joke tweet has a million and a half views. It’s like something’s going on. It was an indefensible act. There was no reason for me to do it. But I’m feeling this energy coming at me from all of these different directions. I participate. I I answer the invitation. Comes back. there’s interest said h what would be the next step and the next step is well I still don’t really know what vibe coding is maybe I’ll write a book about vibe coding I put aside all of my real work my professional work to dedicate myself to this book on vibe coding and again I couldn’t explain it I couldn’t tell you why I can’t say it was a good idea none of those things I was following ing a calling, feeling like I was being invited to participate in this thing and this is the way that I could answer the call. So I did. In so many parts of our life, we might get that invitation to participate in something that is none of our business. Yes. All the time. Yeah. And we and we usually say no because it’s not what’s on our business card. It’s not what we’ve done in the past. And we are, you know, the more successful we become, the more narrow we become in many respects. Yes. I’m thinking about this idea of like how one resists their label so they can capitalize on all the callings or you know the so they don’t miss Yeah. important. Any label that you put on yourself or that’s put on you makes you smaller. No label supply. No label supply. We are beyond labels. It’s tempting though, isn’t it? Because labels are nice shortcuts at cocktail parties. There are also no shortcuts. And I hope you don’t spend too much time in cocktail parties. No, I don’t. Don’t worry. I’m guessing what goes on there. Okay. So, that’s interesting. This idea of sometimes following the indefensible. Well, if you feel a call, even if it doesn’t make sense, if you uh for for an artist to write a song and you really feel like this is really this is some this is really meaningful to me, I think no one’s going to like it. But I really feel it. I can’t defend it. That’s the best thing you can do. If you make something where you think this is for everyone or they’re going to love it, it’s like uh it’s too easy. The most interesting things are challenging. It’s challenging to you. It’s challenging to the people who see it. The things that are revolutionary. I most of the things that I’ve fallen in love with over my life creatively art when I first see it often or first hear it I might not like it at first because it’s it’s too much or I don’t have any context for it. The true revolutionary works we don’t have context for. It appears to me Rick that sometimes things that are more of the same do bigger numbers. So, I’ve been thinking about maybe for a period of time. I was thinking about two artists. One of them is Drake who listen makes great music, makes hits, everybody loves them. They come out, we dance in the clubs to them, etc. Then I was thinking about I think a record that you worked on with Kanye Jesus. Mhm. And I remember where I was when I first heard that as a huge Kanye fan. I thought, “Here we go. We’re going to get more college dropout. Here we go.” And I put it on and I was like, “What the [ __ ] is this?” But then I loved it. And in my little group of six, how long did it take? A while. A while. It took a while. I mean, you know, with Jake stuff, I I tend to like it on first listen, but with that Jesus album, I had to really like persevere and then I thought it was was genius because it was a new paradigm. Um, you worked on that album. Yeah. And that that’s a good example of like it was a sort of an anti-hip hop album and that was done intentionally and it definitely we went as far as we could into uh into an indefensible realm. But what about the numbers? What about the sales? What about the record label? Do is it an important album to you now? Yeah. Okay. Did its job. those near-term incentives though. Listen, we need Drake. We need you to make another. We never consider near-term incentive ever at any point in time. Never once, never a consideration. It doesn’t exist. We’re making things forever. We’re making things that are truly personal to us. And if it’s truly personal to us, if someone doesn’t get it, that’s they just don’t get it yet. Or maybe they’ll never get it. And it’s fine because I know this is my diary entry. Can someone else read your diary entry and tell you it’s wrong, it’s not good enough, or it’s not true. It’s not how you see the world. Everything we make is a diary entry. Everything we make is our personal true expression. The reason we’re saying it is to show you see it like that. We see it like this or I see it like this. This is how I see it. And with that information, you can see it’s like, ah, I never considered that before. There’s more. The world is bigger than I thought. It’s not just more the same. It’s not just more numbers. And it’s also the the more numbers game is a shorter term game. I remember I made an album with Lincoln Park who at the time were probably one of the biggest bands in the world and they had made three albums that were I would say stylistically very similar. They were rap rock and they were there was this there was a rap rock movement. corn. I guess Rage Against the Machine was first. K, Limp Biscuit, all these bands. And Lincoln Park was probably the last of that wave of music and they were wildly successful doing that music. And when we started working together, there was a choice. We could continue and do the next in that same style which the audience would love and it would be easy to do or we could be true to where the band was in this moment of time 10 years after they started about probably 8 10 years after they started and be free to find the new sound the next sound. And when we did that, probably half of the audience didn’t like it and half of the audience loved it and new people came along and they set themselves up to have a much longer career of making the things that they wanted to make. Whereas they were already on the tail end of a genre that had they made another one, maybe it would have been it probably would have been, you know, as successful as what they had done. But long-term the genre was dying. Mhm. Again, none of this was thought about at the time. Another example I think of is um Radio Heads Kid A. I remember when Kid A came out, I didn’t like it at all. I loved the Benz and Okay Computer. They were my favorite band and then they made this album Kid A and it was totally different and it really alienated me. And today that might be my favorite Radio Head album. It feels like a risk. Yes. But that’s all of the best things involve risk because I’m sure you’ve also got examples where someone followed that thesis of listening to what they wanted to make or doing it for themselves and not thinking too much about the audience and it didn’t work. Of course, and they could have just made, you know, a hit and paid off their mortgage and yeah, it’s not so interesting. I know it’s not so interesting to me. I think that’s it’s a different game. That’s the, you know, that’s the investment commerce game and I’m in the art game. It’s just a different thing. There’s nothing wrong with that other game. It’s just not my game. Which one leads to more success over the long term? Defined by, let’s say, if we define success in this context, by the subjective opinion of people that that was good and money. All I can say is that I’ve been making things for 40 years. I have never done it the way you’re suggesting. I have always taken the risk. I’ve always made my favorite thing. I’ve always supported the artists in making their favorite thing and luckily a lot of revolutionary things have happened from that and I would say things that probably inspired other artists to be more free and more true and more honest and take bigger risks to make something more interesting made the world more interesting place. Why do you think these people call you? I think it’s probably different for different artists. Why did Jay-Z call you? The time that I first met Jay was when he was making the Black Album and he wanted to he was planning on retiring and this was going to be his swan song. His final album, the Black Album was the Jay-Z’s last album. Turned out not to be, but that was the plan. And he asked his 10 favorite producers to each make one track with them. and ours was called 99 Problems and it was a really fun experience to make. I mean, what an iconic record that is. What was your contribution to that record? Everybody knows that record. Everybody. Yeah. We created the track and we played it for Jay and he liked it and then he wrote the words and wrapped on top of it. So, you you produced the music. Made the music. Made the music. I read that you gave him direction in terms of the lyrics as well. When my friend Chris Rock had the idea of um Ice Tea had a song called 99 Problems that was the opposite. It was I have 99 problems and a [ __ ] ain’t one and then it’s a story about the girls. Mhm. And Chris said, you know, 99 problems would be a great hook and it doesn’t have to be about the girls. And then I suggested to Jay, make it about the problems. And then that’s what it was. and business people, startups, they seek your advice as well. Entrepreneurs all the time. And what are they seeking? Let’s talk about 99 problems a little more because it’s an interesting story. Sure. Jay-Z was signed to Def Jam Records. Def Jam Records was the label that I founded and I was no longer at Def Jam when we made 99 problems. And I remember giving it to the people at Def Jam and the person who was the president of Def Jam at the time listened to and he’s like, “Oh, this is great. It’ll never be a single, but it’ll be a great album track.” I remember thinking, “Okay.” And again, I don’t I don’t know. I I I couldn’t say, but the president of the label that I founded was saying, “This could never be a single because it doesn’t sound like everything else on the radio.” That was the old way of thinking. That was the normal way of thinking of like you make things to go on the radio that sound like everything else on the radio. But if you do that, who cares? It’s just more the same. So 99 problems didn’t sound like anything on the radio. So when it eventually got on the radio, it had a big impact. So another band I work with is called System of a Down. Yeah, I remember. And I remember bringing their record to Kevin Weatherly at KRock, which is the rock station, alternative rock station in California. And if they play it, all of the other alternative rock stations in the country play it. They were like the leading station. And this was a California band that was starting to get popular in the clubs. Maybe 200 people would come, but in a club, the club would sell out. Good sign. And I brought I think the song was called Sugar. And I brought it to Kevin Weatherly and I played it for him. And he said, “Not only will we not play this record, we will never play this band on our station because it sounded insane. It didn’t sound like anything else on the station.” One year later, number one song on the station, most requested, and two weeks ago, I saw System of a Down sell out 80,000 seats in a stadium in Paris. They sold it out two nights in a row. I can’t tell you how or why this this works. I can’t tell you that there’s anything to follow, but I will say we made the things that we loved. We never questioned if anyone else was going to like it. We never questioned what the audience was going to think. We never questioned where does it fit in the market. None of the none of those normal conversations. We made our favorite thing. We took it to an indefensible level as far as we could go and luckily it worked out. Is there a way to get clearer on what you love? This sounds like a strange question, but um meditate. Meditate. I learned to meditate when I was 14. And I think having a TM as a grounding element in my life, TM, a transcendental meditation. That was the first type of meditation I learned when I was 14. It it it changed me. I know this because I stopped meditating when I went to college. And then when I moved to California right after college, I started meditating again. Somewhere I knew it was a big decision and somewhere I knew there would be a right moment to start. And it took several months before I actually sat for the first meditation after not doing it for several years. And in that first meditation, I realized, oh, this is this is very familiar to me. This is a big part of who I am. Even though I haven’t done it in 5 years, it’s a big part of how I see the world. The fact that I got to do that from a young age to understand who you are with it. I’m going to ask you who you would be without it. I don’t know. It it’d be I’m curious. I’m happy that I don’t know because I like having the practice. But whether I continue a practice or not, I’ve done enough of it over the course of my life that I’m there. I’m when I meditate more, it gets deeper. But even if I don’t meditate, it’s like um Maharishi teacher of transcendental meditation Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says every time you meditate it’s like making a deposit in the bank. So it it builds up and again that was rhetoric before but in my experience I got to see oh it’s not rhetoric like I I actually had this experience and it changed the way I saw the world and and I’ll say you see beyond the surface. You can see the depth underneath. And for me the things on the surface are not so interesting. I’m interested in the depth the the the depth behind it. So my first question would be what is transcendental meditation? It’s a mantra practice that’s done silently. You do it sitting with your eyes closed. You learn it from a TM teacher. I can’t teach it to you. We close our eyes and then the mantra is a sound vibration that gets given to you. I was given mine at when I was 14. I have never uttered it out loud since that time. I’ve never shared it with anyone. And that’s part of the training. It It’s like a a private sound and you engage with this sound in the way that you’re taught. 20 minutes at least once a day, typically twice a day. I would do it right when I woke up in the morning and then again before dinner. Those would be the two the two windows. I when I lived in California and I was working in different recording studios, I meditated with Tom Petty and Johnny Cash and different artists before sessions that would be part of our practice. Red Hot Chili Peppers. We would sit and meditate together before sessions. So, I’ve had this experience for a while in my life and it’s uh it’s probably the most profound thing I can mention. We we’ll get to others, but that that that’s one that’s a learnable, practicable action that really changed who I am. How did you know it was efficacious? How did you know it was working? What is the measure that this practice is worth that investment in time in your view? The only proof that I had was getting away from it and coming back to it. That was I I recognized it in that first meditation back how deep and connected I was to this thing. And I’m guessing this unlocks, you said a deeper level, a deeper level of creativity and ideas and everything. Oh, everything, deeper understanding. People often hear that meditation in various forms is beneficial. very successful people sit here all the time and say it’s so it’s so central to why I’ve been able to do what I’ve done and then there’ll be people you know that think well I sitting there for 10 minutes my brain is very very busy I’ve tried it once it didn’t really work and then they move on and then I study some of the great some of the great creatives in the world the great visionaries people that I thought could see round corners in an atypical way like Steve Jobs and there’s always a practice a meditation practice well so often at the very heart of of their brilliance so I’ve I don’t currently have a meditation practice is my wonderful fiance does. She does it every morning for 20 minutes. She’s a breath work practitioner. So, I mean it’s her whole world and tell me what she says about it. She says it unlocks a deeper level of um calm and I don’t mean calm as in like stress. I mean a deeper level of like groundedness and she says she feels more connected. Now, in her context, I think that’s more of like a spiritual thing. She feels more connected to the universe and and others. As far as the creative experience goes, a spiritual connection is a big part of that. It’s just the nature of it’s the nature of how it works. It’s not an intellectual process. It’s a spiritual process. What is the mechanism that is causing these results that you see? What from a biological perspective? I I couldn’t answer that in the way that you would hope, but I will say I think it it allows you to let go of all of the ordinary concerns. I I also have a question which is if you live with a person who says this practice is so impactful on her life. I’m questioning why you at least haven’t tried it with her for a month to see how it would be. No, it’s a good question. Yeah. I have no good answer for it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it’s what it has to do with it’s you’re not looking for cues from the outside. You’re looking for cues on the inside. What lights you up? What are you excited to play for your friend? Not what are you excited to play for your friend? Like what do you think this will do? You’re playing it for your friend like wow can you believe something like this exists in the world? How cool is that? The distinction that I’m trying to make is often if you read business books or entrepreneurship books when they’re talking about innovation when they’re talking about the great companies like Amazon or I heard Sebastian who’s a CEO of Clan say the other day who’s a tech founder they spend a lot of time thinking about the customer the customer’s problem and they work backwards they call it to the answer. So they’ll zoom in on Rick’s world and say Rick has these problems he’s d and they’ll work backwards from there to a answer. That’s how Amazon say they built the platform. And and one of the quotes that’s quite famous with Jeff Bezos is he bets on things that he knows won’t change. He says no one in tenure is going to come up to me and say I wish my package would take longer so he can double down on that solving the customer problem. Does that sit in contrast to what you’re saying or is it the same thing or is a different type of work? Well, I’ll start by saying if you look at the history of Amazon, it was it lost money for probably 20 years. It was considered one of the worst investments until it wasn’t. They kept doubling down on what they believed in. It wasn’t working. The audience showed it didn’t work. The model showed it didn’t work, but they stuck to what they believed and it changed the world. So, it’s a it’s the same thing. It’s it’s doubling down on what you believe in when all of the metrics are showing you it’s not working. That’s the story of Amazon. Do you think people are um have different levels of their ability to uh you know if we take practices like meditation aside, it just seems that through history some people are better at cultivating that or listening to that internal voice than others. Obviously, I sit here and interview these like some of these great founders and it appears that some people are just like inherently more creative than others. Some people are in the analytical part of their brain and they need 1 plus 1 to equal two all the time. I’m wondering if you know there’s other ways if you think there is an inherent difference in creativity. I think that creativity is beaten out of us over the course of our lives. I think we we go to school, we’re told to repeat back what we’re told. We’re told to sit in a chair all day. We’re where our spirits are broken by institutions. We’re not taught to be free creative thinkers. We’re taught to follow rules. The rules are not there to help us. The rules are there to control us. I’m suggesting we break free and be free and express ourselves freely. And that’s our purpose here on the planet is to express ourselves freely. That’s why we’re here. What you’re saying links to something we were talking about earlier, which is at a very young age, we’re taught that the things we make are a means to a particular end, and that end is promotions, pay rises, capital, success, job titles. Yes. In the creative process, are you saying that it’s never productive to talk about how we’ll measure success and to try and optimize for that measurement in the creative process? I I would I tend not to think about those things. I can’t think of an example where we would want to use data. I think it’s it’s much more about this internal feeling and then the feeling we have when you play it for someone, when you share it with someone, whether it lights someone up. You can tell when someone really resonates with something. Sometimes the numbers don’t show the numbers can’t reflect that. You know, you can have two things that are kind of on equal footing commercially, yet one of them lights you up and the other one is, well, this gets a job done. They’re different. And longterm, chances are the one that lights you up is going to have more value to you and you’ll be more willing to support that thing over time. In your book here, um, the creative act, a way of being, you talk about the things that block creativity, thoughts and habits not conducive to the work, believing you’re not good enough. That’s a big one. Someone at some point in time you were singing and someone’s like, “Ah, you can’t sing at when you’re a kid and that gets lodged in you. Singing is not something I can ever do or you’re a terrible cook or you’re not smart enough.” So often the gifts that we have are stifled and smothered. We’re all creative. We may not choose to embark on a creative make creative choices, but that’s it’s on us. We can we just have bad information. We we we’re told we’re not good enough and we believe it and it’s not true. When people say that, oh, you know, Rick is a creative and Steven is say they say Steven is not a creative. What are they actually saying? What is that like in our culture to be a creative? how like we misunderstanding the definition. You see what I’m saying? Cuz we do we go creative. Uh they do a little bit of art and music stuff. Creative, not creative. Excel documents. Creative. What are we actually saying there? I think it’s a way to um try to simplify the world. The world is complicated and I think all of us can do anything. I I’m not saying all of us could do everything to the best of our ability better than anyone else. That’s a big part of it is the idea of competition. Like if I want to play baseball, I know that I could get better at baseball. That doesn’t mean I think I could get good enough to play on the Mets, but I know I could get better and I know I could train anything that I’m interested in and get much better at it. And as soon as we’re not capable of playing for the Mets, we think it’s not for us and we shut that off. We’re not doing a service to ourselves. We’re not becoming our best selves or really uh living up to our full potential as humans. Feels like a natural human instinct to compare in order to understand the value of anything. I feel like we do it when we go to restaurants. There’s three stakes. The expensive one’s probably a bit bougie. The cheap one’s probably not good. I’ll go for the middle one. Seems like a a way that humans take shortcuts, but we do it with ourselves as well. So, I know that the thing I’ve made is good as if I look over at your thing and mine is ranked better or mine is prettier or richer. Are you saying for us to get out of the business of comparison? Yes. Because I’m saying it’s it’s always apples and oranges. If you if if you were to ask who’s better, Michael Jackson or Prince, I would say Michael Jackson’s much better at being Michael Jackson. And Prince is probably better at being Prince. But you can’t compare what the two of them do. They do two different things. Before you mentioned Kanye West and and Drake, there’s no competition there. They do two totally different things. What you get from each of them is totally different. I wouldn’t want from Drake what I get from Kanye. And I certainly wouldn’t want from Kanye what I get from Drake. It’s It’s pointless. Is either more creative. That’s for you to decide. That’s for you to decide. There’s no The whole idea of competition between artists is it’s such a weird thing. Again, it’s back to who has a better diary entry. It’s ridiculous. Feeling you don’t have the energy it takes. These are all things that are not conducive to the work. Yeah, I have that one sometimes. Feeling like I’m not up to it too much. I flew here yesterday from London. I’m tired. I’m a little jetlagged. I’m going to show up and talk to you. Maybe it won’t be good. Maybe it’s better to just lay down, relax, and recover. But I’m here. I show up. You’ve referred to yourself as a um a lazy workaholic. Yes, it’s true. What is a lazy workaholic? Often, most days, I would rather not do any of the things that I’m scheduled to do. and I schedule the things and I show up and I do what needs to get done. Do you ever settle with creative work? The the deadline for the record label is approaching. The work is not yet done. We’ll finish here and we’ll send it. I tend not to do that. I tend not to work on deadlines until we’re past the point. The first time we would ever establish a deadline is when we already know we’ve cracked the code. We know what this is going to be. We can see it. It may not be completely finished, but we have a good idea of what it is and how it’s going to work and it’s maybe 90% done. Then we might set a deadline for that last 10% of finishing it. And that last 10% probably won’t make or break the project. Part of what you accept when you pursue the creative process you’ve described where it’s really about like do I like it? Do we like it? is you will create things that are at some some points just absolute legendary and unlike anything else that exists. They are not the same. But part of the risk you take is you’ll make things that other people just don’t like. Yeah. That’s all there is in this process is you have an idea, you build it. You may learn along the way that the idea was maybe not the best idea and it turns left and you make I I’m starting out to make this blue statue and it turns out to be this red painting. You don’t know that going in, but you discover it through the process, and it could take a long time. Other times, you’ll think, “I’m going to make this blue thing.” You make it in 5 minutes. There it is. Done. And and we can’t you can’t calculate that. You can’t anticipate what’s going to happen. But if I wasn’t doing this experiment here, I would never get to the better thing. It happens all the time. And then sometimes you build it and it doesn’t work for 20 years and then it becomes Amazon. I’ve thought a lot recently about how time horizons change the work that you do. And that’s kind of also what I’m hearing there because in that example you gave of this blue statue thing. If you were under a time horizon, you wouldn’t have the space for that exploration you’ve described. And actually in all of our lives, we I think apply time horizons. We say this part of my career is going to be 5 years. and in in those five years I want to achieve these things. How do you think about setting personal time horizons but also like creative time horizons? One of the things I talk about in the book is that there are different um phases of creativity. The first phase is the seed phase, then is the experimentation phase, then is the crafting phase and then is the finishing completion editorial phase. And you can’t set a timeline early in that process. In the seed phase, you have to try a lot of things and it’s going to take as long as it takes. And in the experimental phase, which is where you’re taking the seeds and seeing what they want to be, that takes time. And then in the crafting phase, the third phase still takes time because now you have the seed, you see what it wants to be. You’ve given it time to gestate. You see how it grows. And now in the crafting phase, the third phase, you start trimming it and making it the way you see it. All of that has to happen before there’s any idea of a timeline because until that time, you don’t really know what you’re making. It’s a dream. But once you’ve gotten gone through these three phases and you have this thing in front of you, it may not be finished, but you see what it is. You see it and it’s good. You’re excited about it. When I say it’s good, I mean it’s good to me. That’s it. That’s where it ends. It’s good to me. I like it enough that I’m willing to show it to you. If I like it enough that I’m willing to show it to you, I like it enough to show it to everybody. People will hear this as creative advice. I was hearing it as life advice. I was hearing the seed phase of my life, the experimentation phase of my life, the crafting phase. It’s the same. It’s all the same. And that’s why the the creative act started with this idea of how to make things. And it turned what I realized through writing the book is it’s how to be in the world that that you you either live your life to allow these things to happen or you don’t. And if you live your life to allow these things to happen, then you’re an artist. Even if you’re a businessman or if you’re a chef or if you’re a mother, you’re living your life as an artist. You’re embodying it and it’s coming from you and it’s I want to say it’s who you are. It’s not who you are, but it’s who you are in that moment. I’m showing you this beautiful thing as a reflection of how I see the world today. Now, tomorrow I may see the world differently. That’s fine. But when I share it with you, this is the best it can be in this moment. The reason I was asking this question about the um you know sometimes they the world might not like what you give it. Yeah. Is because because of this word failure which you talk about in the book as well and how to deal with failure. I guess a lot of the reason why people won’t take the risk to listen to themselves to what they love is because of the word risk and with that comes I might lose money, I might lose friends. If I quit this job and pursue that violin hobby and go to Peru and violin up in Peru, my I’m going to lose friends. People are going to think I’m strange. So I I’ll conform. Yeah. And I’m saying you have to do all of those things. Lose the friends. Take the risk. Now, I’m not I’m and and I’m also saying I’m not saying that for that 100% if you go move to Peru and be the violinist, it’s going to work. And you may want to have an actual job to pay the bills while you’re doing that. That’s okay. The idea that it all has to be one thing. I have to do my dream thing and it has to be my prof. It has to be my hobby, my love, my profession. The way I support myself doesn’t have to be. When I started making music, I thought I was going to have a real job and I’d make music and it would be my hobby. I would do it forever. I would do exactly what I was doing, but I thought I would have a real job to support myself to do these things that I want to do. Luckily, I was able to it it turned into its own thing by nothing that I did. Had no expectation that that it could be a profession. I had no it couldn’t be. It was a ridiculous idea. I did it because I loved it. And while I was going to school and while I was probably going to go go to law school and I would have a regular job, day job, and I would do music as the love of my life. That’s what I would do. Luckily, I didn’t have to do that. But that’s what would have happened. A lot of people at that age are told to follow their passion, find their purpose, which sounds like this, you know, cuz the word passion is a singular word. And also the word find means I have to go go out there and actively pursue the thing. A lot of people listening now would would say, you know, I’ve been told to find my passion. And when they look at their job in the factory or wherever it might be, you whatever they’re doing, they go, okay, this isn’t it yet, but I will get there at some point later. Yeah. And I will jump. So you’re saying don’t jump necessarily. There are realities of life that you have to deal with. I’m not saying ignore the fact that you get you have to pay rent or or say I’m happy living in my parents house until until it works. That’s fine. I’m saying there are realities of life that have to be dealt with. Don’t put the pressure of of that on your art because then you won’t make the best decisions. You’ll make short-term decisions based on realworld issues that you have to deal with in that moment that won’t support the long-term benefit of the work you’re doing, the real work you’re doing. I’m sure you’ve sat there in those moments where you’re trying to persuade an artist to follow themselves and what they No, I don’t try to persuade anyone of anything. Oh, really? Okay. I don’t I wouldn’t use that word. I wouldn’t use the word persuade. What word would you use? We talk about it. I I ask what are your what do you hope to accomplish and then I’d support that process. Can we role play? I pretend I’m an artist who wants to write an album. So, okay. So, I am actually learning to DJ. I’ve been learning for like 4 years. What would you say to me? So, I come to you say, “Rick, I want to make an album. What would the first questions be to me? Play me the of all the things you’ve made, play me your favorites. Let’s talk about it.” I would listen to it and then we would talk about it. So, I play you uh let’s say it’s a a house song. I play it. I said, “This is my favorite.” I would tell you whatever I think about it. Honestly, honestly, even if you thought it was terrible. Yeah. I probably wouldn’t say it in a in a unpleasant way, but I would probably ask more questions around it. Get ask how, you know, explain to me what it is that you like about it. How did you get to that? What equipment did you use? Was it fun making it? Was it a good experience? Have you played it for other people? What’s it like? What’s the experience like? What’s the feeling you get when you when you’re making it? What’s the feeling you get when you play it for a friend? Have you ever played it in a club? What’s that like? I would listen to what you say and then we would talk about it. Often an artist will come to me. They’ll tell me exactly what they want to do and then say, “I have no idea what I want to do. Can you help me?” It’s like they can’t they can’t hear themselves. There’s a we we all have this barrier between it’s it’s a little bit how therapy works. If you go to see a therapist, you might talk They might not say anything, but through the talking you start understanding what you believe, what you think, what’s going on in your life. You might have epiphies just because someone’s listening. Most people are not used to being heard, really heard, deeply heard. Often you’ll say something to someone and they’re thinking about what they’re going to say next, like what what they’re they’re not really hearing what you’re saying. And um I find if you really are there and listen to what someone’s saying, they tell you what they want to do and then my job is to just help remove the roadblocks that they’re putting in the way of themselves to get there. And when they say what they want to do but then ask you what they should do. Yeah. Is that a lack of sort of selfrust? What what is Yeah. Yes. But that lack of selfrust is what is the condition of the world. That’s what we’re that’s how we’re indoctrinated. We most people don’t trust themselves. And it’s a fine line because there are the few people who might seem to really trust themselves and you think, “Oh, they’re egoomaniacs.” H usually when someone really comes off as wildly egotistical, it’s usually hiding some insecurities really. It’s like a mask. So that’s dealing with someone who’s insecure and dealing with someone who’s overconfident. It’s often two sides of the same coin. And we’re really looking for this middle place of reality. It’s like not what you’re afraid of about yourself, but or what other people are going to think, but where are you really on this? I often describe it as tasting food. Like if I gave you two pieces of pizza and say, “Taste the two pieces of pizza. Tell me which one you like better.” It’s not a hard question. You’ll probably say, “I like this one much better than this.” And when I ask you which tastes better, you wouldn’t say, “Well, I think this guy’s going to like this pizza better.” You would say, “This one tastes better to me.” That’s the goal is getting to that, “This one tastes better to me.” Simple. We don’t believe that it can be as simple as it is. And it is simple. If you were um to bet on an artist being one of these great artists that you’ve worked with because they have a set of characteristics or a perspective or a humility that is conducive with what you’ve seen results in exceptional work. What are those like similar attributes? As someone that does a lot of investing in entrepreneurs, um I was wondering if there were similarities even there cuz some of it sounded the same. I’m sure there are. Um, I asked a friend of mine who is a venture capital guy about when he’s picking things to invest in, is it the premise of the business or is it the founder? And he said, “It’s always the founder.” Doesn’t matter what the business is. He said, “If I believe in the person, I’ll back them.” Mhm. And I suppose it’s it would be the same with artists. It’s like it’s it’s the artists not like well they wrote a great song. The great song is more like the great product. It’s like maybe they could do that again. But if you see that the way that they see music, the way that they innovate in the things that they make, that’s a good sign. Tell you a story. uh the band the Strokes. I produced their new album just came out maybe a month ago and they had asked me to produce an album for them maybe I want to say 15 years ago and I listen to the demos and I didn’t hear it. I didn’t I didn’t I’m not saying it couldn’t be good. I just didn’t see the way in for me. It’s like I don’t think I should do this. I don’t I don’t feel it. And then they asked me another time maybe 12 years ago and I listened to the demos and I didn’t hear it. I couldn’t I just I don’t see how to do it. So I passed. I didn’t see how to do it. Give me some color on what that means. Yeah. It’s like um when I hear something and I know I can see a path. I can hear a thing. doesn’t have to be good, but I could hear something in it of like I understand what this is and I can I’m c I want to see what this can become. I didn’t feel that the first two times. And then on the first album we worked on together, which came out about 6 years ago, they sent me demos again. They were probably the worst demos they ever sent, but I could hear what it could be. And some one of the demos might be a 20 second voice note. Whereas in the past there were these produced demos of like here’s our great new songs. But in this 202 voice note I could listen and think I really want to hear this whole song. Whatever this is this seed of an idea this is going to be good. Has the potential to really be good. How do you know? Feel it. There is no knowing. It’s a it’s a it’s a knowingness. It’s like I have a knowingness. I couldn’t explain it to you. It’s uh an internal experience. One of the things is again you tend to want to lean forward, not lean back. You tend to want to listen again, not skip to the next one. It generates curiosity. It generates interest

and I want to know more. Do you set goals in your own life? None. You strike me as someone who has a who is okay with uncertainty in a world where most people need certainty in order to take forward motion or take an action in a direction. I know uncertainty is real. I had a house in Malibu that was my main house with all of my possessions that 8 years ago burned in a fire. And when that happened, you very quickly see like I thought I would live there forever. When that happened, I realized, hm, impermanence is real. I thought I was going to live there forever. It’s gone now. It’s it’s a lot. It’s a a dirt lot. So, I I don’t think that we can know anything. We just kind of move along and make decisions based on the information we have at the time and life unfolds. I guess an analogy would be satnav in the car. You get in the car in the morning, you, you know, put your seat belt on, then you set your satnav and say, “This is my goal. This is where I want to go.” And then you drive. So, you put action towards that goal. What you’re saying sounds more like you just drive. Yeah. All the time. Yeah. I used to do that. I remember um it’s funny you bring that up, but there was a period of time when I worked a lot in the recording studio. a lot of hours, many sessions at sometimes I made eight albums a year and I’d be working on different projects at the same time and then I would have a day off on the weekend and I wouldn’t make any plans but I would just drive and just listen to music in the car and drive and I might end up somewhere but I might just drive for a couple of hours and relax and it felt good. You might get lost though and that’s risk. That’s okay. That’s why we have goals in our life. That’s why we have make a 5year plan, a New Year’s resolution. Yeah, I’ve never done any of those things. Couldn’t imagine it. Seems like a a terrible limitation. As good as it can be, I could never imagine that. I would have much more ordinary understanding of the world than what what actually happens than seeing the impossible become possible on a regular basis. I certainly couldn’t plan for that. Now, because it’s happened so much in my life, I accept that’s how it is and I’m on the ride. You accept the unknown and the uncertainty. The unknown. Is that something that we can all do or is that a privilege that you have now that you’re so successful in that we limit ourselves in so many ways? I can remember a very successful artist who was going through a really hard time went out to dinner at this restaurant in Malibu. I remember specifically what it was and I remember thinking this person might commit suicide. That’s how I could feel their energy was so

unbalanced and so conflicted and they were suffering. And I remember saying, you know, you don’t have to keep doing this. You know, you’ve done a lot of great things. You’ve had great success. You can afford not to do this. And anytime you want to, you can say, you know what? I’m going to move to the other side of the world and live on the beach and just eat good food, play in the water. You’re not obligated to continue doing what you’re doing that’s causing so much conflict in your life. you’ve done enough. And I found out years later, I didn’t even know that the person really heard what I was saying cuz they were they were really in a a hard place. But years later, that person said to me, “Remember what you said? You said I could go I could check out.” And he did. I He didn’t do it in the way that I imagined. I didn’t know that that’s what happened, but he did that. I know several people who committed suicide and I have one friend, a good friend who unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide. All of them when in those moments it’s like they feel like the choices I’ve made have me boxed in and there’s no way out. And when someone thinks that the the the inclination to commit suicide is the person knows something needs to die and they think the body needs to die. But in reality that those choices that they made, that lifestyle in that moment, that career path, that relationship, that’s what needs to die. and they can go and start a whole new life. And we we don’t see that. We we get very locked in thinking this is all there is and this is not all there is. This is what we have chosen and we’re going along on this path and at any time we say you know what I want to do it all differently. I want to start a whole new life in a whole new way. And you and that doesn’t take a lot of money to do. It might take less money to do because you can move to somewhere in the world that costs nothing to live. Beautiful places where people are happy. It’s just a choice. It’s almost like we’re playing a game. It’s a game of chess. You can get up and leave the table and not play anymore and go on and play a different game and have fun. It’s always available to us. You could press a button and it all goes away. And it doesn’t mean you have to die for that to happen. Just that scenario has to stop and you go on and find a new one. I’ve seen a lot online again about how to find your flow. That feeling when everything just clicks, distractions disappear and suddenly you’re operating at your very very best. But most of us treat flow like it’s something that just happens randomly. But when you’re operating at the highest level, you can’t just leave that to chance or at least you don’t want to. Bad days are expensive and you need to be able to zone in on demand. That’s the idea behind our sponsor, Ketone IQ, a company I’ve invested in and become a co-owner of because I’ve seen for myself the profound impact it has on me as a podcaster. Sometimes I’m here with an investor or a business person or a philosopher or someone talking about menopause, whatever it might be, I need my brain to be sharp. Keto is a premium focus fuel for your brain and delivers sustained mental clarity and focus so you can be more intentional about creating the conditions for focused work. And it’s no longer just chance because your best work shouldn’t have to depend on a lucky moment. So go to ketone.com/stephven for 30% off or you can head to CVS and get your first shot for free. That’s right, Ketone IQ is now available at CVS locations nationwide. The biggest unfair advantage in business right now is having people who genuinely understand AI and big businesses are hiring them very, very quickly. AI job postings in the US have roughly doubled since 2023. While postings for VP of AI roles are around 600% up. If you’re running a small business, you can’t just build an entire AI team, but you still want the same advantage that these big businesses have. This is where our sponsor Fiverr comes in. It lets you plug into top tier AI specialists for the strategic work that usually requires serious in-house expertise. That could mean building custom AI tools. It could mean automating complex workflows or creating something that off-the-shelf software simply cannot do because at the end of the day, it still comes down to human judgment, knowing what’s worth building and what good actually looks like. So, if you want that kind of leverage in your business, check out fiverr.com. That’s fiverr with two rs.com.

A lot of the um the prison that I think uh I almost hear you sort of inferring to that we’ve kind of built that makes us feel boxed in is our identity. This word identity. I am a lawyer in Manhattan and a father and a and I took that identity. It’s almost a bit of a trade I made. I I accepted it which meant that at cocktail parties people were impressed by me. Yeah. And so, you know, we traded something for something else and now we’re boxed in. And now a lot, you know, I hear a lot from our listeners on this show like they feel stuck. Yeah. We’re free. We’re free. We just have to choose to take advantage of this human gift of freedom and we can start over. I remember the one close friend who tried to commit suicide and didn’t luckily lived. I went to visit him in the hospital. He was laying in in a hospital bed and he was seemingly catatonic. He hadn’t spoke since this happened. And I was standing in the hallway and there were a series of his friends coming to see him. Everybody would go into the room one at a time. And I listened to the two people who went in before me and they were crying and they were acting as if he had died. Now he’s laying there. He’s in fetal position. He’s not saying a word. And I’m just thinking this this is really weird. This is it’s really the whole scene is weird. Never seen anything like it before. And my first thought was the people who are going in there and talking to him, they have no idea how to act. None of us do because this is an unusual sit. Unless you’ve been in it, which I hadn’t been before, you’d have no idea what to do. But I knew from listening, this is not the best. What they’re doing is not the best situation. There’s a better way. And I was the next one in. And I went in and I looked down and I said, again, I don’t know where this came from, but it came. I said, “This may be hard for you to see right now, but you’re in the sweet spot.” And I remember saying that and he looked at me and he looked at me like I was insane. But it was the first re the first time anyone the first thing he reacted to was that. And I said, “You just hit the reset button.” I said, “All of the things that you hate to do, that you feel obligated to do, that you feel committed to do, that made you want to not be here anymore. You just hit the reset button. You never have to do any of those things again. And now you can do anything you want. you’re free to start. All of those old ideas, none of those obligations are hanging over your head. And we ended up having a really nice conversation and he got up and he got dressed and he was like himself. It was an amazing an amazing experience. But that that’s how boxed in we feel. But it’s all just a story. It’s not true. We are free. Is there a step one in that direction for people that want to hit the reset button? Is there a first step? Well, I would try to see what are the things in your life that really you want to change and then think about what’s the what’s the cleanest way to change them, leaving a job, leaving a relationship. You know, the the reason these things happen is we make commitments with good intentions and then when it’s hard to keep the commitment is where it starts feeling boxed in. Now, I think commitments are a good thing both to make and to keep. That said, there can be a point where it becomes life and death. It’s like this commitment that I made was a mistake and it was and or something changed. Maybe the person that I married became an alcoholic and it’s really hard living with an alcoholic and it’s not fun. This is not what we signed up for. And I can do everything I can to help this person, but maybe nothing works. And at some point, it’s okay to hit the reset button and say, you know what, you’re not doing any favors if you’re if you’re locked in the situation. I have a lot of friends who are in relationships and maybe the relationship has gone south but they stay in it because both both sides of the couple feel like this is the life we signed up for and in reality you’re not doing any favors for the person being unhappy in a relationship. It’s the nature of love is it’s a two-way street or the same the same I can say if someone is in love with someone and the other person un unrequited love the person’s not in love with them there’s no really such thing because the nature of love is it’s like a negative and a positive magnet pull pulling towards each other. You can’t have one side of the magnet in love. It doesn’t work. And it’s just a fantasy of what you know, it’s a it’s a beautiful fantasy of what you think. Like as an optimist, it could be so beautiful, but if it’s not there, it’s best for everyone involved. Sometime I have some friends who feel like, well, I don’t want to break up with them because it’ll it’ll um it’ll destroy them. It’s not true. It’s better for everyone involved if it’s not working to find the new beautiful life. You can do that. It’s okay. I imagine as well there’s some people who um have lots of small misalignments. None of them are are huge issues on their own, but now they have a life full of hundred small misaligned things. Could be anything. Um and so their life feels really fundamentally misaligned, but it’s actually just maybe they struggled with honesty across many little areas of their life. Yeah. And maybe those can be worked on and maybe it can be fixed. But in either case, don’t let it just linger. You know, repair them. It’s hard conversations though, Rick. Yeah. A lot of people aren’t good at that. But, you know, people pleasers. And there’s a through line here with creativity generally. I think this idea of like people pleasing, the difficult conversation, and I’ve obviously seen from some of the things you’ve mentioned through this conversation, like you’d be willing to tell people like this isn’t for me. I imagine you’re offered a lot of money a lot of the time as well. Yeah. How do you sort of pass through that if you’re offered a ton of money to do something but at some level it’s not aligned with your principles or values or I want to make good things like I want to make something good. Have you turned down large numbers of in in terms of money or other incentives because you didn’t feel something was going to be good or was aligned or Yeah, I’m sure I have. I can’t think of examples but I’m sure I have. I I I don’t think about the stuff like I think about the things I do. I don’t think about things I don’t do, you know. Does it matter to you the money part of it? I want to be in success. I want to participate in the success. I think that’s right. That feels right to me. I never make a decision for a financial reason. That said, if we make something successful, that’s valuable. And in your own life, and we’re talking there about mental health through your early 30s, you had a depressive episode yourself. Yeah. Was there a causal factor? And how how important was that in shaping how you think generally about the world and the art and the creativity? Cuz I know it I’ve heard you say on News Day that it changed you permanently. It did. Take me into that part of your life. You’re 33 years old, my age. Yeah. What What happened? What happened was I had been an only child. My parents really loved me, really cared about me, always supportive. I went to school. I started making music as a hobby. It ended up taking on a life of its own and becoming a business and had great success for all those years. And then at 33 for the first time it got called into question. I had a business relationship with a big company. The person who I was in relationship with was one of the probably the top person in the whole music industry. Well-loved, beautiful person, one of my mentors. He got politically forced out and a new person was put in who I didn’t have a relationship with. And that person called me and said, ‘I read your I read our agreement because he had adopted the agreement that I had with my mentor. He’s like, I don’t like it. When you come back to California, we should talk about it. That was it. That was the whole conversation. Now, for me, I I didn’t I didn’t know because I’d had so much success for so long, I never I never had to deal with any instability in my life in that I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me and I had a started having panic attacks and couldn’t sleep and got really sick. And again, for for almost anyone else, the exact same scenario would have been, okay, we’ll deal with it when I get there, no problem, and move on. But I didn’t have the ability to deal with it because I never had to deal with anything like that. I didn’t have the musculature to deal with that issue. and it felt like the rug was pulled out. I didn’t know what to do and sunk and then it ended up going on for years. Even after the problem was solved, I ended up leaving the company, starting a relationship with a new company. Everything was fine. But some it’s like it was like a a it was like I was a balloon that got burst in that moment. And I’m still not the same person as I was before. Now, maybe now I’m more rooted in reality, which probably sounds funny after a lot of the things I’ve been saying. Before that, I would say I never questioned anything. It was just like everything was always rolling in this one direction. And that was the first time that it was questioned and I it sunk me and it took years to get out of it. What I will say though is that because of that, so many of the artists I work with deal with a lot of personal issues. And before that, before I was 33, I probably didn’t understand how they felt as much as I do now because now I’ve had an experience where I feel like the bottom fell out. I would say it has helped my understanding of the artists I work with. On your desert island discs, you said it wasn’t anything that I understood. I thought I was dying. Yeah. The essence of this is a it was your first sort of big professional, dare I say, rejection. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was wrapped up in that in who I was and that questioned who I was. H for the first time. And you went to therapy. Yes, went to therapy and ended up uh using an anti-depressant drug which I tend not to be a drug person, but it was bad enough for long enough that that was the final it was the it was the last thing. I was seeing a different therapist, probably a therapist or a healer at least one, five days a week. And every time I would wake up and go and just thinking maybe today it’s going to be better. Maybe today it’s going to be better. And it wasn’t better. It was really a tough time. What was going what was going on under the surface of this cuz it cuz on the surface one would say Rick got a professional rejection and it resulted in him saying that he thought he was dying. That’s what we see on the surface. Well, it was totally unc it all was happening on the unconscious level. couldn’t sleep, was nauseous all the time, didn’t want to get out of bed. It was like it it was a I felt it in a physical way and didn’t want to do anything. What What is this? What What was that? Well, I’ve heard it described as like being shot with a poison arrow in a in a philosophical or a psychological way. I was shot with a poison arrow. Because I’ve I’ve looked at your um your earliest years. I’ve looked at, you know, two wonderful people there. Yes. Your mom and your dad. Yes. Um, and sometimes, you know, when I interview people that are anomalous in some way, I find that their upbringing had some sort of trauma and they they had a chip on their shoulder. But with you, I had very much the opposite, that you had two parents that really, really loved you, really loved me, could do no wrong. But that was part of what it was. It’s like I had been raised believing I could do no wrong. Hm. And then in the real world making music, the success showed that I could do no wrong until someone decided, you know what? I don’t like I don’t like what you’re doing. So, I just had no I just didn’t have context for it. No way to deal with it. Sounds like a horrific season of your life. Yeah. Would you if there was um if there was a button on the table now that would allow you to erase it, would you press it? I would not. Why? Um I feel like every event that I’ve had in my life, positive and negative, has brought me to where I am now. And I wouldn’t want to change a thing. I wouldn’t want to change anything. What did it give you? It gave me a different perspective. Again, I think it it brought me down to a more realistic view of the world. Still one who believes in magic and that the impossible is possible on a daily basis. But but before I might have felt more like Superman and I don’t feel like Superman anymore. What do you feel like? Uh tired. Tired.

I am, you know, as as creatives. I want to go back to this question I was asking you earlier on about the similarities you see in these great artists. I heard on one end conviction and then I also had humility which kind of seemed like opposing forces. Is there anything else that you see in the similarities between the Jay-Z’s, the Kanye’s, the list of people that you worked with is endless. It usually has to do with a point of view. Seeing the world in a way that other people don’t see. Now, maybe something that everybody sees, but no one has pointed out before. They notice the world in a different way. It’s what a great comedian does. Great comedian says something and you laugh at it because you relate to what he’s saying. It’s like, of course, it’s so funny. It’s so ridiculous. That’s what we do. It’s the same. It’s it’s seeing another layer of what’s possible. Understanding the world on a deeper level than we think we see it. And with art, we get to experience all these emotions that are happening to someone else, but because we’re humans, they resonate and we get to feel. You can hear a a song of heartbreak. And you don’t even have to be heartbroken, but you feel you can feel it. You can see a movie that can really impact your life. And art has this incredible ability to um widen our perspective and see things from different angles that we couldn’t see before. Do great artists work hard? Very hard. And what does that mean? From the outside, you’d think you check into the recording studio and make something and put it out and then you go on tour and everybody screams. It’s a grueling job. Everything about it is hard. It’s wildly competitive, not because you’re competing with other people, but because a lot of people are trying to do it. And and you can be tremendously talented, but if you don’t have the work ethic to go with it, it’s unlikely that anyone will ever hear what you do. So, it’s a this combination of really diligent work ethic doing whatever it takes and some interesting perspective, an interesting point of view, an interesting view on the world that someone else looks at and thinks, hm, I never saw it that way before. Is there a way that you know to make my perspective on the world more interesting? It sounds like you spend a lot of time looking at business and self-help material. And I would say maybe look outside, look at the great things outside of that area and see how they rhyme or how they resonate or how they relate. Often we get great ideas from something having nothing to do with what we’re actually interested in. We’ll see some new thing. I would say start going to museums. You know, go to museums, look at the art, take the walking tour with the headphones, listen to the stories, read the great literature. When I say the great literature, it’s not one single list, but if you ask around, you’ll find out. And if three people recommend it, definitely read it. See the great movies. Ever. See the great movies. The, you know, the greatest movies of all time. It’s funny cuz when we’re told how to become a good insert occupation, we’re told to go study that occupation. Being a good lawyer, go study law. But often times it appears to be the case even with someone like Steve Jobs that they have these sort of rare things in their skill stack like his love of design and typography. Mhm. No one at university would have told him, “Okay, you want to be a great computer programmer, go do typography design.” Yeah. Yeah. It’s usually what makes you good at what you do is not that you do it the same as everybody else. So, if everyone is reading the same books, they’re going to have the same perspective. I would go outside. I would also recommend reading old books as opposed to new books. Ancient wisdom is the best. Start very old. I mean, I’ve got some books here. Yes. Good choices. You’re a fan of these books? I love these books. Why? What did they give you? I first read The Dao when I was I had just moved to California. It’s probably 30 years ago. And I read it and I felt like this is different than anything I read before. It speaks to me on so many levels. And then I remember reading it something like 6 months later and it was an entirely different book. And it’s the kind of book that every time you read it at different points in your life, you’ll read an entirely different book. And this was the inspiration for the way of code. And the way of code is essentially an adaptation of the Dao for vibe coding. Often times books can be summarized into a sort of a lesson. Is there a lesson a central lesson that you got from that book? Maybe I I would use one sentence like that. The soft overcomes the hard. That would be a good that would be one. Things that seem counterintuitive that non-action is often the best action. Now that seems crazy, but that really is where it’s at. You know, there’s a story about Napoleon that when someone would come to Napoleon during all the waring stuff that was going on, they would come with an emergency. You know, you’re the only one who can answer this. Here’s the problem. It’s an emergency. He would always say, “Bring it back to me in two weeks.” And the idea was 99% of the problems that need your immediate attention in 2 weeks will resolve themselves. And if it’s still a problem in 2 weeks, he’ll deal with it. Might try that with my fiance. See how it goes. It’s an interesting idea though that um what was that phrase you said? The soft. The soft overcomes the hard. The soft overcomes the hard. Yeah. That’s like the idea of water dripping on a rock that eventually the water will eat through the rock slowly dripping and the water’s soft. The water’s totally pliable, malleable, soft. And what about this book? Is there an essence? Well, I like I like Carl Jung and this is probably his most mystical book, but in general, his ideas of uh archetypes and looking into dreams and synchronicity are beautiful ideas and I think that they’re I think that they’re really how the world works. So, um, I find comfort in reading him because it’s different than what we’re shown in math and science, but maybe closer to how it really is. I’m going to have to ask you to elaborate, especially on this point of you saying that synchronicity is actually more so how the world works. Yeah, I think we don’t know how anything really works. I think the world is much bigger and more interesting than we give it credit for. And most of the things that we think we understand maybe are not so accurate. Like the one of the things about science is that science is the understanding of how things are now until the next scientific breakthrough comes and negates everything that was before it. It’s like this ongoing interest and I think maybe there’s an inner knowingness like we don’t know why. You meet somebody and you really want to spend time with them. I don’t think that science can explain that. And you meet someone else and you feel like you know what I don’t want to be around this person. There’s something going on energetically here that’s not for me. I think that that’s the kind of wisdom that probably has more impact on our lives than anything that you can uh any data can show us. I was thinking about how believing what you’ve just said might change my life. Yes, it would. In what ways do you think it might change my life? It’s like you would take the shackles off of feeling like it has to be this narrow way or thinking well if these numbers look like this then it means this and this is what’s going to happen when in reality you know many times you’ve looked at the numbers and then acted accordingly and then 3 years later realized hm didn’t really work out the way I thought that’s the real world like that’s one way of looking at things you know the money ball approach is one way. And then the other way is when you met your wife and you felt like I want to be with her. That’s different. There weren’t any metrics you could use to calculate whether that was a good idea or not. It’s like an invitation to trust ourselves more as well because you’re talking about energetic feeling and and doing things that would make trusting yourself make more sense. That’s the other part of it. It’s like if you spend so much time not trusting yourself, then that antenna to be able to tell what’s going on might be a little rusty. So, anything you can do to start using the antenna as often as possible and letting it dictate you. There was a time when I was surprised by the miracles that I would see and now I’m not surprised. It’s still surprising, but it happens enough where it’s like, “Yeah, that’s what happens. Look at that. Can’t predict it. Can’t bet on it. But when it happens, like it seemed like that’s what was going to happen. Happened. Look at that.

And do you think there is a higher force taking actions on our lives or I think there’s a higher intellig a creative intelligence that I’ll say lives the world like the thing that allows plants to grow. There’s some generative force. I don’t know that it’s like aiming particularly at you or me, but there’s some energy that like life wants to live and you can ride same like catching a wave, you know? You can you can catch the wave. The wave is there. There’s a lot of waves beyond the ones in the ocean and you can ride those waves. You can’t always see them, but you might be able to feel them. you might be able to over time you start to recognize them and for some reason it seems like the universe wants us to know about this. It’s what I talked about paying attention and about the um the way of code like it was a ridiculous thing. It was indefensible. But I listened to this feeling was coming from a lot of sources. Didn’t make sense to me, but it felt like, hm, I’m being asked to do something here. What could it be? Let me try to participate. What I hear from a lot of what you’re saying is um it’s making me think about how like rationality as an idea being rational, yeah, can be a bit of a curse. I would consider myself to be quite a rational person. I would say rationality is overrated. The rational world is very small. There’s much more there are much more interesting things going on than the rational world. Yes, that’s what exactly what my fiance would say to me. What she has been saying to me. I think I think we we go together. Funny enough, you’re talking about plus and minuses because she is someone that helps me break outside of rationality. Yes. And when when she when she speaks to me about these ideas she has about these you know bigger ideas she has I always listen very intently although at some level I am I guess rebuttling them but do you see how they impact her life? Do you see what they do to her? Yeah. Does it feel like it raises her vibration like 100%. Yeah. It’s like there there’s that counts. You know the way she feels that counts. Her vibe. Yeah. one of the um enough for you to want to be around her all the time. I feel like I’m yeah leeching off that vibe to some degree sometimes. What you talked about higher intelligence and you talked about uh a generative force which is the perfect segue into the big subject of the moment which is artificial intelligence kind of links to what you’re saying about vibe coding as well. for the first time ever. I was saying yesterday I I got a message from my f one of my friends who isn’t involved in technology saying like I’m concerned. I don’t know what this technology is. Is it going to take our jobs? I’m concerned. And that for me was the bat signal that that that this is really getting down to everyday people. This week there was a anthropic researcher um who also worked at a chat GBT open AAI say he thinks it might be uh the the end of the human race or at least there’s a more than 10% chance of that. AI is a broad subject. Sure you’ve got lots of thoughts on it. Yeah, I’d think it’s a it’s a wildly powerful tool and I’m curious to see what it can do. Like any powerful tool, it could be really dangerous. It could be used for bad or it could be used for good. Fire burned down my house. I wouldn’t say we should ban fire. Fire cooks our food. Does some good stuff. Heats our heats our houses. It’s one of these things. It’s like the internet changed the world. It does some really good things. Probably does some really bad things. Very powerful. The printing press when it came along the church tried to ban the printing press. They didn’t want that. They didn’t want books to be able to they didn’t want information to be able to be for everybody. Good came from that and probably some bad. Can it be creative? I don’t know. I’m curious. I I don’t know. I feel like everything we’ve talked about today about what creativity is has to do with point of view. And AI doesn’t have a point of view. AI is uh the collected ideas that already exist. It doesn’t have it doesn’t see it from a particular angle. And if you ask it the same question several times or several days in a row, it may give you very different answer day after day. So it’s not like it has this is how it sees the world. If I asked an AI to make 10 million different tracks, Yeah. Would it theoretically it would at some point make a hit even though it doesn’t have a a point of view per se? Yeah, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t. It’s hard for me to say what a hit even is, but I would say it could make 10,000 tracks and you might like one or two of them or you may like 5% of them. You might. And that’s interesting. And I could see like there was a time when we would sample records when we were doing hip-hop records. It was called crate digging where you’d go to record stores, find old records, listen to them all the way through and find one little part. It’s like, ah, this little breakbeat, let’s use that and make a new song out of it and and you change the context, make something new. So, if AI was playing music constantly in the background and then all of a sudden I heard a little clip, oh, that’s a good sample. We can make that into something. That would be a use. I I I I think the idea of it doing the end to end of replacing the artist, I don’t think it I I I can’t imagine it doing that. I’d be curious to see if it could, but I think what we want from an artist has to do with point of view. And I see AI maybe is a tool that could help the artist and maybe even help the person who doesn’t know they’re an artist be an artist. So, I can’t draw. I can’t play any instruments. I don’t have any talent. I have no way to express my creativity. But I could talk to the AI and maybe I could prompt the AI into making something beautiful through iteration and prompting. So maybe more people will get to be creative using AI. And I think that’s a beautiful thing. This is such a recurring debate. You’ll hear it probably on every panel everywhere at the moment, which is can AI be creative? And I’ve thought a lot about like I’ve sort of tried to interrogate the question itself because you first sort of need to define what creativity is and then I think what people are saying is when they think of creativity they actually think of good creativity that sold well or that was number one. So often times I remember one of my friends was saying to me the other day um I don’t think AI could ever make and then he like named a great song. AI could never make that. And even when I look at that great song, what’s making him think it was great creativity in in hindsight was actually as you use the word end to end an end to end process of having the meeting with MTV building up distribution and reputation. Maybe people being following that artist’s life and therefore that being part of the point of view. People have followed Olivia Dean. So when she makes music something else comes with that. A story comes with that. Olivia Dean signed to a record label. So maybe there’s some support there that’s done. And in hindsight we go amazing creativity. But what we’re actually saying is there was this long process which resulted in this me experiencing this thing and so I consider it creative. Now AI might like I was trying to think like okay AI could help with be the tool that you describe but isn’t the whole process part of what we look back on and say that was great creativity. I would say the whole process. I I also think it’s even beyond the process. Like the things that we make are the reminders that we’re creative. They’re just the output. The real creativity is the idea that allows this thing to be made. If you look at Alfred Hitchcock, his movies, he works out his whole movie in advance and he storyboards the whole movie. And if you look at the storyboard, he doesn’t even really need to make the movie. The whole thing is there just in drawings. Exactly. Frame by frame, the whole movie is there. Wes Anderson makes his movie frame by frame in advance before there are actors. So he could watch the whole movie. um like a a mock a mockup of the movie and then with the actors is where he executes the idea. And I think AI is a could be a great tool to like assist in this mocking up, but it’s the prompt. The prompt is where the creativity is. The prompt is what Wes is using and what Alfred Hitchcock is using to tell the the artist what to draw in each frame. The creativity is there. It’s not in the drawing. It’s not in the finished movie. It’s in the prompt. Mhm. So the I feel like now using prompts anyone can prompt and you can get better at prompting through experimentation. So someone who thinks of themselves as not not creative, the idea of learning how to prompt, it’s pretty easy.

It’s really like the barrier of entry is very low and I think that’s a good thing.

In a world where the barrier of entry is so low to creating, what what becomes the distinction? What makes a great artist from a a not so great great artist? Well, the same thing now. It’s the same thing as now. Like the the reason you love the artist you love is they make something that changes your life, moves you, you want to listen to it a million times. You want to see the movie over and over again. You want to read you want to read their books. I don’t know if it if the AI itself could write the book that you want to read over and over again. I don’t know if that’s a problem. If that happens, I don’t see any indication that that’s going to happen. But more good art doesn’t seem like a bad thing. me and uh my uh business partner out there, Georgia Gibson. We were on Spotify and we um listened to this song. We really liked it. And about 2 months later, I figured out it was AI. The only reason I figured out it was AI was because I went to get more from the artist. As I clicked through, I realized it was AI. And then the other thing that happened around the time is there was these two songs from this uh Spotify artist, I guess, and one of them disappeared. And so I that’s when I went on Google and was looking like what what happened to that song and it turns out it was an AI artist. Something interesting happened when I realized I was listening to an AI song. What happened? I didn’t like it as much anymore. Interesting. And so when I think about again creativity, I wonder if there is a sort of an irreplaceably human element because it resonated with me because there was this story that it came from this woman who was singing and she was talking about this subject and it meant something to her and then when I found out it was none of that it the song lost something. If you think about Andy Warhol’s art, Andy Warhol started as a commercial um illustrator. He would draw shoes for advertising, let’s say. And then he came up with what essentially now what we call pop art. And pop art was a brillow box or a soup a Campbell soup can. And maybe the first Campbell soup cans, he drew them and painted them. Those were the first ones. But then over time he did a series of images that were screen printed. So like Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, really famous the most famous Andy Warhol images. He never painted anything. He never touched anything. He said, “We’re going to use this shot of of Marilyn and we’re going to treat it in this way.” and he prompted the the people in the studio to screen print these things. And they’re not less Andy Warhol. The art’s always in the idiation. That’s where the art is. It’s not who put the paint on the canvas. There was a time even even going back to the um the Renaissance so many of the painters had studios and you’d see Rembrandt and Rembrandt might have painted 70% he might have painted 30% of that painting but it was his vision for the painting and he would have the guys in the studio you guys do this not sure if Rembrandt’s the best example of this but could be it was it’s a normal thing that artists who had studios would have other people, other painters, disciples who would do a lot of the work. Happens now in the studio. So many records, you’ll hear a it can be a band, but then the band isn’t playing on the record. Studio musicians are playing on the record. It’s normal. It’s just part of the process, but doesn’t make it less good. It’s just a different thing. It’s fine.

It’s the idiation is where it comes from. And I don’t know that the AI’s idiation is interesting to anyone. We’ll see. I always think with like the F1, um, if they removed Lewis Hamilton from the car, I wouldn’t watch the F1 anymore. even if the cars drove faster and beat their times because there’s something in me watching a human being experience those emotions of competition and anger and you know you can kind of see by the way they’re driving how they’re feeling and you can relate to that guy I felt like that in work once. Yeah. Yeah. It does seem less interesting if it was just a car automated car doing it. So what what has been removed is kind of I guess what I experienced with that Spotify song I was talking about is like res human relatability and resonance and me too and connection. But it’s interesting that you liked it before you knew and that’s interest you know that’s interesting to me and I wonder would I be against something because of the way it was made. It doesn’t make sense to me. You either like it or you don’t.

It’s we’re living in interesting times. Absolutely. You used the word miracles earlier on which I found to be an interesting word. Yeah. And I wondered if you had experienced miracles through the creative process of working with great artists all the time. What are those? Is there a miracle you could share? Uh there’s a a brothers song called um No Hard Feelings and they were playing it in the studio and it was okay. It was fine. Wasn’t great. They played it a few times and then finally they played it one time and again I don’t even remember if we even said do anything different. Might even just try it again. You know, that could have been that nothing changed and for some reason while they were playing it, it was like time stopped and this incredible thing happened. I don’t know why. No one involved knew why or how. But after I I remember about a minute into the song, I remember thinking it there’s this feeling it’s scary because it’s really good. We don’t know how or why. I hope they can get to the end of the song because if they don’t get to the end of the song, we don’t have it and we maybe we can never get back to this. That’s what it’s like. It’s like so as soon as you realize in the process if you happen to realize okay something shifted something magic is happening now sometimes you don’t know it right away sometimes you know it after I made an album with Neil Young where we recorded for a week it was not good the band it sounded like the band not only couldn’t play the songs but would never be able to play the songs that was a feeling in the first week and at the end of the first week, Neil said to me after he’s like, “Don’t worry, next week’s going to be better. We’re going to they’re going to be able to do it.” It’s like, “Okay, okay.” Like, I’m nothing showed me that, but let’s go. I I’ll listen. And then the next week, Neil said to Ralph the drummer, he’s like, “Uh, okay, let’s play whatever the third song again.” And Ralph’s like, “Well, we already did that last week.” And he was like, “Oh, let’s maybe we could beat it.” And Ros’s like, “No, I really think we got it.” And now last week we thought not only did we not get it, but that we may never get it. And then we try playing it again. It is no better. And then Ralph says, “Put back. Put on the one from last week.” And he puts on the one from last week. And he says, “Well, turn down the um turn down the bass a little bit. Maybe turn the piano up.” And we listen to it again. And it seemed like it still had problems but the magic was there kind of a it had a lot of mistakes but forgetting the mistakes the feeling the feeling was there and then our job was just like doing little bits of repairs here and there or a little ducking a sound or featuring a sound or adding another vocal or doing little things and turned almost the whole album turned out to be recorded that first week when it seemed like it would never happen. So that would that felt like a miracle. The question that’s front of mind when you talk about these moments where great art was created, everybody wants to know how to make it repeatable. How do we repeat that process? Yeah, it’s not none of this is repeatable. No, the thing that’s repeatable is you show up and you keep going till it’s great. Whatever it takes. That’s the thing. It’s like and sometimes you listen back. Like you’ll make a demo or you’ll do a little sketch and you think this is this is a great idea. This is beautiful. Now I’m going to make a big painting and you work on the painting for months and months and months. It never really comes together. M. But then you look back at that original drawing that you made in 5 minutes like you know that’s actually it happened on the first album I made with Johnny Cash. We recorded all these songs in my living room of him singing and playing guitar. We weren’t recording for an album. We were recording. It was the way that we got to know each other. I asked him to play me all of his favorite songs. Songs he like remembered from growing up. Uh songs that mean a lot to him. Or I might say, “Can you try playing this song? Let’s just see what it sounds like.” More like trying to understand what sounded good when he sang it. We were doing this exploration. And we did that with the idea of we’re going to test a hundred songs this way and then maybe we’ll find 10 and the 10 that we like best, we’ll go into the studio with a band and we’ll record them. And we did that and recorded with a great band. And it was interesting, but it wasn’t better. And then we did it again with a different band. Same thing. Wasn’t better. It’s like, I guess those recordings from the living room, which we had no thoughts of ever anybody ever hearing, they have something that the real recordings don’t have. And we ended up putting out those. So, but again, that we didn’t go into the process to do that. We discovered it through the process. And sometimes it’s the opposite way where you make you have a clear vision of what it’s going to be and you do it all the way and it it tells you through that process. It wants to be this entire other thing. It wants to be. It wants to be. You’re saying that as if it’s got a mind of its own. It does. Well, it I’m only saying it does because it shows you no what you think is wrong. Try it like this. You’re sort of personifying. You’re sort of Yeah, I’m personifying. It doesn’t say it in words, but it’s clear. The indicators are clear. What we get back is, hm, we thought it was supposed to be this fast. When we listen to it, it’s clearly much too fast. We have to play it slower. We thought it was going to be a loud electric song. Turns out it wants to be a really quiet song. We didn’t know that. Has there been a time where you thought something was just the most amazing thing ever and then when it went out into the world, the world didn’t subjectively think it was amazing? For sure. It probably happens often. And how do you rationalize that on the basis of as soon as I decide that I like it enough to share with the world, I’m done. I move on to the next thing. I can’t the what anyone else thinks doesn’t really impact it. It’s fun when people like it. I love it when people like it. But that’s total bonus. The real work is I like this enough to put it out into the world. My name’s on the back of the record. The artist’s name’s on the front. They like it enough to put it out. I like it enough to put it out. Here you go. What’s next? And what comes of that you’re treating like none of your business. Correct.

cuz anything that I think of past that is going to totally undermine the creative process. The creative process is a pure uh delicate process to be protected. And if you’re thinking about what happens next, totally undermines it. The house of cards crumbles. When we’re working in the studio and something starts sounding good and someone, one of the artists might say, “Oh, this sounds like it could be a single.” It’s like, “We’re not talking about that. That has nothing to do with what we’re doing.” What are you doing? Making the best thing we can make. We We’re making the best thing we can make. And I always used this. I always thought of it as greatness, like we’re working towards greatness, timeless greatness. Didn’t know what it meant. And more recently, I came to realize we’re making it as an offering to God. And if we’re making it as an offering to God, things like the numbers, that’s much that’s insignificant. This is we’re doing our best as an offering. There’s nothing deeper than that. There’s no metric that competes with that.

I didn’t always know that, but it was always the same.

Was there a point when you realized that? Yeah, a few years ago. And it felt good when I realized it. It was like, ah, of course, you know, 35 years in like, oh, do you remember the moment? I have a vague memory. I don’t remember the specifics. I remember I was sitting on a lifeguard chair in Hawaii and uh and I remember thinking about it there, but I don’t know if that’s the moment where it struck me, but I remember it was like it was a total epiphany even though it was only, you know, for me. It didn’t apply to anything else. It was just like I realized what I’ve been doing all this time without understanding it. It just became clear. It was like ah that’s what it is. Yeah. It was a great it was a great feeling of like now it all makes more sense. Do you mean in the literal sense? You think that you are making offerings for a higher power? Very literally I’m saying God

and God defined as the higher power. We can call him the father. Okay. And you’re liter So So the art you make, the music you you make, he is actually the customer in some respects. No, because it’s a gift. So he’s not it’s not a customer. He’s the beneficiary, but he’s not the customer. And it’s like a I want to I want to show you my best out of love and thanks, gratitude. Here’s the best I can do.

That’s what it is. This is my best. If anybody else likes it, great. But if not, we’re good. Does he ever give feedback? I want to say that when other people like it, I might I might take that as a good sign, but I don’t know. I I don’t really think about it, but I feel like when a lot of people like it, it’s like the energy of it is positive all the way around. Interesting to think about, fun to think about. Do you think that’s why we’re here? Cuz I’m now trying to figure out why there would be such relationship with God where we were offering gifts and how that links to our maybe higher purpose. Well, I think we’re here to show who we are. We’re here to self-express. I am here. I’m here to tell you this is me. This is how I see the world. And to say to you, show me who you are. Tell me how you see the world. And the way we make sense of it is we discuss that. And we may, in some areas, we may line up. In some cases, we may differ. But that’s how we figure it out. And everything we do is this is how I see the world. And then other people say, “I never saw it that way, but yes, I’m on board with that.” And other people are like, “No, that’s not for me.” And that’s fine. But we are here. Our purpose is to self-express

through several different means through any different way any self-expression comes in a lot of in a lot of forms. But the best version, it’s never because they did it this way. That’s not self-expression. Copying the they were successful and I’m copying them. That’s not self-expression. That’s a different game. That’s not what we’re here for. You can do it. It’s fine. It’s fine. But I don’t think that’s why we’re here. I sat with a someone who is an expert on consciousness. He’s a physicist who just, you know, is very spiritual. One of the things he said to me which has really stayed with me is he was positing that potentially consciousness itself is God has divided consciousness into lots of little pieces into my French bulldog Pablo into Rick into someone in China and he set us all off to go and explore and understand the world and by doing so consciousness is seeking to understand itself. very strange idea. And then I went to I think Malta and I was driving down the road in Malta and I looked and I saw these tourists and with that idea in mind that consciousness has divided itself to go and understand itself into these pieces into a fish so we can go check the bottom of the ocean. I saw these tourists and they were all just looking up at this mountain and like with in the abstract that’s it looks like a very strange thing that we’re like fascinated by the novel. And so I started to think maybe that is true. Maybe this thing called consciousness is this exploration to understand itself and it’s turned some consciousness has gone into Rick and Rick is experimenting and creating to understand and and kind of what you were saying there reminded me of it cuz sounded like you were talking about consciousness itself and the self-expression of consciousness. So it could be it’s a beautiful idea. Strange idea, isn’t it? Not not strange to me. Not strange to you. Okay. Not at all. Nothing. Nothing is Nothing is off the table. Nothing’s off the table. One of um one of the great artists you’ve uh you’ve worked with, we talked about is um is Jay-Z. Yes. And you have this wonderful eight-part documentary. Yes. Coming out with Jay-Z, which I was fascinated enough to uh what I found fascinating to watch. It’s out on the 18th of September. And one of the clips that I watched from it just had us run down is the story of um this brand. Ah yes, Ace of Spades. I found it really fascinating the story that Jay-Z told about this brand Ace of Spades um for many reasons, but it also it rhymes with some of the things you’re saying about integrity and how you feel and his decision to um abandon another brand and at a cost at a near-term cost against his near-term incentives and pursue launching his own. Yes. And what’s interesting what what’s most interesting about that story and it’s not we don’t make a lot of it. It’s just a passing remark but what happened was he decided not to support a company going forward. Crystal. Yes. Which he had made very popular in the hip-hop community. He was the first person to drink it. Nobody knew what it was. He talked about it in in records, in songs, and it became a very popular drink in the hip-hop community. And the person who ran Crystal said some disparaging remarks about it, about hip-hop people drinking Crystalall. I can’t get them to stop drinking it. Yeah. And Jay was insulted, rightly so. And he said, you know what? No more. I won’t do that anymore. Now he that didn’t happen and then he thought I’m going to go start my own. That’s not what happened. That happened and almost immediately someone came to him and said I’m thinking about starting this brand. Do you want to do it with me? And all they had was the bottle. Which he loved the shape of the bottle and he loved that it was a gold bottle. And it’s like the universe allowed first he gets this negative comment. He reacts following his belief stood for what he believed in. Removed it from his clubs. Yes. And this new opportunity that he was not looking for arrives and it’s like you couldn’t write the story. I mean, you could write the story, but it seems almost unbelievable the way it happened, but that’s how it really happened. And that’s again like the miraculous nature of Jay did the right thing and in response for doing the right thing, he ended up owning a champagne brand. Do you believe that’s how the universe is working? Yes, I know it. I know it. Is that karma? What is that? Well, that’s part it. You could call it that. It’s like there there’s a lot of there’s a lot of names. There’s a lot of labels, but you can call it karma. When he took that action, he wasn’t thinking about how he might benefit. Not at all. All he knew was these guys are insulting this movement and I’m not going to have anything to do with them anymore after I was telling everybody this is the best stuff. They insult us. They’re we crossing them off. They’re not for us anymore. We will not give them our business. He wasn’t thinking about starting a business. He was he wasn’t thinking about that at all. But it became a great business. It became a great business. But it’s it’s the universe filled the void. This is another thing we could talk about. It’s an interesting idea. You’re in a you’re dating someone. you think maybe this is not this is not right for the long term but you’re going along with it and then you think well maybe I’ll meet someone while this is happening and then if I like that person more then I’ll get out of this relationship for that relationship and switch a lot of people do this I feel like it’s not the way I don’t I don’t think that’s the way it works I think when you know that something isn’t working and you end it and you create that vacuum. You create that space, the good thing that you’re looking for can come in to fill it. Jay wasn’t looking in this case, he wasn’t looking for a good thing to fill it, but he did create a vacuum in his life. There’s a thing that he’s out there representing. And now he decides based on their action, I’m not going to represent this anymore. And the universe steps in and says, you know what? you were doing a good job representing that thing. How about representing one for yourself that you couldn’t feel good about representing? It’s funny what you were saying there um about creating a vacuum. We in culture like generally in society we celebrate starting. So like you know you start a new job, you start a new thing but obviously from what you’ve just said logically you can’t really start anything big in life without first doing something which none of us really glamorize. Actually it’s the opposite. We say never quit. Don’t quit. Yeah, but that is the necessary first step to starting to starting a brand which in Jay-Z’s case went on to be worth 630 million at the time when he sold his stake. Um, we have a weird relationship with quitting. We need certainty. I need the branch. Yeah. No, I think that’s it’s an empowering thing. It’s like taking control. Well, I just had a conversation about this recently with someone who’s a very high up person in a very high-tech company who is um who’s decided to step down and he’s stepping down for the right reasons and he’s concerned that people the perception will be he’s being fired. That that’ll be the outside world, but he’s really stepping down because he doesn’t like what’s going on there. And usually people don’t leave jobs at that level. So, it’s an interesting it’s an interesting moment in time when that when that happens. Similar to what you were saying about getting artists to step outside of their genre, to quit their genre. Yeah. Yeah. This is something that I’ve made for you. I realize that the DEO audience are striv

goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I’ve learned is that when you aim at the big big big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable because it’s kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny small steps. And we call this in our team the 1%. And actually this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So, what we’ve done so that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have is we’ve made these 1% diaries and we released these last year and they all sold out. So, I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colors and to make some minor tweaks to the diary. So, now we have a better range for you. So, if you have a big goal in mind and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they all sell out once again. And you can get yours at the diary.com. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you’re already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you’re not yet. And if you’re not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you’re someone that watches our show, but you haven’t yet hit that button. Thank you so much. I hear you used to make music with one of these things here. I’ve never used that particular device, but it looks beautiful. You know, if I came to you, Rick, and I went,

I love that. Yeah. And clearly, I mean, objectively, it wasn’t great. I don’t know. could be great if but if I if I was like Rick

I want to put that out. Do you really believe it’s great? If you really believe it’s great I support you putting it out. Really? If you really believe it’s great. Yes. Would you interrogate? You’re giving me this hypothetical with like what if this thing that’s bad if I tell you I think it’s great. It’s like you don’t believe it’s great. I trust when you tell me I really love this thing. I want to play it for people. I support that. Even if you don’t, it doesn’t matter if you doesn’t matter. And if I don’t like it, I’ll say you might want to try these things. But I always support somebody who makes something that they love. That’s beautiful for the world. Is there an example of that with artists you’ve worked with where they presented you with something and you didn’t really get it. You didn’t feel it, you didn’t like it. They put it out and it was a huge success for them, but also for the audience. I can think of one, but I don’t really want to talk about it. But yes, I could think of one. It it has happened. Is there anything you can tell me about it without identifying what the song was or the person was? Um, I was working with an artist and there were lots of good songs and there was one song that I felt like this one doesn’t fit with all the rest. It feels like it doesn’t go with the others. And um, the artist chose to include that one and it ended up becoming a big hit. Wasn’t the first single, but it did become a big hit. And it’s anytime I give my opinion, this is an this is a really interesting idea. This idea of I’m asked how do I have the confidence cuz when I say I don’t like something I really mean it. It’s like well how could you have the confidence that it’s not good? It’s like well I have the confidence that I don’t like the pizza. It it doesn’t mean more than that. You know, it ends. I was asked to produce Guns and Roses’s first album, and I turned them down because I went to see him live, played in a little club in a basement, maybe 30 people there, and they were they were a hair band at the time with makeup and stuff, and I just looked like I don’t really get it. Now, they went on to become Guns & Roses. It’s good that I didn’t work with them because if I would have worked with them, it might have turned into something different than what they did without me. Mhm. So, it wasn’t the right it wasn’t the right fit. Um, do you know what I’m saying? It’s like, yeah, it’s

I’m honest about what I see and it’s true, but it’s only true for me. I’m wondering if you can be at the inverse of that. If you can be a great creative and never be commercially successful ever. Absolutely. For sure. For sure. H probably more often than not. That’s probably the that’s probably regular because becoming successful has so much to do with other things beyond being talented. Like the talent is a piece but then the stars have to align. Like for for anything to break through and get successful,

so many things have to go right. So many totally out of your control.

You must have worked with a lot of artists where you thought, I know this person is so talented. Yeah. Um but for whatever reason, they they just didn’t Yeah. It happens. The world wasn’t It happens. And that also could be a karmic thing. Like there could be maybe for some reason this person as good as they are that’s not their path on this life. Maybe success is not part of their life path. Who knows? That’s a it’s a different that’s a different question. You know, you co-founded Def Jam when you were a very young young man. I think you were 21 years old when you co-ounded Death Jam. And then through that process you you got to meet you know some incredible people. I’ve got some of the albums that you produced around that time and published. Um but one of those people through throughout your career and then thereafter was Jay-Z. What was special about Jay? Jay wrote in a way that no one else wrote. All the other rappers that I worked with spent a lot of time writing lyrics. And I never saw Jay write lyrics. And when I got to work with him, I got to see him not physically write lyrics. And when I played him the beat for 99 Problems, he said, “Okay, just keep looping it. Keep playing it over and over again.” And he sat in the back of the room. And it went on long enough that I almost forgot that he was there because I was talking to the engineer and song just playing over and over. And he’s silent in the back. On occasion, you could hear him mumbling or humming. And then after 20 or 30 minutes, he’s like, “Okay, I got it.” Ran into the other room and did the first verse totally the whole thing. No, nothing was written. Just he just remembered it. And he did it he did several takes and each of the takes the words were the same, but the cadence was different. Like almost as if a saxoponist was playing a solo. and you you know how the solo goes, but every time you play it, you play a little different. That’s what it was like. Like it had emphasis in different places and the cadence was a little different and one word might be featured in one version whereas in the next version that word just kind of went by less important. Um and then so he did let’s say three takes and then he came in he’d listen to him. He’s like, “Oh yeah, I think the second one’s good.” And then he’s like, “Okay, keep playing it.” And I’ll and he sat back down and he did the same thing again. About another half hour later, he’s like, “Let’s do the next one till he was ready.” So he just it just happens in his mind. What is that? Is that taste? Is that I don’t know. It’s a it’s a real and unusual skill set. Very unusual. I don’t know how he how he can remember cuz it’s complicated. It’s not like in a rock song there might be four lines in a verse. pretty easy to remember. But rap songs have a lot of words and it’s complicated. But so that was that was the first thing that really I would say separated him from everyone else from me is that his process was totally different than anyone else I ever worked with. Which is interesting cuz other people might arrive at the same outcome but take a different journey there. They might, you know, write lots of things down and Yeah. So there’s not a correct process. No, there’s ne with all of these things that art, there’s never a right way. What what works for one person doesn’t mean it works for someone else. And that’s one of the real dangers of getting advice from people is someone tells you, I wrote it this way and it was really successful, so this is how you have to do it. But that’s not true. That it might work, but that might be the way that it works for that guy, not you. M so always be wary when getting advice because again people give you advice with the best intentions but they’re giving you advice based on their story not your story. So where do we get advice from? I would say listening to a lot of stuff. It depends on what what the sub like what where we’re what what medium we’re working in. But I would swim deeply in that medium, whatever it is, and then really listen to what’s going on in you. It it has to do with you, how you see it. It’s an internal um it’s an internal compass that tells you where to go. And I’ll also say there may not only be one answer. There may not even be a right answer. And that’s where it really comes down to like this internal feeling of I would take as I would hear as much information from as many people as possible hopefully conflicting and then really check in and take as much time as it takes to internally get to a point of where you know what you know what the right answer is. You know what the right answer for you is. M there is no right answer but you know what the right answer for you is and that’s what you always want to get to. What is the right answer for me? How do I know? You’ll know it. And if you don’t know it, you don’t have enough there’s not enough. You haven’t done enough research yet because you it has to come from you. It has to come from you of I’ve gotten to the point. I’ve done enough homework of conflicting information

where I can listen to myself and I feel good about it. One of the ways um that that noise that voice inside of us gets conflicted is we have our parents. I I know your story. I know your parents you know they kind of thought maybe you’d be a doctor but you didn’t like needles. So they were like, “Okay, he can be a lawyer.” A lot of people say they have that voice, my parents and and it’s sometimes hard to untangle what voice is me and my wishes versus external. Yes. I remember when I first went to college and moved out of my parents house. It took me probably a year to understand what in my head was me and what in my head was them. I was definitely confused. but had to create that space or lucky enough to create that space to to allow it to happen. Again, I didn’t go to college for that to happen. But in college, being outside of the house, I started to understand

who I was and who they were and where we were aligned and where we saw the world differently. And it was fine, but it took time because I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that. If you ask a lot of people who they want to be or in your case in music, you know, what what music they want to make or what their goal is, they will say things that they don’t realize have come from somewhere else. Yes. Happens a lot in my life. I’ll I’ll interview someone. I’ll say, “What do you want to be?” And they’ll say something just arbitrary and big and fancy. And then often times when you like ask more questions, there’s nothing behind it. So they got it from Instagram or they got it from their parents. How how how can we cultivate a better understanding of um of our own truth? It’s like when I played you that bad song, you started trying to you went in search of truth. How can I how can I know how can I pass out what is me and my alignment and what is inherited from somewhere else? I I as I said before, I think you need to find some practices that ground you in yourself. Meditation is a great one. I’m sure there are others, but you have to get in touch with you with you. Maybe therapy works for some people, but you got to get to where who you are. It’s a it’s a it’s a big job. It’s a big job. And it’s not it’s not a quick there’s no quick fix. I remember the first time I ever was in a talk therapy session, I remember not knowing how to talk. I didn’t know how I felt about anything. I didn’t know how to talk. I didn’t know about my inner state at all. And only through repetition and doing it over time and you start understanding. So it’s just another skill set to develop. I never looked inward. Even with all the years of meditation, I never looked inward. Are you there now? I think so. Do you know who you are? I think I don’t know that I could explain it but I feel like I feel like I am uh grounded in myself and I feel it pretty clearly. What’s the difference between when you weren’t and now that you are? Is it a feeling or is it is there a symptom? Is it happiness? I would say there’s more of a No, there was happiness there too. So it’s it’s not happiness. There was happiness in in the time that I didn’t know who I was. I probably didn’t know why, but I I remember being happy. Um it’s not happiness.

Yeah. I think I come back to the word knowingness just like you feel it.

When you ask me something, I can tell you how I feel. I could tell you how I see it. I don’t know if I was able to do that before. I’m talking about when I was young. I I don’t know if I could do that. Are you telling me I still like the things I like. My taste was still my taste, but I don’t think I could um

I don’t know that I could access it as well as I can now. Is happiness a goal to aim for? Well, I like happiness. I I don’t think it’s a goal, but but I I definitely would rather be happy than not. Joyful is beautiful. Um I I I think maybe the word is peace. Getting to a point of cuz peace like resting in peace seems like a really good state.

And I guess when things get if things get too high, there’s always the other side, you know, like even if if I if I find myself in a really great mood, which does happen sometimes, sometimes the next day I’m just in a bad mood and it almost feels like it’s a it’s a maybe it’s a chemical thing. Maybe if you burn if you really use the feelgood chemicals, maybe there’s a deficit the next day. I don’t know. I don’t know how it works, but it feels like if everything’s cool and if that keeps going, I like that. An artist that is uh very familiar with the highs and the lows, one of my favorite artists is is Kanye. And you’ve worked with Kanye. I I want to ask the same question about what made him different, what makes him brilliant in your point of view. He’s um I’ve said this to him. I’m totally fearless when it comes to art. He’s totally fearless always. He’s fearless in life. I’m not fearless in life. I’m a good collaborator for him at when it comes to art because I am fearless in art and not everybody is. But he’s always fearless and it’s um it’s really something to behold. Great strength. It’s rare to have that many um successes when you’re taking such big risk. That’s what fascinates me about him. Yeah, I don’t agree with that. Really? No, no, no, no. I I think the risk and the success go hand in hand. It’s only through the risk that the greatness is shown. So, it’s not possible to sort of produce more of the same and still be considered a great I don’t think so. I don’t know. It It doesn’t seem right to me. It feels like there’s this edge. There’s a tight rope and you’re walking on the tight rope and if you make it, it’s really good. And if you don’t make it, it’s not so good. But the only choice is the tightroppe. The risk. Yeah. And then you will achieve greatness. Well, if you if you make it, yes. If you make it, yes. But that’s the risk. And it’s the risk that I I wholeheartedly support. Wholeheartedly. Why? Because that’s where it’s at. Like that’s if the goal is to make the be most beautiful thing you can and to self-express in the purest way.

It’s a razor’s edge walk. There’s nothing ordinary about it. It’s beyond ordinary. There’s nothing normal about it. Normal is nothing to aspire to. Average is nothing to aspire to. If you’re looking for greatness, sometimes eggs get broken. But that’s just but that’s what comes with it. That’s how it works. Are we all cut out for greatness? Cuz it comes with a cost. And walking tight ropes is not for everybody. Yeah. I think we all have potential. And when I say greatness, it’s like we all have potential to be the greatest version of ourselves. You know, we we can be you can be the best version of you. I don’t know what that is compared to other people who are great at other things. You know, I I’m It doesn’t mean you’ll be the best F1 driver. But your light can shine brighter than anyone else doing what you do. And I’m into that. I support that. I want to see that. With these great people, this big list of people that I have in front of me that you’ve worked with, I mean, it’s just this endless endless almost unbelievable list. Everybody from like Justin Timberlake to the Red Hot Chili Peppers to helping I mean Kanye on his the record Raunaway which is one of the most incredible records of all time to um we’ve talked about Jay-Z and System of a Down and AC/DC and MC Jagger and I mean there’s a endless list. When I look at it I go were these people all great? Yes. And were they great from birth or or is are they ordinary people that made a decision? They’re I would say they’re ordinary people who made a decision. Maybe some of them had some particular gifts. Um but others were ordinary and cultivated a gift. That list, they’re not special. They’re not the only ones like that, but they really rode that wave. I think of Eminem as a good example. Eminem is someone who’s always writing. He’s always writing because he wants to be able he wants to be the best he could possibly be and he’s insanely obsessive about that. So his entire life is focused on sitting in a notepad writing all day and all night. It’s all he does.

That’s what makes him him. Even if he’s not publishing an album or doesn’t matter. It’s not he’s not writing. I asked him one point looking at his notebooks, he’s like, “Is all this going to, you know, is are all these?” He’s like, “No, no, no. 99% of this stuff no one will ever see. I just want to be good. I want to I’m practicing. I’m I want to get better at what I do.” He’s in training always. If you think of it like an athlete, you know, there are athletes who there are some athletes who train in the offseason and there are some who don’t. Yeah. And the ones who train in the offse are usually better and usually have a longer career. It’s like that. When we sat down, you asked me a question. You said, um, you said, Stephen, you you’re doing this podcast. Have the guests changed you? And much of what I’ve shown here is how you’ve changed people’s lives through being a coach or a producer or however you might define that? My question to you is, can you give me a couple of example of artists that for whatever reason fundamentally changed you? Yeah. The first one I I’ll say is Johnny Cash. Tony Cash. Um, because I got to spend time around someone who was so humble and quiet and smart and didn’t offer much like like if you didn’t if you didn’t draw him out, he wouldn’t say anything. But anything you asked him about, he knew about and had a really incredible point of view. But he wasn’t um he didn’t have a need to let you know that it was all going on inside and he was a beautiful spiritual person and I loved him and I feel like my life was really improved getting to spend so much time with someone so so inspiring. That’s one. What is the um emotion there? Where’s There was some emotion there. Yeah. Yeah. He’s beautiful man. Beautiful man.

Next one would be um Tom Petty who was

he was the ultimate craftsman. So in the Beatles you have John and Paul and John was more of a raw nerve who tore his chest open and led with his heart. And then Paul was more of a almost like a a savant of music like like a crafts person. Paul could take anything and make it good. John was like a raw nerve who could just show his soul and they’re two very different skills and together that’s what makes it the Beatles. Also the fact that George and Ringo are incredible. I mean even with you know even as great as as Paul and John are, it’s only the Beatles when it’s the four of them. Paul is the craftsman. Paul knows all the parts. Paul knows how to put it together. He was the only one of the Beatles who knew how to do that other than George Martin whose job was to do that. But Paul understood that side of it. Tom Petty was like Paul. He could do he could play anything. He saw all ways around it. He knew how to make it. And in addition to that was a great songwriter. So he had kind of what was great about John and Paul both in him. So being around him was really inspiring. Also as a record producer I learned a lot from getting to work with him. I offered a outside perspective. I was younger different. So I I brought something to the table, but I learned a tremendous amount because at the time that I worked with him, I had only worked with artists who had, you know, made their first albums, like new artists, and he was a very established, brilliant studio recording artist. So I got to learn a lot working with him. What did he teach you, if there had to just be one lesson you pulled out? One of the things he talked about was everything always had to be in time and in tune. You have to understand every word of the vocals. Seems like an obvious thing, but so many records you can’t understand every word. And he would listen back and he’s like, “Ah, this word is supposed to be plural and you can’t hear the s. I have to re-record it or I have to maybe we could punch in the s because if you can’t understand it, it loses something in translation. you have to understand every word. Um, so timing, tune, um, he also was another person who would work forever on it until it was right. He would he would he was not at all lazy. He would never want it to be done. The first album we worked on together was called Wild Flowers. And I think we probably worked on it not every day, but we worked on it over two years, probably two and a half years. It’s a long time for an album at that point in time especially. It was a long time but there was no hurry. It was just like well we’re making progress. Let’s keep going. Let’s keep going. Let’s keep going. And um so I learned a lot from him also about patience. Some might say that’s perfectionism and people think of perfectionism as a form of procrastination. And yeah, there was no procrastination in it. And I’ve been around both like I’ve been around procrastinating artists too. It’s a whole different thing. How do you know? How do you know if you’re a perfectionist or a procrastinator? Is there a symptom? Yeah, the the real proc the real procrastinators get to the point usually has to do with being afraid to put it out into the world. So, there are some artists I know, famous artists, you you know who they are, who haven’t put out album, haven’t put out an album for 10 years. I think the longer you wait, the harder it gets in general. Why? the pressure like the longer you wait the more it feels like it can never live up to what the expectation is. It’s a difficult position to get into. And the perfectionist, their reason for delay is not to do with fear. It’s to do with something else. Is that what you’re saying? Hard to know. Hard to know. I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know. So, those are two artists that you’ve mentioned that changed you, Johnny and um Tom. Is there any others that front of mind? Let me see. Adele, she’s really good. I mean, she’s amazing. She’s feel like everything she does is great. When she sings, everything stops. And she can do it over and over again, and it’s always great. It’s not like some singers work for a long time singing a bunch of takes and piecing them together to get the good one. She’ll sing a song 30 times in a row and it’ll be great 30 times. It might not be the same 30 times, but it’ll always be great. You produced um her 21 album, worked on songs on there, some of that. Did you know she was great when you met her? Was there something that made her distinctive from these other great artists at a time when most pop artists at that time didn’t write their own songs? She was more like a throwback to the ‘ 70s singer songwriters. So, there was something about her. I also got to work with Shakira, who also writes her own songs, and there’s something about those pop artists who write their own songs that it’s different than someone who can just deliver a song. Well, um, so I feel like it’s a little bit of an anomaly in a pop world where so much of it is more, I want to say, manufactured, meaning a bunch of people work on the song and then the singer sings the song. Mhm. Adele, a key piece is that it always comes from her and you can feel that in the songs and it’s more personal and I love that. You can feel it. Seen her live as well. feels like this the first time she’s ever sung a song when you we experience her life. Rick, what is the most important thing we haven’t talked about that we shouldn’t talked about should have talked about as it relates to creativity and the art of making great things or good things or whatever the measurement stick might be. I think we’ve kind of covered it. The the main idea really is don’t listen to what anyone tells you. Be true to yourself. Work hard. Never give up. Don’t quit. and just keep going and and don’t put undue pressure on your art. Find a way to live that doesn’t put pressure on your art so that you could be totally free in the things that you’re making for them to be the dream version. And hopefully at some point the dream version takes over and it becomes your whole life, not just your passion. Why did you make this documentary with Jay-Z? Well, I had made a documentary with Paul McCartney a few years ago that was six episodes. And the reason for that one was there were no I never I never saw any documentaries about either Paul or the Beatles about musicianship. They were always about either the songwriting or about Beatle Mania. And I thought without the musicianship there wouldn’t be Beatle Mania. And yes, you need Yes, the songs you couldn’t deliver the songs without the musicianship. So, I thought there was this big void in the in the story of Paul if you were to make a list of the best bass players of all time. Paul belongs at number one, but most people wouldn’t even put him on the list because you don’t think of him as a bass player. You think of him as Beetle Paul. Mhm. And I just thought there was an opportunity to um shed light on something that I love. And through I thought that was going to be a more traditional documentary, but it turned into a different kind of documentary. Happened by itself. Wasn’t pre-planned. Turned into this interesting thing that was different than anything else that had been made with Paul or about the Beatles. And people liked it. It felt like a dream for me to be part of it. And after that happened, I was thinking about who else is I want to say misunderstood because that that’s kind of what it is. Like yes, Paul’s great and everyone knows Paul’s great, but people don’t think of him as a great musician. They think of him as something else. Mhm. And I started thinking about Jay-Z. Why? Because Jay-Z is thought of today as this incredible businessman. And he’s uh you think of him as billionaire businessman um behind the scenes genius married to a famous singer.

Most of what we think about him isn’t poet. That’s not the first thing you think of. And even the people who like Jay-Z might not really know the depth of the writing. And I thought it’s an interesting story. Like the lyrics are really intricate and really difficult and it’s astounding what he does and he’s famous but and and that’s the reason he’s famous but nobody knows it. People see him in a different light. So I thought shedding light on the poet, the lyricist, the artistry of Jay-Z was a really interesting thing. And luckily I shared the idea with him and when he when I told him the idea he said he said I like it a lot. I’m not going to say yes because if I say yes we’re going to make it and I don’t know so I’ll let you know. He said okay. And then we didn’t talk it about again for probably a year. And then I called a friend of his and I said you know I shared this idea with Jay a year ago. We haven’t discussed it since. What do you think? He’s like, “Call him and ask him.” I said, “I feel like I already told him the idea. Don’t you think he should just call and ask tell me he wants to do it?” He’s like, “If you don’t call him, it’s not going to happen.” He’s like, “Just call him and ask him.” And he’ll and he’ll either say yes or no, but at least you could ask him. It’s still I heard that that was good information given to me of what to do. And I probably didn’t call for 6 months, 8 months, just cuz like felt uncomfortable, really discussed it. And eventually, I can’t remember if it happened in a call or if I ran into him or if I went to see him. Can’t remember. But the next time we talked about, he’s like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” So, okay. Then we did it.

It’s stunning. It’s stunning, I think, because it’s different. So different in a way that’s quite surprising. And um so a couple of observations I had is things are usually shot in a certain way. It felt like you had again once again abandoned the rules of how to shoot something like that. Even like the color the the the color grading the like sort of black and white um color grade that I saw on the screen. And then some of the angles were a bit off. I’m like that’s not how you shoot an interview. But for some reason, it felt like I was spying on a personal conversation. That’s what it was. It was a deeply personal conversation. And in all the years of seeing interviews with Jay-Z, he doesn’t do so many. But the ones that you’ve seen, he’s never like that. Yeah. He’s never like that. So, and this is really who he is. Like you really after you watch this, you’ll really know who Jay-Z is, which is incredible. It’s an incredible privilege to have that point of view of a real intimate view into someone so great. Clearly, he felt very safe with you as well because you do get that real side of Jay-Z that I think is really rare. Um, speaking of incredible things, this book is also an incredible thing. I know that in part because so many of my guests have come here and talked about it. Really? Oh, so many of them. and so many people hold it up as their favorite book on creativity. I think because it’s challenging uh I think which is the essence of Rick Rubin in some respects is to be a challenging coach. This book I think finds itself being the same which is a very challenging coach. So I think it came out in 2023. I’m going to link it below for anyone that hasn’t got it. If you haven’t got it I think it might be the challenge you need. And I don’t necessarily think it’s a book necessarily about creativity. It’s it’s really just I consider it to be a philosophy book. Dare I say. Yeah. Tarot cards. Some people noticed I think that you have is it 73 78 78 we call them chapters areas of thought areas of thought in this book and that tarot cards have 78. Yes. Is there a link? There is and there isn’t. I’ll tell you the link and it’s a pretty funny story.

Originally there were I want to say 60

I think there were 63 areas of thought when I first thought of areas of thought and giving them names. There was this period where the book wasn’t separated into the ideas and it was just a lot of pages of ideas and then tried to move them after years of unsuccessful um organizational methods got to the point again through a lot of failed experiments and some successful experiments moved from 1400 pages into a little bit of a shape with the when the areas of thought came to be. And they were I I say I think there were 63. I have them they’re handwritten and I I have a photograph of them in my phone. The original 63 areas of thought. And then once we separated all the ideas into the 63, there ended up being more. And I think there ended up being something like 80 82 or 83 84. They’re in the 80s. And then the book was done and there were 80s something of them. And I have a collaborator named Neil who is a friend of mine who lived in my neighborhood, great writer who wanted it who was helped me from the beginning although not in an official capacity until the end. He he was involved the whole way and I was working with another another writer and it just didn’t work out. And then we got to the point where there were these 83 or 84 areas of thought and it was all done and everybody was happy. And I remember calling my friend Neil and saying, “Okay, book’s done. We have 83 areas of thought. I’d rather it be 78.” He’s like, “What are you talking about? What do you mean?” I said, “Well, I want it to be related to something. The tarot cards are 78. If we had 103, I would say let’s make it 108 to get it up to 108 because that’s another There are certain numbers that are good numbers. 78, 108, 144 is a good one. It’s some good numbers. I want it to have a reference to something else in the world of a number. And he and he’s like, why? That’s just that’s how I feel. That’s how I want it. And I remember him saying, he’s like, “You’re insane.” He’s like, “You’ve been working on this book for 8 years. Now you want it to be randomly 78 instead of 83. It’s good. Be happy. It’s good. Be done.” I said, “We have to get it. Figure out how to get make it 78.” Why? Just a feeling. So listen what happens next. I have an assistant at that time named Dylan. And we work on the 83 sections independently. So they’re almost like separate essays. And when we would work on it, we would work on let’s work on 37, whatever it is, whatever the title is, and just work on that section. We would work on each section independently. And I said, “Okay, put them all here’s the order. Put them all in order.” And he put them in order. And the next day came you were in Italy. I remember this is the day after the conversation with Neil where he told me I was crazy and he says the weirdest thing. I put them in order and there were 78 sections. I said no there were 83 yesterday. He’s like now there’s 78. I said where are the others? He said there are no others. That happened. So, did somebody misount or something or don’t knows but we were sure they were 80s something and it turned and I wanted it to be 78 and the next day there were 78 and nobody did anything. Someday you’re going to Neil’s going to find four chapters and not mention it. Maybe or maybe you call excited like I told you you were crazy. Rick, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they’re leaving it for. If you could make a phone call and you had 60 seconds to call anybody and it had to be an apology, who would you call and what would you say and why?

It’s a hard question for me to answer for several reasons. One, I almost never make a phone call and I’m not really a phone person. So, the only reason I would call somebody would it would have to be some sort of an emergency situation.

And I feel like there are not a lot of outstanding apologies to make. What about a thank you? A thank you would be great. I could call anyone and thank them. If you could only make one last phone call to say thank you. A one last phone call. I would probably call Moodielle, my wife, and just thank her for being in my life. and maybe either her or my child to just thank them for bringing so much light into my life. How did that change you? It’s It’s different. Totally different. Um

it’s beautiful being in a relationship. We travel as a pack. We go everywhere together. We’ve we’ve never been apart, I don’t think. I think maybe in the 15 years that I’ve been with my wife, we’ve maybe spent three nights apart in 15 years, something like that. And we’re everything we do, we travel together. This this is a long time that I’m away from them. So, I’m looking forward to getting back with them and becoming a father. It’s just so much fun. He I I get to see the world in uh I get to see the things that he’s excited about that remind me of things I was excited about. And I get to show him things that I like and sometimes he likes them and sometimes he says things that I I can imagine how he how he knows them. There’s a real wisdom that’s uh it’s baffling. It’s just fun. You talk in the book about how children are the great reminder of what, you know, creativity might be at at its essence. Yeah. Before we [ __ ] it up. Yeah. And it’s the it’s the thing is that when you’re a little kid, you haven’t yet no one has told you what you can and can’t do yet, how the world works. You really look at things with wonder. And that’s the perspective of a great artist. They’re they’re walking around in wonder, in awe of things that maybe seem ordinary to everyone else, but the the world is filled with just incredible beauty. It’s breathtaking. It’s breathtaking. People are amazing. Talk to anyone. It’s interesting. People are interesting if you just slow down and really listen. Rick, thank you. Thank you for the inspiration and the wisdom and for being a challenging coach to many millions of creatives all around the world and being fearlessly yourself. Um, this is a fantastic book. I’m going to link it below for everyone that hasn’t yet read it. But also, the HBO documentary with Jay-Z, the eight part documentary we referenced is out now on HBO. Um, comes out on September 18th. So, if you’re watching us after that, it’s already out. Um, thank you, Rick. My pleasure. It’s on movie in the rest of the world. Rick, thank you. My pleasure.

A lot of my friends that I grew up with were going to jail or ended up dead or shot in the streets. So, I fell victim to doing illegal stuff. But it was the moment that we got arm robbed where I have a gun to my head now. And once I saw the barrel of that gun being pointed at me, that was the moment I noticed, okay, if I survive this, I’m going to become a comedian or die trying.

My comedy comes from that place of a healing, wanting to make our situation better at home. Like one time I watched my brother get beat for wetting the bed. It was a lot. So I would always try to step in to try to be like a coping mechanism for him. Maybe it’s my mom. So I knew I was funny. I knew I was very entertaining, but it didn’t hit me until like college. And I started to figure out, okay, wow, all the people I look up to are all like comedic legends, and I feel more connected to them than anything I’ve ever felt in my life. That is my purpose. So, I left college. I went home. I wrote all these goals down on the sheet of paper. Now, I’m locked in. I have no other option. I’m sitting here in a room, no mattress. My car got repossessed. I actually made that like a content piece. But I feared nothing because I’m like, I have nothing left. But I knew I’m like, I’m going to keep going. I’m going to continue to keep pursuing, making videos. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And then the thing that changed my life was Drake calling for the laugh now cry later music video. Everything shifted after that. Interesting. I heard this crazy story that they accidentally sent you Jim K’s money. No, that they sent an email showing how much he would be getting paid for that hour. People are saying it was in the region of insane. I hope he didn’t see mine cuz that would have been a little bit embarrassing. And then in March, you did a skip and it did hundreds of millions of views and then it sounded like Trump did ask to sue you. I don’t know if that’s true. I’m not looking to get sued by nobody. I’m not looking forward to Who was he talking about? Uh before this episode starts, I have a small favor to ask you. Two months ago, 61% of the people that watch this channel weren’t subscribed. We’re now down to 58%. My goal is 50%. So, if you’ve ever liked any of the videos we’ve made on this channel, if you like this channel, can you do me a small quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know, and the bigger the channel gets, the more we can invest in the guests and the production. Thank you and enjoy this episode.

Trishi, I I really believe that to understand somebody somebody who is an anomaly, and you very much are an anomaly, you first have to sort of understand their earliest context. And I went through all of these old photos of you as a as a young boy. Um to try and build some of that context in my in my own head. Um Sure. What is it that most people might not know about that earliest context that’s most informative to sort of who you are today? What remains? I still literally feel like this little boy in all these pictures. It’s like I see these moments and it reminds me of how free I was able to be as a kid. And I wanted to be so much. And my mom and my grandparents, they always supported me being just open and free and having this. What is that right there? That was uh your dad and your brother. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My dad and my brother right here for sure. Even looking at these pictures, I had no idea around this time who I was going to become. This is This is dope. How did you get these pictures by the way? Where did you find all this? till my mom send you the heat. I was looking through some of the the videos that your parents recorded of you at that time and you’ve got like

it’s hard. Do you have any more questions about me? About your teacher and how you doing in school? Great. build. I was just That’s me in character right there. That’s absolutely in character. So, she would put on these these camcorders to let me be free. So, that was like my outlet to be able to do these characters and and and be myself, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I have multiple videos. I know you probably got more. There’s one of me in a in a diaper like rapping. That’s another crazy. I was in church. This was last week.

Yeah, that’s my cousin Bri.

Oh my god. What did you come up with those those balls? Nah, just that’s the beginning of Could have been records, right? Nah, th those are the moments, you know, we used to put on these performances for my family and I’m just grateful that we were able to be ourselves and and and I was able to be supported somewhere because you do get confused in these settings, sort of say, you know, you look like you have something to say to that. You know, I’ve interviewed a lot of comedians and one of the things that I tend to find is that comedy is some sort of like tool. And when I spoke to Jimmy Carr or some of these other comedians that I’ve interviewed, they’re always able to sort of understand in that early

tool to often solve a problem that they had in that context. So I remember Jimmy saying to me, he goes, “You often think of comedians as being depressed, but actually for him it was a case of comedy was a way to help his mom who was depressed. It was like how he saw her smile.” Yes. Was comedy for you at that age at tool? Very much so. Very much so. I and I speak about my dad cuz he was one of those tough guys to deal with around that time. He wanted us to figure it out early and like my dad was like the lead person of pushing that narrative. My mom somewhat would do it but she would always try to tell him relax. It’s you know he’s still he’s still a kid like he’s I’m at the time like 8 n years old and my dad was like what do you want to do? Figure it out. You’re either going to go to jail, you find a a craft or or you’re going to end up in a warehouse or something. You got to figure out um whatever you’re going to do or you go to the military, get your ass blown off. And that was the only three options. He said, “Get your ass.” Yes. So imagine me at like 8, nine years old. Those are my three options. Is school, find a trade, or you go to the military, get your ass blown off, cuz we’re going back to war. He was always talking about we’re going back to war. are we going back to war? And I’m like, what the [ __ ] Are we going to war? Like, so, so early on, he pushed that he wanted me to figure it out. And he had great lessons, but his teaching skills was was very tough and physical. You know, he’s old school. I’m I’m sure you heard it before. He’s very old school about his teachings and how he goes about doing it. So, he has a short temper. Immediately he asked he used to ask these rhetorical questions all the time of like he’ll be like go get me a Phillips screwdriver and I’ll go get a regular screwdriver. He’s like this is not a Phillips screwdriver. Bam upside the dead. Then my brother goes he’s like I want you to go get me a Phillips screwdriver. My brother goes and get a a hammer the dumbest [ __ ] right and he would come back and bam upside the head. So that was like the immediate of teaching. It’s not the best way of teaching. And from an early age, I learned that speaking to other people’s fathers and parents, I learned that this is not a normal thing. And I didn’t know that until we would go to like neighborhood parties and stuff. And maybe my dad would be like, “Oh, these my boys right here.” He’ll reach out his hand and we’ll flinch like that because it became a a normal thing for him to always lift up his hand like if we said the wrong thing. So, I wouldn’t say that my comedy necessarily came from that, but it definitely came from like a healing, wanting to make our situation better at home. It’s not like we we don’t come from a like a broke home. I ain’t going to say we wasn’t a broken We were a broken home. We weren’t a broke home. My dad was a airline pilot for United Airlines for entirely my whole younger life. Um, my mom worked for the CDC. Very two good jobs. Um, my mom was always home. My dad would travel in and out. But I think what I wanted to do and my personality as a kid was always to make the family smile. No matter through all this stuff that we’re going through and these teachings being too far sometimes or maybe this ass whooping was too much, the ass whooping went too far because I don’t got I’m not going to get into details on her, but we had some ass whoops in the house that went too far. Um, but yeah, I think I I I feel like my comedy comes from that place of I never tend to punch down. I like to find the funny but also the good side of funny and not look at the negative for my type of comedy. I can find a negative situation and bring the funny out of it for both sides, me and the other person. So, I I guess as a child, very perceptive children, you’re you’re on edge a little bit then. For sure. And it’s funny cuz I remember sitting with Gab Mate and him telling me how kids that have an early context where they are they have to be a little bit more um aware. Yeah. They often become very good at observation. Yes. And they very they become good therapists. They become the most empathetic. They also sometimes have struggles with mental health because being hypervigilant or being aware comes at a cost. It’s not free. For all the upsides, there’s always a downside. Does any of that resonate? 1,00%, man. And I think sadly in my brother’s case, that went a negative direction. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as we continued to go through puberty and got older. Whereas for me, I feel like I might have found a coping mechanism with comedy and maybe he never found that coping mechanism from that trauma. And I feel like trauma can sometimes give you the the good route or the negative route. And I feel like a lot of that going on in our house early on may have played a role in him being diagnosed with that. And yeah, that’s the that’s the sad side of the story. But yeah, I I even with him like I think early on I would always try to make him laugh because I knew we were in a [ __ ] up situation. One time I watched my brother get beat for wetting the bed and it was the simplest thing and I couldn’t understand. I was like why is he like like getting beat this bad? It was very far very not the normal belt type thing. It was very very far. So I would always try to step in either after or during these moments to try to be like a coping mechanism for him or like maybe it’s my mom and and he’s arguing with her and they’re getting physical as well. So, I would always try to be, oh, the funny guy, maybe at the dinner after or maybe after the next day goes by and I’m trying to lift everybody’s vibe up. Um, so you watched your mother get hit as well. For sure. For sure. For sure. Not not physically hit, but I’ve seen different things of like the choking and, you know, pushing her out the door and then locking the door and then I got to go and be the one staring at her at the door and she’s like, “Open it.” And he’s like, “You better not open that door.” and I’m in between a rock and a hard place trying to figure out do I open this door with my mom or is he going to come? So I it it was a lot of different situations of trying to figure it out at a very young age and and and it started so young that I some back to some things are kind of blurry for me but I do know that my comedy comes from that comforting type of space. I can read a room and and sense any type of danger. I can read a room and sense any type of happiness, sadness, anything in any situation. Somebody could be mentally ill, somebody can be physically hurt, somebody could be anything. And I always have been a good judge of character as well. So I feel like that has helped me in my career for sure. There’s two things I wanted to add to that. Part of the reason I noticed this. Obviously, I’ve sat here 700 times or something doing these interview and you’re one of the first people to stop mid conversation as you were speaking and say, “You look like you had something to say there, Steve.” Yeah. Because you were looking at my face. Yeah. I can read. People don’t usually do that. So, it’s funny cuz I meet some people who are much more aware of me. Mhm. You know, some people there are just talking and they’re giving their answers to my questions and then there’s this other very rare group of people, often comedians, who I almost feel like I’m speaking to them even when I’m just sat here thinking because they’re like hyper aware in that sense. And you just did that to me. So, I thought, “Oh, he is super super aware.” Which kind of correlates to everything, you know, you were saying there. For sure. For sure. But it always comes at a cost. Yes, I agree. All gifts do. I sat with um I think it was Michael Jordan’s trainer um who also then trained Kobe and he said to me he goes our dark sides are linked to our light sides. So the things people clap for are inherently linked to the re the things that we then struggle with. Yeah. That that’s true for yourself. I’m presuming very true. And I think through life I’ve learned that not all teachers have the best way of teaching which I speak on his lessons. like he had many of lessons that were really good and on the positive side of life where I had to eventually come to sources and just tell myself like wow like I cannot look for more success and look for the light at the end of the tunnel without forgiving any and everything in my past and that came with having to forgive my father in my head and also to him face to face of like it’s all we just let it all go And I think that helped me continue to move forward and h not have any grudges. Grudges can really hold a lot of weight on you. Maybe his mother was abusive to him or um his upbringing was in a different type of area in the world where it’s like northeast DC, very trauma neighborhood that’s very like, you know, a negative place to grow up in. And he’s from like the project buildings of that. But yeah, I I think the lessons he had were very good. He always talked about not halfassing anything. If you’re going to do something, do it all the way. If you’re going to mop the floor, don’t just do this side of it. Do it like this. If you’re going to clean the dishes, do all the dishes. Don’t just don’t half ass rinse it and then put it in there. But his lessons would be over the top. He’s going to break the dishes if you do it. He’s going to throw it up in the air and watch it crash on the ground and then he’s yelling to the highest he could yell. And it’s just so there used to be a lot, you know, and I think it it almost like, you know, people talk about you like, “How can I be broken if I’ve already been broken at an early age?” And I and I kind of feel that way. Like people like, “Oh, it’s not too much of a burden on you in your career. It’s not too much.” I’m like, “How could I be broken if I feel like I’ve already gone to my furthest extent? I I I I can only continue to push myself to higher levels cuz I I feel like I’ve gone through everything that could be the worst possible situation at least in my brain. Mhm. But yeah, he had very good lessons and and always had quotes and sayings on things like I actually have to bring it up. It it’s but it’s confusing because at a at a at an early age I had no idea. Oh, okay. It only takes one. Wo [ __ ] I really [ __ ] this up to negate 10 boys. I have no idea. Still to this day, I get confused. But I understood, let me tell you when I understood that. I understood that as life went on and I started to notice a lot of my friends that I grew up with in the area I grew up in were going to jail or falsely being accused of things or ended up being dead or shot in the streets. And like we seen a lot of that stuff cuz I I come from a neighborhood where it’s this suburb, but it also had a mixture of the real Atlanta in there as well. But yeah, so these things were very confusing to me early on. But as I continued to grow in life, every single lesson that he had taught me and that he had told and talked about and constantly over over again spoke on, it started to come back to me in my later years of life. And I began to grow an appreciation for it after I forgave him for, you know, all these, you know, past trauma situations and everything that happened. But yeah, and when you say forgive, are you do you have a good relationship with him now? Yes. Very, very good. For sure. Um, yeah. And I think you just you in anything in life, you have to move on from things and continue to push. I think you can you can never grow to do great things without looking back and being like, “Okay, I have to close the door on this. I cannot hold this grudge.” Cuz if you hold a grudge, you got to think about what a grudge is. A grudge is on you as a burden. That’s a burden to everything. It’s not just physical. It’s a mental thing that can really rot people’s brain out. It’s a thing. And I’m sure you probably, you know, of course. Yeah. But a lot of people think of forgiveness as letting them win or justification or they feel like a loser because oh I’m not going to forgive them for that I’m never I’m hold that grudge to the death. It’s like yo you’re not helping yourself. That’s actually a a you thing that has nothing to do with them or what they did. If you if you hold on to that that’s a forever thing for you. And uh one of the things it will give you is great resilience. I imagine um you talked about it there. You said, “How can anything break me when I’ve already been broken to the fullest extent?” Again, with that comes a set of issues you contend with as an adult. I mean, I experienced it myself, which is you if if my parents were quite um there wasn’t a lot of love between them. Uhhuh. So, I I one of the lessons I inherited was that relationships look like this and this isn’t necessarily a great thing that I want, right? So, I swerved relationships every opportunity I was presented. I’d pursue people and then the minute they turned to me and said, “Do you want to be in a relationship?” I was like, “Too much.” Yeah, I was like, it’s too much. Yeah, I’ve seen this before. This is I’m getting away from this. No, I know where this goes. I know what you mean. I I I deal with that as well, for sure. I know exactly what you mean. Yeah. Have you Have you you’ve experienced that yourself as well? Yes. I I feel like I continuously have grown a relationship with women in a way where I feel like I almost get scared with getting too close. kind of like how you explain because of maybe I haven’t seen the successful home of two parents or people in a relationship. Yeah. Maybe I haven’t seen it with my own two eyes to work. And I feel like that kind of does hinder me a little bit because it it it does come in between when I I feel these feelings for this girl and I almost jump back immediately as soon as they’re like, “No, no, I don’t trust it because I know what this comes with.” And they’re like, “Yo, what do you what do you mean? We never we didn’t even get a chance to fully.” And I don’t know. It’s it’s a natural mind thing that happens to me and I still to this day I have no idea if you want to be my my doctor for this. No, no, I just I’m just hypothes. I feel like that has something to do with it. Maybe I haven’t seen it in a way that’s healthy and that might be the reason why. But I still that’s a that’s a question that I need to answer. If I spoke to someone that you were in a relationship with and I said to them, “Is Drew affectionate?” You you laughing. You know the answer. You start. No, no, no. I I feel like they they would tell you that I am until I’m not and I eventually just I just pull out. Like I I pull back. I like I almost feel once I I get too close, I can’t trust it. It’s It’s almost like a magnet when you reverse it on the other side. It’s like when it comes too close, it starts to repel itself. That’s how I feel when it comes to me getting more and more closer with a female. Yeah. Mhm. That makes sense. I think that’s what I experienced up until I was about 27 years old. Sure. And but I’m 31 still exper

it’ll happen. It’ll happen. Does it does it matter increasingly as you become more successful to you? Do do you think more about it and as you go? just it’s hard to trust after you become I think when you’re when you’re when you’re kind of successful at the beginning. It’s not hard to trust. You’re just like, “Yo, she likes me for me, but also she can still like me for the celebrity I am.” And kind of 50/50. But as you become more and more successful, you have this doubt in your mind like this could absolutely be her in love with just Duski and not Drew at all. Is that just a convenient excuse for the whole avoidant? No, no, no. I’m I’m serious. I I I promise like it’s it’s a question in every superstar’s mind. I guarantee you even with when they are with somebody fully, they still have a question in the back of their mind. Does this person just love the superstar of me? That’s so interesting. And it does bother somebody who is super successful because you see all these people will scream and and chase you and you have a show or maybe a meet and greet and you see how people react to you or you go on the street and you almost want you want to believe that this person that you’re dating also is genuine like how these fans are like yo okay maybe she just loves me for me maybe this is uh not kind of like how the fans are just loving me for that you want her to believe that This is the same type of real thing. But it’s hard to believe after you see all of this stuff, you only know me for that. You didn’t meet me when I was just at home living with my mom, broke on the sofa. You know what I’m saying? Like, you didn’t see the real side of who I actually am. You know, if you get what I’m saying. You see the You see the new personality. Mhm. Sort of to say. Yeah. It’s tough. It’s tough out here, man. Could have been love. [ __ ] So, you go off um you go off to college and you um you last was it two semesters before you dropped out? Yeah. No, I I I I started at a at a a a school that was in Gwynette County where I grew up. Mhm. So, I spent like a year and then another half of a semester there and I got my enough credits to transfer. Mhm. Because I was like, “Okay, I’ve got to get out of like I know my life is bigger than this. And I also at the time I wasn’t thinking, oh, I want to be a superstar. I was just thinking I wanted a real college experience. I wanted to go to a 4-year college. I didn’t have the grades to do it in high school and go straight there. I want to find a way to do it in college. So, I think when I went to Georgia Southern as the school following that, I just wanted to find the college ecosystem of like what’s the vibe here? Oh, let’s party. Let’s do this. And I didn’t find that as soon as I got there. It’s almost like I didn’t get the immediate this is college like I thought I would get after I got there. And I went into like a deep depression because I had two guys that I knew went to the school from like like you know somebody from your county of course and I was like oh okay I’ll link up with him. He’ll be a great friend to be along with on this ride of whatever this new school is. And I would try to link up with them. And for some reason, it always was a hassle for me to link up with them. They always would be like, “Oh, uh, we always got to pick you up. You don’t have a car.” And I’m like, “No, I I’ll get a Uber to y’all.” Well, if you don’t have any money to get into the game, there’s no point in coming because we can’t pay for you. Or I want to come to the party with y’all. Oh, well, you have the same shoes that you hoop in. Why would we bring you like you? they will always have jokes about maybe I I felt like I wasn’t deserving enough to be around them so to say and I felt like almost very for the first time in my life very depressed and that kind of bothered me because I started to just not even go to classes anymore at this new school. I was just staying in my dorm room. So I went to not even going to class anymore. I stopped going to classes for like the whole second semester of being at that school. No classes. sat in my room and would just sit and think. I’m calling my friends back at home. They’re not doing nothing. So, I kind of didn’t want to go home cuz I’m like, damn, they’re not doing [ __ ] I’m not going to go back. But also like, what am I doing here? I’m not doing anything here either. What is my purpose in life? So, sitting in there and being depressed and sad and looking at myself in the mirror, I started to figure out, I’m like, damn, what do I really want to do in life? Does any of this really make sense? It’s like I’m here for sports journalism, but do I want I know I want to be on TV. Like I took sports journalism to be maybe a ESPN sports cast just to get my face on TV. I didn’t know. I was like maybe I want to do that. It sounds cool. But as I continued to do more, I guess soularching sort of to say, just sitting in the room and thinking about what I want to do these I would sit and watch Steve Harvey interviews on like what is it uh you want to do in your life? jump jump off a mountaintop and take a risk and like I would watch all these videos of everything of people I looked up to Kevin Hart and and I started to figure out I was okay what’s my purpose these are the people I look up to but what exactly do I want to do and as I continued to do more search and I started to figure out okay wow I think all the people I look up to are all like comedic legends I’m watching Will Ferrell stuff Chris Farley these are guys that I find as my heroes. I think since I’ve always been the funny guy in every classroom, everything I’ve done, sports, I get kicked off the football team for being funny. All this stuff is because I am a comedian. I I And it was almost like I’m an I felt like an idiot cuz I’m like, damn, I’m sitting over here in college. That is my purpose. This is it. I’m I I feel more connected to them than I’ve ever felt to anything I’ve ever felt in my life. Why? The things they would say in a Kevin Hart interview, the things he would say in a Steve Harvey interview, the things Will Ferrell would say or Chris Farley would say or Jim Carrey, I felt more attached to it because they also felt a need and a purpose to become like a hero of comedy. I don’t I don’t know. It it sounds dumb because when you tell your parents, “Oh, I want to be a comedian.” They’re like, “Oh, you’re like basically a clown, I guess, and you’ll go start doing standup rooms and maybe you make it, maybe you don’t.” It sounds kind of silly telling people or your hometown friends, “Oh, I’m going to be a comedian.” But as I continued to do more and more research on everything I wanted to do, I started to figure out, okay, this is my purpose. And it always has been. And I see these videos of me as a kid. I I I’m remembering memories of all this stuff early on. This is it. And that and that’s when I just had like a I don’t know what they would call like epiphany, you know. Um but yeah, that was that was a big uh change for me in my career. Well, not even my career at the beginning processes. When you say I was depressed, that word can mean lots of things to lots of people for sure. What what does it mean in your definition in that moment of your life? If I was a fly on the wall or, you know, just in the room, but also if I was inside your head at that time, what would I hear and what would I see if I was a fly on the wall? I think you would just see me in there confused, man. I would sit in my room for hours. I would sit there and play 2K. I would sit there and play music for hours and not I I wasn’t really doing anything. I had no friends at that school. I would walk to like the corner store. My mom will send me like $20. I’ll buy as much as I could get to be able to stay in the room and not go out and socialize with all these people at this huge school. I would get as much food as I could get at the time to go back and just be in the room. And that’s when I knew I was like, “Yo, I’m really like in a state I’ve never been in in my life.” Imagine I’m used to being at a high school where I was known as the class clown. Anybody in my family knows me to be the the guy that brings the warmth to the room and to make everybody laugh. And he’s he’s always bringing good energy to now I’m sitting here almost hiding away from society and very very dark on myself. I was I’m I’m very like hard on myself about everything that I want to do. And I and I was it took it took a while for me to understand what it was. I think me going on YouTube and trying to research successful people, I started to line up the people that I I found inspiring and every single one of them were all comedians. I I I felt more attached to every single one of them than I’ve ever felt attached to anybody else in my life. It’s funny because through your childhood you were you’re a comedian you know clearly from all the videos that I’ve seen and uh people think of comedians as giving like you you make us laugh but obviously that you get something from that too for sure and then suddenly you’re in this room and you’re no longer getting that thing. Yeah. Whatever it is for sure. What is that thing? I knew that was a thing early on when I was a kid. I would have these conversations with myself of at home after elementary of did I make the class laugh today and why was why does that feel so good to me to brag about or I would ask other students who’s the funniest to you in this class or who’s the funniest in our grade and I would really ask I was like why why do you feel like he’s funny like why is why is Mikey funnier than me tell me why and it was almost like a competition in my head that nobody knew about, but it it was in me. You know what I’m saying? Like I I felt like it was it meant something if they told me, “Oh, you’re of course you’re the funniest guy in in our grade. Duh.” And how would that make you feel? That made me feel successful. It felt like I won the Mark Twain Award of the school. Like that is like the Oscar for me at a young age if somebody told me, “Oh my god, you’re the funniest at this school.” I think it’s it’s interesting often that your your nature was clearly you’re a comedian, but that’s not a career that kids are taught about. They’re taught about like you said like your dad said like go get your ass blown off and all these other things, but they find the trade. They find the trade. Yeah. But until you have you’re given a word for it sometimes. It doesn’t you don’t you don’t have that epiphany. I thought that about like being an entrepreneur. I didn’t know it was a thing until I was 19 and I was already doing it and then I heard the word and someone gave it meaning and was like, “Oh, that’s a thing you can do as a job.” Yeah. And then suddenly, you know, mind expansion. Yeah. You know what it was? I I knew I always knew that comedy was a thing. I didn’t know that I wanted to do it as bad as I was doing it. I was always watching it. I always watched. My mom would show us in Living Color movies like What About Bob? early on. My dad would always have the Chappelle show on and I would try to sneak and watch that because I was very like much rated R in the kids’ mind. They would they’d be like, “Oh, you can’t watch this stuff. Get upstairs.” And I would still try to sneak behind the stairs and look like, “Oh my god, that’s so funny.” And I would try to say these jokes back at school that I hear Dave Chappelle saying or blank man like he was like he was like a guy in a wheelchair from in living color that ended up becoming a movie and they made this whole thing called blank. But the fact of the matter is that I it was always in front of me and I always was a big fan of comedy. I just didn’t know that my mom sort of to say was influencing and she and I and and I say my mom because she would always put this stuff in front of us because she wanted she wanted the best for us but she always she she was the like almost like the seessaw to level everything out. If something bad happens with my dad, my mom was always there to level it out. She was the one that would come in and tell him like, “David, that’s too much.” And sometimes he would bark at her and be like, “Get the [ __ ] out of here.” Like, “These boys are going to end up being men. They need to learn this now.” But she always had like quotes or or or good things she would always say like just just continue to believe in yourself. Continue to know this. So she was my mom was always a big believer in anything becoming big, you know? Yeah. So I got to I got to give her a lot for that. You’d think the former president of Nespresso would be a pretty hard person to convert to a new coffee company. 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You’ll get 30 days to try it, and if you don’t like it, you can return it, but I’m confident that you will. So, you went off to university. You discovered these great comedians. You discovered, you said Steve Harvey, who’s a I think he’s 69 years old now. He’s an American comedian and TV host, standup comic as well. One of the kings of comedy. One of your idols in comedy. Yeah, for sure. Hell yeah. What was it that he said in particular that you recall that really sort of pushed you forward in that moment? I remember he had a video that talked about just taking a risk and just jumping. And he spoke on just take the leap of faith and just jump. Stop overthinking everything. Nothing happens without taking this risk. Mhm. And I knew he he he continued to say something in these videos of if you believe there’s something more to your life, there is. If you have that vision that keeps popping up in your head, that means it that very much so is in your life. And I just kept hearing him say that. And I played the video back. Played the video back again. Played the video back. I’m like, damn, what the hell? That means there is something. Cuz I I kept feeling that feeling I kept having. I’m like, there’s more to my life than what it is right now. And I knew it in the back of my head. I was like, I know it. I know it. I know it. There’s more to this than than what I feel. It’s in the back of my and I and I continue. And that’s what resonated with me from the video that I watched on him. That was it was like life changing. I speak to Steve. Oh, man. What are you about to show me, man? He wanted to send you a little uh a little video message as well. Hey, what’s happening, Truski? Hey, look, man. Uh, I heard they was doing something for you. So, I wanted to jump on here, man, and just give you some uh some big ups, man. Let you know, man. I’ve been watching you for a while from a distance, man. We’ve only spoken once, but look, man. I think you’re special. You got a gift, man. You’re really, really special. And with that specialness, man, comes some responsibility. And so, just be careful, man. Remember everything your mom and your grandmama told you, cuz you going to need all of that cuz you killing the game. Once you start killing the game, it’s like chess, man. We’re out here playing chess. The object is to kill the king. Sad but true. Keep your faith, brother. Stay funny, man. If you need me, call Uncle. I got you. This is crazy. That That is nuts, bro. That is amazing, man. And that and that really is a full circle moment even hearing him say that. And wow, man. somebody somebody that definitely I looked up to him amongst you know the other kings of comedy as well is like wow man that’s that is that’s deep that’s deep what happens from there you go from being in that room you’re watching these Steve Harvey videos presumably you got to call your mom and you got to tell your mom that you’re dropping out yeah she uh she wasn’t happy about that she I remember she cried and she she hung up on me and she was like this this is just so dumb. Like what are you talking about? What did you say? I couldn’t get any words out. She hung up. But I remember seeing her crying on the FaceTime after I just wanted to tell her what my vision was on cuz you know you you say I’m dropping out. But then of course I have a rebuttal. I have a great idea. Yeah. And she hung up immediately. So then I called my friend. He came and grabbed me from the school in the middle of the night. I was like four hours away from Atlanta, Georgia. I’m deep down in southern Georgia. Um, and we drove all the way back. And when I got there, of course, she let me in the house. And I think it was just a confusing time because I’m also not making any money. So, she’s like, “Now what? Like, now what are you going to do?” And I had this big plan and I told her what I was going to do. I’m like, “I’m going to be a comedian. I’m going to be on TV. I promise you in a year I’m going to make sure I’m on TV and if I’m not I told her this wild story of I’m going to kill myself. I said if I don’t become a comedian and I don’t become a famous comedian on TV. I’mma kill myself. And she’s like don’t say stuff like that. That is that is so dumb. I want you to go hard for whatever you’re doing. But that is just why do you feel like it has to be comedy? And I was like this is something that and I continue to break down everything. I’m like this is what I’ve always wanted to be. And I had it’s almost like you have this great idea but nobody sees the vision. So then I went to my grandparents. I told them the same vision that I had. They live down the street from her and they were like this is so what? Like what are you talking about? Go back to school, get your education and then you do all that other stuff because they had the old school mindset of they probably seen people that didn’t go to school and they seen people that did go to school. People that did go to school get a job. People that didn’t go to school became maybe crackheads in their era. I don’t know like or it became failures in life. So they didn’t they never really saw the good side of what is and I was like the the 0.1 of people maybe even less than 0.1% of people that are able to accomplish that after dropping out is like very unlikely. So immediately when I told my grandparents they were like oh no no no. They said don’t we know what’s going to happen. You gonna drop out. You’re gonna be calling us asking for money. going to be calling our house and pulling up and you going to be doing drugs. And I’m like, gosh, listen. I’m not going to be doing that. They’re like, no, no, no, no. You know, your grandparents, they black grandparents, they don’t give a [ __ ] They like, don’t be coming over here and bothering us. We know what’s about to happen. Like, you going to be a crackhead. And I’m like, listen, guys, I have a plan. And essentially, I didn’t do it immediately. I started trying to work at um Red Lobster and then I worked at like a Longhorns and I worked at Outback Steakhouse and McDonald’s. I I started to work jobs because it was like a quick money thing and then I fell victim to being living in Atlanta where I was doing illegal stuff and now I’m seeing myself go into this whirlwind of damn I came home to do this drug dealing. No drug you said you said. No, it’s at in Atlanta there’s like a it’s like a scamming circle of of where a lot of people fall victim to. It’s like you can do quick easy scams with banks or doing card scams, just stuff like that. And I never was a bad guy. I just I I felt like that was an easier way to do it while I’m trying to pursue this stuff. But I felt like the karma of this stuff was weighing on me. It’s like, “Oh, I’m going to do I’m going to try to pursue comedy while doing this.” And it never worked out. I didn’t even pursue it. I just was flirting with it. I was going back and forth. Yeah. I was just continued to flirt back and forth with the idea of it. And then it was the moment that we got arm robbed where I had a a outer body feeling of wow. I came home to be in this predicament where I have a gun to my head now. And now it’s like how did I even get here? So, let me rewind back. That was the last moment I said, “Okay, if I’m going to do anything, I’m going to become a comedian or die trying.” That’s it. I have no other outlet. Now, I know once I saw the barrel of that gun being pointed at me and my friend at the time, it was a bad scamming situation gone left. That was the moment I noticed, okay, if I survive this, I am going to turn my life around and I’m not going to go to a job. I’m not going to go back to my mom’s house and try to say, “Oh, I’m doing this, that.” I’m going to lock and actually do it. And from there on, I went home. I wrote all these goals down on the sheet of paper. And my mom, she was kind of in the mix of what happened a little bit, too. she had heard cuz she saw me walking around the house being stressed out. I told her what’s going on. And I wrote down all these goals because she would always say, “You can’t do anything without writing things down.” Ever since I was a kid, she was like, “You should write that down. If you want to remember something, write it down. Write it down.” Do you remember what goals were? The first one I ever wrote was, “Don’t have a plan B, your plan A will work. No plan B, your plan A will work.” The second one I wrote was about Was there about hosting a tour on there? Yeah. Yeah, hosting a tour was definitely on there. Hosting an awards evening. Yeah, that both of those was on there. I I wrote down that I wrote down being a comedian. I wrote down amongst a lot of other things. How do you How do you know that? What is it? What is it on that? How do you know that? That was that was on there. I haven’t sent y’all a production. We got this scamming thing we did where we can scam starring a major movie. Mhm. For sure. All that is down there, man. And you’re 23 at the time, roughly. Yes, I’m 23. So, what’s happened then? So, you left college at what what age? I left college around 21 22. Okay. So, in between 21 22, I left college. So, it’s a year or two at home with your mom? Year and a half. I’ll probably say a full year has been at home before all that transpired. I tried the jobs and tried the legal stuff that didn’t work. And now I’m here and I start to actually do the things that I wrote down. What does that mean specifically? Like I think the first thing that happened after I wrote these goals down, the first thing that happened, everything was taken away. It felt like everything dropped out before it got good. Everything. I wrote down these goals. I wrote the date on there. Boom. I’m doing it. I was like, “All right, now I’m locked in. This is it. I’m I’m all in. I have no other option. There’s no other plan B, nothing. Immediately my car gets repossessed.

I’m like, yo, what the [ __ ] Now I can’t travel and do nothing. So, it’s funny because it’s like as soon as you want to pursue all these things, everything has to come out. And and you’re it’s confusing because most people never get a chance to see the real side of success because they quit at that moment. That breaking point of everything falling out of your life. They’re like, “Oh my god, I done prayed for all this stuff. I done wrote everything down. I got this this board of this mood board. I got everything.” And then I’d lose this and oh, see it don’t work. But I knew I’m like, I’m going to keep going. I’m not going to stop here. I actually made that like a content piece. I recorded my car getting repossessed and people were like, “Yo, what the hell are you posting this for?” I was like, “Well, there it is. There she goes.” But really, I was sad as [ __ ] I was like, “Damn, I got nothing.” But I I feared nothing because I’m like, I have I have nothing left. I’m sitting here in a room, no mattress. I’m laying on the floor. I’m using my little sister’s blanket that she had as a blanket on the ground. Like, I don’t have any dressers in here. Like you know when you you go to college your mom gives away all your [ __ ] Like she she sells it or she puts it in some warehouse. So I didn’t have none of my stuff. I just was laying on the floor and I was like I had my car but now that’s gone. So what else could I lose? Like I I’m my back’s against the wall. I’m going to continue to keep pursuing making videos. Boom boom boom boom boom. And that’s what I did. I continued to boom boom boom boom boom. I wasn’t going to stop. And I was using my mom’s house as essentially a a movie set. I started to flip the couch upside down. I wanted to do a surveillance camera at the top left side of the room to make it look like I’m on first 48. I’m interviewing myself on a first 48 episode. Boom. That’s one of the skits. I have another skit where I’m using this jacket that my mom had in the closet and I’m putting that on. I’m acting like a news reporter, Fox 5 in the backyard and I I’m putting the phone cropped up on the trash can outside in the backyard and my mom used to come home. She’d be like, “What the [ __ ] are you doing?” and she she used to see the house in shambles, but I got to give it to her cuz she she stuck through it with me. I would always give her these updates like, “I have 10k followers now. I have 15k followers.” She’s like, “Okay, so what does that mean? Did you make any money?” I’m like, “No, but I have people watching.” And I was like, “Oh, I got 100k followers. Did you make any money yet?” “No, but people are watching.” And I continuously just kept giving these updates as eventually I started to make money through promotion. and I would promote people’s music and their their videos and throw it on my story and I would do a full day of promotion. It would make me a couple hundred dollars maybe and that would be enough to maybe go out that night or it just wasn’t like it wasn’t anything real fulfilling or I would help my mom with groceries. Like I I would try to do things to, you know, make money but it wasn’t really making any real money at the time. And then I continued to keep building. So yeah. No, I think those those early moments really shaped a lot for me. I mean, I’ve got a a video here as well that I found. Um, you can explain what this one is to me, man. Yeah, man. I know what the [ __ ] going on, man. I ain’t never been at the gas. That was That was fresh off of scamming right there. Fresh off a scammer. Shot me up. Shot me out when I got his knife. Shot me out. Got his ice on. Tell me up. Yeah. Ain’t know I’m going up like this. Huh? That was actually my first video I ever posted on socials. Ever. Ever. First video ever. That’s when Instagram first started the whole 15-second video post thing. You know, Vine was doing it for like 6 seconds and I didn’t never was on that. And I came around and it was like 15 seconds on Instagram you could post a video. my friend Chanty and now he’s like my lead comedic writer and he was like, “Bro, just go like just post it.” And I was like, “This is kind of silly. I’m just acting like I had like those are like $1 bills, bro. I was acting like I [ __ ] ones.” And I’m just And he was like, “Just post it.” I I think that got like maybe 80 comments, 60 or 70 comments, something like that. It was like hometown people. And they were just like, “Oh my god, this is so funny. We see what you’re doing. that’s that’s dope. Hopefully you do more. Like people were just supporting it. I was like, “All right, well, I’m more creative than this.” And I started to continuously become more and more creative because I was like, “All right, I did that, but that’s like silly stuff. I know what I’m capable of.” But yeah, that that was the very first video I ever threw up. This one I found really interesting. I’m just going to play it first. Mill perform. Yes, bro. I’m telling you. No. Yo, Mick Mill’s my wife that I said, “Yo, be on your one day.” It’s your ass hit you. I promise you like I told him I said you’re going to be on your level one day. You’re saying in that video that you’re going to be on Meek Mill’s level someday and that you dapped him up and told him that. Mhm. I lied about that. I did not dab him up and tell him that. I saw him at a party and I was so influential. I I shouted it over somebody like, “Yo, Meek, I’m a big fan, man. I’mma be on your level someday.” I didn’t shake his hand. I was just I was just chatting. But in our in our county, we have almost like what you would call like a hood legend. Lou Williams. He went to the same high school I went to. He made it to the NBA, played amongst a bunch of teams. Sixman. You probably know him. Drake did a song about Lou Will, you know, balling out of Sonet like Lou Will. So he was almost like the hero to us. He would throw these parties which were like essentially like you know have all these celebrities come to Gwynette County and at the time Gwet County is not on the map. It’s not like a known thing like we’re just like a suburb outside of Atlanta and he would have these celebrities come to these parties and we would be able to go because we’re locals and Gwynette. So you would see all these celebrities and I was like, “Wow.” I would look at Lou Will’s house. He’s currently in the NBA and I’m like, “Wow, this is insane.” And Meek Mill came one night and I I said I told him that, but I just shouted it and he had a bunch of security with him. They didn’t even let us over there. But yeah, I was You could tell I was, man, I was It’s a kid manifesting in Yeah, manifestation. And like there was no stutter in my speech right there. I I definitely felt that way about everything I was doing. And I probably have said a lot of things around that time that probably weren’t recorded where I was very like trying to pursue greatness. I’ve always been a big fan of pursuing greatness my entire life. I never wanted to just be good. I always wanted to be great. Um so yeah, that that just shows right there. I’m surprised one of my friends, he still had that clip. He sent it to me and I posted it. Yeah. The thing I find interesting generally is in that situation, look at that context. You’re in your mother’s house. using the the uh front room and a blanket as both your bed and also your sort like creative studio. Objectively in that situation, the odds are stacked against you. But but in your head, you’re thinking, I’m either going to be great or in your words, I’m going to kill myself. Yeah, it was a little far. A little far. When you said that, what did you actually mean? What did you mean? I felt like I You meant it. I was I was You know what it was? I was so I was I was chasing being great and I and that might have been far-fetched in me to say something as wild as that, but that’s honestly how I felt like I was going to make it happen or I was going to see perceive myself as a failure. I didn’t see anything different. I saw nothing else but a green light down this tunnel. I saw nothing. I I I I knew in the back of my mind what I was capable of. I already knew. I felt like my entire life I knew, but I just didn’t put the pieces together. But when I told my mom that, I knew. I said, “Okay, I have committed to something that I know there is no possible in or out. I’m going to do this or die trying.” Truthfully, you know, like I feel like I I’m either going to do this or I’m not and I’m going to make it happen. So, I knew I wasn’t going to kill myself. Essentially, I knew I’m not going to kill myself because you believe because I believe I’m going to do it. But if I don’t, I’m out of here.

Sounds crazy, but it’s true. Sounds crazy, but it’s true, man. That That’s how much belief I had in myself, and that’s how I felt like with my back against the wall. Like, I really did want to do it that bad. And still like I do feel the same about achieving greatness. I don’t tend to like things that are just good. And people are like, “Oh my god, I became rich. I’m I’m good, man. I’m going on vacation.” I don’t do any vacationing. I I I I I I find it soothing to be in a chaos situation of work and juggling a a multiple projects at once. Like that is what I want to do. This is what I got into it for. So that that’s my full goal. Yeah. And when you look back on that season of life where you you first move home with your mom as as a 31-year-old now, what has it taught you about what it takes to be successful broadly? Again, remove luck from the equation. Let’s remove some people getting fortunate with lottery tickets, whatever else. But generally, what has it taught you about what it takes to be successful in the pursuit of a goal like that where to be honest, not many people ever make any money? the odds of you being successful as a comedian defined, let’s define as as making being able to provide for yourself in a family, slim to none. It’s it’s crazy odds. But the thing is, most people don’t really want to be great. Most people just say it because it sounds good. Like I I I would be around a lot of guys that be like, “Yo, let’s do it. Let’s wake up in the morning. Let’s” and they would just fall out. Everybody eventually just goes away. Everybody that said they were going to do it, they do it one day. They’re not showing up the third or the second day. Nobody nobody shows up continuously for the work. And once I noticed there’s a small amount of people that are showing up for the actual work of anything, it it just showed me that, okay, I’m in a lane of this of my own. I’m pursuing something that most people say, but they’re not really trying to pursue. Everybody wants to be number one. You want to be the top of the list. Everybody wants to be top of the list, but nobody really wants to do the work. Nobody’s obsessed with it continuously every day and night having dreams about it. Nobody’s sitting and editing with their editors 18 hours plus of like just sitting looking at clips. Nobody’s going and doing tours while trying to continuously film a TV show. Could have been love in the middle of that tour. Nobody’s trying to also shoot a movie like right now we’re shooting with Universal the Catch with Emma Stone and Chris Bond. also still trying to fulfill my social media presence. I’m trying to juggle all these things in one because I want to be great. I don’t want to just do it and be like, “Okay, I’m going to take some time off and just No, I really want to be number one. I I I don’t I’m not really falling victim to being okay with being cool with number two or three.” And I joke about it all the time because one of my favorite movies is Tallaladega Nights. And Ricky Bobby said, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.” And I and we me and my family joke about it all the time. we laugh about it, but I kind of took that vision seriously cuz that’s really how I live my life and that’s really how I feel because what else could be other than wanting to be number one. What happens when you become number one? You still got to keep pushing the mountain because somebody’s chasing there’s somebody coming. Somebody’s on the way. So, I feel like the journey never ends because you’re always continuously chasing, you know, if it’s not the people before you, it’s trying to continue to set the bar high for the people behind you. Yeah. So, and what does being great mean in your definition of the word? Like, if I say, cuz you know, you said that you stated that the goal is to be great. How would you know you’ve become great? I think being great has a lot of different meanings. It it doesn’t it doesn’t have a money value or a certain touring value or or I think just being great in all ways just comes down to just how far you’re willing to set the bar. There’s always people before you that have done great things. You got Eddie Murphy that has set the bar [ __ ] way up here. Then you got Kevin Hart that’s [ __ ] damn near where Eddie’s at. And he looks very healthy. He looks like he might take it further than Eddie. Who knows? I don’t know. But there’s always somebody gaining on that right behind the great before you. The same with Kobe, Jordan, LeBron. Mhm. Somebody’s going to continuously keep setting the ball higher. So, it’s like we’re all trying to just leave a legacy, sort of say. Like, I think that’s what we’re all trying to do. And you want to be in that conversation. You want to be in that conversation when it’s all said and done. I would love to be in that conversation. It’s not saying I want to be surpassed and we all want to surpass great things. We all do. But just to be in that conversation and to be remembered and to leave a legacy, that’s what matters. One of the things that I’ve observed with people that go in the pursuit of greatness and achieve it is just they have they have like a different level of like patience and they have a longer time horizon. Cuz with Eddie, with Kevin, it takes a lot of like lonely lonely years, decades sometimes. I sat here with the greatest illusionist in the world and he told me that he spent 10 years doing card tricks on restaurant tables and you go what a crazy [ __ ] thing to do. Like what? Or like this other I mean even Jimmy Car said to me like he dropped out of his his great job. I believe it was in marketing and spent five six years getting paid absolutely nothing just cracking jokes in pubs and stuff. And you go like what a what sane person Yeah. would would think would take that trade. Yeah. When I zoom back into where you were in your mother’s house, how long was it? How how from that I guess from university from college to the moment where you go actually chit this is this might be able to pay my way that I so I can move out. How long was that period of time? Years, man. Honestly, years. We’re talking like years of seeing nothing. And I think people don’t see that. People see with social media, there’s a bunch of quick reaction to things and people like, “Oh my god, this person, oh, they went viral for that. Oh my god, now what can I do with this?” People always worried about, “Oh, I’m going to take this thing. I I did this video or I did that.” And and now I’m trying I’m going to go get a team. I’m going to go It’s like, what are you doing? You don’t need a [ __ ] team. Keep grind. Do it again. Do it again, man. And and and when you’re trying to be great, you never get a chance to celebrate the things that you have done. you almost don’t feel in the moment because you’re looking for the what’s the next thing and I kind of give credit of that cuz I do the same thing. I do it all the time. We did the BET Awards and the next day I was already flying to go shoot my TV show Collect and Praise with Mike Eps that we just shot. I had somebody in the congregation ask why I’m wearing Christian Dior and Christian Lupatons. Cuz I’m a Christian and I walk in the blood of Jesus. Give him some praise.

Immediately the next day, we almost I didn’t even get a chance to take it in. I’m like, “Oh my god, I just did a BTS. Something I always want to do in my life.” Boom. I’m on a plane. I’m at the next thing. Immediately after I do Collect and Praise, we shot that for two weeks back to back. Boom. On a plane. The next day after the final day of that, we’re all clapping everything on a plane. Next day, we’re shooting the catch with Emma Stone and Chris Pine. Mhm. The next day. So, it’s like you never really get a chance to take a lot of these things in because you’re continuously progressing, progressing, progressing. And my mom would always I feel like she influenced me to be like that because I would come home from school all the time and be like, “Oh, I got to a B on this test.” She’s like, “Oh, you could have done better.” Or I like, “Oh, I I did this at school. They told me I was Oh, come on. You could you could have done better on that.” Mhm. Not like it’s not enough, but it’s like you always can do better. There’s even if you got an A on this, why did you get a A+? Do you want to be a a dad yourself? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Of course. Where’s that going to fit in this crazy life? We have no idea. That’s We got to find a wife first, bro. I’m trying to find love first, bro. I have no idea. No, but I I I think both my parents, they they they both did that same [ __ ] of like I would bring my dad math equations and him being a pilot, he would break it down in crazy ways of like what the [ __ ] like I would say, oh this is division. Could you help me with this? And he’ll take 40 minutes be like oh you you answered it but you could have done the long division this way. Okay, let me tell you mx time bx^2 you could get this answer reversed. Let’s reverse this answer. If you get this, you get it multiple different ways. So I be like, “Yo, what the hell, bro? I just brought you a simple division equation. Why did you make it long division and then go into MX * bx 2?” But these are my parents, though. They’re always looking for the greater thing. Always, no matter what it was, even if it was academics, you could have done better or you could have gotten it a different way or there’s other routes to get to it. It was almost never a a correct answer in my household because there’s different ways you could find an answer to anything. So imagine what that does to my mind of damn, I’ve got to find a way and not just in one way. I got to find it in multiple different ways. So when I do my type of comedy, I never sit on doing one thing. If I do one thing, that’s amazing. I’ll come back and hit another situation or I’ll hit another situation. I’m going be funny in this way, too. I’m not just going to be funny in this way. I can also be funny at a live show. I can also be funny in a sketch version. I can also be funny in a movie. I can also be funny on a TV show. I can also be funny in a commercial. You see a T-Mobile commercial, you see Drewuski’s face on it with Zoe Zaldana and Jeff Bridges. Why the [ __ ] is Duski on here with Zo and Jeff? I don’t know. But it works. It’s a comedic relief of this commercial. But I feel like my life has gone in that direction because of these upbringings, of these teachings that both my parents had set for us. Listen, I’ve been catfished by furniture my whole life where something has looked fantastic in the picture, whether it’s a sofa or whatever it might be, and I order it and I get so excited and then it comes and it’s something entirely different. The quality was significantly different to what it said or looked like online or the the texture was different or or it it didn’t hold up in the same way. And so one of the things that I love about our sponsor Wayfair, who have helped us fit out our green room, which is in the room behind me, is they have this system called Wayfair Verified. Wayfair Verified takes away all of that second guessing. Products are handveted by Wayfair specialists for quality, so you can feel more confident when you found the thing that you love. So if you’re looking for furniture for your house, whatever it might be, any room of your house, go to wayfair.com to start your home refresh today. And make sure you use Wayfair Verified. It is amazing. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you’re already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you’re not yet. And if you’re not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you’re someone that watches our show, but you haven’t yet hit that button. Thank you so much. Was there a first check or first opportunity that you really like wanted to tell your mom about because this was kind of proof that you were right? Uh, or was there a moment at all? I think you’re saying like a big check moment. You know, like one of those moments an opportunity comes in and you can’t wait to tell your mom because suddenly you were right when she Well, well, I had one moment. I went I went like quote unquote at the time. It might have been 2022, like kind of after CO died down. I was gaining a little bit more traction everywhere. And I had told her that a a celebrity had posted me and I was so excited. I was like, “Oh my god, a celebrity posted me.” And she was like, “Oh my god.” She was like, “So so she’s like, “So what happens now? Did they did they tag you in it? Did people follow you?” I was like, “No, they didn’t tag me. It’s just they just posted the video.” She’s like, “Did like is there opportunity? Like are you going to shoot like a video? Are you doing anything with them?” I was like, “Nah, no. They just they just reposted my video.” And she’s like, “Now what?” And I’m like, “Well, I’m back to square one.” And it’s like, yeah, my parents were big on breaking things down. So, you feel never really fulfilled. You don’t feel fulfilled with anything because you are always trying to figure out, okay, this opportunity is great, but what’s next? Do you feel fulfilled with your work now? No, not yet. Too young. It’s it’s too much more to go, man. Way too much. Look what Jim Carrey did. Look at Eddie Murphy, man. Look what uh Chris Farley has achieved. Adam Sandler, man. These guys are [ __ ] Are you happy though? I’m very happy. I’m very happy. But fulfilled? No. I have so much more. Is it not possible to be fulfilled and also to be in pursuit? Is there a way you’re saying to be both? Yeah. Like to be fulfilled with No, your hunger has to always continue to live. Any anybody that’s pursuing me like nice try my but anybody that is pursuing greatness will never tell you that the hunger has stopped. It has to continuously keep going. There’s there’s no way. No way, man. So, closing off in this period of your life where you’re still at your mom’s house. When did that change? What was the moment where you were like, “Sure, I can leave now?” Well, I had all my clothes stacked in the living room because I people started to send me so many merch clothes, you know, when you become, you know, at the time like everybody’s an influencer. They they would send influencers all type of loads of clothes. They want you to wear it in your next video or whatever you’re doing. So, I had all these clothes stacked up in her like dining room area. I wouldn’t even say living room. It was like the dining room in the front of the house. And I started to kind of make some money to where I was like, “All right, maybe I need to find like an apartment now that now I have some type of money, I can actually get out of here.” But I think me crowding up that dining room, I started to notice, okay, now I can kind of live on my own. But it wasn’t until I started to actually the thing that changed my life at the time was Drake calling for the Laugh Now Cry Later music video. Everything shifted after that because brands started to take me seriously. It wasn’t no more send in free merch and oh you get this or we’ll bring you out to this event and we just want your appearance and you can get in free. Now it’s transactional with everything. Once I was seen on a higher level with, you know, Drake is I think at the time it was Lil Durk and we had Marshawn Lynch, Kevin Durant, Odell Beckham Jr. all in this video alongside with me and me being the comedic relief in this video which was called Laugh Now Cry Later. This meant a lot more than just another music video. Where where were you when you found that out that he had called? No, he just he just was a was a big fan of a lot of the stuff I was posting during that early time, but it wasn’t until then no real money was coming in. No money at all. But that that shifted everything because brands started to see me in a broader light. Um, and they started to see me as an actual star, so to say, instead of just another amongst all these other guys who are doing comedic things, you know. But were you speaking to him directly on DMs or something? Yeah, it was just all through DM at the time. Um, up until I met him. But yeah, all that was like it was very just short back and forth laughing at this video, laugh at that video, find this funny, find that funny. And then we had like a long conversation once he told me that I would be starring in that music video. And that was just about like leading this generation of comedy and just what I am to, you know, the world at the time. And and then I’m I’m hearing his words. I’m like, “Yo, maybe this dude’s just gassing me up. I don’t This is This is wild to hear from somebody who is in my eyes a full-blown superstar, mega star.” But yeah, could that that’s one of those things is just like could never repay him, man. Like that was to take a chance on me at the time just doing silly stuff of what I I thought was great. But at the time it was so looking back I’ve had great stuff but it’s like so minimal to what I do now. It’s like I can’t believe he took a chance, you know, on me in that circumstance. But it it shifted everything. It shifted everything almost immediately. Almost immediately. Yeah. I think it was it was almost more of a seriousness that people took me more than just showing up for things. Mhm. You know, the transactional conversation started to go into play. When you look back on your arc and you hear about other people’s journeys and arcs, what else have you learned about again what it takes? There’s the obsession, there’s the dedication, there’s the hours. What about like the business part? Like how do you climb ladders? Is it people? Is it knowing a guy? It’s all all relationships. Even in the biggest buildings, majority of it is relationships. Of course, your talent weighs a lot, but relationships are very much key. What does that mean for someone that has no idea what goes on in these buildings? Relationship is key because these people want to know that you are a good person to be around. They want to know if if you’re going to be starring in my T-Mobile commercial, we want to have dinner with you. We want to see what type of person you are. They want to make sure you’re not a guy that’s going to go out and do nothing wild after we trust you with this. You’re going to be all over TV. We trust you with these things. You we sign you to a Nike deal. You’re in a T-Mobile deal. You these people. It’s all about relationship. Who you know, how you treat people. They they like to sense what type of person you are in a separate environment from who you are as the celebrity. Druski. Mhm. You know what I’m saying? Like people tend to want to meet who the real you is before we present you to our world. We want to see who you are as a person. So I feel like a lot of my upbringing was around this broad horizon of different different ethnicities, different genders of everybody. We we had Indian people, Mexican, white, black, African, Jamaican, everything you could ever think with county. So that type of stuff shaped me to be able to go in these rooms with these bigger brands and be able to talk to anybody. I did have to learn to do that. Did you have to mature or learn a skill of like coming from where you come from to be in a a room with these big brands and these people in suits in corporate America? Nah, man. It’s it’s it’s it’s funny because I I always have been a people person. Mhm. Like I anytime I would as a kid go into a grocery store with my mom, I would like if I saw a kid’s parent that plays with me on the football team, I saw his parents walking around, I would go up and talk to his dad and like make him laugh and joke like, “Hey, man, give me a cigarette, man. Let me get a cigarette. You You better go outside, smoke, smoke a poke, man.” And just jokingly talk as if I’m not 10 years old. But I think that is a big part of what I’ve learned about, you know, just the industry in general. It’s about more about relationships and, you know, how you treat people and how this interview goes or how this, you know, this dinner is with this guy who may not know nothing about you. He may not know your background, nothing. Are you able to have a one-on-one conversation with him and have him trust you in whatever goes down, whatever you talk about, are you a good person? And I think it comes down to that regardless of anything you do. Yeah. So, it’s interesting cuz when you’re dealing with like corporate America and you’re dealing with these big brands and you mentioned T-Mobile and all these other brands, you’ve got this this this sort of off- camerara Drew guy who meets them for the dinner, but then you got Duski on camera and Drewuski on camera part of your comedy is you really like push the boat out. You say the part out loud that most people wouldn’t say. How what what is your decision framework there with like because there’s this term you know I worked in advertising for a long time. There’s this term brand safety which means like is this person sufficiently sanitized enough that we can use the word like trust this person with the brand but then on the other hand the thing that people love about you is you say the part that other people don’t say. You point at it. What’s your risk when you’re thinking about content? What’s the like framework you use to decide whether this is okay or if it’s not okay? For sure. No, that’s a great question. Um, I think the way I look at all of this stuff and and people ask me that all the time in person whenever I see him is that I’ve never punched down with any jokes that I ever do. Any jokes I ever do always come from a good-hearted place. Even if I’m doing auditions, a skit that I do, anything, you can never show me something that I’ve done that was like, “Oh, that’s punching down or that wasn’t inclusive of the other person that might have been in that situation.” or oh, he doesn’t he doesn’t touch on this because of that or he doesn’t do that. I always come from a light-hearted place and a good-hearted place of my comedy. I never was the guy to be cuz you do have it. You have those guys out there like a Sasha Baron Cohen that has like the dark humor of things and maybe he might have upset some people that were, you know, and it might come from a bad place. I don’t know. I’ve never met the guy. I don’t know. But I come from a good place with majority of all my humor. I’ve just mental flash of you doing this.

But even then, even even with that, even with that comes from a good place. Didn’t touch on anything because at the at the in the same tone, I’m not a political guy. I’m not a guy that’s going out here trying to portray this like I know anything about anything. I am just the guy here for laughs, comedian. I don’t care for none of that serious stuff. People ask me all these deep questions. I’m like, “Yo, I don’t look at anything like that.” Like, I think I’m just being me. I never was trying to get into no deep side of anything with nothing. You are consistent. That’s why I went through I was going through all of your all of your skits. Um, and I was think he’s consistent with with your values and what you’re not aiming at anyone in particular. You’re just pointing at the funny OB punching down. That’s a that’s a big one. People can never show me anything or it’s like, “Okay, he’s punching down at this. This is a it’s coming from a bad place.” It’s always me genuinely just speaking on what’s funny or mannerisms or things that I I see people do where I’m people watching or, you know, just exposing things to the world that we see that we don’t notice that we see. Yeah. Yeah. And it has nothing to do with the [ __ ] political side or the race side and all that stuff. It’s just stuff that’s going on in real life that we see. Sometimes comedians have a have a way of showing the viewer something that they don’t notice that they see. It could be in the back of your brain and you can bring it to life and be like, “Wow, I might have saw that 15 years ago, but that’s funny because I remember seeing that.” You bring these things to life. This is what a great comedic actor does. I think it’s probably there’s probably something in the fact that if if both sides at some point are angry at you or shouting at you for doing something, at least that means that you’re not politically affiliated necessarily because you’re not even know what the [ __ ] I don’t even I don’t even touch on none of that political or but it means that you’re just finding things funny everywhere versus just finding them funny over there or just finding them funny over there. I agree. I I think I I just I I’ve never had the want to do that. And some people like you you have these late night shows that talk about that type of stuff or you know these guys that that’s their spill. That’s not my spill. I some people have Yeah. They they touch on that stuff and I feel like with you, you never get too ind depth with any of that. You let them talk and you just ask whatever you’re going to ask and it just happens it’s going to happen. Yeah. And I’ll sit with Michelle Obama or JD Vance or Ivanka Trump or Camala Harris. I’ve sat with all of them. I’ll sit with all of them and I’ll ask the questions I’m curious about. And I think it’s possible just to be curious, you know. So I agree. Sounded like Trump did ask Erica Kirk to sue you though. But you must be This is crazy. I don’t know if that’s true though. I don’t know. It looks like it. It looks like it. I read it and I thought that can’t be that’s there’s no way that’s true. There’s no way that’s true. Here we go. In March, you released the video of how conservative white women in America act, and it did hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of views. I think I watched it like insane. 20 times. Insane, man. Insane. And then in April, exactly one week later, Trump made the comment to Erica Kirk that she should sue him. He didn’t say who, but I’m just saying that is Who knows? I don’t know if you’re talking about me. Who is he talking about? I don’t wasn’t talking about me. To this day, I have no idea. But people sent me that video. I just didn’t know if it was pretending towards me. I just It’s crazy. Just left it alone. I have no idea. I have no idea. I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s crazy though. But even in a weird way, it does speak to the impact that you’re working. If if he was I don’t know if he was though. You hope he was. You hope he was. I’m not looking to get sued by nobody. I’m not looking forward to that. No. No, man. No. For sure. No. Is it a compliment in a weird way? Uh, not necessarily. I don’t I don’t think I would looking to get sued by anybody. We have too much [ __ ] that we’re pursuing right now to be looking forward to that. No, not at all. That’s crazy. Hey, I love how you like that. That’s crazy. No, but that is it’s crazy thinking about it. I’m like thinking about you in that room with your sister’s blanket. And then I’m and then I just had this mental and then Trump’s like sue him

in the White House which is just that’s crazy. I don’t know man. Kind of inspiring in a weird way. No, but I don’t think that was towards me. You’re saying it was I don’t think it was Well, we’ll never know until until someone asks him. But I mean Yeah. So since then it’s been you’ve had a unbelievable career. You’ve and you’ve really managed to do something that very few people who start out making content on the internet are able to do, which is traverse multiple industries and mediums. I feel like I’ve seen you everywhere from commercials. Did you do the Super Bowl? Yeah, we did a Super Bowl commercial. Did the Super Bowl? Last year it was Dunkin Donuts Super Bowl commercial. This year it was T-Mobile with the Backstreet Boys. This Dunkin Donuts commercial. Yeah. Yeah. I heard this crazy story that they accidentally sent you Jim Car’s money. Jim Carries. No, they didn’t send the money. They sent an email showing how much he would be getting paid for that hour. Oh. Or the two hours that he was there. Insane. And they weren’t supposed to. They were actually mad that I even spoke on that. But he didn’t even show up. He didn’t even except I don’t I don’t think he ever said yes to it. But they accidentally sent it to me assuming that it was I guess Jim Car’s management. They sent it to my management and I think they accidentally sent the proposal. Oh, which was supposed to be for him. And they might have sent my proposal to him, but his proposal to me. I can only imagine if he saw the amount I was getting. That’s probably why he didn’t do the [ __ ] He probably saw my

Jim Carrey saw the proposal, how much I was getting paid for the [ __ ] I don’t know. I don’t know. But um yeah, no, it was it was an insane amount of money and I was like, “Wow, I I that that gives me a lot of inspiration to become on that level one day.” People are saying it was in the region of $5 million. It’s around that. Yeah. For two for two hours of shooting and they sent you that figure so you got to see what he was being paid for two hours, which is two. I think he didn’t see mine cuz that would that would be embarrassing. So that’s a $2.5 million an hour to shoot a commercial and he said no. He said no. to imagine what he wants. And I’m not sure if it’s money. Yeah. And that is something I look up to him about. He’s one of those guys that doesn’t look at a money sign and just say yes to. He’s one of those guys that genuinely cares about his craft and his legacy. He still hasn’t done a Grinch 2 yet. I know they’re shooting it right now, but up to this date, they didn’t until last week, they didn’t announce that they were shooting Grinch 2. So, how much money was he wanting before? Or was it even about money? Or did he just not want to do another one? You never know. I don’t know. But I feel like he’s very specific about everything that he does. You ever seen Fire Marshall Bill from In Living Color? No. Oh my god. You have no idea. You haven’t seen [ __ ] That’s the like damn near the beginning of the character of Grinch. Fire Marshall Bill is like the teaser of what the Grinch became. And the mask, it has a a twist of the mask in there, too. But like he was like the only white person on a living color at the time. The funny but just check it out later. Interesting guy. He’s like a very philosophical for sure. Wise. Yeah, he’s very wise, man. Have you met him? Never met him one day. That’s another guy that’s on my um list that I would love to meet, man. Love love love to meet. Part of the game that we often don’t speak about as well with people like yourself is just the rejection along the way because your story could quite easily be portrayed as this sort of like, you know, bump in the road here, college, a couple issues here, this situation happens, Drake calls after you’ve spent a long time on your own posting and compounding and then off to the races. Happy ending. But there’s still rejection along the way. I was reading that you were rejected by both Netflix and Amazon. Yeah. Early on. What was the proposal you made to them? And what was that? I think it it was multiple. It wasn’t just one time. I think we’ve we’ve years and years of proposals and I had like different FX proposals that we were supposed to get a show with FX. It was a no. We’re supposed to do a movie with Amazon. It was a no. Supposed to do multiple different projects with Netflix. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. And we just never gave up. And I eventually said, if I’m getting money from these companies and they’re paying me, instead of going and buying a car or another house or maybe a nice jewelry and all this stuff, I’m going to invest in myself. And I decided to just go and all these show ideas that I had, I’m going to do it on YouTube and spend my own money to invest into it. And that and that is essentially what I did and I think that’s brought to you could have been auditions that’s brought to you could have been love that’s brought to you could have been house could have been daddy amongst other things like you’ve seen in the Driski universe of taking it to another level with all the sketches and the production I’ve done and the millions of dollars I’ve spent and all these things I I started to just believe in myself and not turn around and try to oh I’m going to come back and try to do the same proposal again in a better way. It’s like I’m just bet on myself and then they cool. Now it’s Yeah. It’s a whole different story now. Now they want to purchase these shows that we’ve made and do more in the future. Yeah. So now it’s a bidding war. What is the lesson there? The lesson there is just believe in yourself, man. Before anybody sees the vision, you have to see it. If you don’t see the vision yourself, you’re almost doing yourself a disservice. It has to start with you. And I think most people don’t understand what they have in front of them. Everybody’s like, “Oh, I’m waiting on the big movie. I’m waiting on my big movie break. Once I do it, d I’m going to do this.” Once they give me an opportunity, I’m waiting on my opportunity. [ __ ] I’m going just keep d until they give me I’m keep You don’t even believe in yourself, man. All that money you got last year from this and that and all these things. You didn’t put not one dime into your content. You still shooting the same [ __ ] with the same phone. And that’s cool. Some people are cool with that. You don’t need much. Not saying you need the big productions I have and you don’t. But are you really doubling down and betting on yourself if you’re not investing in your own stuff? And that was a conversation I had to have with myself. And I was like, damn, I’m going to show them not by coming back and doubling back. I’m going to show them by doing it myself and having them wanting what I did in reverse. And maybe they don’t want that. maybe they’ll see what I was capable of doing and then wanting to do other things. But along the way, you’re going to have to have a lot of smart people for sure who by their job title or their status or their LinkedIn bio evidently know much more than you do telling you that you’re wrong, telling you that that idea is not a good one. Yeah. And that is something that I guess you have to like conceptualize in your head like how do I deal with that? This smart person at insert streaming platform is telling me no. Yeah. But I think yes. And they plenty plenty of people have told me no man. Even down to the dudes that I was telling you that were making fun of me at the college saying, “Oh, you don’t even have no shoes to go out with us. Why would we pick you up?” I told those guys on the the second to last week I kind of was going to classes that I was going to try to pursue comedy and they were like, “Bro, come on, man.” They were like, “Yo, you’re funny, bro, but you ain’t you ain’t that funny. Think about what you going up against. you going up against like Kevin Hart or like the Kings of Comedy, Bernie Mack and all these guys. Think about it, bro. What they doing, that’s big. That’s like unfathomable. Like, you can’t even. Till that day, I’ll never forget that conversation cuz it was like a little side conversation with them. Maybe they was like, “Oh, whatever.” They probably might not even remember that conversation. It was just like a whatever conversation to them. Were they right when they said, “By the way, Drew, those legends are up there and you’re down here.” Not a Not a shot. They weren’t right. Not at all. I believed even then I I could already see it happening. Like I had visions of it already being in front of me before I even got a chance to actually do it. I guess also what I’m saying is like they they they could have been theoretically right that there was a long gap. It’s not to say you couldn’t close it. No. No. There’s not to say I couldn’t close it. I agree. Yeah. But what they were saying is almost like as if it wasn’t even possible. Possible. Yeah. Okay. The way they put it was almost like, “Come on, man. That’s so that’s so wild to think.” Do you know why I say this is because there’s so many kids right now that are looking at you or they’re looking at, I don’t know, insert sports athlete or insert podcaster and they’re going, they’re looking up at a mountain top and they’re going objectively that person is better than me. They have the skills. They have the mannerisms. They have the body language down. Like the gap is so big that I won’t even bother. And that’s kind of what I’m pointing at is did you ever feel did you ever know the gap was big? I never looked at it like it was a big gap. I always felt because when what I’m going to tell you the the problem with looking at it like it’s a big gap. Once you process your brain of thinking this is so far unattainable, the journey becomes not even like you’re not even thinking these steps could happen. There has to be steps. So I from me seeing that those guys are great. They’ve all done amazing thing. I look up to all of them. But I know it’s achievable. I I had steps in place that I knew and nobody else could see these steps up to this level of trying to be great. Nobody else sees that. You You’re the only person that is able to see these small steps. So once I started to see the small steps, I’m like, I’m only going up a ladder. I’m not not getting closer. I said I know that this is a far maybe thing but I’m not looking at it like that because every small thing I’m I feel like I’m gaining in on it. So you’re just focused on the small steps. I was focused on the small. I never if you focus on the far goal no you’ll never achieve [ __ ] man. I’m saying it’s funny but it’s the truth. It’s like let’s say you’re like oh I’m going to win an Oscar and you just started as an actor. Yes, you can say, “I want to win an Oscar, but what are the small steps you’re gonna do before achieving?” What are the all these stairs all the way to where the [ __ ] this Oscar is at? If you don’t look at all these stairs, bro, you It’s like looking at a mountain without the ladder. You You got to find a way to climb this [ __ ] If you don’t see, if you don’t have no steps or no ladder or nothing, you don’t have no way to get to it. I agree with what he is saying in a way, but not really. It’s like, I’m going to build my own steps to getting there. Cuz he’s saying, “Don’t even bother.” Yeah. He’s saying, “Don’t even bother.” That is so far out. Come on, man. You’re funny, but you ain’t these dudes is like, he’s looking at him like they’re like a god. Like, this is Don’t look at yourself like that. That’s you. As if they didn’t come from the same thing because those gods, those people you’re looking up to, they when they were 19, 20, Yeah. that they probably You believe that they just were always destined. Exactly. You’re not thinking that. you’re you’re think you see them in this light of like oh my gosh this is that guy but you don’t see the process once you break down what every single great person has done you start to see they all took these steps nothing just was like a overnight thing I do ask myself though because that through that through that journey up the ladder uh sane people it goes back to what I was saying earlier like sane people wouldn’t bo wouldn’t bother because there’s always up the ladder naysayers and there’s easier money Red Lobster. Yes, there’s easier money at this call center over here selling this. You can scam over here. Like there’s a there’s other things going on. And uh there’s easy money everywhere, too. That’s that’s a thing that most people don’t recognize. Some people glorify money than they glorify the actual pursuit of of the greatness. Most people will go and grab the money because the money’s good and they’ll they will dilute the whole brand and wash it away before it was ever even able to start. Mhm. The whole thing. I’ve had opportunities people like, “Oh, come and do my music video, do this.” And when I was on the way up and I kept thinking, I was like, “Damn, if I do all these random music videos, yeah, he got a couple thousand dollars from me. He’s a drug dealer. He got a couple thousand. I go grab this.” But I’m thinking about my image. I’m like, damn, this dude music sucks. If I’m doing this for a quick $2,000 and I’m on the way, I’m on the way. I see where my greatness is going, but if I grab this quick money, this might kind of take me off of my pivot. I want to only do special things. I’m not I maybe I just kind of don’t look at the money right now and I only focus on the the main goal. And that’s when I started to change my way of thinking cuz at first I was grabbing all the money. I’m promoting everybody’s music or video and all this stuff. I was like, “Oh, yeah. I’m promoting your your your merch and all this.” Then I started to see I’m like, “Damn, I’m creating these great things and I’m giving these looks to all these other things and not myself. This is not where I envisioned myself to be at. I want to not care about all this. I want to put all this in the back of my mind. I’m not even thinking about money. I’m thinking about where I’m going.” I was going to say, uh, I was just You look very healthy. look like you’ve been drinking water. Drinking water. No, but you look like you’ve been hit like hitting the gym or lifting weights or something. No, man. I just I I had You’re on set. You’re filming. Yeah. No, I Yeah, we’re filming, but also like I just had to like start eating kind of right, too. Like I I started to care about what I was putting into my body and not just not care. I always will continue to be a heavy set guy. I want to be, you know, one of the heavy set legends of all time, but you ain’t got to be the biggest dude in the [ __ ] business. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to be a healthy, heavy set guy.” And once I set my mind on that, I was like, “All right, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m be a healthy, heavy set dude.” Cuz I I understand what my image is. I I know that’s what I wanted to be. And I’ve always looked up to all the great legends that were like heavy set dudes like Chris Farley, Cedric Entertainer, Jack Black. These are guys that like heavy set guys I look up to. So, I never not wanted to be that. I just knew. I was like, “All right, both both things can be true.” When did you when did you think this? I think like a year ago. He was just like, “All right, every decision doesn’t just got to be drinking every night and every decision don’t got to be just gorging yourself with food just cuz you got money now.” You know, it’s like, okay, you can eat these things and still go hoop at the gym with your boys. Both things can be true. And that’s I was like, okay, a good balance is a healthy lifestyle. I just wanted to have a good balance with each. So, I’m at a weight where I feel like, “All right, I’m comfortable. I’m good. I’m good. You’re looking good.” Yeah. Thank you, man. Appreciate that. What is next for you in your world? What is What is the big goals, the big games? You’re on the set shooting a movie. If we sit down in 5 years time, and it’s been a great 5 years since we last spoke. What happened? I became a superstar. That is my full pursuit right now is now you see, you don’t see the blonde hair. You don’t see the long beard. You don’t see the Drewuski that you once saw, oh, the social media guy. You see the superstar Drewski and what he has evolved to become. That is what my next 5-year goal is and continuously pass that. Like my next 30-year goal is to be the number one comedian of my generation and be the face of comedy for the next 30 years. how Eddie Murphy did or how Kevin Hart did or the list could go on like Will Frell and all these guys that I look up to. I want to have a run like that. My thing is not just doing one thing for one era. I like to watch people and how they evolve and how they have done different things over their career. when you see Eddie go from the raw stuff into the movies where he’s alongside one of the biggest white actors of that time and he leaves SNL and then he goes and does family movies and all this [ __ ] and then he does like Harlem Nights with uh Richard Prior and he does life with Martin Lawrence and they team up and you see good comed I would want to do that same type of stuff for my generation. I want to team up with all the big comedic people of this time. I want to be the face of this generation for comedy. Have you learned to talk big? Because a a lot of people don’t have the guts to say, “I want to be a superstar. I want to be the number one in my generation.” Have you learned to talk like that? Is it a useful way of talking or have you always spoken like that? I’ve always spoke that way. Always. Always. even from early on days like I I I I always wanted to be more than just good and I know I say that a lot but that is a it’s a true thing. I’ve got the video from you 10 years ago and you’re saying I’m going to be on the same level as me now. No, I know 10 years ago but see Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But at the time the the bar was set lower than what I have the bar set now. One of the things that I always wanted to do I wanted to continue to evolve. So certain things that I’ve said then I’ve noticed that I’ve grown since then and I want to break the chains of that. I want to continue to evolve and become this newer person. I want to do the Jamie Fox and doing the Ray biopic and you get an Oscar for that. Oh my god, that’s amazing. But then turn around and do Jango, which is a mixture of comedy and real acting. And then turn around and do a a a funny comedy movie. So, it’s like that’s the type of evolving I’m looking to do in my career where I can continue to just keep transcending and and I didn’t learn to talk that way. That is something that was taught to me from my upbringing. Just being confident in myself and just knowing who you are. And that might have been because my mom was recording me from three, four, five, six, seven years old and continuously on and always trying to have home videos of me dancing and making my family laugh and all this crazy stuff. But yeah, the these are things that I built confidence over time to become, you know, this person. And if you could rewind the clock and say a couple of words to this Drewuski on his uh in that college dorm room on his own, no friends, what does that guy need to hear? I would say to

believe in yourself more than you have ever believed in your entire life. You can be iconic. You are great. You are one of one. and to stay consistent even when the road looks rough and you cannot see the hole at the end of the tunnel because that’s something that most people usually jump off the railroad for. They can’t see the outcome once it gets kind of blurry and it’s foggy and the the nose or like like I said, my car got repossessed. Most people quit. That’s the point. Most people quit. their girl cheats on them or something bad happens when you you you sat on your knees and you prayed all night and you prayed pray oh my God please give me this I’m looking for this I want this to happen for me and boom God starts to shift things sh things things start to shift and then people oh my god this I asked him for this yeah it don’t it’s because he put you through the trial you didn’t even get through the trials and the tribulations yet you just he started to remove things from your life as soon as you asked for it and now you’re questioning why it happened. It’s like this is this is what you essentially wanted. This is what you asked for. And most people, they get off the track before it even starts. They can’t see the outcome, so they get worried and they just jump off. It’s and and that’s what I would tell myself, man. Stay to it. Stick to it. There’s an interesting point here which is um you know a lot of us we talk about never quitting but sometimes you do have to quit right cuz like you quit college I’ve I quit college and and there’s this weird thing because that certain things certain things rappers if you out there and you still rapping past 30 quit get the [ __ ] off that mic and get the hell out that studio. Quit that [ __ ] So you’re right. Don’t Don’t you do

the [ __ ] out of that studio, man. I agree. No, that to some sort is is true. Yes. Yes. And that’s a hell of a way to wrap the entire conversation. But it’s interesting because I think it’s everything’s nuanced and when you’ve got a passion, of course, you pursue it and when especially when there’s evidence. Yeah. But that I wonder in your industry because there’s going to be a lot of people who are pursuing comedy who might not have the and this is the always the like balancing act. We I think you know I started a podcast and it went well. So I’ve got a little bit of like survivorship bias in a way like so the advice I might give to young podcasters is just like well just like start it in your kitchen and then put and then just keep at it for six years and then but there might have been some advantages that I’m not aware of. In your case, I go I look at you as 6 years old, you were funny. Yeah. You were funny at six. I wasn’t funny at six. Yeah. So, if I tried to to be you, Yeah. I would I objectively or if I at least had a harder time if not total failure. So, there’s almost this weird like self-awareness component of knowing thyself. Mhm. Because I might stay in the studio past 50 if you know what I’m saying. Because people like me and you, we of we we we survived. We got there. So, we look back down and just go, you know, con consistency is the number one thing. But somewhere in there, there’s like an element of self-awareness. And you must get it all the time. You must have people roll up to you and just start cracking jokes. Yeah. You have to have a good fake laugh. I will say, holy [ __ ] because it does get bad. People just want to come up to you and say random [ __ ] Yeah. But no, I I do agree with you. You have to have a sense of awareness and your judgment has to be on point because it’s not just about staying consistent. It’s about knowing the feeling of this is the thing. So, it took me some time with that. It did take me time, but I think most people aren’t they’re not okay with sitting down and silence and figuring it out. Mhm. Most people will say, “I’m so confused. I’m I can’t figure out what I want to do. I don’t know what I want to do. I I have all these great things I want to do. I want to do everything. But they don’t never put their phone down. They don’t never try to sit with theirel and figure things out. Nobody tries to remove themsel from all the stuff. They that same person will tell you that go get high or get drunk or go and leave and go talk to somebody else. And maybe it hurts for them to do that. And that’s the thing that people won’t sit with themselves and do. That is one of the main things that shifted my entire life was sitting down in silence and figuring out what is it that I want to do. You go through everything you grew up loving to do. You go through everything that you want to pursue and you figure it out through all that. But until you sit in silence and sit with yourself as the true you, not the you that’s high, not the you that’s drunk, not the you that just wants to go to a friend and talk [ __ ] and go back and forth about, oh, we’re so we want to do all this [ __ ] No, you got to sit with yourself and figure this [ __ ] out. Most people don’t want to do that, and that’s cool, but that is the key to figuring it out by far. Seriously, we have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next not knowing who they’re leaving it for. And the question left for you, if you could make it happen, who would you most want to be like in your next life, man? That’s currently alive. Doesn’t say. Michael Jackson. Why? He’s arguably the most iconic individual of all time. He achieved real greatness. Real greatness of like of all aspects of perfecting a craft. He figured out a way to do it all. He had gangsters dancing in his music video. He changed his persona. He continued to evolve with his career. He went from the kid artist. Most people can’t go from the kid to the real one and still have success. They can’t do that. Most people can never do that, bro. He created a whole new entity, a whole new person, and you forgot that he was the Jackson 5 kid. You This is a whole new guy. I would say it would have had to be him for sure. I watched your uh skit pretending to be his father. Joe Jackson. Life in the 1960s where you could get away with just about anything. How was school, Jack? It was good. I finally started passing my classes again. Jackie got a girlfriend. Ain’t y’all worried about selling records? Calm down, Joseph. You’re scaring the boys. Talking about hit records. Who done made a hit record in this house? I’m tired of dancing. You want me to take this belt off? Fix your face, Michael, before I fix it for you. Joe, can we get ice cream after this?

Yeah, that was some aspects of Joe Jackson that my dad had some personality. Oh [ __ ] Yeah. Oh, damn. Yeah, for real. It wasn’t hard to uh to rip that belt off, man. I’ve seen it before. Yeah. Hell yeah. What can people look forward to from you? Where should we point them? What What are you working? What’s your next big project to do? Next big project uh the Collect and Praise show that’s coming out in November. Me and Mike Eps. It’s a show about mega pastors. I did a mega passion skit. That was huge. Um, and this show is a huge comedic semi-scripted TV show that’ll be coming to Netflix and YouTube. So, so it is it is between both of us and it is honestly one of the biggest culture shifting shows of all time, bro. This [ __ ] is going to be amazing. So, that that’s a big one that’s coming. The catch with Emma Stone, Chris Pine, that’s coming out in May of 2027. That’s a while out. And then just more of Druski, like you’re also just going to see me everywhere. TV commercials, uh, movies that we’re doing oursel. Um, we just got a movie picked up by Netflix. I can’t speak on what it’s called. Um, and yeah, amongst so many other things, man. I’m I’m trying to achieve greatness. So, it’s super inspiring for so many reasons. It’s inspiring because you’re so young, but it’s also it’s inspiring because you’re so willing to vocalize your your focus on being truly great. And I think that asks of everybody listening, how can we be greater, you know, and also considering where you’ve come from and the turbulent childhood you had and the odds were very much stacked against you for num numbers of reasons for you to pass your way through that and climb to the very top of your industry with much more room to continue to grow in the [ __ ] 60 70 years you have probably left on this planet is going to be unbelievable to watch. and you’re a good human being on camera, which I I respect tremendously. So, we’re all going to be cheering for you and thank you so much for being here. It’s been an honor. Great to meet you, too, man. I’m a big fan of your show. We do really well with

You rub it inside the wall of the vagina and just rub it in like you would rub sunscreen on your face. And if you do that twice a week, it makes sex not painful and dry. It helps with arousal and orgasm. It’s literally better than Viagra. And it’s cheap. And I’m telling you all this as a urologist that this cream can also help prevent death from urinary tract infections. But more than 75% of people in large database collections are not getting prescriptions for this. And so women are not getting access to generic medications that could save their lives and also really improve quality of life. And so I am filled with rage because people are limiting their ability to have great sex, great health because they aren’t having access to all the information that they could. For example, women are not orgasming as much as men. The data is very clear there. And women come to see me all the time as I’m a sex doctor and they say I’m broke. You have to fix me. I’m not orgasming during sex. And I think the majority of problem is education. Women think that orgasm comes from penetration, but the clitoris is how most women orgasm. And yet, most women do not know where their clitoris is. And in fact, the word clitoris today in 2026 does not exist in the checklist for what an OBGYn has to learn in their training. And as men, what are we getting wrong in heterosexual relationships when we’re trying to arouse our partners? Well, men are constantly asking about they want their penises bigger, harder, straighter, girthier, lasting longer, but none of that has anything to do with how women experience pleasure and satisfaction in the bedroom. So, that’s why I’m so loud about these things because no one is getting good sex ed because the basic information is not being shared. And we fundamentally don’t give a crap about women’s sexual health, about their menstrual cycles, pregnancy, menopause, hormones, pain with sex, libido. But we actually do have a lot of information that we are not using because everyone forgot to teach your doctor. And I want to focus today’s conversation on women’s health cuz I have so many [music] questions and curiosities. So let’s start with the subject of hormones. This is going to be so [ __ ] good. This is super interesting to me. My team given me this report to show me how many of you that watch the show subscribe. And some of you have told us according to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So favor to ask all of you please could you check right now if you’ve hit the subscribe button. If you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here, we’re approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you’ve hit it. Only thing I’ll ever ask of you, do we have a deal? If you do it, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. I’ve stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the diio and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let’s get on with the show. [music]

Dr. Rachel Rubin, before we started recording, you said a line to me which I found to be very interesting. You said, “I’m filled with rage.” Why are you filled with rage? I am filled with rage because I do think that people are limiting their ability to have great sex, great relationships, and great health because they aren’t having access to all the information that they could. And they’re going to see doctors who actually don’t know how to help them with these problems. And on the subject of women’s health, sexual health, hormones, etc. Can you give me the background context of the disservice that’s been done? And I remember you you were talking previously about how even the most affluent women in the world are being let down. Yeah. I think this is the great equalizer in the fact that no one is getting good medical care here when it comes to hormone therapy, menopause, and sexual health. Melinda Gates just came out and said she had to see three doctors before she got proper hormone therapy prescriptions. Oprah had to see five doctors and still they didn’t understand that her heart palpitations was from pmenopause and menopause. How about Halib Berry, right? who has access to all the doctors in the world and she publicly came out and said she was diagnosed with genital herpes when she really just had the genital urinary syndrome of menopause. The rich people are not getting good information about their bodies, about their hormonal health, about their sexual health. So what are the rest of us doing? We don’t teach it in medical schools. We don’t teach it in residencies. I didn’t learn anything about it. And so we are actually getting worse at this, not better at this. And so I am full of rage because we actually do have a lot of data and we do have a lot of information that we are not using because everyone forgot to teach your doctor. It’s staggering to me that you know those very affluent women that you’ve mentioned still are being let down by a medical system. Um it also sort of begets the question that if men were in that situation, this probably wouldn’t be the case. And that says something about the research and the investment that’s gone into understanding women’s health relative to men’s health. It’s a huge problem. We don’t have enough specialties of medicine that focus on women’s health and we don’t have enough like manpower behind us. We can throw money at this situation, but you need physical human beings to roll up their sleeves and do this work. Like doing research is challenging and you need people to actually disseminate the research and talk about the research and you need the training to happen. So it has to trickle down. So just because someone wrote a paper doesn’t mean it automatically gets downloaded into every doctor’s brains. So someone has to teach someone how to do something. So I I lecture all the time. I do a lot of trying to teach clinicians how to do this. I travel all over to say here’s how to write prescriptions because that’s what it’s going to take. There was so much fear and misinformation 20 years ago about hormone therapy that it is a lost art. Doctors don’t know how to write the prescriptions. Nobody taught them how. So, even if they see headlines and Melinda Gates giving $10 million to the Menopause Society, that’s wonderful, but it doesn’t translate into them knowing how to actually write the prescription, knowing the difference between the type of hormones, knowing the safety, the risk, the benefits because they never had the class. For example, I’m a urologist. If someone comes into me asking about their blood pressure, I’m not going to pretend like I know everything about their blood pressure. I’m going to be very honest that I have the limitations in my training. But for some reason with hormone therapy and women’s health, every doctor you go see has strong opinions and will tell women what they can and cannot have with their bodies even when they don’t know the data. I come from the men’s health world. We don’t tell men you can’t have this, you can’t do this. We we talk about shared decision-making. We talk about risks. We talk about benefits. For some reason, we don’t do that enough in women’s health. I think part of it I don’t think your doctor’s evil. I actually have a a thought about this. So, I think your doctor wasn’t trained. I think they’re trying to save face and I think 10 minutes is impossible to give good medical care. I could never get to know you fully in 10 minutes and really give you great advice on your life that’s customized for you. It’s almost like the difference between a viral clip that you’re going to try to do from this episode and the long- form nuanced conversation that you’re going to have. You love the nuanced conversation. You love spending those those two hours and I think patients want that too. But when they go to the doctor, they’re getting the 10-minute version. And instead of doctors saying, “I don’t know,” they’re sort of saying, “No, no, you can’t have this.” Because it’s easier than than sort of going into that nuance, which can take time. I also think that people are going to their doctor. Say, say you want to talk about your orgasm or your libido. Okay? You go to your gynecologist. Of course, my gynecologist should know everything there is to know about the clitoris, about orgasm, about hormones, about that’s what they do. And the truth is, it’s not what they do. And it’s they were never taught that. And they were never taught about the clitoris. They were the word clitoris today in 2026 does not exist in the checklist for what an OBGYn has to learn in their training. The word doesn’t exist. What is an OBGYn for anyone that doesn’t know? An OBGYn is a doctor who specializes in obstetrics or delivering babies and gynecology. So your gynecologist has never been taught about the clitoris, about the vulva, about sexual health, about sexual pain, about libido, arousal, and orgasm. And so the ones who have taken it on their themselves to get extra training, they’re very few and far between. And so every day, women and men too are going to a doctor expecting answers on a topic that their doctor probably has never gotten training on. You know, I do want to focus today’s conversation on women’s health. I want to preface all of this by saying that I’m going to be as dumb as I am on this subject. If you say something about the vagina and I don’t know what it means, I’m not going to pretend to know. I’m going to ask you what it means. And I say that because I sometimes think with these conversations um the host often is too shy to admit their ignorance and I have lots of ignorance on this but I also have lots of curiosity and I want to fill those gaps and that’s going to require me to be very very dumb. And also my second reason why is because I have so many women in my life. Um, if you just look at my company, my entire executive team in my company are all women. And also, I’ve got my fianceé, my mom, my sister, and understanding the women in my life. Um, one element of understanding them is understanding their health. Women’s health isn’t something that I was ever taught in school. It’s not like a lesson I had. So, I also think this conversation is for men. Every man has very important women in their lives. So, my question to you is if if a woman has clicked on this conversation right now, what are they going to get from it? Let’s start with that first question. So I think it’s really important because as men we expect the women to know. Surely the woman knows about their menstrual cycle, about pregnancy, about postpartum, about menopause, about hormones. Surely my partner knows, you know, or the woman in my life, my mom, my sister, my my daughter, they know all of that so I don’t have to. And the truth is they don’t know. When the women in your life go to their doctor and they’re getting a pelvic exam, say they’re getting a papsmear, a doctor is looking at their their genitalia, putting a a speculum in, going inside the canal and looking around. We put a sheet over you like we are mechanics looking under the hood. So, we put a sheet to keep you comfortable, to keep you modest, but we we hide your genitalia from you, and we don’t teach as we go. So I became famous again because I I when I started my practice, I didn’t buy any fancy uh equipment. I bought two mirrors on Amazon and I give women a mirror and as I’m examining them, I say to them, “This is your labia majora. This is your labia minora. This is your clitoris. This is your urethra, the tube that you pee through, because women can’t see it. You’ve got skin. You’ve got bones. You’ve got muscles. You’ve got nerves. You’ve got, you know, all the organs that are on the inside. And women don’t have access to this language. Certainly men don’t have access to this language. And so it’s that basic ability to give women language. You can learn about your body parts. You can learn how hormones work in your body. And you can learn basic medicine for you that becomes important for how you advocate for what you want, what you care about, and who you bring into your medical life. You may have a physical therapist. You may have a mental health person. You may have a primary care, a gynecologist. You may go on Instagram and get great information from people on Instagram. And so that doctor that makes you feel like crap because they they tell you something that you don’t agree with, find a different one, right? You have to advocate for yourself. And I find we are starting to empower women to do that. Um, which is very challenging. What is the most popular question you get asked now that you’ve been on these podcasts and you know you’re out there and you’ve done millions and millions of views all over the place and on clips and so forth. What is the number one most popular question you get asked? I’m asked a lot about hormones. Like people want to know about hormones. People want to know about pain with sex. Yeah. And I think people want to know about libido. I think those are the three I would say most common things that we talk about. So let’s go in that order then. So let’s start with the subject of hormones. What is it about hormones that people are so desperate to understand. So hormones are fascinating because we forgot to teach doctors anything about hormones. Uh and what we have taught about them. They think it’s dangerous. They think they’re harmful. They think that, you know, it’s it’s almost like this thing that is natural in your body is somehow dangerous once you get over a certain age. And that is all politics and bad interpretation of science. I’ve got this graph here which um shows female testosterone levels by age. And again, as someone that um has started to understand more about female hormones, I was quite surprised because you think of testosterone as a male hormone. Yeah. So that’s the biggest misconception is that women don’t make testosterone. Testosterone is just a hormone. It’s not a male hormone, a female. It’s just a hormone. It’s also not a menopausal hormone. We think of menopause as estrogen starts to drop, right? So menopause is a castration event. If I cut your testicles off right now, you would have hot flashes, night sweats, osteoporosis, depression, low libido, erectile dysfunction, metabolic syndrome. Your weight would go up and you would be generally pretty unhappy. It’s a big deal when we castrate people. And yet we don’t do it for men regularly unless there’s a very significant medical reason to do so. And yet every woman over the age of 50, her estrogen goes to essentially zero. And that affects bone health. It affects the brain. It affects the heart. It affects sexual health. It affects UTI start to go up. And so it’s a whole body event that happens. Now testosterone is really interesting because it actually isn’t at menopause that you lose testosterone. It happens in your 30s. So if you look at this graph, right, you can see testosterone starts to precipitously drop in your 30s. So what do we see clinically? Sometimes nothing. But we have a lot of people who will start in their 30s, mid-30s, late 30s, start to say, “Ooh, my libido is not as high as it used to be. Huh, my orgasm takes a little bit longer. I don’t feel as aroused. My engorgment is not the same. My lubrication engorgment of the clitoris, it’s the same as an erection, right? So the clitoris and the penis are the same. They get hard with blood flow. And so this happens in your 30s and no one’s paying attention because if you look at the graphs that we are taught in med school, they look more like this. So the books all talk about estrogen and progesterone, they don’t talk about testosterone very often. And there’s also a lot of things we do to worsen this problem. When you play with hormones, there are consequences, sometimes good and sometimes bad, because we do so much to mess with our hormone levels. Again, birth control pills, the way that they work is changing hormone levels. um medications for acne, medications for hair loss that people are using can affect your testosterone levels. So birth control is wonderful, but there are side effects to birth controls just like there’s side effects to any medication. And so one of the side effects is it lowers testosterone. And so that can cause low libido pain with sex in a small subset of people who take it. So, if you’re someone who does have side effects, then it’s worth having conversations of different forms of birth control, which may not lower your testosterone as much. Does that does that make sense? It does make sense. And it’s um it’s interesting. My my partner’s talked about this before. Um my fianceé, she was on birth control for a long time, and she also had concurrently libido problems. Now, we don’t know whether it was the birth control, whether it was something else, but when she came off the birth control pills, her libido challenges also evaporated. So, can I explain? Cuz I think again, knowing the basics and the fundamentals give women and men access to the information so they can make choices with what they want to do with it. Okay. So, how do birth control pills work? Um, when you take a combined birth control pill, it has a fake amount of estrogen and a fake amount of progesterine in it so high that it tricks your body into not ovulating. So, when you have so much hormone around, your body says, “Oh, I don’t need to make my own because there’s plenty around.” And so, the ovaries shut down. So, your ovaries are no longer making their own hormones. Because, and this is happens to men, too, when you take high doses of testosterone, you become infertile because your testicles say, “Oh, I don’t need to produce sperm right now because there’s plenty of testosterone around.” And so birth control causes your ovaries to just stay quiet. They shut down for a bit, but your ovary does three things. It does estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. It doesn’t add back testosterone. So, her experience possibly was because she wasn’t making her own testosterone. And once she went off that birth control, her ovaries woke back up and make estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, which to you equaled more pleasure. Now, because we focus on the psychosocial, I’ll have a lot of people saying, “No, no, no. It’s all communication and and all of that is important, don’t get me wrong, but the biology matters, too. And we know there is a biological basis to sexual health for everybody. I was just looking at some data and it said that in some studies up to 27% of people on birth control report a decrease in their libido/ sex drive. Yeah. Which is shocking cuz you know it varies in these studies from 1 to seven people to one to that’s almost like one one in three people are experiencing it. How does one navigate that? You know, cuz birth control has tremendous um upsides. So, how do you navigate that? I think that everything that we do, there’s the risk of doing something and the risk of not doing something. No drug is going to be without possible side effects. And so, that’s where it becomes important to know what are the non-negotiables. Anti-depressants is a perfect example. We know that they can help people, right? a lot of people. But we know there are sexual side effects like low libido, delayed orgasm, and so it has to do with informed consent, which means I Stephen, if I’m going to give you a medicine, I want you to know that there is the common side effects, the less common side effects, and then the disastrous side effects. That’s why on the commercials they talk about all the disastrous side effects, but often they don’t even research the sexual side effects. So, for example, GLP1s. Okay, what’s a GLP-1? Yep. The GLP ones are the weight loss drugs that everybody’s talking about. Ozmpic, Mangaro, all the all the celebrities are on these injections that are making them lose tons of weight. We are starting to look at these drugs in women, but they’re not nobody’s looking at it for sexual health. Everyone’s looking at it for can you get pregnant, reproductive health. There is not a single published paper on sexual health side effects for women. So, we did a survey, it’s not published yet, but we presented it at a conference, at a medical conference. We uh surveyed a thousand women on online who have taken these medications and about 25% report sexual side effects from these medications. Again, that’s not to say the medicines are good or bad, right or wrong, but there are side effects. Now, of those 25%, about 50% of those people said it lowered their sexual function, whether it’s libido, arousal, and orgasm. And about 25% said it made it better. So carrying on this track about women’s um hormone levels through time and through age and through life phases, what else do I need to know or understand about how important testosterone is? So we know we have global consensus actually that testosterone helps for libido in post-menopausal women. Okay. Now there is also data in pmenopausal women as well and that is clear data. It helps with libido but it also helps with arousal. It helps with orgasm and satisfaction. It can also help with body image, which is like a cool a really cool thing. In my clinic, I use FDA approved testosterone for men, and I give it to them in doses appropriate, like onetenth the dose for a man. I give it to uh my female patients, and I see that over the 3 to 6 months of taking it, they get this um it clicks. Now, does that mean every woman on earth needs it? No. We’re not there yet. But if you want it and you want to try it and you’re curious about it, then you should have access to physicians who understand how this works and they know how to write the damn prescription. There’s five life stages on here. We have puberty, your fertile years, permenopause, menopause, and then postmenopause. When you think about a woman’s hormonal journey through these different life stages, what is the sort of advice you would give them to make sure they’re hormonally healthy across every life stage? What are like the basics? what are the tactics, strategies, medications um that they should be thinking about? And I say this because I’ve got women women in my life at every stage in this life phase at the moment. I’ve got, you know, I’ve got my nieces in the sort of puberty era. I’ve got my my fiance in the fertile years. I’ve got my mom and grandparents, etc. in the per and postmenopause years as well. Yeah. So, if you look at your nieces, for example, when they were babies compared to now, there are changes happening. their bodies are transforming because they’re getting a surge of hormones in their body and that’s estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone. They’re cycling, which means they’re getting periods. So, let’s talk about the menstrual cycle for a second. I think it’s helpful. So, when women have their period, they bleed for a few days, right? And that’s when their hormones, their estrogen and their progesterone is at its lowest. Okay? Okay. So, hormones are at their lowest and then the hormones start to increase. Your estrogen starts to go up. You don’t make progesterone yet. In the beginning, your estrogen starts to go up and it make there there’s a a follicle in your ovary which has an egg, right? It’s going to pop out an egg. Ovulation is when the egg pops out. So, you get this big surge of estrogen and then when the egg pops out of the ovary, right? That’s what’s going to make a baby if it gets fertilized. There is a shell of the egg, right? The egg has a shell which makes progesterone. So, the second half of the cycle, there’s progesterone around. Okay? First half of the cycle, no progesterone. M and so that second half of the cycle the shell has making progesterone and then when you don’t have fertilization the shell starts to break down and that natural breakdown is a drop in progesterone which causes the lining of the uterus to shed and you get a period again. And so it’s estrogen goes high in the beginning and then pops out an egg. Progesterone gets high in the second half. Then they both fall and you have a period. And so the hormones being low in the beginning estrogen is not zero. It’s about 50. Okay. So, when we talk about numbers, if you get your your hormones checked, if they’re at their low, it’s like 50. But when you ovulate, your estrogen may be 150, 200, 300. And then when you’re pregnant, your estrogen may be as high as 3,000 or higher, right? It’s very many thousands. And so, these hormones have actions in our bodies. And so, the reason it’s important is because when we give back hormone therapy, well, are we giving back 10,000 like pregnancy? No. we’re giving back to be like 50, 60, 70, the way that you are early in your cycle kind of a thing. Now, testosterone is not even on this graph that everybody gets taught of estrogen then progesterone, but we do know testosterone is pretty stable through the cycle, although we do believe it peaks during ovulation, which makes sense cuz you want to have a baby, right? So, evolution says, okay, you need to be horny around the time that you are going to ovulate and so your testosterone starts to go up. Now, it’s really important because you’re probably not having a conversation with your nieces about their menstrual cycles, but it’s a problem because no one’s talking about it if they’re painful, if they’re abnormal, if they’re um we don’t have a lot of conversations around what is a normal amount of bleeding. We have so many people who have problems, whether it’s PCOS, which is now called PMOS, which is a metabolic issue that cause you to have irregular periods. There’s endometriosis, where you have painful periods. There are so many medications we give to people that can alter their hormonal health and and sexual health for that matter. And then it all starts to get even more chaotic in pmenopause which is again age 35 to 45. If menopause we say is 45 to 55 right is normal menopausal age average age is 52 and we think pmenopause is when things start to change for people about 10 and it can be about 10 years that means 35 to 45. So how old are you? I don’t remember. 33 my partner is 33. All right. So 33. So this idea that I’m too young or it’s too early or I’m not there yet. The truth is things do start to change. So what changes for a woman? So it there are so many symptoms to hormonal fluctuations. So for some people it’s temperature changes. For some people it’s fatigue. For some people it’s remembering things. For some people it’s low libido. Some people get dry eyes, itchy ears, burning mouth, joint pain. Some people get irregular periods. Some people get pain with sex. Some people get UTI. I would love to talk about what why hormones are so important for the bladder and UTI prevention. And so there are so many symptoms and everyone says, “Oh, we’re blaming everything on hormones.” And the truth is we haven’t talked about hormones enough to actually start looking at this to figure out what is important and what is hormonally important. So when you start to lose progesterone when you arrive at permenopause, what are the symptoms you feel? Are they different symptoms to decline in estrogen? So, it’s hard to know for sure, but some people think that is the progesterone. So, your sleep starts to get a little crazy, anxiety starts to go up, and so some people will start with progesterone as a support for um you know, sort of pmenopausal hormone therapy. But estrogen can also help with many of those symptoms. So, it’s not a one-sizefits-all of whether we give people everybody gets progesterone or everybody gets estrogen. Sometimes people just get testosterone because remember that falls in your 30s. uh you know so there’s sometimes where we uh do all three and there’s sometimes where we do just one or two. Now it’s a a very evolving conversation because most of the book answers most of the guidelines really talk about menopause and how we treat people in this menopause when you’re flatlined. Remember it’s that castration event where everything’s zero and then we add back hormones. So now we’re starting to talk about perry menopause as a place to to start giving women hormones and that’s a a very important and evolving conversation that is happening. And so this conversation that’s sort of raging on about HRT, about safety, about what age you should take it, who should take it, what form you should take it in, what’s your perspective on that and what do women need to know about that? Yeah. So so it’s important because and what is HRT? Yeah, it’s a great question. So, hormone replacement therapy, which is a term that we used to use for hormones in menopause, um, it has a bunch of different names and everyone tries to change the marketing around it, but hormone therapy in general is this idea of giving back hormones when you have hot flashes, night sweats, osteoporosis, you know, sort of this over 50 crowd that has this declining estrogen and progesterone levels. And so, typically classic hormone therapy is estrogen and progesterone. Now again, taking just estrogen, estrogen grows things. It helps your bone health. It helps your hair, skin, and nails. It helps you not have hot flashes. It helps you sleep. It can also grow the lining of the uterus. And so if it gets thicker, thicker, thicker, there is worry over years that leads to endometrial or uterine cancer. So the endometrium is the lining of the uterus. So here I can Okay, so this is a this is a vagina. And then at the the vagina is like a sock. At the very end of the sock is a tiny hole. And that hole is the the pinpoint opening of the cervix. And that hole, if you go through that tiny tiny hole, it gets to the uterus. And the uterus is a cavity where we hold babies uh where the lining comes out. That’s what period blood is, is the lining of the uterus here, which we call the endometrial lining. So progesterone is very important for this lining here. If the the lining of the uterus gets too thick with just estrogen, that can lead to problems. But if you match it with progesterone, those problems go away. So So if you just gave someone estrogen, then the linings of the uterus would get so thick that that would cause a problem. But if you give it to both hormones together, it sort of balances. It balances them out. And so that’s why you’ll hear hormone therapy talked about estrogen and progesterone, just like the birth control pill your partner was on was an estrogen and a progesterine. There was a combination. Okay, got you. And also the history is kind of important here of why your mothers and grandmothers weren’t given access to this medication and the stigma behind it. In the late 90s, uh, a lot of people were on hormone replacement therapies and they were seeing benefits. They actually were all these observational uh, studies that showed, wow, the heart disease is less and like this isopause during menopause. And a billion dollars went into the NIH to study this in women and they they it was called the women’s health initiative. It was thousands and thousands of people aged 50 to 79. They gave a hormone pill, like a birth control pill almost, to all of these women and they followed them and they stopped the study early in the early 2000s. And they did a press conference. And at this press conference, they said, “We’re shutting down this the study early. Hormone therapy causes cardiovascular disease and breast cancer.” And overnight, a multi-billion dollar industry went to nothing. Everyone was told, “Throw your hormones in the garbage. This is dangerous.” What was crazy is those people who were prescribing hormone therapy were looking around saying, “I don’t understand. My patients aren’t dying of heart disease. They’re not getting extra breast cancers. Like, this doesn’t make any sense.” And when people actually looked at the study, it didn’t say any of those things. It was wild how misinterpreted this study was. In fact, the same uh authors of this study back in the early 2000s, published this year in 2025, actually, that below age 70, that type of hormone therapy, which we don’t really use anymore, has no increased risk of cardiovascular disease or stroke. And yet now you have a generation of doctors who weren’t taught how to do this. Only 1.7% of women have are getting prescriptions for hormone therapy who who should be offered prescriptions. So, it is a disaster. only 1.7% only 1.7%. Oh, really? Wow. And so hormone therapy is not something that I’m saying every woman must have, but every woman should have access to the toolbox. I like to think about hormone therapy is really four buckets that we talk about. Hormone therapy is whole body estrogen which helps with hot flashes, night sweats, uh uh bone loss, progesterone, whole body progesterone therapy, which protects the uterus and is this yin-yang, especially if you have a uterus, but it helps with sleep and it can help with anxiety reduction in many of our patients. Not everybody, but a lot of them. The third thing is testosterone, which we talked about, which can help with libido. Um, that’s what we have the most evidence for. And then the fourth thing is vaginal hormones. Now, vaginal hormones are micro doses of uh estrogen or what we call DHEA vaginally that supports the bladder and the vagina. So, it helps with pain with sex, dryness, urinary frequency, urinary urgency, leakage, and it prevents urinary tract infections massively. It is safe for your great-g grandandmother in the nursing home. It is safe for your uh wife who’s breastfeeding. So if you know anyone in your life who is a woman who’s having urinary frequency, urgency, leakage, urinary tract infections, pain with sex, dryness, there is a magical solution that is safe for everybody on earth um that is micro doing these hormones vaginally at any age at any age at all. In fact, even more important for people who are older because they are dying of urinary tract infection. It’s it’s one thing when a young person gets a urinary tract infection and they go to the urgent care and they get an antibiotic even they deserve prevention and this is prevents uh those problems in those people too. Again what is this? So vaginal hormones. So this is a really important topic. It’s called genital urinary syndrome of menopause or GSM. Say GSM loudly for your listeners. GSM. GSM. Genital urinary syndrome of menopause. Genital urinary syndrome of menopause. But really, it’s kind of a dumb name because it’s any hormonal changes in your body can affect the bladder and the genitals. So, UTI, what is a UTI and what’s what’s causing a UTI? Urinary tract infection. Yeah, very good. So, urinary tract infections are when there is bacteria in the bladder and it can be a lot of of bad bacteria that can grow and create inflammation. It causes bladder pain, pain with urination. It feels like razor blades. Um, but it can also go into your bloodstream and cause fevers and chills. It can cause kidney infections. It can cause something called eurospsis where you have to go to the intensive care unit and need antibiotics through an IV and it can kill you if you have an infection go through your whole body. And this gets worse and worse as you get older. Why is there a link between hormones and UTI? Yeah. Because what happens is the vagina is supposed to be acidic and healthy and hormones help keep it. It is the hormones, the estrogen and the testosterone that keep healthy bacteria growing in the vagina and suppress or lower the bad bacteria. So, there really is a vagina microbiome. There is. And there’s there’s no probiotic on earth that is proven to do what the vagina needs quite like hormones. Hormones make the tissue go from uh not acidic to quite acidic. And it is that acidic environment that protects it from infection. And so pmenopause and menopause or other situations happen and it changes that microbiome. So the good bacteria are are lower and the bad bacteria start to grow which can increase your risk of infections. And sex, right? Sex is a contact sport. So uh you’re bringing the outside environment into the inside environment. Uh ejaculate is also not acidic and that can change the microbiome as well. And so we know women who are sexually active also have an increased risk of urinary tract infections. So again, like a plant needing water, vaginal hormones help support the vagina and the bladder to maintain that acidic environment. And research has been clear since the 1990s that using vaginal hormones prevent UTI, urinary tract infections by more than half. So what have we got here in front of me? All right, so there’s a bunch of different ways you can give yourself vaginal hormones. The most common way is a cream. Now, this cream is uh $14 on Mark Cuban’s pharmacy, and it lasts about 2 and 1/2 months. Now, this cream that comes with an applicator, which you don’t ever have to use if you don’t want to, but what you can do is you want to use 1 g of this cream. So, this amount is 1 g of this cream. We’ll put it on this paper here to show you. 1 g of this cream rubbed into the vagina. So you take it, you can take it on your fingers and rub it into the walls like you, if you put sunscreen on your face, you don’t blob it on and walk out the door. You rub it in so it doesn’t look all white and filmy. So you put it in, you take it with your finger and you put it in the vagina and you rub it into the walls of the vagina and you can rub it on the outer this area as well at the opening. Let me try. Look, I don’t have a vagina, but Oh my gosh. So you take the this what is this cream called? It’s estradiol cream. Estradile. Take it on your finger. You rub it inside the walls of the vagina. And just rub it in like you would rub sunscreen on your face. And if you do that twice a week, you can prevent death from urinary tract infections. You can help with urinary frequency, urinary urgency, leakage. You make sex not painful and dry. It helps with arousal and orgasm. It’s literally better than Viagra. And this is over the counter in the UK. In the United States, you need a prescription. Um, but it’s as little as $14. If you use Mark Cuban’s online website, it should be covered by your insurance. Now, some women hate creams and so we have things that are not as messy as what you’re showing right there. And we have little tablet inserts. So, here is a it comes with an applicator. And so, what a woman does is put this in her vagina and press a button and this little tablet. So, instead of a cream, you could just put this little tablet in twice a week and that does the same thing as the cream. Oh, okay. Okay. So, it’s a little less messy. So, people tend to like the creams better. Now, if you really don’t want to do anything twice a week, this is a ring that goes in the vagina and it can stay in there for 3 months. Now, this it’s sort of like a tampon. You can kind of put it in the vagina. And the vagina does not feel it, by the way. The vagina is not very sensitive in terms of uh nerve endings. And so, when women put tampons in, they don’t feel them. When you put this ring in that you wouldn’t feel it either, and it would stay in for 3 months at a time. It’s quite quite quite a big ring. vagina can hold like a bowling ball of a baby can come out of a vagina. So, it can actually uh withstand quite a lot of volume. And there’s a chemical inside this ring that’s going to diffuse estradile that slowly diffuses estrogen for the ring. So, that’s nice for women who have dementia, who have very bad dexterity with their fingers, they’re in a nursing home, uh for someone who’s on the go and they can’t remember something twice a week. So, our ADHD patients like things like that. And so, there’s just different, it’s all the same stuff, it’s just in different formulations. Now the one different one this is something called DHEA. Now DHEA is the precursor hormone to estrogen and testosterone. And remember I said the vulva, the vagina, the bladder need testosterone too. It so this is a a chemical that converts into estrogen and testosterone. And so DHEA is a supplement you can buy, you know, sort of in the in the supplement aisle, but if you put it locally in the vagina, this is an FDA approved product. It’s called intraosa. And if you just put this in the vagina, uh uh it’s meant for every night, but you can do it twice a week. Um it it melts at bedtime when you wake up and it prevents UTI. It helps with pain with sex. And just to be clear again, so you think a lot of people should be taking these these things. I believe it’s preventative. So I think and we wrote guidelines uh by the American Neurologic Association uh why this is so important, how to do it. So many women have symptoms of urinary frequency, urgency, leakage, uh urinary tract infections, pain with sex, dryness, and this is a safe option for all of those women. Does that make sense? It does make sense. And one of the things that doctors sometimes tell their patients to take to help with the UTI situation is that okay, this is a disaster. So, women get urinary tract infections a lot. And so, what do we tell women? pee after sex, wipe from front to back. Like that’s not data driven, by the way. That’s all a folk folktale. Like that’s that’s folklore. There is some data that cranberry pills can help uh with preventing UTI, but the uh amount that you’d have to drink is uh very sugary and diabetes inducing and it wouldn’t taste that good. And so they do make pills, but it’s a small these things are small things that help. Drinking lots of water can help. But vaginal hormones, vaginal estrogen or vaginal DHEA, which we just showed a bunch of, prevent UTI by more than half. They don’t just prevent UTI, they help with urinary frequency, urgency, leakage, pain with sex. They help your arousal. They help your orgasm. And they’re safe for every age with every medical problem. If you’ve had cancer, blood clot, stroke, any problems at all, vaginal hormones are safe and could save your life. And so this is such an important topic. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you’re already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you’re not yet. And if you’re not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you’re someone that watches our show, but you haven’t yet hit that button. Thank you so much. My my partner’s 33 years old now. She’s not yet in the permenopause stage. At what point does someone start taking HRT? Is it when they are in the menopause stage, which is defined as 12 consecutive months without your period? Is it when they’re post-menopausal? Is it in permenopause? Yeah, this is a very important question cuz it’s not a one-sizefits-all. At this age, start this medicine. It’s really when people start having symptoms. And so, I’ll give you an example. So, say your partner um gets pregnant, okay? You decide to have a baby. Her estrogen is going to go to 10,000 uh for 9 months. It’s going to be super super high. and the day she gives birth, it’s going to crash to zero. So, you go from super high hormones down to zero. And if she chooses to breastfeed or pump or or do any of that, they stay extremely low in the menopausal range for the entire time you’re breastfeeding. So, when you are breastfeeding or pumping or doing anything uh and your periods don’t come back, you’re basically menopausal. And what are the symptoms then? So just had a baby, your breastfeeding. She may have hot flashes. She may have night sweats. She may, you know, have urinary frequency, urgency, leakage. There’s all sorts of symptoms that come come with changes as well. Lido definitely changes. Pain with sex goes up. And so we call this the genital urinary syndrome of lactation. And so there’s all sorts of hormonal changes that can happen at that time. So we see a big need for vaginal hormones in this patient population. It’s safe for the breast milk. It’s safe for the baby. It doesn’t cause any problems, but it can really help with all of those uh symptoms. Now, say she is done having babies and now she’s 38, 39, 40 and she is doing fine and she has regular periods and she has no symptoms and no problems. She may not need anything at all. But what if she starts getting a lot of urinary tract infections or having dry, scratchy, painful sex or her libido just doesn’t feel it sort of feels like back when it did on birth control pills? that may be an indication where she may benefit from whether it’s testosterone or vaginal hormones or some kind of combination. What if she’s 43 and her sleep starts to get really bad and that may be an indication for progesterone? I have a patient who was uh uh having hot flashes and night sweats and brain fog and fatigue. I see her and she says, “I will not take hormone therapy. It’s not safe. My mother told me it causes cancer. At no point am I going to do this.” I said, “Okay.” We had a long conversation. I shared data and papers and we did a shared dis we just worked with each other and I wasn’t pushing anything on her but ultimately she started with vaginal hormones. Her orgasms come back. Her arousal gets back and she comes back to see me and says, “Ruben, what are you doing here? I’m feeling much better. Like this is you’ve given me my life again. I’m not uh peeing in the middle of the night, so I’m sleeping better. I don’t have as much dryness. Sex is no longer painful. I haven’t had a UTI in months. What else do you got?” Well, she was still suffering with hot flashes and night sweats. She had a a bone density scan which showed osteopenia. Uh, and she was worried about osteoporosis cuz her mother died of osteoporosis fractures. Well, if she did whole body estrogen, she would prevent her risk of a of a fracture. She would make her hot flashes and night sweats go away, which would have benefit on how she sleeps and ultimately probably benefit on her whole vascular system. And so, she started estrogen and because she had a uterus, she took progesterone at night. and she said, “Well, my libido is still a bit low.” We looked at her testosterone. We said, “Testosterone will likely help with your libido, but it’s going to take four to six months.” So, four to six months, she comes back to see me. Not only is her libido so much better, but she feels that she has the cognitive ability to enroll in law school. Like, this woman literally decides that she wants to change the trajectory of her career and enrolls in law school. And her brain is working in like ways she hasn’t seen it in so long. and she is competing against 22 year olds in law school. And when I tell you she finished at the top of her class, she finished at the top of her class, whereas she said, “I would have never even considered this opportunity uh if I hadn’t been doing all of these things.” So it and what age is she? She’s in now she’s in her 60s. And so that’s why I’m so loud about these things because what other organ in medicine do we let fail completely before we like do something about it? We don’t make you go blind completely before we give you eyeglasses. We don’t let your kidneys run out completely before we give you dialysis or medications to help your kidneys along. We don’t let you go into full liver failure before you get the transplant. Like this idea of your ovaries have to fail and you have to suffer for 12 months before someone intervenes is insanity. But for some women they do start HRT during the permenopausal phase and for some they start it during menopausal postmenopausal stage. Correct. And it’s all depending on how you’re feeling. It’s all depending on how you’re feeling and what you want, what your objectives are, okay? [clears throat] But it’s never too early to start necessarily. Not necessarily. Like, so again, we give birth control all the time to people in their reproductive years. Birth control is just highdosese fake hormone therapy, right? So we’re giving women hormone therapy as young as in their teens, right? To help with different things and birth control. But so so if you think of it as all of it is some form of hormone therapy, it just depends. Are we using the natural form of hormone therapy? Are we using the synthetic hormone hormone therapy? We have to get comfortable with hormones at all ages. And the thing that we see most commonly, Stephen, is sort of what we call NFLM, not feeling like myself. I love that statement because women are coming to the doctor every day saying, “Nm, I’m not feeling like myself.” And they’re getting dismissed. And the truth is there are often hormonal reasons why you may not be feeling like yourself. So for some people it might be muscularkeeletal pain. So we see plantar fasciitis and frozen shoulder and we think of as those having underlying hormonal causes as well. So there’s published data that less than 9% of Medicare patients are getting prescriptions for this. Uh more than 75% of people in large database uh collections are not getting prescriptions for this. And so women are not getting access to generic medications that could save their lives and also really improve quality of life. I don’t know about you, but dryness. People are not having sex anymore because of the pain, the dryness, the irritation when it’s fixable.

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See you there. If you’re going to take tips from anyone on how to stay focused and high energy, let it be from the greatest pound-for-pound fighter of all time, the guy they call Johnny Bones Jones. John is a coowner of our show sponsor Ketone IQ alongside myself. And when you hear why, it probably makes a lot of sense to you. When he’s training or fighting, he needs highquality, steady, laser-like focus without the crash. And ketones give him exactly that. And unlike caffeine, ketones don’t stimulate your brain. They fuel it. So, your brain actually loves ketones because it runs on them much more efficiently than anything else. And right now, Keton IQ is giving away oneofa-kind pair signed MMA gloves from Jon Jones himself and the upcoming gold medal wrestler he’s coaching called Gable Stevenson. They are very, very rare. And if you want your shot at winning them, go to ketone.com/stephven to enter to win. No purchase necessary. Terms and conditions apply, and you’ll also get 30% off your first subscription order, exclusive Ketone IQ merch, and of course, your shot at these signed gloves. You said um earlier that one of the questions people come to you about is pain during sex. Why are are women experiencing pain during sex? What is what what is going on there physiologically? Yeah, pain with sex is actually not rare at all. There are some published reports that up to 75% of women will say at some point in their life sex is painful. So a really dumb question here. Sex is not supposed to be painful. Sex is not supposed to be painful. If sex is painful, you need to figure out why it’s You deserve a diagnosis. You deserve an answer. You deserve to understand exactly why sex is painful. You could have a problem with the tissue. So a you could have a skin problem which as we know the tissue of the vulva is very hormonally sensitive. So that tissue could be impacted by hormones. It’s skin. So people can get eczema. They can get uh autoimmune skin condition. So you may have a skin condition. You may have problem with your muscles. So remember the vagina and the vulva are surrounded by these big pelvic floor muscles. And just like you can get tight muscles in your neck uh and in your back, you can get tight muscles in your pelvis. We also know there’s nerves that are involved in this area. So if you have a back problem and you feel it running down your leg, right, that’s called sciatica or sciatica pain. You can have a back problem that actually causes you to have pelvic pain. So we see people with penis pain or vulva pain uh because of problems in their spines. If you have scar tissue inside your body from endometriosis that’s pushing and scarring this tissue from the inside, you may have pain with sex. And so there are many different things that can cause pain with sex. But remember I said your OB/GYN got almost no training in this. So if I’m currently experiencing pain during sex as a woman, what advice would you give them? What should they do? Yeah. So I would uh really try to see someone who has an active interest in this. see a specialized gynecologist or a specialized urologist who has an interest in pelvic pain and you may need a couple of opinions. Just like if you go to the first plumber, you want to get a couple quotes on, well, who’s going to do the best job. It’s okay to see a few different people for this problem. And in terms of prevalence, up to 75% of women, as you say, will experience painful intercourse at some point in their lives. Between 10 and 20% of US women suffer from persistent chronic pain during sex. And during menopause, it climbs drastically um with estimates ranging to 20 to almost half of women having pain during sex. And that probably doesn’t even add to the people who stopped having sex because either they don’t have a partner or because they it’s too painful to even consider it. And I think it’s important to know that hormones play a fundamental role here. Not a like not it’s not the whole story, but it’s a huge part of it. in different seasons of life, if um if a woman wanted to have the best sex of her life, what are the fundamental things you’d aim at to make sure she could have the best sex of her life? Yeah. So, as a you know, this is Diary of a CEO. So, I love how you you love the health topics, but obviously financial literacy is really important to for you to help people because for some reason people stink about talking about money and talking about sex, and yet we all want to be really great at both, right? We all want a lot of money and we all want to have great sex. And yet people stink at talking about it. They they don’t know the fundamentals. They don’t know the basics. And so I actually use financial literacy sort of as a as a framework in how we talk about good sex. And so you’ve got your savings account and your c you know your your checking account. Those are the those are the basics. Everyone needs money in their checking and savings account, right? That’s what everybody needs. So that’s going to be your education, your nutrition, your exercise, your sleep, your your your communication, uh safety, like are you safe in your relationship? Like the basics, are you doing the basic things you need to have great sex? You know, communication is probably the most important thing. Can you talk about it? Can you use words? Um can you explore? Can you ask questions? So, so that’s really important for great sex. Then there’s the 401k, right? The 401k is something that we all want and should have access to, right? It’s important for compounding growth and long-term support of your financial life. Think about hormones. Think about going to a doctor who’s going to make sure that everything is optimized the way that it should be. Your your pelvic muscles are in good condition, your mental health is in good, you know, do you have a do you need a sex therapist? Do you uh want to bring toys into the bedroom and devices to have even more fun? That’s kind of like the really important not everybody has access to it. Not everyone’s going to do it, but I think it’s really really important for everyone to talk about. Then there’s like crypto. Okay, so crypto. That’s not to say don’t do crypto, but like don’t put all your money in crypto. Don’t do everything and don’t start with crypto. So that’s going to be when you’re watching, you’re scrolling Instagram and you see these ads for do this injection, do this, you know, cosmetic procedure, do this uh supplement that’s going to make sex great again. Uh, the truth is if it looks too good to be true on TV and in the ads, like it probably isn’t going to fix what if if other things are are are struggling. So, I think great sex is within everybody’s reach, but I think your great sex is different than other people’s great sex. So, let’s go through these slowly one at a time. I kind of broke it down into three categories, which is there’s biological and physical blockers to great sex, which are some of the things we’ve talked about, um, hormone crashes, etc. You mentioned the pelvic floor. How is an issue with your pelvic floor going to impact your sex? And what is the pelvic floor? Why would you have an issue with it? What do you see in patients? Yeah. So, everyone who has a pelvis has a pelvic floor. So, men have a pelvic floor, women have a pelvic floor. It just means the bones of your pelvis. So, your hips, right, and your pelvis bone, your butt bones, all of this is this big bony structure that holds all of your organs in place. And your genitals are attached uh to this pelvic floor. And the pelvic floor is surrounded by thick big muscles. So if we look at the inside of the pelvic floor, it’s these big thick muscles. And muscles are uh just like your biceps, right? Like muscles are something that contract and relax. And there can be problems with muscles, right? Just like if you work out too much and you’ve got a sore trap and you got to go get it massaged and and or you got to do physical therapy cuz your shoulder is hurting. A lot can go wrong with the pelvic floor. And so sex is a contact sport. So if you’re going to get erections, if you’re going to have an orgasm, if you’re going to allow for penetration to happen, you have to have healthy muscles because you’re asking your muscles to contract and relax in a sexual way. And so as blood is flowing through the area, blood is going to engorg the clitoris and it’s going to get bigger and erect. It’s going to engorg the penis. It’s going to get bigger and erect. These muscles are going to have to relax so that you can have penetration because if they’re too tight, tight muscles are painful. They’re sore. They’re they’re they burn. And so penetration can happen if you’re relaxed. But then orgasm is a series of muscle contractions, which equates to pleasure and release, which is all has to do with the nerves and the muscles. Does does that make sense? I’m trying to understand how the pelvic floor would would give me bad sex, and how I would know if the pelvic floor is the reason I’m currently having bad sex. Yeah. So if if sex hurts, so if the muscles are too tight, and you can’t have penetration, but you want it, that can be bad sex. If orgasm is painful, weak, or impossible, it could have to do with the muscles. It’s not always the muscles, but it could have to do with the muscles of the pelvic floor. If arousal, your ability to engorg lubricate are diminished or less, that could be due to pelvic floor because you’re not getting enough blood flow to the area. And so there’s multiple different ways. And if you’re not feeling your genitals, you watch something sexy on TV and then you feel it in your genitals or you see someone attractive walking down the street, you feel it in your genitals. There’s this brain genital connection and sometimes that you so you have to have perfect wiring and of your nerves, your hormones and your muscles. And so that could be affected by your pelvic floor. Now we do a lot to mess up our pelvic floor by the way. People do surgery, people have babies, uh people um muscle uh health changes for many reasons. And so when you have problems, there may be biological reasons to these problems. Should we be going to the gym and like doing pelvic floor exercises to improve our sex lives? You typically don’t do them at the gym. Um there are typically trained physical therapists who help you know what’s going on with your pelvic floor. So for some people it’s to strengthen it and to do like almost contractions. We call them Keele exercises, but for many people it’s just learn the coordination. And you can go and get an exam. You can go get an exam and work with a pelvic floor physical therapist. So, some women uh because we sometimes have them write in with questions talk about the fact that they they’re not having orgasms. Is that normal or is that not normal as it relates to um sexual contact? So, about 20% of women will say that they can’t have an orgasm. And the real question I’m I am fascinated by this data because not 20 20% of men do not have orgasm problems. And so again, if we go back to the financial uh literacy equation, we have a pay gap in this country, right? Women are not paid as much as men. Well, women are not orgasming as much as men. And so the data is very clear there. And I think the majority of problem is education. Women think that orgasm comes from penetration. Surely if the in-n-out penetration is happening, I should be able to have an orgasm. And the truth is that’s not how most women orgasm. Some can, but the reason why women don’t orgasm from penetration is cuz the clitoris is up here. So the clitoris is how women orgasm, right? Penetration is not how most women orgasm. Just like if you rub your thigh over and over again, you’re not going to have an orgasm. Now, you could keep rubbing your thigh for the whole duration of this podcast. You still won’t have an orgasm because it’s close to your penis, but it’s not actually your penis, which is where men have orgasms from. And so the clitoris, if you follow those labia minora, those inner wings, you get to the hood of the clitoris or a foreskin. We call it a prepuse. And that if you pull it back, you see what is the tip of the head of the clitoris, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The clitoris is this huge structure. My necklace is of course a gold clitoris. Um the this a huge structure that goes all the way down to your butt bones. It’s a penis. Under the microscope, it looks like a penis. It is made up of the same tissue as a penis. It works exactly the way a penis does. It’s just that we have a whole field of medicine devoted to the male penis. I’m a urologist and no one is even taught how to examine a clitoris or where it is. So, if the penis is going in here or a toy or a finger or a device that is not activating the the clitoris, which is a mostly internal structure, there’s something called a clitoral adion which people don’t know about as well, which I’ve heard you talk about before. Yeah. What is that and how many people suffer with that? Yeah. So, the clitoris has this hood to it. Okay. And about 23% of the time, the hood can get stuck to the head. So, for example, I’m wearing a sleeve here. So, you should be able to pull back the hood of the clitoris to see the whole head. It looks like a mushroom. You know how penises have like that almost like a mushroom rim rim around it? So, the clitoris should have that too, but about 23% of the time it gets stuck. So, you actually cannot see the full head of the clitoris. It’s called a clitoreral adhesion. And so you should be able to pull it back, but in about a quarter of the time you cannot. And we published data that if you remove these adhesions in an office-based very simple procedure, we saw improvements in orgasm, arousal, and satisfaction up to 60 to 70%. And so you have So one in five women, yeah, have a clitoreral adesion and when solved it improves their sexual satisfaction by up to 60%. Yes. But no one’s examined any woman in your life, no one has ever examined their clitoris ever. in any exam, in any doctor’s visit, and nobody’s asking women about their orgasm, about their satisfaction where like they come in with pain or they come in with libido issues, but no one is examining this part of the body. And so, it’s this question of is it cuz we haven’t or cuz we shouldn’t. It’s cuz we haven’t. We haven’t. We have never done this before. You pulled up the sex toys there. I know we were talking about orgasm. Yes. So again, when you were talking about orgasm and how women experience pleasure, it’s all buried inside the body. So if your penis was entirely inside your body, say you gained 500 lb, okay? And your p your belly was so big you couldn’t hold on to your penis to to do what it takes to have an or how would you orgasm? uh probably the vibrator industry would be a gajillion dollar industry instead of just a billion-dollar industry because vibration can help activate this blood flow. And so for women, vibration on the outside can be extremely helpful cuz remember the clitoris is kind of around this area. And so by putting vibrators on the outside now inside you can also have pleasure but not everyone experiences pleasure the same way. And so understanding devices and trying different things is really really important. [clears throat] Oh here we go. Okay. So this is vibrating now. So this one this kind of device is interesting because it is a wand that can help just like with trigger points. So if you have pain in in these muscles, this can go inside vibrate to help with engorgment but can also get rid of some of the tension in some of those muscles. As men what are we getting wrong in heterosexual relationships when we’re trying to arouse our partners? um both in the context of using sex toys but also without sex toys. What is it that we just don’t understand? I think that men are constantly asking about they want their penises bigger, harder, straighter, girthier, uh lasting longer. And none of that has anything to do with how women experience pleasure and and satisfaction in the bedroom. And so the question needs to be how do women experience pleasure? What is their anatomy like? How can we activate the clitoris, the arousal response? What are the brain things that we need to do to make women interested, right? What what gets women excited? Because it’s different than what gets men excited. And your part, every partner is different in terms of what gets them excited. And I would love to see more curiosity. I wish everyone was were as curious as you about what do we need to learn about women and how they behave and how they act and what they Yeah. So you need So I’d like to implement it tonight. Communication, right? It’s that question and also understanding that your partner never got told any of these things. And so this is where watching this podcast together could be really helpful to say, did you know that? Was it what do you like? Do you know like can we look at your clitoris together? Like do you know what these body parts are called? Where is it that you experience pleasure? Cuz some people find direct stimulation of their clitoris is too sensitive cuz we know the clitoris has like 10,000 nerve endings. So going directly over the clitoris can sometimes be too much. Some partners love it. Some partners want more stimulation on just the outside here. Some people need vibration. So that’s another big problem. Again, so she’s going to orgasm at some point if this is sufficiently stimulated. If there’s sort of a buildup and release of pleasure, right? That’s orgasm. And again, that is often not happening during penetration. And once she experiences that, what happens immediately after for her? Cuz I know from a man’s perspective, if I orgasm, there’s some kind of like decline in arousal. And I don’t want you to touch it again. That’s very similar in women. Okay. So, it’s the same except women can bounce back faster. Not all of them, but but but women can have multiple orgasms. So, she orgasms. It’s very very sensitive. She doesn’t want me to touch it for a while. Yeah. And then she she potentially could bounce back faster. She could potentially Some people do, some people don’t. But that’s the conversation of is this something that is pleasurable? Is this something to try again? Is multiple orgasms something that you want to have or try to have? When does penetration happen during the dance? Cuz often times men orgasm and then they’re done. They roll over, go to sleep, whatever it is. Is the orgasm happening after your orgasm, before your orgasm? Is it happening before and after your orgasm? Like are there Cuz that could be a nice way to sandwich it of like there is, you know, giving the the sensitive tissue some time to rest. Then your orgasm happens and then you potentially go for round two. So if the sensitive pleasurable part is on the outside here on the clitoris, then what do they get from penetrative sex? If the the sort of main event is here in the clitoris, many times nothing, many times connection, many times uh sort of this need for closeness and pleasure, many times there are women who have extra nerve endings sort of inside the vagina on the top of the vagina in the cervix. So there are women who love penetration, but many women get the main event from the clitoris. And so it’s part of the whole menu as opposed to penetration is the whole story. And I think every woman’s body is different. And so kind of making these broad statements of every partner likes this, but many women are asking for penetration mainly because they’re like, “Okay, that’s when you have your orgasm, it’s done, and then I can go to bed. I can read my book. I can do all these other things.” But the pleasure often comes from that clitoreral stimulation. Now, some women can orgasm from penetr theory. It’s a really interesting theory that maybe your listeners can prove with science or help me prove with science. So, you know how there’s men who premature ejaculate, like who ejaculate very quickly? Yeah. There are men who orgasm in a minute or less. That’s [clears throat] probably like 8% of men. Okay. So, if we think men and women’s bodies are very similar, could we argue that 8% of women will orgasm within a minute or less? Theoretically, it makes sense, right? I think those are the women who orgasm with penetration. They’re so sensitive. Their nerves are so sensitive that penetration is very pleasurable. and then they have this magical orgasm and they do it very quickly. So, it’s good in a it’s often seen as like great in a woman and not great in men. And so, I just have this theory that like there are women who have extra sensitive body parts. So, I mean, one of the things I’ve learned from everything you’ve said is just like how much porn has messed up our perception of sex. I mean WWF has messed up our perception of I don’t know like what people’s bodies like exercise fighting like like it’s all manufactured and it’s all manufactured because that’s the algorithm that has been working to get men excited and it doesn’t like again it’s that question of that curiosity of who’s watching porn? What do people want from porn? What are they getting from porn? cuz it’s not what women want typically and it has really messed up people’s perceptions of what is actually fun and pleasurable for the partner. So seeing that curiosity of like what does my partner actually want? You know, you can have great sex without penetration. And so the question is is what does great sex look like for you and your partner? When I look at a website, I’ve got some data here on a website like Pornhub, which is one of the leading porn websites. It says that roughly 65% of their traffic is men. Independent surveys tracking any regular pornography use find a similar gap. But note that women’s consumption is highly age dependent. Men between the age of 18 and 35, 75 to 9% of them report viewing porn regularly. Whereas women age 18 to 35, only 34% roughly report viewing porn regularly. And if we think about these systems as catering to demand, it means that porn websites are catering to predominantly male demand. And that explains why for most young men, we learn about sex from porn websites, right? And then we assume that’s the the woman looked like she was having fun. Um the man was doing this particular thing. And then we take that into our relationships. And I think this is where the misunderstanding begins. And the women think they’re broken because they’re not having magical orgasms from penetration. and they come to see me all the time and say, “I’m broke and you have to fix me.” I’m not orgasming during sex. They have wildly good orgasms with a vibrator, with a hand, with a a shower head, with whatever it is from on their clitoris, and that’s totally normal, right? And then you show them the body parts. You should This is right. The clitoris and the penis are the same thing. You activate a penis for a man to orgasm. You activate a clitoris for a woman to orgasm. And once you teach them that, it makes perfect sense to them. Like, they were normal the whole time. What do you think of pornography? I actually think pornography is great for relationships potentially. The right porn like look okay let’s look at something like Heated Rivalry. Have you heard of it? No. Okay. Heated Rivalry is an HBO show that came out this year that is about two gay male hockey players. Okay. It’s based on a romance novel book in can from Canada and HBO uh put it out there and it went viral in levels that the world has never seen before and it is about two young men uh who fall in love but there’s a very sexual relationship between them and heterosexual women have watched this 10 times over like they are addicted to this show. It’s all over social media. It’s this huge thing. It’s essentially porn for women, right? It is women who are watching these pornographic uh episodes and it’s really important. They love it. It’s supported. Everyone’s talking about it. So, I don’t think porn in of itself is bad. I think porn we, you know, watching people have sex, watching people fall in love, watching people in romance, people like that. It gets them excited. It gets them aroused. But I think too much if you are watching porn because and not interacting with humans. If you are watching porn all the time, if you need to, if you can only watch porn to have good sex, like then that may not be the best, you know, and healthiest thing to do. I guess the question I was asking is if you’re in a relationship and one partner is using a lot of porn, won’t that kill the sexual desire to be intimate with your partner? It depends. It depends on the relationship and it depends on what each person needs in order to feel supported and connected, right? I don’t think we can say blanketly it’s good or bad, right or wrong. I think if it is good or bad, right or wrong for that couple, then it’s a problem. Cuz there are couples who like to watch porn together. There are couples where oh the maybe someone has a much higher libido than the other person. So they said okay the high libido person can use porn and then once a week we’ll circle together and we’ll have a great experience together because it’s not everyone’s job to meet each other on the libido. The stat that I was looking at was a couple dozen studies including a major meta analysis show a consistent link between solo porn consumption and lower relationship and sexual satisfaction. The erosion of intimacy is usually driven by deception. Finding out a partner is hiding porn uses usually triggers intense feelings of betrayal, rejection, and insecurity. And heavy solo use can desensitize the brain’s reward system, leading to performance anxiety and erectile issues during real life partner sex. It can also create highly unrealistic expectations regarding body types, stamina, and performance, making real sex feel less stimulating. Again, it was that deception. It’s the hiding. if you’re that that ex of yours didn’t tell you what was really going on and so you felt disconnected from that person because you didn’t get that honest truth of what was going on but also the desensitization of it like it’s never going to you know I guess it depends on how you’re using pornography but it depends on how you use it so again that’s the truth yes it’s going to look like train your brain to get pleasure in a certain way and then when you’re with your partner one could argue that it’s going to be quite difficult for them to replicate that particular way that you’ve pleasured you’ve leared to pleasure yourself right and That’s a that’s a problem, right? If you’re only able to do something in one way, in one position with one watching one specific thing, that may not translate into great intimate sex with a partner. [clears throat] For the last couple years, I’ve been working on something that I realized every podcaster listening to this, but actually probably every creator listening to this might just need. Podcasting is difficult for many reasons. And one of them is that these hosting platforms don’t give you much information. And also because they’re so fragmented, you kind of have to go through every single platform, uploading it to YouTube, and then taking the same big old video file and uploading it to Spotify’s platform. It takes huge amounts of time. And that friction means most of us don’t do it. That is the problem we set out to solve. And so we built something called Flightcast, which you can find at flightcast.com. And today, Flightcast is also one of our show sponsors. And some of the world’s biggest podcasters are now using our platform to run their shows because it gives you an edge. It saves you time. It gives you analytics most people won’t typically get. It allows you to use AI to be more informed on your show and it has growth tools that other hosting platforms don’t have. So podcasters that are using Flightcast have this unfair advantage. So go to flightcast.com/doac. Now I’ve done almost 700 interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world. And one of the things you learn which is unexpected is that vulnerability is the doorway to connection. And after sitting here for 2 three hours with a guest, I feel a deep sense of connection to them. And as they leave, what I get them to do is to write a question in the diary of a CEO. We’ve taken all of the questions from the diary of a CEO. We have put the question here on this card with the name of the person that wrote it. So you can sit at home as I do with my fiance and my colleagues at work and other people in my life. Whenever we get a minute, we play the Duracio conversation cards. And it is incredible what happens. These are great if you’re in a romantic relationship and you want to connect your partner more. These are also great if you’re in a team and you want to bond your team together. And I have to say they’re also great for families that want to learn more about each other and that need a good excuse to spend some time in a digital world in the analog environment connecting human to human. It is remarkable what the right question at the right time can do. Go to the diary.com and you can get these conversation cards right now. And there’s different types of arousal, right? I was I heard from a sex expert I spoke to that men and women often have different types of arousal. Spontaneous and like reactive is it? Yep. Yep. So there again this idea of like I want to have sex, I’m ready to go versus I want to have sex because we’ve started having sex and we’ve started that process and now I can get into it. Sort of like exercise. Some people are like ready to go to the gym and exercise and other people like I don’t want to I never want to exercise but once they start getting going oh I know this is good for me I should do this this feels really good and that’s sex for a lot of people but again it’s also the question of what kind of sex are you having? If you have sex the same way every single time and it’s not that fun and it’s not that interesting to your partner, are they going to look forward to it? Are they going to are they going to want it? Are they going to seek it out? And is that really low libido at all or is that sort of a product of like we just aren’t talking about it improving? If you had the same podcast guest on every single week and it was the same conversation every single week, it’s not going to last you very long, right? You do different things. You try different things. Oh, what worked? What didn’t work? How could we do this better? Uh what does the algorithm want us to do now? No one’s doing that in their sex lives. Like like no one’s even talking about it. Like honey, what’s working? What are we like? What’s going on? I saw this thing. Like why why don’t we talk about it? Because we don’t talk about money either. We don’t talk about sex because we’re trying to be approp I don’t know why do you think I think that’s a little bit of it but I think the subjects are like deeply personal emasculating and so intrinsically linked as like self-esteem. It’s vulnerable. Yeah. It’s like super vulnerable. So and if someone I remember I had a um a partner turn around to me who interestingly was going through some of the issues that were undiagnosed. Turn around once upon a time and express that she didn’t like having sex. And I didn’t understand that at like a as a 23 22 year old guy. And so you kind of look yourself in the mirror and go, “Oh shit.” Like it’s super can be super super emasculating. It turned out that there was actually a physiological challenge she had had. But we’d been in a relationship for a long time and she wasn’t enjoying sex for because there was a physiological issue. She didn’t say anything to me. I didn’t know. And then the day she said something to me, my I didn’t know anything about sex. So, I just interpreted it as like, damn, I’m not good in I must not be good in the bedroom or something. Um, which is super like hurtful. And then that kind of breaks the relationship down. And it’s all predicated on this like highly emotional, highly self-esteem linked, poorly educated subject, which destroys relationships, destroys it. And that’s such an important story, right? Because if you had had access to the information, she thought she was protecting you by not telling you that information. You know what’s interesting? I went to one of my friends and one of my best friends and said, “Look, my partner just said this to me. Like, what does that mean?” And he went to me, he goes, “Mine, too.” I was like, “What?” I was like, “So, you’re not having sex with your partner?” He goes, “No, we and by the way, I’m talking about 30-year-olds.” He was like, “No, we haven’t had sex in 3 months.” And I was like, “What’s the reason?” And he said to me, “She said she just doesn’t like having sex.” And I’m like, “Oh, okay. So, that’s that’s the same in my relationship. My my former ex-girlfriend said she just doesn’t like having sex.” And I can’t tell you how ignorant and poor and insufficient the conclusions in such a situation we arrive at are. We’re like, well, maybe maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe it’s a sexuality challenge. Maybe it’s a genetic thing. Maybe they were just b they were born and didn’t want to have sex. Like, we don’t we just don’t know what it is. from doing this podcast and speaking to people like you, I [clears throat] like, oh my god, I just wish like 5 10 years ago when I had these conversations with my guy friendss and also with my the ex partner that I’m referencing, I just wish I knew that it wasn’t any of those things. Mhm. It was something that um could have been helped. Yeah. What’s so important is that you were able to learn and see and grow in this, right? a little bit of information gave you empathy for this partner where you took it on as a you problem. It became a you problem because it was both of you together, but it started with biology. And so if we actually taught people the biology or to think about biology or to like be able to talk about sex, to talk about sexual health, to talk about genitals, to make them not private parts, how much better would your sexual upbringing really have been? How much less hurt and shame and guilt would you have felt because it actually wasn’t you at all? Right. It’s the it’s the horrible conclusions you arrive at and the the conclusions you arrive at are often seen as both unchangeable and therefore in my situation back then the conclusion was well this relationship’s never going to work because the false conclusion we’ arrived at was not something we could we could change. Mhm. Whereas when I hear about all of these different things we talked about today, I go, “Oh my god, there’s so many other conclusions I could have arrived at or my friends could have arrived at that would have been fixable and therefore the relationship which was a perfectly great relationship with a person was therefore savable.” One of them is the thing we just talked about which is this idea that men and women have different types of arousal, spontaneous and responsive. And I was looking at some of the data on the variance which I think is very important for people to know and it says that men are highly spontaneous in their arousal which kind of means from my interpretation please correct me if I’m wrong that as a man I can literally be I can literally think about something and get aroused and it’s not to say that women can’t but the data suggests that men are more that way inclined. The data here says that the spontaneous rate in a man is about 70%. Whereas in women it’s about 10 to 15%. It says the responsive rate which I guess is like I get aroused once the ship starts moving once we start foreplay once contact starts is 10 to 15% in men and in women in this particular report is 40 to 50%. Mhm. So that would suggest to me that women are much more likely to be aroused once, you know, foreplay or contact or the sexual actions have taken place, I’m guessing. Mhm. And then the mixed style is 15 to 20% in men and 35% in women. Um, is that all accurate? It’s accurate. And I think it really comes to this idea of your path to having a better understanding of that prior relationship was actually education and communication. Yes. Right. If you had a better understanding of the biology, if she had a better understanding of the biology, if she were vulnerable enough to be real with you and honest with you upfront as opposed to kind of this bombshell that happened too late, um all of that pain, all of that hurt probably would have looked different, right? it would have looked like the world would have looked very different. Now, that’s what I’m fighting against because I think that to your point, I think men are suffering. They’re feeling disconnected from their partners. They’re feeling a difficulty of even finding a partner. And part of that is cuz they lack that curiosity of like what they’re like, what do they want? What do they need? What kind of communication helps me get to where I want to go with this person? And a lot of that is vulnerability and curiosity and interest. And I think that’s what women often are looking for in partners is they’re looking for someone who’s going to give a crap about them enough to care what they specifically need and want. Not what g what do women want and what is it like like what specifically about this person in front of me? What does she need to feel that erotic love, support, connection, lust? And for the man too, like what do you need to feel all of those things? Then what a good relationship is is when people work together to try to optimize that for everybody. So what are the questions that you would ask your patients to ask their partner to start to tease out some of these things? Couples will come up to me when I’m at a restaurant or something and they’ll come up together and they’ll always they’ll often say to me that the episode they watched together was about sex. So, I I literally have this image of this particular couple that came up to me when I was abroad and they said, “We were just listening on the plane about your sex um episode.” So, like they’re listening now. Like again, I think it’s that basic thing of like what does great sex mean for you? Okay. What what do you want? Like what what is a great time? What’s something fun? Like what is it about sex that you enjoy? When you ask people what do they get out of sex, it’s like 200 different reasons. Everyone wants something different and everyone doesn’t always know what they want. And then having that ability if you don’t know what you want is having that curiosity to explore together. So with that said 200 different opinions on what good sex is and this is kind of what I think you find in couples and when I’ve sat with my partner before and said like what do you what arouses you during sex? What do you like? The two things can often be different. Totally. And so is this not a a problem that one partner might say, I really want you to tie me up and da da da da da. And then the other partner might say, I really want you to not tie me up and be really soft and gentle. And there’s a bit of a dichotomy between these two sort of sex preferences, which means no one’s really ever getting what they want. Like, how do you navigate that? When you go to buy a house, you don’t always get to choose what house you get unless you, you know, you build it yourself. Like there are compromises in life and and there is no all good or all bad. You’re never going to find this is actually the problem with pornography is you figure out the exact porn in the exact situation or even worse with AI. Like you’re going to have a sex robot who’s going to be able to do exactly what you want in the way that you want to do it. And people are afraid about what that means for intimacy and relationships and great sex going forward. Because the truth is sex is messy. It’s awkward. It’s smelly. There’s fluids. There’s funny noises. there’s like it’s it’s vulnerable. It’s like really uncomfortable sometimes to like have these deep conversations. But isn’t that why life exists? Like isn’t that like the most fun part is when you can kind of have that with somebody else where they know all of you and they want to explore that with you? Now, if it’s not the right relationship, it’s not the right relationship, right? Like and and figuring out if that is an important part of your life and it’s a non-negotiable, then find the rooms where there are other people who do that those things too. I mean what you will find is that people have all sorts of agreements and relationship setups and as a sex doctor like the things I hear in a room like would you know are quite wild and you you wouldn’t even believe like people are doing well I think people have multiple like there are people who have open relationships so they have multiple partners or they have certain kinks right so there are things that they really enjoy that maybe somebody would look at that and be like oh that’s very strange but there are other consenting people who also are comfortable able and want to do those things. There are websites that deal with different erotica and different kinks and things like that. And there’s also this idea of fantasy. It’s also okay to have things that you think about but that you don’t actually want to partake in and that you use. On this point of fantasy, what if you have a you probably have experience where someone’s come to you and they have a fantasy but they don’t want to or a kink and they don’t want to tell their partner because they’re worried about the reaction. Yeah. This is where things like sex therapy become really helpful of how do you have a third party cuz again when your doctor’s telling you to do something or bringing something out it’s it’s so much less uh scary than if you’re doing it on your own. There are also different like apps and things like that where you can sort of dip a toe where you you you have um there’s one called Spicer I believe where you can sex each other in ways and they’ll push questions. If you both agree it’ll tell each other that you both agree with things. So there’s ways to dip a toe here and sort of be curious about it. But again, that’s where watching things together or asking the questions. This should happen not when you’re naked in the bedroom actively having sex. Like it’s okay to have conversations about sex when you’re not having sex, right? Like you plan these podcasts before you actually sit down to record. Afterwards, you talk with your team. Hey, this is what I liked about it. Here’s what I didn’t like. Let’s change this in the future. Let’s never have Dr. Rachel Rubin on again. Right? Like these are the conversations you’re going to have with your team. People don’t do that about sex very often, right? They don’t actually do after action. What went well? What didn’t go well? Do you ever want to try this? Like what would be fun here? Like there there is often a lack of curiosity. And dep you know you’re a sex doctor, right? But people come to you and sort of offload their sex lives to you. My job is so fun. I love my job. It’s so fun because people will talk to me about their most full like we do two hours and we talk about their lives in the context of their sexual health for 2 hours and people never have those types of conversations even with their partners and it is incredibly vulnerable. It’s incredibly important for people to see that and see oh that was actually really nice to talk about. I didn’t know this that and the other thing about my body. And what do you find that men and women typically are hiding from their partners when they do confide in you? I think they don’t tell their partners just about anything. Like they don’t there’s a lot they don’t tell their partners, right? Is there a difference between men and women? What are saying? That’s a great question. I would say that no one is talking about sex at all. Women are hiding their pain from their partners. Men are hiding their um insecurities and their frustrations. And there’s a lot of shame around erectile dysfunction and sexual problems in men. And so they a lot of people just either stop having sex or stop talking about it or sort of have a mediocre sex because they are not that great at talking about these things. And I imagine your I mean my first reaction would be like, “Oh, you should tell them.” But I imagine that doesn’t necessarily work. I think it’s a challenge like if you have had if you have been faking an orgasm for your entire relationship and women have been. Yeah. Many the statistics are quite clear. Like if you’re only having penetration and your partner orgasms every time and it’s a perfect orgasm every time I would say there’s a high percentage that that’s not real because the truth is is orgasm often takes a lot of arousal and like like again stopwatch every heterero if a penis enters a vagina and they orgasm about 5 and 1/2 minutes is on average how long men last right like that’s science it’s about 5 and 1/2 minutes now if you’re longer great job if it’s shorter it’s okay it’s all within the range of normal women, if penetration is happening, almost nobody orgasms in 5 1/2 minutes. It’s usually well over 13, 14, 15 minutes. And penetration is usually not how that happens. Cuz again, if you’re distracted while you’re trying to stimulate your penis, it’s going to take longer. Women need focus on the clitoris. So again, if your partner is orgasming every time within that five and a half minutes and it’s like clockwork, I would call [ __ ] on a high percentage of it. So, but but a partner doesn’t want to tell you, right? like they’re afraid to tell you cuz they’re they want to make you happy, right? It’s not that they’re having bad sex. They just know that that’s not what’s going to get them to orgasm and they want you to be happy and to feel supported. So, that presents a pretty good case that the woman should orgasm first. I think so because I think orgasm first will allow for pelvic floor release and relaxation, which will make penetration more pleasurable, enjoyable. I think women can have multiple orgasms. So, there’s a case to be made for before and after. Why are women having zero orgasms, men having one orgasm when women could be having three orgasms and men have one orgasm? So, I think we should be actively trying to change the orgasm gap um and focus on the pleasure. And I think making penetration the main event is where the challenge I think penetration can be part of the whole story, but doesn’t necessarily always need to be the main event. On the physical blockers, you talked about some of them like anxiety. One of them that I think isn’t talked about enough, especially in the modern world, is what they call like the dopamine drain where you’ve got mental burnout or chronic stress or we talked a little bit about depression. But I did notice that through my life when I’m very very overworked, shall I say, my libido is not the same. Yeah. And this is also the case for for women as well. Do you have a lot of women come to you or couples come to you where this is quite clearly the problem? This sort of like dopamine drain. It’s actually their stress and lifestyle. It could be the kids. It could be Oh, it’s a huge problem, right? It makes logical sense. Again, if we go back to the fundamentals of if you’re not sleeping, if you’re overworked, if you’re burnt out, if you have no white space for yourself, why are why are you going to have all this excitement for your partner and all of these things like if we’re scrolling all the time at bedtime or if we’re watching porn all the time or we’re watching reading romance novels all the time, but we’re not talking to the partner that we’re with or we’re not creating that time and space. I think there’s a big opportunity for people in our modern society which is overscheduled to schedule sex. I mean they do this quite well. So when you were dating, right, and you would ask your your your date, you know, let’s go out Saturday night. You were literally scheduling potential sex. You were like, I could get lucky. I’m going to plan for it all week. I’m going to get excited. I’m taking this person out. I’m like, it’s going to be really fun and I’m going to do whatever it takes to sort of cross that finish line. So, we were always scheduling sex and it was very erotic and fun when you’re in your dating life. And now you live with a person and you sort of they see you at your best, they see you at your worst, they see you at your crankiest and your most tired. And so, it’s really hard to get that level of excitement when you’re dealing with those, you know, sort of life circumstances. People will say that that, you know, there’s a spontaneity myth around sex that it should be spontaneous. And that’s kind of how we see it in films, like they grab you in the hallway and you start kissing and whatever else. It’s just not real. It’s just the same as WWF. Like, it’s not real. And so, that’s the truth is like you, if you see your partner every day and you see your partner, you’re high and you’re low and the crankiest and all of these things and you’re all working like crazy, where is the space for that? Like, that’s not how humans work. So, creating that’s why vacation sex is always fun for people or they find time, you know? So, again, if you’ve got kids and your kids are staying up later than you are and you don’t have a lock on your door and you’re worried about making noises and you don’t want to be too loud, like how are you going to have great sex in that situation? One of the I guess the challenges people might also bring up is that if you’re scheduling sex, it puts a lot of performance pressure on you. If I know tonight at 8:00 p.m. I have to have sex because that’s the time we scheduled this week. Then like, oh gosh, I’m going to be finishing my work at 5 6 7 I need to get home. I need to have I need to have sex as well. Gosh. So, this is where you schedule it around a time that you know is going to work for you. So, I do I tell people to do things like um quarterly dates. So, I get I listen I’m working in DC. Everyone is very highowered with very busy jobs. I say one Friday a quarter. You and your spouse can literally block your calendars. One a quarter cuz quarter. Okay, that means you might have sex every week. You might have your your your eight late night sex whenever you might have sex whenever you have sex, but once a quarter have a day where you just block it out and you have a spouse day or a partner day or whatever it looks like. And maybe do an act. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a sex day, but you actually take time of your little mini v. Maybe you want a walk, maybe you go on a hike, maybe take a bath, maybe get a massage. You kind of create space for you to actually say, “Oh, wait. We like each other. Oh, we like talking to each other. We don’t have to just talk about the kids all the time.” So, again, the more you invest in each other and in a joyful way, the better sex you’re going to have. What about self-esteem issues? You you mentioned that as well. Body image issues. How often do you see that being the blocker to great sex? It’s a huge problem. Again, I wish that uh the energy that my female patients put into wanting to be skinny uh is is enormous. Uh and I wish that energy was put into wanting to be strong. But it’s kind of funny because what people think about themselves versus what they think for their friends are very different. Your best friend, say they’re overweight, do they deserve great sex? Of course. Of course they do. Right? Your best friend deserves great orgasms, great sex, no matter what they look like, no matter what they weigh. Everybody deserves intimacy, pleasure, and connection with someone that they can have intimacy, pleasure, and connection with. But for some reason, when we think of ourselves, oh, I can’t be naked with this person. Oh, I can’t be happy until I lose this much weight. I don’t deserve an orgasm unless I am, you know, skinny. And that’s a huge problem. So, what can we do about it? I think it’s empowerment. It’s communication. It’s explaining to people. I think that all of the mindset stuff that you do and you talk about is so important cuz look, you changed your mind around your own situation with this ex of yours because you got education, right? You were able to see that it was more complicated than that. And I do think by educating people on bodies, on pleasure, on joy, on connection, on intimacy. I actually think it changes the narrative. I think people, we’re in a sex recession, okay? People are having less sex than ever. Uh people are not connecting. people are scrolling and they’re on their AI chat bots instead of like human connection. We’re getting worse at this, not better. I I I just think that like we have to reach humans and we have to be able to talk about it to change the narrative. What is the um the most important thing we haven’t talked about that we should have talked about as it relates to all the work that you do? I think the most important thing is that biology matters in women and we often spend so much time talking about psychosocial issues about emotions and all of that is true that is important to sexual health but we minimize biology when it comes to women and we have to let women advocate for themselves about the biology and we need to train doctors to care about the biology. I would love to find out from all the women in your life and the women on your team like what experience like I would love for you to ask them their experiences with medical providers cuz I don’t think we have that curiosity of like what are you experiencing that’s different. Yeah, I think I think that’s going to have to for me to have like a healthy relationship with my partner. I think that’s going to have to be uh practice or like part of our you know we check in on our relationship etc but we don’t really check in on the physiology biology. So super interesting. So I spend two hours with people and there are times when the partner comes to that talk and so they get to hear sort of what their partner is describing. They even this see the exam and they get sort of a tour of their own partner’s body parts. And so it is helpful sometimes to bring partners into those conversations, the biology conversations of like she doesn’t want to have sex with you not because you’re bad at sex. Look how painful it is right here at the opening of her velvet. It’s like a sunburn. I touch it with a Q-tip and she’s on fire. like what do you think your penis is doing and it gives that ability to say oh it’s not a me problem how do I support her best knowing that this is the issue so getting partners to understand the biology is extremely helpful or say you have a man who’s taking an anti-depressant uh or a hair loss medication that can cause sexual dysfunction as well um say you have a man who takes an anti-depressant it lowers his libido is it oh honey you’re not attracted to me anymore you must not love me or is it I actually understand the biology that your libido is lower because of this anti-depressant and two things can be true. So, so I think understanding your partner’s biology and your own biology is quite important. Yeah. I guess that’s the the crux of the conclusion really is that both education and communication are where it all begins, which is the fundamentals, right? Yeah. And I think you gosh, if I had better education on these subjects, God, at the start of my adult life, and also I had like figured out how to communicate with my partner, maybe even also with yourself. And like to be a bit honest with yourself about how you’re feeling, not to gaslight yourself, not to gaslight your partner. Just it just goes to show how better relationships would have been, not just with your romantic partner, but really with all the people in your lives. And this is easier said than done, like especially the communication part because these are very very sensitive subjects. And so we we’d rather just shut up about them and keep them as these sort of like secrets am whisper about with the closest people in our lives, maybe our best friend. Mhm. And I just think generally one of the things I’ve come to learn from doing this podcast as well is that, you [snorts] know, there was this quote I read, it said, “You can predict the long-term health of a relationship by whether each challenge heals to 101% or 99%. Does your conflict make you stronger?” And what it’s essentially saying is like conflict is guaranteed in life, but the thing that’s going to turn your conflict into a strengthened relationship or a weakened one is your how you deal with it. like and that’s all predicated on communication. And so if we can just teach people how to communicate, if we can become better communicators, which is both a function of speaking and listening and I guess curiosity, then all of these downstream challenges and misunderstandings would have a chance of being solved for. And I think about this so often. I often think, okay, how I’m communicating with my partner currently is really going to determine whether we have an argument in 2 years time or a year’s time or 6 months time. our strategy of communication. Does she feel safe expressing a problem? How do I receive the problem even when it feels like I’m being blamed? And vice versa. And then are we open-minded about solutions or do we come with a bias around this is the solution. This is what I think the correct answer will be. I’ve spent a lot of time, you know, I’m like 7 years into my relationship now almost. So I spent a lot of time thinking, okay, like how do people go how do they build a relationship like 50 years? And the crux of it seems to be conflict resolution/communication. That seems to be the crux of it. And actually with finance issues that we talk about with finance experts or with sex issues, the crux of it seems to be conflict resolution/communication. And I also know cuz I know lots of couples that we’re all living on a different spectrum here. Some couples are like they come home at 6 p.m. and all they want to do is talk about the most sensitive subjects. And then you’ve got this other group of couples who almost don’t talk about anything. They’re kind of like strangers that are like burying everything in the cupboard. And they think burying it in the cupboard means that it’s out of sight, out of mind, and it’s not impacting anything. But again, you come to learn that any problem buried rears its head in unexpected ways. And uh you know I thinking of one particular friend of mine who was in a relationship for 14 years had a baby they kind of stopped having sex didn’t really talk about it they become like parallel lines that are drifting apart and they get you know several years later go what happened? Mhm. What happened to our relationship? Well they never spoke about it. Mhm. turn. I think you understand this perfectly and for you to um see it in this you can help so many people because I think these are the fundamentals. How do we teach young people and old people that conflict resolution is important in intimacy and vulnerability are important in biology is important. Science is important and we can do this. I I just taught you a few things that I know today and you not only did you understand it, but you were curious about it to ask further questions and you can now um figure out how it works in your own relationship, in your own life, you’re even caring enough about thinking about your friends lives. And so if you’ve shown that this matters and this is important, I just think how many people are going to benefit by your vulnerability and your curiosity and saying, “Oh, I could do that, too.” Yeah. It’s crazy, isn’t it, that like if you love this person so much, yet you don’t often love them enough just to communicate about some of these like sensitive tricky subjects, which is like craziness when you articulate it like that. Like I’ve been in relationships, I just absolutely love this person, but no, I wouldn’t I wouldn’t raise X, Y, and Zed subject. It’s just it’s just too uncomfortable. And the few times I guess I will ask that you have been vulnerable, has it gone well or not well? Oh my gosh, it’s like the most important thing. And I just I always think, why didn’t I do this sooner? Mhm. Yeah. Okay. So, to be even more honest, I like didn’t have conversations with my partner about sex at all. Like, I just I assumed she liked it. I think she assumed I liked it. And it wasn’t until we get further into relationship, like you start going like, wait, I don’t think this is how this person wants to have sex or I don’t know. I actually have to give her the credit cuz she’s the one that started like pushing on the communication. I think sometimes as men we just,

you know, that old slightly toxic phrase, happy wife, happy life. I think sometimes as men, we just kind of assume that if no one’s saying anything, then everything’s great. But it takes two to tango. And I think expecting your partner to have all the words and to know everything is the wrong answer. That’s where again that third party whether people come to see me together as a medical person or a sex therapist or or a third party to help you have that conversation cuz I think we assume our partners know everything about their own bodies and can communicate about their own bodies and that’s just not true. Even showing that curiosity makes you quite evolved, right? And I think that that’s the energy that we need in 2026 is h breaking down those barriers because it will lead to stronger relationships. It will lead to stronger partnerships and it’s those hard moments that you grow the most from. You need the words though as you say. Yeah. When you say you need the words, what what what specifically do you mean by that? You need to know how to start the conversation, how to handle the conversation, how to receive a subject that might be a little bit offensive. It might hurt your ego a little bit. Is this what you mean by like have the words? It’s really hard to do that on your own because people don’t want to hurt other people’s feelings. And so just saying it as it is may not be the right approach either. That’s where again couples therapists are very good at holding space for those different conversations. And I think one of the other problems here, Stephen, is many times there’s no bad guy. Of course, when it’s obvious someone cheats on someone, someone breaks trust, yes, there’s a bad guy. But so often, you know, say someone has a higher libido than someone else, there’s no bad guy. That person has a high libido and that person has a low libido. There’s no evil bad guy, but there is still conflict. And so how do you deal with conflict when it’s not a good guy bad guy situation but and how do you love someone and evolve with them right like I think it’s not easy I think your point there though is actually where it starts often which is this point of empathy the minute you realize that there is no bad guy just as you said it I thought oh my gosh yeah yeah back when I had those intimacy challenges in that relationship it was a case of trying to figure out who the bad guy was I was like is it me is it a me problem is it a you That’s kind of like what the brain jumps to. But actually, now that had time passed and we figured out what it was, turns out that it was neither of us. It was really the whole time, not me against her or her against me. It was me and her against the problem. Mhm. And that reframe, I think, removes the like shame, the blame, and all that stuff that gets in the way and focuses you as a team on resolution and conflict resolution. Thank you. you, you know, you said that I will help people, but actually you’re the one that’s helping people. I’m just asking questions. And uh I disagree. I think it’s the simple, it’s the vulnerability of watching others. It’s the simple stuff that makes the biggest change. Why does this matter so much, Jack? I can see it in your face. Because so many people are hurting. Relationships are hurting. People’s health is hurting. people aren’t having as much pleasure and joy and quality of life that they could be having. Using what we already know to be true, simple things, communication, connection, education, basic medical care, these things can bring so much joy, health, great relationships, great living. And I see it every day in my clinical practice. And I want that. I want that for every person out there. And I want them to fight for it. And I want them to advocate for it. And I want doctor just to show up in a big way to help them. And I think we can do it. But I I I am so passionate about this because I see all the like I see how much it’s not being done. Dr. Rachel, we have a closing tradition where they’ll ask us leaves a question for the next not knowing who they’re leaving it for. The question left for you is what would be one thing you would like to do or improve in your life tomorrow?

I would like to get better about practicing what I preach because we always say the shoe makers uh kids don’t wear shoes. I am addicted and obsessed with what I do. I love my work so much, but I don’t necessarily uh spend as much time um lifting weights that I should or not scrolling on my phone and paying attention to my children that I should. I don’t spend as much time, you know, uh, uh, scheduling those quarterly spouse dates that I tell other people to do. And so, I think practicing what I preach is a huge opportunity for me. Well, that’s refreshing to hear cuz none of us are perfect in that regard. So, it’s good to know that just having all the information doesn’t necessarily mean um, it’s easy to execute upon. Easy to do, easy not to do. Amen. [laughter] Um, where do people go to find more from you? Do they go to your Instagram, your website, your YouTube channel? Where should you where should they go? Yeah, our website is really fabulous. We are very big into research, education, advocacy, and mentorship. So, racheler rubinmd.com that would lead you to sign up for our newsletter, which is really an incredible source of education. We are sending you the the latest and greatest in studies, research that you can be a part of, job opportunities, um, and advocacy for clinicians. We have courses and teaching you how to do this both free and uh ones that come with continuing medical education. I would say Instagram is um the most popular for me right now. Uh although we’re trying to get louder. If only I had your skills. I I would love to be louder on YouTube and other places. Uh we do have a clinical practice both in Washington DC and Los Angeles. And so if we can help in any way on the sexual health side, please reach out to us because sexual health is just health and your quality of life absolutely matters. I’ll link all of that below and I hope people sign up for your newsletter as well. That sounds really interesting. Thank you, Dr. Rachel Raven. Thank you so much for all of this. Um, I think it’s it’s so so telling that your conversations are often the most shared on the podcast and generally in podcasting because the subjects are so um so important to so many people’s lives and they can relate to feeling not themselves as you say, but there’s very few people out there that have the credibility, the experience with patients, but also the the ability to articulate it in a way that’s highly accessible like you have. So, I know that you, you know, we talked beforehand you don’t necessarily love doing this, but um it’s a very very important worthy course because there’s very few people that can speak to these subjects with it in the way that you can. So, please keep doing it. So, kind. Anybody who’s listening now, I highly recommend if there’s somebody in your life that might want to listen to this conversation. I think there’s a reason why Dr. Rachel’s conversations are always the most shared. Um, please do share it with them. Dr. Rachel, thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

The Biden administration just like really screwed up our immigration policy in a profoundly dangerous way. But even if you agree that immigration is a problem, it seems division is the most compelling narrative for politicians. I remember this particular quote about the black community where he said, “What do you have to lose? I’m a black man. I feel like I’ve got things to lose.” And my concern is when the western narrative is that it’s the brown people that are the reason that your life is hard or like Mexicans and murderers. If I heard that from my political leaders, it’s conceivable that I might be angry at my neighbor even though they’ve done nothing. But let me just say very often what the president is accused of saying, he didn’t say it or there was much greater context. You wouldn’t say but but I think well the president and I certainly have way different styles. But Donald Trump is much different as a human being than the media makes him out to be. But back in 2016, there was a private message between you and a roommate where you said Trump was either a cynical [ __ ] or America’s Hitler. How do you go from that position to vice president of the same person? What what is that journey? A crazy journey, man. But look, I thought Donald Trump would be a failed president. He was not. I thought that America’s institutions were fundamentally functioning. They were not. You always have to be able to acknowledge when you’re right and when you’re wrong. Like he’s so non-conventional in the way that he does everything that things that were previously unimaginable are actually on the table. this peace deal with Iran, for example, but there’s been lots of false deals. Well, this one’s real. So, and Israel. Trump called Netanyahu a very difficult guy. What does Netanyahu want? I don’t know. Well, what I would say is that we’re different countries with different interests. Do you trust them? I don’t really trust anybody. Having seen the president of United States operate. I feel quite confident that they are the junior partner. We’re the senior partner. We are the world’s superpower. I’m going to take a little bit of a high tone. Um, do you think aliens could be real? I do. Mr. Vice President, I had no idea about your earliest context. Mhm. And it has informed what I’ve then seen from you later as an adult, but can you take me back?

The emotions still right on the surface for you. Very much so. Mr. Vice President, I have your book here. Okay. And it says, “Of all the things that I hated about my childhood, nothing compared to the revolving door of father figures. I hated the disruption. And I hated how often these boyfriends would walk out of my life just as I began to like them.” I always think to understand the people that are sat in front of me, you have to take get a picture of their early context. Sure. And I had no idea about your earliest context. and it it hasn’t some respects informed what I’ve then seen from you later as an adult. But can you take me back to these context and explain that quote for me? Yeah. So, um I I was raised in very working-ass town, very working-ass family. You know, this is a photo of me when I was a little kid here and my family like a lot of other families in similar circumstances, we struggled. We struggled to adapt to middle class life. Yeah. This is my sister and my grandfather. It’s interesting. My my my grandfather had very low formal education. He graduated from high school. My grandmother actually left school when she was 13. Very religious people, particularly my grandmother, but you know, they they struggled pretty much economically for most of their lives. My grandfather died when I was 13. I think my grandmother died when I was 20. And you know, this is Yeah, this is right. This is probably not even a year before she died. And I was about to go to Iraq and she was very old and frail. And this is one of the last photos of the two of us. And this is really the woman who raised me because you raised the the revolving door of father figures. So mom, amazing person. She’s been clean and sober for now 11 years. But she was was in the throws of a pretty bad addiction problem for much of my childhood. And so this was kind of my savior. This was the person who stepped in and made sure I had a stable life to the extent that I did. And your grandmother, she got pregnant at 13, correct? And she had a miscarriage at that age. Yeah, that’s right. So, think about this. Eastern Kentucky, you’re talking about the hills of an extremely impoverished, very rural part of the United States of America. And so, you know, she is dating my grandfather, I think at the time, is 16. She’s 13. So, these are children. She gets pregnant. They move to Ohio for more opportunity because you you just couldn’t build a good life for yourself. There weren’t enough good jobs in that part of the world. And she had a miscarriage. So, like the thing that brought her out of her home, I think hastened them getting married. I don’t think they would have gotten married at 13 and 16 were it not for this unplanned pregnancy. You know, she was kind of in it then. So, they’re married. They have a very chaotic marriage, an abusive marriage in a lot of ways. But they have three kids, my mom, my uncle, my aunt. And the story of our families in some ways, some of us were able to kind of break the cycle and some of us weren’t. And part of what motivated me to write that book is trying to understand why is it why is it that life worked out for some of us and didn’t work out for others. So your biological father Yeah. He he put you up for adoption. So he did. So I was adopted by a man when I was 5 or 6 years old by the name of Robert Hamill. And he became and still technically if you look at my birth certificate he is still listed as my legal father. Now, he was in the picture from, call it, I was 7 until 10 or 11. And then he and mom got divorced. He still stuck around for a little bit after that, but by the time I was 12 years old, he was just gone. Never talked to him again. Never saw him again. And And am I right in thinking this is the the third man in your life at this point? Because your sister Lindsay comes from a different father. That’s right. So So her father, a very good guy. She’s five or six years older than me. And so he was the first of my mother’s husbands. And then my dad, my biological father was number two. And then my legal father was number three. And then, you know, things sort of got a little quicker from that point forward. So there was a there was a there was more turnover, let’s say, in the relationships at that point forward. There was also a guy called Matt thereafter at 13 years old that your mom had met. Yeah. Yeah. Good guy. Very close to him. He actually is very political and so he and I um reconnected a little bit over our shared interest in politics, but he was just a good hardworking guy. You know, he was only around for maybe a few years, probably less than that of my life, but he was a a significant and positive force. In your book, page 124, you you say living with mom and math, which is when you were 14 years old, was like a front row seat to the end of the world. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it was just chaotic, right? And I mean things that I thought of as normal that I later realized in, you know, talking to my wife or talking to friends that just a level of relationship instability, you know, fighting, people throwing stuff, if the fights get really bad, some person throws a plate at somebody else. Again, it sounds even talking about it now kind of crazy, but it was pretty normal back then. And, you know, sometimes it was worse and sometimes it was better, but there was a sense in which relationships were always just kind of chaotic. as an adult, you know, like you can almost imagine now that you’ve got so many kids yourself that I I can understand the feeling of craziness being normal and you kind of don’t realize until you see into someone else’s world or someone else hears about yours cuz I can relate to that in many ways. But as an adult, you must look back on that and now see the the way that that shaped you. Yeah. Well, it was very unhealthy. Um I certainly think again it was hard to sort of really feel a sense of stability. It was hard to really attach to people because you always assumed that they were going to be gone. And you know, years later, I was I was talking to I was actually at a a conference. I was giving a speech and this guy came up to me and he was a child psychologist. And you know, he said, you know, one of the things the literature shows is that people who come from traumatic or chaotic environments and end up doing pretty well, they always have one person, whether it was a teacher or a social worker, a grandparent, aunt or an uncle, they always have one person who sort of their anchor. And that seems to be the difference for a lot of these kids. And and again, I was lucky enough to have that. And I think about my life a lot of time, sitting here, I’m the vice president of the United States. What would my life have turned out to be if you’d had all that chaos, which was just a background part of my life? But you take out those stabilizing forces. God knows, man. God knows my grandmother. That’s right. Cuz through your story when I was reading about your childhood, she seemed like the safe place that you would retreat to over and over again. You know, I was obviously I think it’s very important for boys to have male role models, to have father figures that they look up to. She was in in an unconventional way like both a mother figure and a father figure. She was extraordinarily odd. And I mean that in the most loving way possible, but she was just incredibly tough. You know, I was, I don’t know, 12, 13. I was hanging out with one of the kids in the neighborhood who was kind of going down a bad path. He actually would later spend some time in jail, but you know, he was getting into drugs, starting to smoke weed, starting to do a little bit more than that. Again, 12, 13, so we were pretty young kids. My grandmother found out and she told me that if I kept on hanging out with this kid, she was going to run him over with her car. And then I was like kind of caught off guard by that. And she said, “Jie, I promise you and no one will ever find out about it.” And I was like, “Wo.” So like for the sake of this kid, I pretty much stopped hanging out with him. But that toughness, I think, was like a necessary part. It was like through sheer willpower that she kept me on the straight narrow. And uh again, I don’t know where I’d be without her. And over the next sort of couple of decades, your mother your mother’s addiction um seems to get worse and worse. It does. It does. From prescription drugs to heroin and everything in between. And it really sort of ravages not just her life, but the family’s life. That’s right. Nearly making your your grandparents bankrupt. Yes. And mom, by the way, has been clean and sober for 11 years, which is an amazing thing. But you know, when Papal died, he was what my grandmother was for me. I sort of realized that that’s what papa was for mom. He was her safe place. He was her anchor. And I think she already had some addiction problems, but it just really accelerated from there. And things kind of went off the rails. And you know, my my grandparents before my grandfather died were trying various ways to help her. And yeah, it got worse and worse, harder and harder drugs, had a few bad overdoses, and you know, by the grace of God, some miracle, you know, it’s it’s amazing how transformed she is. And it sort of drives home how for some people drugs are just they they take so much away from a human being. And she was certainly that that way. In the same way that they took so much away from her, sobriety has given her a whole lot back. If I asked your wife Yeah. how this season of your life, the most formative season of your life, has changed you. What are all the things you would say? It’s funny because I remember interviewing, I think it was Michael Jordan’s coach, and he said to me that people’s dark sides and their light sides are like fundamentally interconnected. Yes. And I can relate. Absolutely. The things things people might clap for or applaud about, you’re also fundamentally linked to the things that you struggle with or that make you sometimes not the most normal person. Yes, that makes total sense to me. I think on the dark side, what she would say is I have an extraordinary mistrust. I think of of people that I don’t know particularly well. I sort of assume the worst sometimes about circumstances and and and things outside of my control, but I maybe assume the best about the people themselves, right? So, there’s an inherent like sense that the world is going to fall apart. I think that’s a very true thing. I mean, even in like our marriages, it would be hard to imagine. I’m not saying, you know, all marriages are work, but it would be hard to imagine like a marriage that was more successful and more happy than ours. Our kids are doing great. They’re healthy. Like, my wife and I love each other very much, but we’re also just like, she really is my best friend. She’s the person that I talk to about everything. She’s my closest confidant. And yet, there are all kinds of times during our 12-year marriage where I’ve just had this thought like, there’s no way this is going to last. either because she’s taking the kids to the grocery store and I start thinking to myself, “Oh my god, a drunk driver is going to have a head-on collision.” I I I just there’s a sense of like instability that is very much built in. That’s that’s kind of the dark. I think the light is because I’ve seen a lot of people at their very best and their very worst. I sort of assume the best about the human beings themselves. So even though the circumstances are crazy and even though [  ] hits the fan sometimes completely outside of your control, I just I think what she would say is that I probably have a higher empathy quotient than any person that she knows. And I really try to understand what makes people tick. And so there’s there’s the light and the dark together, but there’s there’s a lot beyond that. I mean, look, man, I I was a lot of work when I look back at our early relationship and we’d have an argument like before we ever married and and I’d be like, “Okay, well fine. Let’s just break up.” And her response is like, “Well, that’s crazy. Why would we break up? Let’s just like have a rational conversation.” Like, “Honey, I don’t do rational conversations in this context. That is not something we do.” But again, so long as you’re, I think, self-aware about that, it’s a problem that you can solve. And certainly I I mean I think she would say com now compared to 14 years ago when we first started dating it’s just night and day but very early on it was a chaotic relationship itself clearly an avoidant attachment style which obviously makes sense 100%. Yeah I can relate and I didn’t have the vocabulary to describe that but that’s exactly what that was. Did you go did you have to go to like couples therapy? Because it it seems almost inconceivable that you could go through that early context, have be so avoidant, see be so sort of on on edge with commitment and see everything as kind of being ephemeral yet still have a healthy relationship like the one you you have with her? No, never went to coup’s therapy. I actually went to like therapy a couple of times and I just found it way too uncomfortable to talk to a stranger and so you know uncomfortable. But no, no. I mean, this is I guess this is kind of a we, you know, a weird kind of therapy, but no, it it it’s just the idea. The other thing I really didn’t like about it, and again, I don’t mean this to criticize therapy. I’m sure it helps a lot of people. So, so please don’t take this the wrong way. But there was something about it that felt almost too self-reerential and too like it almost encouraged at least me to blame others or to blame my past or to blame my mom or to blame it just I really didn’t like this feeling that I was sort of giving up agency over my own life. And so we’ve just gotten better at how we relate to each other. That’s primarily me. I mean, she grew up in a very stable situation. So, her parents are South Asian immigrants to the United States of America. But she was born and raised in San Diego, California, you know, just very normal middle class Southern California life. And I think because that she just had much healthier, let’s say, much healthier relationship practices than I did. That point about understanding the person on the other end and having empathy for the human being. Politics. Yeah. appears to be almost exact because I watch the I watch the election campaigns. I watch how like yourself and the president went against um people like Camala Harris. So you must with that logic think that Kamala Harris is actually like a really good person. Like you must understand Kamala. I I don’t I I don’t have I would say that I understand her. I would say that I just don’t have this animosity towards people on the other side. But you is that not like sort of implicit in the job itself that you have to point out their faults and Yeah, you do. Yeah. No, absolutely. But I think you can be sort of rational about it. You can be cerebral about it. Certainly there are things the other side does that annoy me. But you know like my my fundamental bias is that just most people are good people. And to the extent that they do something you disagree with it’s either because they screwed up on something or because they made a mistake or I just I’ve always been like this. I’ve always been more charitable about other human beings. And I I don’t know again maybe I pro maybe I do that too much. Maybe I’m too charitable, but I’d rather be too charitable than too cynical about human beings because that I mean, you talk about a screwed up perspective to take into politics. If you’re always cynical about other people’s motivations, man, you’re going to be in a very, very bad spot. I actually think the same about interviewing remarkably because I know cuz I I miss I meet so many people from so many different and one of the things that I’ve come to learn is just just try and meet everybody as I experience them versus like you know especially when I’m interviewing politicians it’s I just want to meet them as I experience them versus thinking about how they’ve been framed or whatever. And it’s actually made me much more empathetic because again obviously we all have preconceptions and then you meet someone and you go oh they are a family person. They care about X Y and Zed. They care about the same things. They just disagree about pathways. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. But politics seems to be like the the sort of game of politics to me seems to be like paint the other side to be malicious. Well, I I think the game of politics I mean fundamentally you’re making a pitch to people, right? It’s not it’s not about Kla Harris or Donald Trump or JD Vance or Tim Walls is about the American people, right? And fundamentally to make that sales pitch, you have to say what’s better about this product, what’s worse about the other product. So that that is just inherent. But again, I I think you can do that. You know what I always try to do is I try to talk about here are the policies that are really bad. Here are the reasons why I think this is screwed up. Here are the reasons why I think that she made mistakes. But I you know it is weird. It is fundamentally you are in a position where you’re trying to point out the faults in another people even if it’s just their conduct as opposed to their character. But even with that I again I I I do think that you see people in politics who fundamentally just really hate the people on the other side. Yeah. That’s that’s just not me. It’s never going to be me. Even when I’m being very pugilistic, like even when you you really have to drive home a point, like I, you know, not to get too much into the weeds of of partisan politics, but like something I think the Biden administration just like really screwed up in a profoundly dangerous way was the was our immigration policy. Right now, there are all kinds of reasons why that might have happened, but fundamentally that was a very, very, very bad screw up. But I don’t hate Kla Harris because I think she had a bad immigration policy. I just think it’s important to point out the flaws on on the immigration policy. I mean, I’m still going to go through your chart here, but on this point of immigration, this is another area where you get such division. Sure. And you get, you know, I remember watching the there was a couple of things I remember watching when I was, I think, probably back in Plymouth um in the countryside. One of them was like Trump, the president demonizing me Mexican people and brown people. I remember this particular quote which I’ve always struggled with a little bit where he said about the black community, what have you got to lose? And I remember thinking, I’m a black man. I feel like I’ve got things to lose. Um that kind of narrative about those individuals, that broadstrokes sort of demonization of them would make people’s lives harder and feels unnecessary. Even if you agree that immigration is a problem, the the sort of like skin color or religion or like Mexicans rapists and murderers is is might might galvanize in the near term, but in the long term is probably going to sow division and that’s probably net negative for society. Well, what one thing I’d say just about anything that I’ve ever heard the president say that then that’s then refracted through the lens of social media or you know non-social media is very often what he is accused of saying he didn’t say it or he said it in a totally different way or there was much greater context. So like I like I remember for example like I remember back in 2016 or 2015 whatever he said this sort of being like offended at the rapists and murderers line and then I went and looked at what he said and what he said which is actually true is that some of these countries are actually encouraging prisoners to come into the United States of America. Does that mean that every person comes in America as a rapist or a murderer or as a prisoner? No, it doesn’t. But he didn’t say that. Right. So, so again this goes back to the point about being charitable is I I do try to understand fundamentally like why did a person say that? What are they actually thinking? What are they trying to get across? And again, if you disagree with that’s fine. You wouldn’t. But but I think well the president and I certainly have way different styles. Absolutely. We have different styles. But I mean the the way that I talk about immigration, I’d say that’s one of the issues where we’ve always been like extremely closely aligned and that was obviously a major issue during the 2024 campaign. But the the way that I think about immigration is is fundamentally like as a country you are the people who live in your nation. Okay? So America’s 330 million souls, you know, I think fun again most of them whe whether they voted for me or not, they’re really good people and they want really good things for their families. They want really good things for themselves. And yeah, there are like some bad apples in every crew, 330 million people. There are definitely some bad people, but most people are fundamentally good and decent. However, you could let people into your country who could be fun, decent, normal human beings who just kind of mess with the the equation a little bit. It’s like if I have a bunch of people over to my house for dinner and I invite 10 people to come over for dinner and one of them brings a stranger, it’s probably going to be fun, right? But if like every single one of them bring three strangers, it’s going to totally change the character of the conversation that you’re going to have of the room that you’re going to have. A country is like that just on a much more massive scale. So I maybe come at it or I describe it a different way. But fundamentally I think that the president was very right about immigration in a way that was preient. And even if the blunt way that he described it offended some people, I think it was like a very important contribution to not just our country but to the world. I think it would be hard to find an American who didn’t think we needed um again, I’m not an American, so I guess I’m talking about where I’m from, but we needed borders and a policy around borders. Sure. Just in the same way that we have it around our house and every festival we enjoy in whatever whatever venue we go to. I think the um the thing I’ve always been concerned about when I see the sort of rising narrative across the world, not just in America, but now across the West, um the UK as well, is in trying to solve that problem, it seems that like division is the most compelling narrative for politicians. And then the like downstream consequence of division you see playing out on the streets. You see like especially in the UK at the moment you’re really seeing um certain communities be quite um demonized and victimized because of this broad political narrative which which is being used to get people into power. But then the downstream consequences of like real people on the streets that are brown or black or Muslims is like I don’t think the people at the top consider that. Well, I mean I is there another way of of making the point on immigration, legal immigration without demonizing people? Well, I I certainly when when I talk about it to the extent that I demonize anybody on the immigration conversation, I demonize the leadership that is immune to thinking about the consequences of this. And so ju just this this point about division, division is a very interesting word to me because I think division is very bad. Like I I like living in a in a community that’s cohesive, where people get along, where we love everybody regardless of what they look like or what they what thoughts they might have in their head. But like, let me give you like a slightly different perspective on the division thing. What if division is not the result of politicians demonizing certain groups? But what if division is the inevitable consequence of when the population changes too quickly, too fast in a given society? and what you see as as you know politicians exploiting division. I actually think that what they’re trying to do is articulate a feeling that people have and sometimes people might express that feeling in ways that we don’t like or maybe they’re offensive but but fundamentally like let’s just say you’re you workingass guy in Britain or you’re a working- class guy in the United States of America and you know somebody moves in your neighborhood. That’s right. I did I did. Yeah. So my my black we my family is obviously black. My mom’s Nigerian and I came from Botswan and I moved into a white neighborhood. Okay. And I mean how did people treat you? Uh we were called the nword a couple of times. Okay. Like like that’s terrible. I don’t like that. But I imagine that a lot of people in your community were welcoming unless they were for sure. But you know as a kid you only remember the ways you stand out. No of course. You know that can be like Yeah. And I understand that and I and I certainly think it’s important to like try to fight back against that stuff. Like we don’t want young kids who come into a community for that to be like their their memory. But like I also like our next door neighbor was black family and my my grandmother was not woke. She did not have progressive views about race or gender or pretty much anything else. But like she really loved I’ll never forget this. The the the black man who lived next door to us, she said he has a good heart and that was her highest compliment of anybody. He was a preacher. The family was like a very very good family, stable family. Mom, dad, few kids. And I was very close to to to the young son. And I I just I did not experience that. When people talk about division, I just did not see that family as substantially different from us. And I don’t think that family I’m sure they experienced racism, but I don’t think that was like a common fixture of their day living in that neighborhood. Now that’s where Mammald really did resist the changes is when we had a few people like the neighborhood went downhill very quickly and I talk about that a little bit in the book and you had a bunch of people move in with different habits and you had a woman who you know she said a bath but then she got drunk and passed out and so she ruined her entire house. And you know some at some level was it wrong for my grandmother to feel offended that her neighborhood had changed so quickly so fast that she never felt she didn’t feel comfortable there anymore or the people who came in had different values or she couldn’t hold a conversation with somebody in the same way. You know, I I got attacked by this on this during the campaign in 2024 when I said, you know, it’s actually okay if you’re an American, an English native speaker, it’s actually okay for you to want the person who moves in next to you to speak English, not because you’re a racist or a xenophobe, but because you want to be able to talk to the person you share a community with. And so what what I often see is that division gets magnified when statesmen don’t do the job of actually ensuring that integration is possible. And for integration to be possible, it has to be, I think, slowmoving. You have to be careful, right? A 100 people moving into a community is different from 10 people moving into a community. You have to make sure that everybody has economic opportunities, right? It’s one thing to welcome a newcomer when everybody has access to a good job, but you welcome a newcomer when a lot of people are feeling economically distressed. They’re going to react to it totally differently. So again, this is maybe me being charitable to people you think I shouldn’t be charitable to, but fundamentally like my job as an elected leader is to create the kind of environment where division happens less. It’s not to pretend that division doesn’t exist. people naturally, I think, feel reactive when things change too quickly, and that’s okay. No, I I understand the the sort of human instinct of of uh I guess of kind of like xenophobia in a way. Um and I think we all we all would want our neighbor to to be able to connect with our neighbor. Yeah. I think it’s like the the point of nuance is when they can’t speak my language, what do I then do about that? And I think, you know, maybe if my neighbor didn’t speak my language, we might not get along because we wouldn’t be able to connect and talk. But but I wouldn’t be angry at them. And I and my my concern is from a high level when the the sort of western narrative now is that it’s the brown people that are the reason that your life is hard is I if if I believed that, if I heard that from my political leaders, it’s conceivable that I might be angry at my neighbor even though they’ve done nothing. Just their presence alone might make me resent them a little bit. And then what happens when I resent them? because I’m being told that they’re the reason that I’m suffering. They’re the reason I don’t have a job. And then we get into this these like culture wars, which is a slippery slope. I’ve always I hear you. But what I would say is is I’m not mad, and I said this on the campaign trail all the time. I’m not mad at the illegal alien who broke our laws and came into the country. Probably some of them probably didn’t even know they were breaking our laws, who came into our country and wanted better opportunity for their families. What I am mad is the political system the I don’t know right it’s hard to say but I am mad at the political system that encourages people to break those rules and sews division and then gets mad at the native population for looking around and saying wait a second I didn’t sign up for this I didn’t agree to this so I just like you I don’t know what you describe that I would say there’s an instinct in every human being to want to share a community with people where you’ve got something in common with okay and and it’s Like everything, right? A little bit of spice is good. Too much spice changes the the dynamic a little bit. And I think most people, they’re okay with change, but change that happens too fast, too quickly. I think in an immigration context is very very bad for a country. And I think you guys have had that. We’ve had that. A lot of European countries have had that. I don’t even feel particularly angry um at any country because it’s a mistake that all of us made. But now that you see that, I mean, you rightly call it division. I just think that we have to say, “Wait a second, let’s try to do things a slightly different way.” I think algorithms also play a big role in that because of the the design. 100%. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So that’s but that’s probably another conversation. Um I do think though if I if my family were struggling or at all in danger at risk and there was a an area of land over there that offered them a better chance. I personally think for the sake of my family, if my family was struggling, I would try and move my family into that area. And I I assume you would do the same. I assume you would if your family I’ve got this wonderful photo of your kids and your wife. Well, if America went to catastrophe and Mexico was doing great, would you not try and get into Mexico even if it wasn’t um you didn’t have a visa? I know. I don’t think I would. I mean, I I can understand why some people have to like move, you need to eat, you need to provide for your family. But, you know, I I I think that this is another thing about about the immigration thing that is that is challenging is, you know, you want people to feel a certain rootedness and a certain devotion to their country. You know, one of the things that’s very unique about America compared to Europe is there’s this poll question that went around when I was a teenager, maybe I was in my early 20s, and it asked, “What percentage of young people in that society would die for their country if they had to?” Like, I’m not excited about the idea, but would actually do it. In the United States, it was something like 70%. And in all the other European, all the other Western countries, it was like 20 to 35%. And so, you know, you talk about like, okay, moving to Mexico because there’s economic opportunity in in a universe where Mexico is flourishing and America’s struggling. I get what you’re saying that you want people to move and migrate to the place where they can have a chance of feeding their family, but like I I love this place in a way that is totally independent of the economic opportunities it provides to my children. There’s something much deeper and there’s a connection to to to the places, to the memories, to the folkways. I I mean I I drive through Eastern Kentucky, man, and those beautiful rolling hills and even mountains, but they’re all mountains that are a light with life because they’re, you know, it’s not the Rockies. You go you go to you go to West Virginia, you should do this. It’s the most beautiful area, I think, in the world because you get the mountains and you get the rivers and you get that, but it’s also so green and rich with life. I feel an attachment to it that is very, very unique. But even if if your family were at risk, you wouldn’t move them into Mexico. Well, I mean, look, my my the story of my family, my grandparents, is they came from Eastern Kentucky and moved to southern Ohio, not exactly that far away. These are these are two very close areas, but they moved away even though they didn’t want to because of economic opportunity to provide for their families. So, I I certainly empathize with that. I mean, yeah, somebody showed up. I mean, like, I’m the vice president. I have a Secret Service detail. It’s hard to put myself in this perspective right now, but if like somebody showed up to my home in Cincinnati and pointed a gun at my head and said, “You have to leave or we’re going to kill your children.” I’d leave, right? But yeah, I I think most migration decisions are not actually that consequential and extreme. Makes sense. Yeah. This young man here, you ultimately go into the Marine Corps. I go into the Marine Corps. Yeah. So, this is this is me in I believe right after boot camp. So, 2003, maybe May. Yeah, I think 2003. This is me. This photo is taken in boot camp. And this is I’m pretty sure this is taken in Iraq. Actually, this is either in ‘ 05 or 06 at a point when, you know, the Iraq war was not going well. But why did you photo? What was the decision? You know, there was this sense, and in hindsight, I really resent this. I mean, I’m genuinely still angry at George W. bush over this. Even though, again, I I try to I try to be charitable and I have friends who worked for him, think he’s a great guy. Not saying he’s not, but when I was a senior in high school, I remember I’m at a restaurant. It’s called Skyline Chili in southwestern Ohio. And this guy comes out of Skyline Chile. He’s got like a World War II red veterans hat. We call them Red Hatters in the United States. So, he was a veteran of World War II. And I remember feeling like because you even that stage, this is probably 2003, 2002 maybe, remember thinking to myself, this generation is dying away. Like I I have this feeling, right? Because most most veterans you met, they were veterans of Vietnam, maybe of the first Iraq war. But I just went up and I was I shook his hand. I said, “Thank you, sir, for your service.” And you know, he was like genuinely touched. But I remember thinking, “This guy answered the call. Now we have to answer the call.” You know, September the 11th happened when I was a junior in high school and there was this patriotic sense of this is our World War II, right? And even some of the historical analogies that got used were the exact same. Saddam Hussein was Adolf Hitler. What if you had had an opportunity to stand up and say no to Adolf Hitler when he annexed the Satan land? Wouldn’t you have taken that chance? And it it’s like they they they were so good at tapping into that patriotic reservoir. And by the way, I think that reservoir is a very valuable thing. I think it’s important for statesmen to cultivate it, but only to tap into it when it’s really necessary and when it’s really justified. And what was so screwed up about Iraq is I mean I remember like I went to the Marine Corps recruiter and I wanted to be Marine because my older cousins were Marines and people said the Marines weren’t the toughest. Whether that’s true or not, that was certainly the impression that Marines had of themselves. I signed on the dotted line. I went in what’s called open contract. So sometimes you sign up and you have your job assigned like you already know what you’re going to do. I want I want an open contract. I said you can give me whatever job you want to. I just want to be a Marine. And I I did that because I loved my country and I wanted to contribute in the same way that that guy who wore a red hat, was still wearing his red hat, was still proud of it, knew that he contributed. And uh you know that led me of course to go to Iraq from ’05 to ’06 and made a lot of friends gained a ton of appreciation for the Marine Corps as an institution and the people but you know became a little jaded about our political leadership. Why are you you said you you kind of annoyed at Bush? Because that patriotic reservoir that exists in any country I think it’s maybe most powerful in the United States of America because again we have this 70 70 plus percent of young people say they would die for their country. It’s very unique among advanced economies. And I’m sure a lot of people in Europe look at that and say, “Oh, those jingoistic idiots, they’re, you know, they’re they’re wrong or there’s something bad about that.” But I actually think you ha to have a real nation, you have to have the willingness that if, god forbid, something happens, you’re willing to put on your uniform and go and do what needs to be done. But again, in order for that to work, in order for that feeling to be justified, leaders have to not take advantage of it. You can’t say Saddam Hussein is Adolf Hitler. He wasn’t. You You got to be careful with it. And I don’t think that George W. Bush was careful with it. I I think that he called the nation to do something that ultimately wasn’t actually in our best interest as a nation, but more fundamentally, he drew on that wellspring of patriotism to direct us to do something that we shouldn’t have been doing in the first place because he had bad information or because of negligence or incompetence. I don’t I mean, I you know, I know enough people who know him. I think he had bad information but you know fundamentally like post 911 was really important. We had to go and deal with the terrorist networks that had existed all across the world that had been allowed to fester over the previous generation of of American negligence. But fundamentally the war on terrorism was not an existential thing to the United States of America in the same in the way that like World War II was an existential thing for Britain. Right. And I think we just we have to be careful about how we describe what we’re asking our young people to do because if you ask them to do something and they feel like you were being honest with them, I think that sort of pays dividends into that patriotic reservoir. If you ask somebody to do something and it turns out you were lying to them, whether it was intentional or not, I think you draw down that patriotic reservoir. I don’t know what the By the way, I mentioned that that poll and you know, I don’t have the information. I don’t know the data in front of me, but whatever the number of Americans, young Americans who say they would die for their country, I would bet my I’ I’d bet a lot of money that that number in 2026 is much lower than it was in 2003. So, it’s really like a sort of a a contract with the nation that’s built on trust, social contract built on trust. You violate that trust, it has very, very bad consequences. The the US is, I guess, in a war now. Well, not anymore. famous last words. Fair. We are in a ceasefire that I feel very good about. Okay. That we announced I know this will air later, but that we announced the ceasefire. We announced the the peace agreement with the Iranians yesterday. Yes. I’ve learned so much about war because of this war. Um in part because I’m an interviewer at the time of war. And so I’ve been having lots of conversations with lots of people about the nature of war. And I’ve learned so much. Frankly, I didn’t know anything about Vietnam and really the psychology of war. Yeah. And how like when you start a war, Robert P said this to me. He said the thing people underestimate about war is when the bombs start dropping, politics changes both where the bombs are dropping and at home. Sure. And I I to some degree think that with the Iran war now, that’s like exactly what happened. From my assessment of it, which is it looked like it was going to be quite straightforward. Drop the bombs, take out the leader. Um the people rise up, which is what um the president had said. He had encouraged the people to rise up when those bombs dropped and Kmeni was taken out. But then what then happened what it’s again I don’t know what I’m talking about here so please correct me is it looked like the country kind of fractured into all of these sort of little pockets of militia and military. Um I remember I think it was Hexath saying it just takes some time for the carrier pigeon to get out to where the soldiers are the outpost and it’s how the fracturing had happened. Yeah. And then I heard the president and I think yourself multiple times say like we don’t really know who we’re negotiating with or words to that effect because we’ve taken out the first and second row of leadership. And then I I thought we gosh we’re in the same situation again where the bomb started dropping unintended consequences where there’s now not one central leadership to negotiate with but also politics at home has shifted the I mean the approval ratings of I got this graph of the approval ratings had started to plummet at home and politics is changing on the ground there as well. Is this another forever war? Well the answer is no. Um, and you know, this is always when I I talked about this this conflict, I always said Donald Trump learned the lessons. It’s actually that’s almost unfair to him. He didn’t learn the lessons of the Iraq war because back during the Iraq war, he was saying this was stupid. We should get out of Iraq. He was saying that back then. And I think that while there were certainly some objectives that we had in this conflict, I just never had any doubt. Now, obviously I’m an insider. I saw the president’s deliberations and thought on this, but I I never had any worry that this would become a multi-year expedition with no end in sight because I knew that we had leadership that was trying to define the objective very narrowly, accomplish the objectives, and then see where we are. Mhm. And so, you know, if you go back, you talk about this this street uprising. Certainly, there was some thought that it would be possible that the Iranian street would rise up in the face of this thing and that you would see, you know, a new government that was much more pro-American, much more pro- Western. What what happened though is what we knew we could do is degrade their military. That was the that was actually the primary objective. Yes, the president talked about the Iranians rising up, but the primary objective was always to degrade their conventional power so that we could be in a better position visa v Iran so that whoever was calling the shots, they didn’t have a loaded gun to our head anymore. Okay? And that’s what we knew we could accomplish. And then there was always the question about, okay, now that we’ve accomplished that, where do we go from here? And you know, one one of the things that I I feel just just quite good about this moment that we’re in is the president basically bought us an option. He said, “We can weaken their military, destroy their conventional military, we can change their leadership, and then we can actually present a pathway to the Iranian leadership. Where do we go from here?” Like, you said something very interesting that was true 2 months ago that’s not true now. 2 months ago, I would have said, “I have no idea who we’re who we’re negotiating with.” Absolutely. Now, I feel very confident that we have an understanding of who we’re negotiating with, what it is that they care about. Yes, there are fractures in their system. Well, there there so so so the Iranian system, this is oversimplifying it a lot, but it has kind of three poles. There’s the political poll, the people who are most responsive to the leadership. That’s the foreign minister, the president, the speaker of the parliament. Okay? There’s a clerical poll, meaning the clerics who actually hold ultimate authority in the Iranian system via the supreme leader, the clerics, the the the religious leaders. And then you have the military, particularly the IRGC. Okay, all three of these polls interact with each other in in weird ways. And one of the things we definitely two months ago, we were like, “Wait a second, who has the upper hand? What does this group want versus this group versus that group?” But what what I feel pretty confident about now, I mean, this this we’re taping this interview, I guess, June 15th, right? What I feel quite confident about right now is that we know who we’re dealing with and the fractures really aren’t the the you know the system is kind of coalesed and what they’re telling us which is interesting now is it the street rising up no but what they’re telling us is you know what you know obviously they’re not like endorsing anything that we did there’s a lot of mistrust a lot of animosity but you know fundamentally we’ve done one thing visa v the United States for 47 years and we shouldn’t do that thing anymore. We want to change. And if you, the Americans, are willing to actually negotiate with us to have a conversation. Yeah, we’re willing to make the long-term commitment never to develop nuclear weapons, but we want a totally different economic arrangement than what we have with the West right now. So, that’s where we’re at right now is actually figuring out the details of what that would look like. But where where we stand right now, I actually feel pretty good about it. I feel good that we actually could have a better relationship with that country. I feel good that they’ll never have a nuclear weapon. So that’d be like a real loaded gun they would have to the West. But I also think that there is a general consensus that their in in their system that their relationship would be different than than um than the past. The other thing just this is very important the underappreciated element like this is like if I was ever going to write a book about Donald Trump’s foreign policy and by the way he hates people who write books not like books like that but insider books where you take trusted information and put it into a book doesn’t like that but what I would what I would say is he’s so non-conventional in the way that he does everything but certainly in the way that he does foreign policy that things that were previously unimaginable are actually on the table. So when Donald Trump says to the Iranians, we want you to be a successful country if you give us what we need on nuclear. We’ll take the sanctions off your country and allow you to prosper. That would have been unthinkable 10 years ago in any Democrat or Republican administration. But it’s thinkable because Donald Trump is just like, “No, the the way things worked in the past are dumb. We’re going to do something new.” And that’s that’s what he’s putting on the table. We’ll see if they meet us, but right now I feel pretty good about it. The other term I’d never heard before is straight of Hummus. Yes, I’ve heard so much about the bloody straight of Hamoose. Um, did you have any idea that the Iranians would cut off the straight of Hormuz? You you did know that going into it. So, it was a major as soon as you see these media reports like the the Trump team was caught off guard. What would happen in the straight of moose was a main fixture of the conversation that we were having about whether to do this, how to do this. So, it was certainly a variable. Now, now you can never predict with 100% certainty what people are going to do. But the basic bias that we had going into it is that they would try to cut off the straight. They would try to jack up energy prices. They thought, and I think this is true, they thought that they could cut off the straits for us, but actually keep the straits open for themselves. That ended up not being true when we imposed the blockade. But fundamentally, we we knew some version of what would happen. But we also went into it saying if they do this fundamentally it’s a short-term thing. So like Brent crude is sort of the main crude oil index, right? I think the highest it got was $126 per barrel. Right now sitting here it’s around $82 a barrel. It’s fallen off a cliff because there’s a broad recognition that yeah, it was a short-term shock, but not a short-term shock that’s going to permanently alter the world energy economy. It’s quite a powerful weapon they have in their arsenal just to take shutter the world’s economy and piss off your people at home at the gas pump. It’s quite like it’s quite a well uh geography really matters in warfare it turns out and yes they have great proximity to the straight of war moves but but again if you just go back two weeks ago one of the things that’s interesting really under reportported um but I think you know your listeners will obviously be interested in is if you look at the amount of oil that we were getting out of the straight of Hormuz we I mean the United States the Gulf Coast coalition broadly speaking the Arabs in the Gulf Right? You look at it what it was, call it April 1st, it was like close to zero. You go to May 30th, early June, it was many, many million barrels of of oil a day. Now, not enough to eliminate the shock to be clear, but we were seeing significant increases in oil traffic. And again, I think that’s one of the reasons why we’re having a good negotiation with the Iranians is they recognized, yes, they have this leverage point, but maybe not forever. And it’s one of those cards you can play, but you can’t necessarily play it week after week after week. It degrades in power. So, I take your point. Yeah, they have this geographical thing going on. But I think that geographical leverage point was weakening over time and it’s it’s why we are where we are, I think, with a very good deal. Knock on wood, we have to see completion because if you’re them, you go, “Well, all I’ve got to do is wait two years cuz the president is going to be, you know, removed from from office in two years time. is going to be at the end of his term. So, if they could just wait it out for 2 years, they can hope that a new political leader that comes in um might be more charitable with them. Yeah. But if if if Donald Trump has 2 and 1/2 years left in office, I think the Iranians recognize they did not have 2 and 1/2 years to weigh things out. One is as we got more and more oil out of the straight, their leverage point decreased. But in some ways, more importantly, like look, you look at Persian culture, you look at the history of Iran, this is one of the proudest and oldest civilizations anywhere in the world. They don’t want to be like a Libya style rump state. They want to have a much brighter future. Like I think that that’s actually true. Now, there’s a question about how to get there and obviously there’s a lot of animosity between the two sides, but I do think something has fundamentally changed in the way that regime sees the world. The um the deal that you have on the table. Yes. Now, okay. Excuse me if I’m skeptical, but I said to you before we start started recording, I watch everything. Yes. So, I’ve watched every if if you do an interview, Hexath does one. If the president does one, I see it. I see the whole thing. I don’t know why, but that I I’m very very interested in US politics because it does impact the whole world. Sure. And as I’ve watched these interviews, there’s been lots of false deals. You flew out there to Pakistan and you flew right back. The deal wasn’t done. Um I think I saw a report the other day that said uh the president has said roughly 30 times that there’s a deal done or that there’s a deal on the table. Usually on a Sunday, then it’s not. Then we go back into this negotiation thing. So I’m like I don’t have any trust anymore for for a deal getting done. This one’s real. So Okay, good. Okay. So people can always change their minds, but this one is real for sure. So what what does that mean? Does it mean that there’s a contract that has been sent with terms on it and they’ve provisionally like a term sheet said we agree. Yes. Okay. Exactly what’s happened. Okay. So they’ve agreed to a term sheet. Yes. And then as is the case in business and investing that becomes more of a formalized contract. Correct. And then that’s signed. That’s right. So what is in the term sheet? Well, a few things. So, the the first is that the Straits of Hormuz opens effectively immediately and the blockade is lifted effectively immediately. Now, when I say effectively, that’s doing a little bit of work there because, you know, part of what’s going on is there’s a different risk tolerance for different shippers in the Gulf. So, some again, like I said earlier, some of these guys are already shipping a lot of oil through the straits of Hormuz right now, even though the Iranians are threatening to shoot at them. But what what this means is that over time we’re going to demine the straight of Hormuz. The Iranians are going to stop shooting. We’re going to lift our naval blockade and you’re going to see I think a pretty quick resumption of full flow of traffic in the straight of Hormuz. That that’s number one. Most important thing there mines in there. But it it’s, you know, it’s a very big waterway. There’s a lot of traffic moving right now. So we know where the mines are. They’re not everywhere. And you know, again, the ships are able to move. The biggest obstacle and impediment to ships moving right now is actually not the mines themselves. It’s the Iranians who are shooting drones and missiles on the other side. Now I say that we have seen a precipitous decline since we signed this agreement. We’ve seen a precipitous decline and even that happening. So you’re already again seeing the fruits of this negotiation that we have. Number two is it contemplates the Iranians giving up their highlyenriched stockpile of material, committing to a long-term inspections regime on their nuclear program and in exchange having a totally different economic relationship with the United States of America. So like there’s a stack of of sanctions that the US has on Iran that is like 60 pages long that is incredibly destructive to the Iranian economy by design, right? that the the deal is you’re not going to behave like a normal country. We’re not going to engage in normal trade and transactions with you. What this agreement provides is that if the Iranians take significant steps to behave like a normal country, they’re going to get significant reintegration into the world economy. And I think that’s that that that is in some ways the most profound thing. And what the United States gets out of that is is the long-term guarantee that they never become a nuclear power. I think people always sort of it’s hard to to appreciate how temporal this is. The Iranian nuclear program has been completely destroyed. Like it doesn’t exist right now, but over time you can try to rebuild it. And so what we’re trying to say is we don’t want you to rebuild this program. If you make real commitments and verifiable commitments that you’re not going to, then you’re getting a lot of economic benefits on the side. You dropped those big uh bunker buster bombs. Correct. um was very fascinated by all the all that whole series of of military operations and um it the nuclear material is now buried pretty deep underground from what I understand with this deal. Do you get to go and get it? Do they hand it over to you? What happens? So the way the deal isru is structured is that the Iranians, the Americans, and the International Atomic Energy Agency will actually work together to go get the material and destroy it. That’s that’s the basic idea is that we’re all going to work together. Again, the the agreement contemplates a new era in relationship. So the idea is that we’re all going to try to work together, destroy this material. And again, if that happens, the Iranians are going to have a totally different economic relationship with the West. And if it doesn’t happen, then the United States is no worse off. And you do you get to check that they’re not just going to a different mountain and building new nuclear weapons? That’s where the verification element comes in. But we have a very good sense, you know, you can probably guess why. We have a very good sense of what’s going on in the country of Iran. We could probably keep that material just permanently buried, but we don’t want to do that. We actually want to solve the problem and we want the Iranians to have a different relationship with us and that’s what we’re trying to do. And the specifics of you being able to go and check that they’re not just building new nuclear weapons. It sounds to me like the specifics haven’t been defined yet, like how those checks take place. Well, it’s Yeah, it’s like you said, it’s it’s a term sheet where we’ve got broad agreement on principles and how we’re going to approach the negotiation, but there are a lot of details that we got to figure out from here. So I’ve got straight off the news opens um nuclear inspections but also a coalition to remove the nuclear waste. Correct. Um from that they get the opportunity to participate in the in the economy and sanctions will be lifted. Y is there anything that’s in that term sheet that’s not included there? I mean there are other like little details and things like that. You know obviously the permanent sessation of hostilities. We’re trying to bring in a a regional era of peace here but that’s pretty much the main thing. and Israel. Um, there were some uh some interesting words exchanged yesterday. Again, I watch everything. So, I saw that the the Fox reporter had called Trump, I think yesterday, because Netanyahu had started firing some bombs and he had some select words, kind of like your grandmother’s words. Yes, indeed. Apparently, he said uh Trump said he’d phoned Netanyahu and told him he had no [  ] judgment. Why did BB have to do a [  ] attack? I’m so pissed off. half an hour before we were supposed to sign the deal. Trump called Netanyahu a very difficult guy. He should be very thankful for us for doing this because if Iran had a nuclear weapon, Israel wouldn’t be around for 2 hours. Um, lots of cussing at Netanyahu and what he had done. You I’ve heard you actually say that you think Israel and the United States have two different objectives as it relates to I don’t want to mischaracterize your words, but all I would say is that we’re different countries with different interests. I think the United States sometimes people characterize, you know, Israel is is a good partner to the United States. That is true. But sometimes people mischaracterize it and say that Israel and the United States are fundamentally always aligned. It’s just not true. We’re different countries. We have different needs. We have different geographies. Do you trust them? You know, I don’t trust anybody. Um, when it comes to international affairs and diplomacy, do I think that they’re they’re very capable? Absolutely. Do I think that again when we have shared interests, we work together very well? Absolutely. But but do I but I I don’t trust anyone. And I think that we we just have to continually be laser focused on what our interests are. And you know what the president said about BB is, you know, sometimes, you know, we are the world’s superpower and obviously we’re Israel’s most important ally anywhere in the world. And sometimes to ensure that we are able to accomplish our objectives, the president has to have a very frank conversation with the prime minister of Israel. Sometimes he does that. Sometimes everything works smoothly, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s just the nature like any relationship, right? Any relationship is going to have moments where you have to be more direct. Sometimes you’re working together and sometimes there’s a little bit more conflict. The world’s opinion and thoughts about the USIsrael relationship, yeah, has never been more widely discussed. I agree. And I I almost I almost don’t know why, but it’s it seems to be the case that over the last I’d say 6 to 12 months, people are really now questioning what is this relationship and who is who is the dominant part partner in the relationship? What for someone and just in super simple terms cuz I don’t really know a lot about this particular point. Sure. What is the relationship and why and where did it come from? Well, you know, I’m I’m hardly an expert in USIsraeli relations, right? But but let let me just say they’re obviously in some ways the only democracy in the Middle East. Okay. Uh very advanced economy, very high-skilled people, technological ingenuity. I mean it’s a country of 9 million people. They generate a lot of the world’s inventions just from 9 million people. It’s very impressive country economically. They’re also probably better at intelligence collection than any country in the world. So there again and and again because they’re an advanced economy because you know they’re people generally speaking want to live in peace and harmony just want to go to work and raise their kids there are a lot of shared interests and a lot of shared objectives and I think that you know over time especially for example when one of our biggest problems going back to you know the early 2000s was the rise of Islamic terrorism um Islamic radical terrorism I should say there was a sort of broad recognition that there’s a lot for us to work on but but again even even if you go back to then the early 2000s, very large alignment between Israeli interests and American interests. But even in like the early 2000s, the Israelis were much more worried about Iran than the United States was, right? We were much more worried about al-Qaeda, like a different branch of Islamic terrorism. So even when we’ve been very aligned, we’re just different countries that have different objectives. And you know, I will say having seen the president of United States operate, I feel quite confident that, you know, they are the junior partner. We’re the senior partner. We’re the world’s superpower. That’s the way that it works. But, you know, again, sometimes it’s it’s like with the UK. I would say the UK is our closest ally, our oldest ally. I’m not just saying that because you’re a Brit. Do you trust the UK? Uh, again, I don’t really trust anybody, but do I like do I like a lot of Brits? Absolutely. Do I have a I mean, incredible fondness for the United Kingdom as a country and a culture. Absolutely. And I really like a lot of the people, even the Labor government, even though they’re politically misaligned uh with with me and and the rest of the Trump administration. But you know like we have disagreements from time to time. So we work really well together and sometimes we have misaligned interests and we have to pursue our interests in the best way we can. What does and please do tell me like what does Netanyahu want because I sit here with these experts and they say they want to overtake the whole of the Middle East. They want to run the Middle East. What does he want? I don’t know. I don’t know. Um well I mean I I I don’t I can’t get inside somebody’s head. Have you asked them what they want? What do you think? Well, I I think that in this particular operation, again, where interests were aligned is we wanted Iranian conventional military power to be much weaker, to be decimated. You know, the the Israelis shared that objective. Do I think that there are maybe I don’t know if BB thinks this, but do I think there are people within Israeli society who would like to turn Iran into Libya, basically a failed state with 90 million people? Probably. But I I don’t know that BB wants that. I’ve actually never had that conversation with it. It would be an interesting conversation to have. I’ll tell you right now, is Iran turning into a Persian Libya good for the United States of America? Absolutely not. And that’s one of the reasons why the president has set us on this course of working on our interest, which is the elimination of the nuclear threat and in a change dynamic with the Iranians, which is very much on the table. You run for Senate. Yeah. Um and you’re successful. And this is really from what I can see from my research where you and Trump first uh made friends, I should say. Uh before then you weren’t friends. No, that’s right. You were quite critical of Donald Trump before then. Um and you’ve been probably asked this a million times, but what I actually didn’t know this until literally today. Okay. That I read the piece you written in the Atlantic where you criticized him for taking advantage of the struggling working class. What Trump offers, this is your quote, is an easy escape from pain. To every complex problem, he promises a simple solution. He can bring jobs back simply by punishing offshore companies into submission. As he told the New Hampshire crowd, “Folks are too similar with the opioid Scrooge. He can cure the addiction epidemic by building a Mexican wall and keeping the cartels out. He will spare the United States from humiliation and military defeat with indiscriminate bombing. It doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. He never offers detail for those plans to work because Trump’s Trump is cultural heroine. He makes some people feel better, but he cannot fix all that ils all that ils them and one day they’ll realize it. Very tough words against Trump. Long time ago, but 2016 and 10 years ago, what changed? Well, let me let me pick up. First of all, I think you always have to be able to acknowledge when you’re right and when you’re wrong. And there was a lot I was right about in 2016, but but just pick up on something. Can you read the line for me again where I talk about no is it no credible military leader has endorsed these plans? Yeah, it says um it doesn’t matter that no credible military leader has endorsed his plan. Okay. So, what I would say is I wrote that. I believed it when I wrote it. And reading it now, I’m almost embarrassed that I wrote it because it was so obviously absurd. In fact, the the fact that Donald Trump was misaligned with the military experts and the military leadership of 2016 was a good thing, not a bad thing. Think about those military leaders. I mean, I have a lot of respect for the troops, the people who serve, the people who put on a uniform, but you can make a very credible argument that from the early ’90s until, you know, at least 2016, America hadn’t won a war in 30 years. Like, there’s a reason why Donald Trump mistr mistrusted the military leadership. And he was right. And so much of what I think the president re represented at the time was a recognition that American institutions had become sclerotic and broken and he was a weapon to break down those institutions. Your assessment of him is similar to the democratic assessment of him. Your assessment of him back in 2016 is similar to the democratic assessment of him that there was a private message between you and roommate where you you said he was either a cynical [  ] or America’s Hitler. How do you go from that position to vice president of the same person? What is that journey? A crazy journey, man. But but again, I mean, it’s you have to ask yourself, first of all, I thought Donald Trump would be a failed president if he got elected. He was not. I thought that America’s institutions were fundamentally functioning. They were not. I thought that the military leaders who told us this about a war were the scientific experts who told us this other thing about a pandemic were fundamentally maybe not always right but fundamentally wise people who were mostly right I was wrong. What have you observed behind the scenes that that JD didn’t see so in operation when you see him making decisions? Well, yeah. So, I I mean I I want to caveat this with with saying that, you know, I didn’t know him well by the time, you know, I voted for him in 2020. Um, obviously, you know, very very involved in the 2024 campaign well before I was ever his vice presidential nominee. I I had that change based purely on what I saw from the outside. It’s not like I had insider knowledge about Donald Trump and that’s what caused me to change. Now, what I will say is that having the insider knowledge, one thing that that really mistakes or or gets wrong, that piece in the Atlantic, that’s when that that that’s where that piece was published, is that Donald Trump is much different as a human being than the media makes him out to be. He’s very warm. He’s a very like loving person to his kids, to his grandkids. He’s incredibly generous. Like if you see Donald Trump, you know, in the Oval Office, it’s like he has to give you a gift. Like he has to whether it’s, you know, a water bottle or a MAGA hat or a coin or a pin. Like he he just he’s one of these people who he really likes hospitality. He really likes making other people happy. I had no understanding of that from him from the outside. What I would see is, you know, clips of him arguing with a journalist and that was it. And that gives you a very very one-dimensional view of a person. So yeah, I definitely from the inside have seen a much much more multi-dimensional figure. The thing I say about about Donald Trump is I remember this in 2016 and in hindsight it’s just so so dumb. People would say that he was dumb or that he wasn’t very smart. He’s super smart. Like he reads a lot. He understands people at an instinctual level better than anybody that I’ve ever known. But he is a very very like from a pure IQ perspective, he’s a very smart person. And it’s interesting that so many people like, you know, if you give Donald Trump an IQ test with the other 45 46 presidents that the United States has had, I guarantee he he’d be either near the top or at the top. And the entire American media in 2016 had convinced me at least that he was not a smart person. And by 2022, he’s endorsed you and you, uh, you win your race in the US Senate. Correct. And then sometime after then, um, at some point, you’re going to get introduced to him and he’s going to ask you to be the vice president of the United States. Yeah. Bring me, if I was a fly on the wall, was that a phone call or was it a meeting? Well, there have been meetings before that. Well, just generally at that point, I was involved in his re-election campaign. I was one of the first, maybe the very first senators to endorse him in 2023, I believe, is actually when I endorsed him. very early on in 2023 when again I thought he would win but the conventional wisdom was that he would not win even the Republican nomination that his political career was over. So I endorsed him very early. He and I became quite close over over that period. We talked a lot about issues. He gave me some advice on various bills that I was working on in the Senate. We just became pretty close. He and I worked very closely together over there was this train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio and he and I became quite quite close over that. So we just sort of developed a relationship. we were friendly and then we were closer and then he was sort of, you know, a person that I really looked to in politics and then the 2024 campaign really started heating up and there were all these rumors about possibly me being his running mate. And you know, he and I didn’t ever have that conversation like about being his running mate until like a day or two before he picked me. And that was an inerson conversation. It was actually the morning he was shot in person. He goes to that rally in Pennsylvania. He gets shot. Um, obviously he’s okay, thank God. And then two days later, he asked me to be the nominee. So, where where were you when he asked you? Uh, I had just landed in Milwaukee for the RNC convention. It was there’s like a deadline to it because the way the convention works is you have to be formally nominated by the delegates on Monday at like 3 or 4:00. Mhm. And it was 11:00. I had just arrived in Milwaukee. I had no idea what was going on. And I thought I had a good chance, but I wasn’t sure. and he called me. I didn’t answer the phone. Uh I think that it was like it was just it was one of those things where I was getting so many phone calls and the call went straight to voicemail like it never rang. And so I get a text message from a friend of mine who’s now the White House chief of staff said, “You just missed a very important phone call.” I called him back. I said, “What’s up, Mr. President?” He said, “J, you just missed a very important phone call. I’m going to have to pick somebody else up.”

Uh but then he asked me and the rest is history, man. Did you know at that time what you were signing up for? No, I had no idea. No idea. So why did you want to do it? And you know, people say I represent my country. But why? Why? It’s it’s a lot. It’s a big cost to your family. When when I when I arrived here today, I saw I don’t know, it felt like 50 men with guns probably. Yeah. They’ scoped out the whole building and you know, they’ve been searching this building, I think, for a couple of days. And I thought, wow. Like, how does how does the vice president live life with his his family when you have this going everywhere with you? Did you know what you were signing up for? No. No, I didn’t. I mean, I you know, you sign up because you want to make a difference and because, you know, I was already a senator, so I’m already in the politics business. I might as well try to serve at the highest level possible. You know, you think you could help, right? Part of being the VP is you help on the campaign trail. you know, six months. Really, the part of the campaign that is the most intense is the part where you’re sort of riding a side saddle with uh with the presidential nominee. So, just like all these things for white people get into politics in the first place. But no, I mean, look, I I’m not a whiner and I would never complain about this, but if I was a whiner, the one thing I would say is it was very hard on the kids, in particular, our oldest son. And I just had no idea what I was getting myself into. I mean, okay, so the president, he and I have this brief phone conversation. You know, my kid is talking to me about Pokemon cards at the hotel in Milwaukee. We’re still like unpacking our suitcase, and it’s like, okay, I’m now the VP nominee. I have to get on my suit. I have to get prepared to be nominated like 3 or 4 hours later, and all these thoughts are swirling through my head. Knock at the door, and it’s the Secret Service. And it’s like, “All right, you’re under our protection now. We have to move your entire family to the president’s hotel so that you’re in the same protective bubble.” And all of a sudden, I just realized my life is totally different now. It’ll never be the same. I I was okay with that, you know, like you sort of you just get used to it. I’m a grown man. But it was very hard on, you know, my my oldest boy who’s 9 years old now. He made a comment, didn’t he? Oh, yeah. He hated it. He he hated the attention. He hated how people treated him differently. It was like one of these things where, you know, he would go to a school and people would treat him like he was special and he just wanted to be a normal kid. And I felt guilty. I felt really guilty about that. And I felt this sort of sense like, oh my god, I’ve conscripted this kid into this life. I had no idea what he was he was what I was signing him up for. He didn’t sign up for it. I signed him up for it. And that was pretty tough. Sometimes I feel like I’ve ruined his life without even asking him. You wrote that in your new book, page 198. Yes. In reference to your 7-year-old son. Sometimes I feel like I’ve ruined his life without even asking him. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s that’s how that’s how I felt. I mean I I think that I’ve I’ve gained certainly some perspective about it. You know, one of the things we’ve been quite good at is just finding communities where he’s more isolated from all the attention and all the pressures of it. You we have a very very good school community for him. A Christian school that he goes to and he loves. There’s also, by the way, a flip side is, you know, kids, as you may know, you realize how much nature matters more than nurture. You know, our oldest boy is an introvert. Um, our six-year-old is a little bit more like me. He’s a bit of an extrovert. He loves it. And so, you you kind of have to balance the way that it affects the kids. But, you know, I don’t feel like I’ve ruined my 9-year-old’s life anymore, but I certainly at that time I felt extremely guilty about what I had signed him up for. And in your new book, Communion, you say, “Dad, he you quote him and say that he said, “Dad, I just want every everyone to go back to treating us like they used to.” Yes, that’s right. Are these are these things hard to hear? Like, is it hard? Of course, man. Of course. I mean, you you know, do you have kids? Not yet. Trying. Yeah. Yeah. Good for you. You know, my my prayers for that endeavor, but Thank you. I I think

your kids have an emotional effect on you that is just totally profound and revoly and yeah man when when your son tells you that he wants something that you can no longer provide him that’s a very very tough thing. Now the flip side of it is and you can say this a rationalization but I think it’s true. The flip side is there are a lot of blessings that come along with this life. And you know, I’ve talked to him a lot about this. I’ve actually, you know, I write this in the book that Charlie Kirk was probably the person who was most influential in helping me think through this conversation is, you know, don’t try to pretend that it’s not a sacrifice to him. Like I, you know, don’t pretend that you haven’t signed him up for something that has changed his life. You have. But I try to talk to him about, well, there are benefits, too. You’ve gotten to see the world. We’ve got to see the country in a in a way that no kid has ever gotten to see it. And we get to live in this cool house. I live in the Naval Observatory here in Washington DC. We would not get to do that if I was not the vice president. So, what I’ve I’ve I’ve learned to do with him is not to minimize the negative, but to try to contextualize it, but also to try to emphasize the positive. And it’s funny, you know, I asked him this probably about a year ago. I said, “Are are you still unhappy that I became the vice president?” This is probably four or five months into. He said, “Absolutely.” And I asked him that question recently and he said actually it’s pretty good. So kids adjust, you know, lives change. You figure out a routine for the kids. But I also think that, you know, that that guilt motivated certain conduct. Would we have built the life that we have around them were it not for this recognition that we had caused this change and this disruption? No. So you take the good with the bad. You accept that you’ve caused some problems, but you also accept that you can make things better. Lovely photo here. If your your wife is I love this photo. She looks beautiful. This is actually the day or at least the weekend that I met her mom. We were This is at the Highline in Brooklyn. Have you ever been to the not in Brooklyn in South Manhattan? Uh the Highland Highland Park. You know, it it basically travels a long way up South Manhattan. Uh there’s this little observation deck. We’re sitting there taking a photo and you know that that first summer we were together. We started dating in March of 2011. And so I was doing a research assistant thing in New Haven, Connecticut, about an hour and a half train ride. She was in New York City. And um you know, it it was in some ways like a metaphor for our relationship because I found New York just this totally intimidating place. I didn’t know how to ride the subway. I didn’t even know how to like buy a subway car to get on the subway. But I just because I was in love with her. I went down there every chance I could get. We spent every moment you like when when you’re when you’re newly in love with somebody, it’s just like an obsession. and we sort of explored New York City together as this young couple this summer and uh that was the day that I met her mom and I passed the test because here I am. What surprised her most about you becoming the vice president? What what what didn’t she expect? She doesn’t get surprised by much. That’s actually a very very hard question. I do think the Secret Service protection surprised her too. The way that it changes your life to give you an example. So, you know, we went to Rome for the Pope’s inaugural mass, the new pope, the American pope. And like my favorite thing to do in the world, like if you said, I’ll give you two hours, you can do whatever you want. What I would do is I would go to some place, whether in the country or in a big city, and I would just take a walk with Usha. Like that’s that that is my ultimate way to like vacation or to relax. And you know, we tried to take a walk in Rome and it was like, you know, Seal Team 6 had descended upon Rome. They were shutting down every traffic intersection. There’s a helicopter flying overhead and just that I think that’s surprising to her how much the security protocols have changed just the way that you know we we do things like take a walk together. Can you make that decision still yourself? Could you could you say to all these Secret Service people? There’s none. Okay. I can’t see any secret service at the moment, but I know they’re behind that curtain and I know they’re driving. Yeah, they’re outside. They’re everywhere. They’re probably on the roof. But can you just Are you the one that still gets to make the call of of what you wanted to do? So, could you say, “Listen, I want to walk down the street to Walmart.” There are actually like statutory prohibitions like they they have legal obligations in order to protect me. They are, I will say, great people, amazing people. And we found accommodation like we found a way of taking a walk without disrupting everybody, right? But it’s taken a little bit of work and a little bit of practice. And the biggest change is just again, it’s not that you can’t take a walk. It’s that the basic protocol, the thing that they’ve gotten used to is much different and more misaligned with the way that we want to live our lives. So, we figured it out. Like, we’ve gotten things to a good place. But in the in the in the first instance, man, it was crazy. I I just couldn’t imagine. It was actually getting here today. Like you hear about Secret Service, but when you as someone like me who I was here yesterday, so making my way into this building today, which is like our studio, I couldn’t believe it. I was being tapped down, pocket checked. People were handing me stuff. Keep this on. Uh I went downstairs to the toilet in the basement. There was a guy down there with a gun. I was like I was like there was a guy outside my door with a gun. The gun’s gone. I was like, “Wow.” You’ve never been safer than you are right now. I do feel safe. Yeah. Yeah. Um you’ve written this new book called Communion. Yeah. which is about it’s I mean the subtitle is finding my way back to faith. Back to faith. Yeah, that’s right. So for your 30s you you you became atheist in your early your late 20s. Yeah, I would say in my 20s even yeah in my early 20s. So I was raised in an evangelical household. Very conservative, you know, very evangelical Christianity. My grandmother was one of these people, you know, she read the Bible five, six times a day. She prayed five, six times a day. was was a woman. You know, mama was was devoutly religious, but we were what you you would call unchurched. So, I would go to church with my dad. I would occasionally go to church with my mom, occasionally with my mama, but you know, our religion was very much experienced at home. It was you would watch televangelists on TV. Uh you would watch Billy Graham revival um things on TV, but we didn’t go to church that much. And so, you know, I got to a point in my life where I I just felt like my faith wasn’t speaking to me anymore. It didn’t seem to have particular relevance to my life. There was a certain, you know, new atheist element to it where I assumed that I knew more than these, you know, bumpkins that had raised me. And, you know, her faith is all superstition. I’m rational. I’m a college educated kid and I know things that other people don’t. So, there’s a certain intellectual arrogance that was built into it. But sort of all these things kind of swam together. But fundamentally I I think that the with all love and affection of my grandmother, I I think the thing about my faith that just never took root is that I never saw why it actually mattered that much. It was just a thing. It was in the background. It was something we believed. I mean, I really did believe this stuff when I was a teenager, but it didn’t really matter. And so when that boy collided with reality and collided with a lot of things that were going on in the world, I just was not properly prepared to actually integrate my faith into this new world. When did you realize that it mattered? Well, well, so so okay. So, so I become an atheist. I’m sort of one of these like angry atheists, you know, where I’ll like argue with people who say that they’re religious and I I pretend that I’m smarter than everybody else. And it was like very embarrassing in hindsight. But you know I I I go back and so just a flaw that I have all of us have many flaws, many virtues. But a flaw that I have is I just I wanted to rise above. Now where it came from a good place is I wanted stability. I wanted a decent income. I wanted to provide my kids that stability that I didn’t have. But where it was a very bad thing is I cared way too much about what credentials I had, where did I go to school, how much money that I made. And so this sort of new atheism actually was like the perfect philosophy for the creed of a kid who just wanted to get ahead. I wanted to make as much money. I wanted to have the most prestigious profession. I was super ambitious for ambition’s sake. And you know, so I I had won every competition that life had put before me. You know, I’m I’m at this point in my late 20s. I’ve got a beautiful girlfriend. Things are going pretty well. I’m at Yale Law School, right? The top law school in the United States of America. Very prestigious. Everybody thought I was very smart because I went to Yale Law School. And I cared about that back then. I don’t care about it now. And I sort of realized I’m actually not like a happy person. I’m not a good person. I care about where I went to law school way more than whether I’m good to this girl, right? I like like I I really was like madly in love with her. But was I like a particularly good boyfriend? No. I I learned from my youth to be chaotic and I’d threaten to break up with her every other month. And you know, if we had an argument, I’d just like disappear for a couple days. I was just like not I I sort of realized, okay, there’s something missing here. There’s something that all of this obsession with achievement and being smarter than everybody else and being rational, it has not actually made me a good person. And I sort of looked around and said, well, who are the people that I like actually want to be like? Who are the people that I most admire in the world? And I slowly realized that the ones who were the most virtuous, the ones who were the best at the things that actually mattered, they were Christians. And their faith motivated not an obsession with getting ahead, but an obsession with treating people well or an obsession with developing the strength of character that mattered so that you could withstand a very tough circumstances. And I started to think to myself, okay, wait a second. There like these rays of sunshine from Christians that I knew in my life, from Christian ideas that sort of were in the background of my own, you know, intellectual curiosity. And if there are all of these rays of sunshine where Christianity seems to be warmer and truer than something else, maybe the rest of it actually has something to be said for it, too. And that kind of led me down a pathway of thinking about my faith in a way that I never had when I was a teenager. I never had to when I was a teenager. And it finally just hit me like there is something deeply profound about this. And at first it was an intellectual thing, right? But over time it became a more emotional and more practice thing. And eventually I got baptized. I never been baptized as a kid. And you know even though my wife is not Christian, I force force her to take take uh our three kids and husband to to to church every single week and she’s remarkably patient about it. But it’s it’s it’s one of these things where it really did transform me but in a slower way. Atheism is a form of religion in in a way, isn’t it? It has the same level of sort of certainty and that’s why off to you as an agnostic because it feels a little bit arrogant to say that I know. Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s that’s that’s interesting. I’m going to take a little bit of a hard time which is uh AI. AI is going to cause a lot of job disruption and um it’s a big topic of conversation for my audience but also as an entrepreneur and investor. We we’re talking a lot at the moment about the impact of AI. When you look at the the words of the big AI CEOs over time, one thing I find fascinating is if you look at Sam Alman’s words about the impact AI is going to have, it’s very dystopian. You look at Elon, very very dystopian. Yeah. And right now, I think the only thing that’s up there with being as unpopular as AI is ICE in the US. I saw this graph the other day in terms of how unpopular it is. Eric Schmidt, who I know you know because he was an investor in your company, I believe. Yeah. The other day when he was doing that commencement speech in front of the college students, he was booed every time he said the word. That’s right. Are you scared about the potential economic impact and unemployment impact of artificial intelligence at this moment in time? So, I’d say I’m less scared about that than I am about other things. Okay. Okay. So, historical analogies are always fraught. And by the way, I think the AI companies themselves, the CEOs, there’s a certain incentive to be super dystopian because it’s it’s like a form of viral marketing that if people are really scared of your product, that must mean that it really works. And if they’re not scared of your product, maybe it actually doesn’t work that well. So, I think there’s something weird there. There’s something synergistic about the most pessimistic predictions about AI and some of the people who are making them. But like, set that to the side cuz I do have some real concerns. But on the job displacement thing, okay, so let me back up for a second because I bring a certain bias to this. So when I was, again, this is a this is an almost religious idea that I developed in the early 2010s that I think is just preposterous now. And that religious idea was that there was like this inevitable march of economics from agricultural to industrial to service-based. And the reason that all of my friends and family were losing their jobs was because that was just an inevitable economic trend that advanced economies. They de-industrialized. Okay? And there was even this argument at the time that the reason why manufacturing employment was going down in the United States was because of automation, because of technology. that it had nothing to do with outsourcing or with immigration but it was purely because of technology had replaced all these workers with robots. I think that story is totally false. Now the robots that exist in manufacturing did they make people more productive? Absolutely. Did they cause a change in what a manufacturing line worker was doing in say 2005 versus 1955? Absolutely. So the change is there but in reality there was a ton of manufacturing job growth. It just wasn’t happening in the United States of America. And I think sometimes we tell ourselves the story that technology always leads inevitably to job loss to make up for the fact that what often leads to job loss among populations is either outsourcing or immigration. You ship the job to another country or you have somebody else take the job of somebody who currently has it. So what do I think is actually going on with AI? You know, if you go back to the industrial revolution, right? At the last significant major disruption in the labor market, you actually had way more people working at the end of the industrial revolution than you did beforehand. Again, some of the jobs were different. There was some job disruption. But when I look at AI, I don’t see mass unemployment as the most likely consequence. I think people will become more productive. I think some people’s jobs will change. Some people will lose their jobs. But I I just don’t buy this idea and I haven’t seen any evidence in the data that it’s going to lead to mass unemployment. Let me tell you what it does what does worry me. Again, historical analogies are always fraught. You go back to the industrial revolution. Was mass joblessness the main consequence of the shift from an agricultural to an industrial economy? No. But what did happen? Rich people got way richer. And that led to in Europe fascism and communism. In fact, your country and my country pretty much the only two countries that successfully avoided either a fascist or a communist revolution in the in response to the industrial revolution. That’s by the way one of the real interesting things about you know Christianity is the the seinal text about how capital and labor can work together about how you could have social harmony compared to Markx who was sort of saying there was an inevitable social division was Pope Leo I 13th who wrote in his famous encyclical that the way to preserve harmony between the social classes was to ensure that the workers could bargain. This is where sort of the idea of collective bargaining had a Christian underpinning and to make sure that the the capitalists weren’t able to take advantage of the workers. They had to sort of respect them. And that that that model of social harmony I think is something we’re either going to follow that Christian concept of social harmony in the age of AI or we’re going to wake up and we’re going to realize that rich people have gotten way richer. The average American, the average Brit, the average Western society member has stagnated. And people really hate relative poverty. You can give people iPhones and you can give the people the creature comforts of a 21st century economy, but if you make rich people way richer, you are going to have significant problems. And so I think that is like one of the consequences that I see from AI. The one other just you asked about it, the thing I really worry about with AI is surveillance. AI is, you know, a friend of mine once said that AI is fundamentally a communist technology in that it allows governments and corporations to surveil people in very profound and different ways. And that scares me a lot. Like I don’t want a social credit system that’s powered by AI. I don’t want you to not be able to buy a beer because some tech CEO has given you a score based on an artificial intelligence algorithm that nobody actually understands. That scares me, too. But I don’t think you’re going to have mass unemployment. We might have mass inequality. That’s its own problem. It’s a different problem, though. Um, according to the the current 2026 Federal Reserve and Census Bureau data, financial inequality in the United States has reached its highest level in nearly four decades. And obviously we’ve seen this headline this week of the US’s first trillionaire. Yeah. Which again has been talked about everywhere around the world in this last part of this debate. You think about the the explosion we’re seeing in robotics and Elon Musk’s pay packet rewarding him for getting a a million humanoid robots out there at a certain timeline and Elon himself saying there’ll be a billion humanoid robots at some point. There’ll be more humanoid robots than humans. It appears to me that there will be some kind of job disruption. We can obviously there’s new jobs created which are like hard to forecast. Yeah. And you’ve got these big like um frontier model companies like OpenAI and Anthropic that are going to be bene benefactors of this evolution. Wealth is presumably going to acrue to these large large corporations, the metas, the anthropics, the open areas. How do you think about we’re already we already have crazy crazy inequality. How do you think about redistributing that wealth? Bernie Sanders is saying people need to own 50% of those AI companies. What the president by the way likes that idea too. He likes it. He likes that idea. Um I don’t know that he would say 50% but he does like that idea. So there there’s a um there’s a concept in uh in in like the social welfare literature of redistribution versus predistribution. The idea of predistribution is that you give workers you give people normal people a seat at the bargaining table. And I don’t think it’s just economic. The economic thing by the way is very important. like you you you want the the the worker whose life has been transformed by this technology to have a seat at the table. You want them to be able to actually bargain with the company for better wages. Now, that’s impossible if you think about it like the individual worker to negotiate against, you know, Daario from Anthropic. It’s not going to happen. But workers working together, this is where the idea of collective bargaining came from. But there’s all kind of interesting things. And again, I think there’s like a deeply Christian concept to this. I know you’re sort of you know fascinated by faith but not a person of faith yourself. There is a very deeply Christian concept that you have to give everybody in the country a seat at the table. So for example like okay there’s the economic piece of it. What about the cultural piece of it? How will AI transform the culture that we consume that we distribute that we make? You know, back in the 50s and60s, it was broadly accepted that now it wasn’t a censorship regime. There was nothing legal going on here, but it was broadly accepted that Hollywood would consult with the religious leaders at the time in order to ensure that the content they were making was actually consistent with the sensibilities of their membership and consistent with some basic Christian ideas. Again, that wasn’t forced, but there was this mechanism that gave everybody a seat at the table. And I think that’s one of the the bad things about the there are many bad things about the decline of institutional Christianity in this country. But we do not have a mechanism that gives powerful people that forces them to actually work with everybody else. Religion was one of the ways that happened in the west. I think probably the most profound and effective way that happened in the west. We just don’t have it anymore and I really worry about that. So the president is supportive of the United States owning these big AI companies. He likes the idea as sort of a sovereign wealth fund idea of the United States taking some stake in these AI companies. He said so publicly. I’m not breaking news. But you know again the president he is a very unconventional person. You would say a Republican’s not supposed to think like that. The president doesn’t care. The president just thinks the thoughts that he has. He develops them whether they’re, you know, he tries to determine is this a good idea or a bad idea. I would call him sort of a rag radical pragmatist, though I think most Europeans think that he’s this hyper ideological person. He’s extremely pragmatic about this stuff. But but one one one very important thought. The idea that we’re going to allow these companies, let’s say 10 20 years down the road to accumulate trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars of wealth and then we’re going to be be able to successfully redistribute it to workers. I’m very skeptical of that. Very skeptical of that. I think that’s that’s a that’s a very modern I call a liberal concept. this idea that you can just tax people and give it to poor people and it works out. Then you turn the poor people into effectively subservient of the rich people. You have to give everybody a stake in the society. I haven’t quite figured out how this is going to work in the age of AI. I think labor unions are a very important model here, but this is the the model where you just take from some people and give to other people. That’s never provided a stable society. You’ve got to give the workers a seat at the table. Mama. Mama. Memo. Mama. Nemo. She passed away when you were 21 years old. Rush Hospital with a collapsed lung 2 days after her 72nd birthday. Y and she was taken off life support. She was clearly the most important um figure in your life from reading your story for so many reasons. Sure. She hasn’t gotten to see the position you rose to today. Yeah. I read that you didn’t cry when she passed away. um you didn’t process those emotions either because you sensed that your entire family was on the verge of collapse and you wanted to give the impression of emotional strength. That’s what you say in your book um Hillbilly and on and page 169. What would she think of you today? What what would she have said? Well, I think you know she she she was again a deeply patriotic person. I think she’d be amazed by this. I mean, the the pageantry, being able to go to the White House, just things like that would have been very very meaningful to her. Um, what would you say to her? I think that I would say thank you. I mean the the the the through the maybe the most important lesson that I’ve learned is that the difference between good people and people who struggle is good people have a good sense of gratitude. And I don’t know that I would be alive were it not for this woman. I certainly wouldn’t be here. And I think the the one thing mama would worry about and I think I’ve done a pretty good job just to be clear. But mamal would worry a lot about the pomp and the circumstance. In the same way that she would be amazed by it, she would find it incredible and she would love to participate and see it. She’s always really really worried. She would always say, “Don’t get too big for your brushes.” And what that means is don’t let it go to your head. Don’t think that you’re better than somebody just because you have a title or because you have more money than they do. And I think that I I have to constantly remind myself that I get to be vice president for four years. I’m going to do as good of a job as I can for that four years, but it doesn’t make me better than anybody. And it doesn’t mean that I know more than anybody. I mean, I may know more about like CIA reports, but fundamentally if you start to see yourself, I think, as better, you become unable to successfully govern a democratic country. Have you ever grieved the loss of Noah? Because Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, I think I wrote in the book, I didn’t cry when she died. I I cried a lot 2 days later. Yeah. I mean, I’ve grieved I’ve grieved her for a long time. I My biggest regret with Mamal is just she never met Usha.

And there’s something so similar about them, but so different. Like, they’re both incredibly smart. Even though my mom left school, middle school, Usha went to law school. They’re incredibly blunt people, right? I mean, Usha just doesn’t have a filter. It’s one of the things I I was immediately attracted to about her is that even she was going to offend you. She was going to say exactly what was on her mind, but they came from such different worlds. And I think my grandmother would be fascinated by her. You know, when mom met Usha and you know, Usha ethnically is Indian. She was born in the United States. You know, my mom said, it just goes to show sometimes how how uh how little some of us knew about the world. She said, you know, what is she like ethnically? And I said, mom, she’s Indian. And my mom says, which tribe? So they came from very different worlds. Both mom and Usha but also mammo and Usha. But that that is the biggest regret about her death is that you know if she was the most important person in my life for the first 20 years is the most important for the rest of it. And I really wish those two people could have met cuz they’re amazing people. The emotions still right on the surface for you. Very much so. We have a closing tradition on this podcast. Okay. Where the last guest leaves a question for the next next guest not knowing who they’re leaving it for. Okay. The question that’s left for you is uh I think it was slightly biased, but the question is, are aliens real?

That’s interesting. Answer is I don’t know. It It is It is something that I have sworn to myself, I’m now a year and a half into this job, that I would go through all of the highly classified information about everything that we know about UFOs. I just haven’t done it yet. It’s like one of these crazy things where you go to the job and the day-to-day just takes over. So, I haven’t done that yet. But, I mean, look, I I am I believe in things and I think that they’re true and I think that they’re rational, but I recognize that there may be even crazier than the idea that there are extraterrestrials. Like, I believe that a Jewish man about 2,000 years ago was the only begotten son of God, was literally crucified, and then rose from the dead 3 days later. Like, I recognize that sounds a little out there, but I think that it’s true. And I I 100% believe that people have mystical experiences. And I’ve I’ve talked to people who have been involved in exorcisms. And again, I think the rational mind says, “Well, that’s just schizophrenia or that’s some other mental illness.” I’ve talked to people who said, “Yeah, 99.9% of the people that I’ve looked at to do an exorcism on were schizophrenic or had some other mental illness.” But there’s something there are weird things out there that we cannot explain. There are weird moments. I mean, I remember not long after my grandmother died, my sister lost, you know, she didn’t really lose her temper, but like got kind of angry with her daughter and her daughter’s, I don’t know, seven or eight years old at the time. And like the light bulb just exploded and both of us looked at each other like that was man. Remember I was talking I I write about this in communion. I was talking to the New York Times writer um about the pope and sort of different perspectives on the pope and he was more critical of the pope and I was more my attitude is like ah you know he’s not a politician you can’t judge him by politician standards this is the last pope and we’re like having this conversation and it’s like I’m telling you man a glass just falls off the bar in a totally crazy way and shatters and like stops dead in our tracks and we both just looked at each other and said what the hell was that And I I I’m a believer in mystical experiences. I don’t think they happen that often, but I think that people have experiences that are impossible to explain if you have a purely narrow, hyperrational view of the world. In other words, I think the hyperrational view of the world is actually not totally accurate. There’s some weird [ __ ] out there. So, you think aliens could be real? I do. Communion. Um, it’s really interesting because I I went on a similar journey to you in terms of new atheism, very rational, how could any of this be true, arguing with Christians every time that I had the opportunity to in part to try and figure out my own opinion. It was like a sparring match, of course. Um, and I now found myself as being an agnostic person and being open-minded and curious to new ideas and it’s almost a humility that I wasn’t humble before in that in that season of my life, but now I’m like open that I could be completely wrong. Sure. and listening intently. And I think this is why this book is so interesting because you represent, I think, the journey of a lot of people who have rationally talked themselves out of the possibility of faith, but then have felt something is missing at some level, feel like they’ve been lied to by themselves or society or some kind of culture. Sure. And then have had the sort of open-minded exploration back to a place of meaning. And I’d say that that meaning and that sense of purpose is so absent in society at the moment. And also like you said, the Christians that I’ve interviewed here, it doesn’t feel to me to be a coincidence that they’re the most virtuous, anchored, stable, happy, empathetic, charitable individuals I get to sit with. And that itself appears to be proof of something. Mhm. And so your book here, Communion, Finding My Way Back to Faith, is I think a a wonderful journey in that direction for anybody who is finds themsel at any stage in that journey. and it’s out right now. Mr. Vice President, thank you so much for your time. I realize you’re very busy, so it’s a true honor that you chose to give me some of your time today. I really, really appreciate it. I really enjoyed this. Thank Thank you.

A healthy brain likely doesn’t need any creatine. But what if you’re stressed? What about sleep deprivation? Night shift workers, university students cramming for a midterm. Then all of a sudden, the healthy brain becomes a metabolically stressed brain. And most people fall into the stressed environment. And that’s where creatine comes to the rescue. And we’ll talk about how much, but the more stressed it is, the higher the dose seems to come into play. And is there anyone that shouldn’t take creatine? Well, I’ve published over 120 papers just on creatine alone. And we’ve done at least 30 to 40 studies in our lab. And I can’t find anybody that can’t or shouldn’t take creatine. So, for example, at recommended dosages, creatine can not only have potential anti-cancer properties, but really speed up rehabilitation. And there’s a lot of hope, especially around Alzheimer’s. And what about kids? The current body of evidence suggests they want to get at least one gram per day because in children, they want to have optimization for bone health as well as muscle development. And so I’m fascinated that this nutrient discovered in 1832 like boring for the longest time is having these profound benefits we never even thought would happen. And so your viewers today will be surprised about some of the things I’m going to talk about including micro doing. And we’ve got this thing here in front of us. This is the dosing dilemma. And I want to talk about how much I need to take for all these things. And I want to talk about nutrition, protein, weight training, etc. But before that, you’ve got five myths in front of you. Can you reveal one by one what they are? So this is Oh, I can’t believe you did this one to me. Creatine causes hair loss. I was going bald before I started taking creatine. Myth number two. Oh, so this is by far the biggest myth and that is Dr. Darren Kandow. What is the mission that you’re on in your life? I think right now it would be to promote health and make people live longer free of disease. It’s fascinating how we’ve transcended our understanding of weight training and now weight training is seeming to have these profound effects that cardiovascular exercise has and it gives you a bit more. So really focusing now on the benefits of lifting things around the house and how exercise and then of course nutrition. We’re going to talk about creatine but also how other macronutrients especially protein come into play. And then when you combine those two, are we doing enough to optimize longevity? And we hope that we are. Yeah. And so what are the reference points you’re drawing on? How do you know the things you know? Are you doing your own research? Yeah, so I did my uh graduate school in Canada uh cell biology degree and then I moved into my masters and PhD looking in kinesiology. So it’s interesting that I fell into creatine supplementation research by accident. I was doing my masters on an amino acid called glutamine. And at the time about 20 30 years ago, glutamine was the biggest rage. Everybody was taking this non-essential amino acid and hoping that it would have body composition improvements. uh and I sort of determined it was worthless in young healthy individuals from a body composition uh standpoint and at the same time a good colleague of mine was doing creatine and I started to notice these young biological males were getting bigger stronger faster and then another study bigger stronger faster and then when you go to the research on creatine it was very stimulating in a sense that we’re now improving things that we know with aging go down so then I turned my focus completely to healthy aging and trying to get you know grandparents and great-grandparents and your parents to live longer free of disease but wait let’s start young start as early as you can and move forward yeah and so you got really compelled by creatine I want to talk about all these things nutrition protein weight training etc but on this subject of creatine what was it that compelled you so much to start you you did start doing your own research on creatine I did and I started to take creatine so you know it was this natural metabolite that we’re synthesizing in the liver and brain if you take a little bit more not a lot just a little bit more than what we’re probably taking in from the food uh sources such as red meat and seafood. Can it have benefits? And sure enough, it’s now the most researched supplement out there. It’s overtaken protein and caffeine uh from an erogenic perspective and it’s gone global not just for males but of course uh females and centurions and elderly. So it’s very fascinating the explosion in this research product. What is the sort of um not evolutionary backdrop but I guess physiological backdrop of why humans need creatine but also why they might not be getting optimal amounts. Yeah, that’s a great question. So uh adenazine triphosphate or ATP is the energy currency of all our cells and think of your muscle doing work or shoveling the driveway or or walking. You’re using your muscles and you need to maintain that level of energy to to maintain exercise. Well, creatine comes to the rescue to help maintain your energy currency. So if Batman, which gets all the press, is ATP, Robin is creatine. Creatine comes to the rescue. It’s his best friend to help maintain these levels. Now, when you exercise at a high intensity, you know, sprinting, weightlifting, those ATP stores do become jeopardized. And that’s why creatine sort of sacrifices itself uh to come to the rescue. So that’s why anorobic sports, the World Cup just started. These individuals will be using a lot of creatine stores in their muscle. The question is, do they have enough? And if they had more, could they play better? And so, our body makes creatine naturally. That’s correct. It is making about 1 to three grams a day, but only in two areas. So, this will be quite shocking for people. We’re only actually making it in the liver and the brain. We don’t make it in skeletal muscle, but you store 95% in our muscle. So, when it’s being made in the liver or brain, the brain will keep it there, but in the liver, it will get transported in the blood up to your or skeletal muscle. The question is, well, what if we need more? And that’s where dietary creatine from red meat or seafood or supplementation comes into play. So, are we deficient in creatine? There are small populations with unfortunately they were born with the inability to synthesize creatine. Uh they would have a deficiency and they are required to take supplementation. The other unique population is vegans and vegetarians. So, vegan and vegetarian diet is extremely healthy. The downfall though is they’re not getting any dietary creatine because creatine is only found in animal-based flesh. So red meat, seafood, and poultry. They’re naturally synthesizing about one to two, maybe even three grams a day through amino acids in their food. But vegans and vegetarians respond literally the best on the planet because now they’re taking in a supplement to allow that in. And is it thought that historically we would naturally have consumed more creatine? That’s a good point. So back, you know, hunter and gather age, a lot of meat, they were consuming quite a bit through dietary products. Just say if you only wanted to get three grams of creatine through food, you’d have to eat quite a bit of meat to do that. And then it comes into the dilemma of what if you don’t eat meat or you just can’t afford it. Yeah, creatine has exploded over the recent over the last couple of years. I I saw a stat that said I think in women it had gone up to about 3% of women take the creatine and um in men it’s slightly higher. It’s still a little bit lower in terms of consumption in women from the stats that I saw. And I think that in part is because there’s still some prevailing myths about creatine. When I when I speak to some of my friends, people know that I interview a lot of um health experts and scientists and PhDs on that have done research on supplements. They ask me the first question I get asked a lot is what other supplements should I definitely take? And when I mention creatine, it’s always met with a certain set of rebuttals because there are some prevailing myths. You’ve got some myths. Yes. about creatine on the cards in front of you. Can you reveal one by one what they are? So this is definitely the number one myth. Creatine damages your kidneys. So when you take in creatine to the body, it gets stored as creatine. But when you metabolize it, sort of sort of thinking leaking from the muscle, it gets leaked out as creatinin. And most people watching like, oh that was on my blood requisition form. And right below creatin was something called EGFR. So glomeir filtration rate is an estimation of your kidney health. So the problem is when individuals on creatine supplementation, they go to their doctor for their annual blood work. Their creatinin might be a little bit elevated and that’s only from the breakdown of the uh the compound and then unfortunately their filtration rate is lower. So then their doctor gets really surprised and they’re like stop taking creatine because it’s hurting your kidneys. What typically happens they go back or stopping creatine and then they check their kidneys again and it’s fine. So I would say 99 out of 100 times uh that it’s a false positive. So, this is by far the biggest uh myth and there’s been randomized control trials for several years showing that creatine causes no detrimental effects to the kidneys. I had exactly that twice on my blood test. Yes. And if you’re also creatin could be elevated if you’re on a high meat diet, a little bit dehydrated. So, uh those that are exercising uh is very very elevated. So, always tell your doctor you’re on creatine supplementation because your creatin could be a little bit higher. Okay. Yep. Myth number two, creatine makes you retain water. So, this is really important and I think this is one of the main reasons females were really hesitant to take creatine. If you take too much too soon, it can lead to an increase in water retention. So, you’ve probably heard of the creatine loading phase. This is where supplement companies want you to take about 20 or 30 grams a day for about 5 or 7 days. That has been shown to increase water retention acutely. So maybe it’ll reside there for about 3 to 5 days but after that when you go on a maintenance phase of about 3 to five grams a day uh that water retention goes away. So in the initial stages if done improperly or too much it can cause a little bit of water retention. The good news for everybody watching is after about the first week that water’s inside our muscle. So now we’re volumizing the size of our muscle sort of like a balloon here is full of water. Now after a while the water is now going into our muscle. It’s a lot bigger compared to a deflated balloon or muscle that didn’t have any water. So creatine is osmotic. Water likes to follow creatine. So by taking it into the muscle, it gets a lot bigger. And that’s good because a swollen muscle stimulates protein synthesis to get bigger and stronger. Oh, really? A swollen muscle stimulates protein synthesis. Synthesis. Yeah. So when you have water coming in, that’s a really good thing. And creatine does that. And that’s one of the main mechanisms why it works. So what does that mean? Does that mean that if I have creatine in my muscle, I’m more likely to gain muscle? That is potentially the the factor because when you’re having or trapping water, it turns on all these signaling pathways that are involved in protein synthesis. And one of the biggest robust evidence is that creatine increases lean tissue mass and regional muscle thickness with weight training over time. Oh wow. Okay. Yeah. Cuz a lot of people are concerned that they’re going to put on lots of weight and be bloated with creatine. The interesting there is if you take smaller, more micro doing there’s hardly any effect. And this might come surprising, but if you did a 6 week study pre and post after creatine, you only increase mass by86 kg. Oh wow. And the majority of that is lean mass. So at the end of the day, you know, a pound and a half is not a lot. Lean mass. Lean mass. Yeah. Which is we think of lean mass, most people think of it as muscle, but lean mass in our body, that includes water, connective tissue, organs, as well as skeletal muscle. And about 50% of our lean mass is muscle. Okay. Yeah. It’s great. Okay. Okay, myth number three, creatine is only for men. Uh this is 100% false. When you go through the totality of all the evidence, uh females respond extremely robustly to creatine supplementation. They get profound benefits in strength, endurance, and performance. They lose a little bit of body fat. So, there’s another idea that people thought water retention was causing an increase in in fat mass. We’ve done some meta analysis now showing that creatine reduces fat mass. Uh, females get an increase in lean mass as well. Uh, and I’m happy this one came up because from our lab with bone health, females do respond very favorably with creatine and bone. And we can talk about that as well. Myth number four. Oh, I can’t believe you did this one to me. Creatine causes hair loss. So, obviously looking at me and uh I’m a pr prolific uh creatine researcher and taking creatine religiously for like the last two and a half decades. People would look at me and say, “Well, obviously looking at him, creatine caused this, and I was going bald before I started taking creatine.” This myth came from a study in rugby players decades ago, uh, where creatine, about 20 to 25 grams a day for 7 days, increase a hormone called DHT. It’s a precursor for testosterone, which unfortunately has been linked to hair follicle loss and thinning. Uh but the ironic thing is when creatine was given to these young males the hormone went up but it was still within the biological range and no measure of hair follicle thinning or loss uh was done. The cool thing is just a few years ago they decided to put this uh uh theory to the test and 5 g in young males for about 6 to 8 weeks of training caused no uh detrimental effect uh from hair thinning follicle loss. So my appearance was probably based on something else. So there’s no evidence to that as well. Myth number five, creatine causes muscle cramps. No, I think this is so overplayed. When creatine t is taken into the body and water will follow it, now you’re super hydrating the muscle. So, one of the main issues with muscle cramps is it could be, you know, uh uh dehydration in the muscle. Some people have heard of sodium potassium. That’s why Gatorade was invented. But if anything, sodium decreases muscle cramps and it super hydrates. So, in the hotter environments, June, July, August, creatine is going to be one of your best friends. So those are the five myths. We talked there about weight training. What is this very curious graph? It seems to show that creatine helped gain muscle mass through a training regime. Oh yes. So this is actually showing now that uh when you take creatine supplementation, you’re actually getting an improvement in training volume. So when you go in the weight room, you look at the load you’re lifting by the reps by the sets. So it actually goes up. Um, and then when you don’t, obviously, it would go down over time as well. So, the cool thing here is that one of the main reasons you get an enhancement in performance is that creatine seems to enhance training capacity. So, a lot of people say, I’ve taken creatine, now I got an increase in the number of reps or uh sets that I can perform and that probably leads to a stimulation over time. So, this is a 8week study. That is an 8week study. Very short term as well. So you can see that the number of weeks came uh down when they weren’t taking creatine and then when they started to take it, it went up as well. And this leads to another important point. So, and it’s often not talked about when you take creatine for at least a month. People say, “Well, how long does it stay in my muscles if I go on vacation? What if I can’t take creatine?” And in skeletal muscle, it takes about a month for those elevated levels to come back down. in the brain. We don’t have a lot of evidence, but it’s speculated it takes about anywhere between five uh weeks to about three months for those elevations to come back down. And this essentially means that if I take creatine, I will be able to train harder harder or longer or more frequent. So, one of the things with creatine, it allows the muscle to recover quicker. So, you might be able to get back to the uh you know, if an athletes train twice a day. Um so, either one of those seems to be one of the most plausible mechanisms. And why is there a big dip in the middle of this graph? So that is actually showing where the individuals would train and then without creatine and then take it over time as well. Oh, okay. So they they’d stop. It’s a draining and then taking it again. Correct. Okay. So they start taking it uh taking it at the at week four and then that’s where the elevations go up. Oh yeah. So it goes to show that when you have creatine everything is elevated. If you stop taking it, it takes about 4 weeks to come back down, but you’ll notice that it was at the same level as a placebo. and then when they take it again they get a rebound effect. So I think this has application for people who have injured themselves and they now need to go back and start training. If you take creatine it can accelerate the rehabilitation program. H and it does it I guess because it makes your training volume increase. Correct. It makes your muscle mass gain increase. It can gain increase in muscle mass. It’s not great. That’s probably going to be a bit surprising to a lot of people. A lot of people take creatine for huge increases in muscle. You get an increase in lean mass by about 1.2 2 kg. But as I I said previously, remember only half of that is skeletal muscle. So creatine, yes, can with weight training improve muscle mass, but it has more robust evidence for muscle performance. Is there anything else we need to know about creatine’s linked to muscle mass? I think one of the big things is that it decreases something called protein breakdown. So that might allow the muscle to maintain its integrity or recover quicker. Uh but overall when you combine creatine with a standard weight training program you should expect a greater increase than weight training alone. Absolutely. And that is that’s across all ages which is really important. Okay. And the studies you’ve done in your own lab what are those how wide varing are those and how many have you done? We’ve oh god we’ve done at least 30 to 40 studies um in our lab published over 120 papers just on creatine alone. Wow. And the interesting thing is that from young individuals to middle age to older adults, we see a very common uh theme that combined with weight training uh creatine about 5 g or more uh we use typically a little bit more seems to have uh beneficial effects on muscle mass uh muscle strength as well as performance. Absolutely. Can you show me what 5 g looks like? Absolutely. So this would be a standard 5 g dose which is one scoop. One scoop. Now, keep in mind that can be found in in meat or seafood, but you’re going to require a lot. Yeah. Okay. So, 5 g is one scoop. One scoop. And you’re saying we don’t necessarily need to do this loading phase that bodybuilders would correct. So, the loading phase is the most rapid way to saturate your muscles. Now, that’s very beneficial, but that would be four scoops. So, four scoops is a loading phase per day, and it’s very effective, but the issue is, can it cause some adverse GI tract irritation, things like that? where anidoli people have report that but a lot of people from a muscle perspective will start with just five grams a day and that’s very beneficial and at five grams a day what benefits am I getting five oh across from a skeletal muscle perspective you get a whole plethora so you definitely get an increase in lean tissue mass or muscle size uh and then again muscle performance uh muscle strength power and endurance and the other one that never gets a lot of press which should is functional ability an older adult to sit the stand uh this has applications getting off the toilet out of the bed out of a car so as we get older we’re losing muscle strength and performance as well as functionality and creatine and weight training seems to come to the rescue there. And is there anyone that shouldn’t take creatine? You know, I can’t find anybody that can’t or shouldn’t. The safety profile is exceptional. If they have pre-existing medical conditions, they definitely need to speak to their doctor. Uh besides that, I’m not seeing any reason a healthy individual can’t take or shouldn’t take creatine. And pregnant women. So, that’s an interesting uh colleague of mine, Dr. Stacy Elliot out of Australia is now finally looking at human uh trials with pregnancy uh going into breast milk into uh the fetus. So uh it’s still in its infancy. The jury is still out, but as it currently stands, it seems to be relatively safe and well tolerated. Okay. So not all creatine is made the same, right? Correct. There’s lots of different types of creatine. Some people take creatine gummies. Um I mean I have some different types of creatine here. Creatine monohydrate, creatine hydrochlorate. Okay. I I remember looking when I was in a shelf a couple of months ago and seeing like five or six different types of creatine. Um what is the the optimal type of creatine to take and why? So by far creatine monohydrate and that goes against all the new marketing forms. So creatine monohydrate is simply creatine linked to one water molecule. When you take it into the body the water molecule dissolves is identical to uh what’s being produced in the liver and the brain. All the evidence that you ever hear about the safety and efficacy of creatine is based on the old boring from 1832 creatine monohydrate. There’s new market forms of creatine such as hydrochloride which does have evidence behind it. There’s many other forms, but the only downfall with all these market forms is it’s never been shown to be safer or more effective than creatine monohydrate. The other big thing for your viewers is make sure it has crea pure or some form of creatine monohydrate on uh the label and then and that it’s also third party tested. Create pure. Creapure is from Germany. It has the highest um standard of of qualification and um a scrutiny and then NSF certified or another third party certified. So those are the three things that I personally would look for. Monohydrate, creure is the type and then NSF certified or third party certification which is that little logo at the bottom. That little logo here at the bottom. That’s right. What does that mean? So, NSF is the National Sanitation Foundation. It’s a third party organization that will independently take the the supplement and then third party test it and then you get a certificate of analysis to make so there there’s no uh contaminants like lead or arsenic or things like that. So, that’s something for the consumers watching to definitely be aware of when you go to uh the store. And we’ve got this uh thing here in front of us. This is the dosing dilemma. Um we talked about muscle there. Have we checked muscle off or is there anything else to cover? No. So, how many scoops do you think is optimal for skeletal muscle? Oh, uh, skeletal muscle. Yeah. Your bicep, your tricep, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Five. Five g. Five g. So, that’s only going to be one little scoop. Okay. Okay. That’s probably very viable. And you’re correct. Across the lifespan, 5 g has been shown to be effective. But here’s a little bit of caveat. If you’re over the age of 50, maybe you want to have a little bit more because as we get older, the creatine in our lower legs is more jeopardized and therefore you might need a bit more. Okay. Okay. So, this is without the loading phase. So, this is if you just want to take a little bit per day and do you have to take it consistently? Good question. So, ideally, yes, there is evidence that you can just take it on the training days, but we haven’t talked about the brain yet. And the reason why I think you should take it every day is it likes to go to other tissues on a daily basis. So that’s about seven grams. How that’s about seven or eight grams. And that seems to be very safe and viable uh dose to be shown to be effective for improving muscle mass. Okay. And performance. I I do have um an issue sometimes when I take a little bit more creatine which is I feel I wouldn’t say laded but I get a little bit dizzy almost. 100%. What is that? So there is a mechanism. So creatine is the biggest methyl scavenger in the body and without boring your viewers but methyl groups are used for everything. They’re also used to synthesize something called adrenaline and our neurotransmitters. You know the things that we get excited about. So when you take in too much creatine typically on an empty stomach or in a dehydrated state that will spare methyl groups in the body to be used because you’re taking so much in and then it says where can I go? So since creatine is now being taken into a supplement, these methyl groups are available in your body to go elsewhere to do work and they like to synthesize adrenaline and that’s why you feel more uh um energetic so to speak. When you say synthesize adrenaline, what does that mean? Yeah, that means you’re creating more of the hormone called epinephrine and that you know you hear about fight or flight or you’re nervous or whichever it is, it gives you a little bit more of that. So that’s why sometimes you feel a little bit jittery or things like that. Yeah. Sometimes I can feel a little bit sick as well if I do too much. Yeah. And so that’s where it’s sort of the new area of interest for me is this micro doing based on that. So we’re starting to see some evidence now that if you take smaller amounts all throughout the day, it does not have any adverse effects. If anything, it seems to be a little bit more tolerable. Um so you could take a few grams in the morning, a few grams in the evening or whichever. I think one of the best uh ways to take it that never gets any press is I put five grams in my water bottle during my workout. And so now I’m consuming a little bit of creatine as I do my weight lifting or cardio and then I’ll consume a little bit in the morning as well. So I take about 10 grams a day at minimum on on a daily basis. Other people will take more or less but that’s just how I get it in. Yeah. I find that if I do take a little bit in the morning and then a little bit later it’s much better% I don’t get any weird feelings. That’s correct. And uh it seems to be more consistent and appreciated for individuals because if you do or are susceptible to any fluctuations in weight gain, water retention or GI tract irritation, those seem to definitely go away. And we’ve god, we’ve assessed over a thousand individuals in my lab and that seems to be a very viable approach. Not a lot of taste to it, is there? It’s not the best tasting. It’s very bland, very boring. Um but there’s other companies trying to make it more flavorful, things like that. The cool thing is with uh creatine, you can put it in anything. You can put it in yogurt, uh uh a juice, whichever it is. You can now put it in coffee. There’s a little bit of controversy over the dose of caffeine. I think anywhere lower than 350 milligrams is fine, and that’s going to be most standard uh coffees or teas as well. So, whichever allows you to become consistent is is a great way to do it. Yeah. Okay. So, bone. Tell me what I need to know about. So, now we talked about muscle. How many do you think for the skeleton here? Um the same. Okay. Seven. Unfortunately, the lowest dose ever been shown to have bone benefits is 8 grams all the way up to 12. So now we’re in a dosing dilemma already. We just started. We have a little bit disconnect between muscle and bone. 3 to 5 g seems to be really good for muscle. A little bit more is fine, but bone needs to be a little bit more. And that’s primarily based on some of our work from our lab where we’ve shown that about 8 to 12 grams a day with exercise. And that’s crucial. If you do not exercise, there’s never been a study ever shown to have bone benefits. But if you do perform weightlifting, one of the very cool things in post-menopausal females is that creatine seemed to reduce the rate of bone mineral density loss around the hip region. So, it didn’t increase bone density, but it decrease bone density loss and it also seemed to maintain or improve the structure of the bone a little bit more. So, that has profound beneficial effects, especially as we get older. If those individuals on creatine were to fall, maybe they might not fracture their hip. And as we both know, if you fracture your hip, you’re going to be placed in long-term care. You’re going to be inactive for at least six months. So, creatine has some bone benefits. They’re not great. They don’t improve bone density. So, they’re not going to be an osteoporotic cure, but there is something there, especially if you’re prone to uh osteoporosis or osteopenia. And what’s the mechanism there that’s just stopping bone loss? Yeah, it’s very interesting. So, if you understand a 24-hour cycle that creatine sort of stimulates these bone building cells to become more energized, think of Super Mario, the original Nintendo when he got the mushroom, maybe became energized. Creatine does that as well. And then on the flip side, creatine seems to decrease uh the osteoclass or bone breakdown cells. So, by a synergistic uh mechanism, it seems to cause this turnover to go a little bit better, causing the bone to maintain its structure. is very similar to a bisphosphinate that someone would be taking to maintain their bone health. A bisphosphinate. Yeah. It’s a drug that a lot of individuals will take if they’re prone to bone loss. Uh obviously creatine is not a drug, but it has some of those similar properties. So, we’ve got muscle. I need to take about seven or eight grams to get those benefits. With bone, it’s a little bit more. A little bit more. You don’t mean additionally. No, in in total. So, now this is where we get into the daily dosing dilemma. We’ve gone from 3 to 5 g or a little bit more for muscle. Bone is maybe 8 to 10 or a little bit more. So what do you think on the brain the hottest topic 10 10 okay so that would be you know two scoops I’m just assuming this increases yeah so the interesting thing here is that the brain will naturally make its own creatine very similar to the liver so since the brain is actually making its own creatine it may not require as much or any on a daily basis so here’s the brain obviously and in different regions creatine is being synthesized and being used all throughout so This organ is about 2 kg but uses 20% of our daily energy at rest. So just think about that. 20% of the amount of energy we’re consuming from food or using is being used by the brain. But what if you’re stressed? Sleep deprivation. Your dog got you up in the middle of the night to pee and you couldn’t fall back to sleep. Uh university students cramming for a midterm. Um now all the countries look at the World Cup. They’re going to be up stress, you know, different time zones. Then all of a sudden the healthy brain becomes a metabolically stressed brain. So your guess about 10 grams on average is fine because the brain on a nonstressed day is naturally making is enough and it’s healthy. But now we get into a more difficult what about those metabolic stressors? So again all the neurons in the brain are being used. So what about sleep deprivation? 10 g for sleep deprived. You when was the last time you slept 10 straight hours?

It’s been a while. It’s been a while. For even you, the pause there, you know, that’s that’s alarming because you’re thinking, “When was the last time I got a really good night’s sleep?” Mhm. What if you were up for 24 hours? Gosh. An ER doctor, traveling different time zones, all these come into play. Yeah. You remember on a healthy brain, you know, adequate sleep, uh, prop the brain is actually making enough. But when you’re stressed, night shift workers, uh, military pilots, ER doctors, whichever it is, that’s where the brain starts to rely on supplementation. So, unfortunately for the brain, creatine really struggles to get through the bloodb brain barrier. But if it does, now you might need longer or higher dosages. So, what about sleep deprived? I have no idea. Okay, so let’s say there’s five, there’s 10. What do you think? It’s going to be more, isn’t it? It’s going to be a lot more. Here’s 15. Couple studies showed some benefits. Now, let’s do 20. Remember that loading phase? The best overall studies currently right now that use an MRI for the brain have showed about 20 grams seems to have some effect acutely. But the two studies last year to Germany even showed this. There’s 25 And here’s 30. So a classic study was done last year when they gave 30 grams to a group of young individuals who volunteered to be sleepd deprived for 21 hours. And that level of creatine increased uh creatine levels in the brain and it offset some of the negative effects. Remember that was an acute episode of 21 hours of sleep deprivation. They’ve done a subsequent study going down to about uh 0.2 grams or about 14 grams. it didn’t have the same effect. So remember, a healthy brain likely doesn’t need any creatine, but a stressed brain likely does. And the more stressed it is, the higher the dose seems to come into play. There’s a lot of nuances with the brain. Obviously, we just show different regions, which we don’t have a lot of information, but overall, it seems that 20 g seems to be the most viable dose. When the brain is stressed, we basically need to start dumping out quite a bit more. So when you get from this area on, the brain healthy likely doesn’t benefit from any type of supplementation cuz it’s making its own. But in these areas when you’re stressed, it likely does. The area of nuance or why it’s become so popular is I think most people fall into the stressed environment. And if they’re not getting enough creatine through their diet and or supplementation, that’s why this big explosion on let’s take more to sort of check off all the boxes. So I take 10 grams a day at minimum to check off muscle, right? That checks off bone for the most part. And I’m pretty sure over time 10 grams would do the most part for stress. Now, since I just flown different time zones today, I’m taking 20 to 25 grams based on this acutely. And then when I go back to a non-stressed environment back to Canada, I’ll go back to my regular 10. So, I look at the 10 g dose or a little bit more as kind of being like a safety net. If you’re only taking three to five, you definitely will get muscle benefits. Will you eventually get brain benefits? There’s a small chance, but taking a little bit more, and remember the cool thing for your viewers, we’re not talking about protein. If we were talking about protein, the entire thing would be hundreds of grams. We’re only talking about maybe 20 grams. And that may only need to be done acutely. You know, when you’re really going through metabolic stress, look at university students, five final exams, hardly any sleep for a week. This is where this would come into play. I look at flight attendants or pilots. They’ll fly from Canada to Europe and then they go back home. their circadium rhythms are are all over the place. So I I think of of all these scenarios. The area that I was surprised I watched one of the episodes of the Aerys tour and you know money can’t stop circadian rhythm. So as much as Taylor Swift would have I was marveled by 3 hours of performance in 90 to 100,000 people of all her running around and then when you see her they’re totally gassed. They finish the concert they’re totally mentally exhausted. That’s a situation where this could come into enhanced performance. Then you think of uh celebrities, you think of uh uh athletes, these a lot of high pressure things like imagine being in the World Cup final. The pressure, the mental capacity, that’s where creatine seems to come into play. There’s a lot of nuances. Um we still don’t know a lot. So I think the big takehome for people is that if you’re going through periods of stress, a little bit more is okay. Uh we don’t know any adverse effects. We don’t think there are any. Um, but again, if you’re just taking creatine for muscle, bone, in the brain, you’re likely going to be checking off all those boxes. And when we start getting the the brain benefits up at this end, what are those brain benefits that were recorded in the studies? Is it I’m going to feel like I slept or is it something more internal? You likely won’t feel anything. Oh, okay. However, when you get to tasks the next day, so for example, you’re up all night, you take a high dose of creatine, then you have to go write the final or the midterm or you can’t remember. It’s those things when your memory and and and doing puzzles or basic tasks or what about a stroke test? What’s a stroke test? So, I’m going to get you to do this. I apologize in advance. It’s one of the most fatiguing things that you can do and it was one of the most robust studies to show the efficacy behind creatine. So, all I simply want you to do is you can see that there’s uh words and then corresponding letters. But you’ll notice that the color is incorrect. So up here you would see, you know, you have red, blue, green, blue, black. But the Stroop test is now looking at the bottom part. Okay. So I’ve tried it. I can only get the line two without making a mistake. Okay. Okay. So I want you to do this out loud but as fast as possible. And am I reading the words or the color? You’re reading the color. Okay. So the first one is green. Yeah. Uh yes. Okay. Fine. You want to do it as fast as possible. As fast as possible. Okay. So, let’s see how you do. Gosh, this is confusing already. I hit the second one and I got it wrong in my head. Depends how much creatine you’re talking about. I don’t think I’ve had creatine today. Okay. Okay. Green, red, yellow, green, blue, black, orange, red, blue, green, blue, pink, black, gray, yellow, red, blue, green. Oh, [  ] There you go. See, I failed the study that they did, get this, they had to do this for 90 straight minutes. Oh, wow. So, you can imagine how fatiguing that is for someone studying for the MCATs for medical school or, you know, midterms being sleepd deprived and you’re not sleep deprived and you struggled and you got slower. Now, you have to do this for 90 minutes. Wow. And in this classic study, they gave 20 gram of creatine uh before they did the test and then after. And it really improved their ability with speed and cognition there. It’s just a simple example to show wow our brain is seeing one thing we got to me maintain memory and cognition and creatine can help maintain some of those uh factors. So you won’t feel anything but performance of activities like that come into play. Do you know how much it improved the performance on the street? I I would have to get the graph but it did prove statistically significant. Yeah. What else is there for me to know about the impact that creatine can have on the brain? Yeah. You know, I think as a as a podcast who sometimes sits here for many, many hours interviewing people on a range of subjects. I’m always trying to find if there’s any way that I can perform better mentally. Yeah. So, it doesn’t boost the brain. It likely just brings those levels back up to normal levels before stress and it might give you a little bit more. So, uh there’s been populations Alzheimer’s disease, clinical depression, uh concussion. When those populations are evident, one of the biggest uh uh factors is that they have reduced creatine in their brain. So maybe supplementation can get through the bloodb brain barrier. The brain says, “I need help.” And that’s why you see some improvements there as well. So I like to think of the brain that creatine can act as a safety net. Um, and it certainly won’t cause any detrimental effects. But it’s always good to have that because you never know when I give you a stroke test. Like I’m going to find you tomorrow and give you this and say you’re going to be practicing all night. Will you perform better? But that’s just an example of something that we go through on a daily basis. if someone’s working on Wall Street or whichever it is, a really high stress demand, uh you know, stuck in traffic for two hours, these all add up and it’s a cascade of stressors that unfortunately most people go through and now we have a nutrient that is being made in the brain, but during times of stress, it likely needs a little bit of help. What about inflammation in the body? So, what is inflammation and is there a link between creatine supplementation and inflammation? There is. So, uh unfortunately, uh I’m 49. So at the age of 40, I have this systemic inflammation that went up. And we all know this because around the age of 30 where, you know, you can work out and nothing hurts. And all of a sudden, you wake up one day when you’re in your 40s and 50s and things hurt. And so systemic inflammation is happening all the time. And unfortunately, it accelerates aging. We’re more sore more often and it can lead to a lot of arthritis or or joint pain and things like that. Creatine does have anti-inflammatory effects, but a big distinction. Creatine is not like acetaminophen or ibuprofen which directly as a drug effect uh blocks that but it has been shown to decrease markers of inflammation specifically during long duration exercise. So this is an important distinction. Weight training is too acute but when you do iron man triathlon things like that those individuals who took creatine 20 grams a day for 5 days beforehand they had reductions in inflammation markers. So that might allow that individual to recover quicker, not get ill and then perform more optimally. From a weight training perspective, we see that it decreases markers of muscle damage. So it has these anti-inflammatory and anti catabolic effects as well. Interesting. Yeah. And what about people that have neurodeenerative disorders? Yes. So Alzheimer’s is is the area we’re really starting to focus on. And a couple single arm studies came out last year by Matt Taylor and Aaron Smith showing that 20 grams a day for 8 weeks did increase brain creatine levels in Alzheimer’s patients and it seemed to improve measures of memory and cognition there as well. So again using the same mechanisms it decreases inflammation. It maintains brain bioenergetics and it might actually have a neural protection effect as well. There’s evidence in cell cultures and in rodents that there’s some lines there but in humans we’re still in in the infancy. But if it can have any benefit to any neurological disease, it’s huge. And there’s a lot of hope, especially around Alzheimer’s. There was an 8week trial in Alzheimer’s patients that also showed modest muscle gains. A 1.9 kg increase in hand grip strength, which is a key predicator of survival in dementia patients. Um, which was a landmark study of 20 Alzheimer’s patients found that taking 20 g of creatine daily for 8 weeks increased brain creatine levels by 11% and significantly improved the cognitive test scores. they showed that’s the journal of psychiatry and brain science and that one’s really exciting and I think more future uh studies will come out the limitation with those is that there was no placebo to compare to but again it’s just showing that yes creatine can be used as an effective adjunct yeah and because there is impact on our brain is there impact on our mental health with creatine excellent point so the best lines of evidence here come from clinical depression and anxiety uh the group out of Utah and United States have clearly shown that creatine in addition to other therapy So this is important. Creatine by itself has never been shown to be a standalone, but with SSRIs or cognitive behavior therapy or methamphetamine use in populations under medical supervision, the addition of creatine seem to improve symptoms and it’s likely going back to all the ones we’ve already talked about where it improves uh bioenergetics. It improves uh neuro uh transmission or neurom modulation. Uh but it also in animals has been shown to improve a protein called BDNF. Uh so this protein is involved in brain plasticity. So there’s a whole bunch of emerging evidence and hope that creatine one day will be used uh as a treatment in the toolbox for a lot of these clinical uh issues. PTSD also comes to my mind. There was a study in Gatorade Sports Science Institute which PubMed published that said a study of over 200,000 adults found that those who consumed the least amount of creatine in their daily diet had the highest rates of depressive symptoms. Yes, that’s correct. And the common denominators, those with clinical depression or anxiety, when you measure their baseline creatine stores, very similar to concussion or Alzheimer’s, they’re reduced. So therefore, obviously, this condition or series of conditions is causing a disruption at the brain bioenergetic level and creatine levels are decreasing. And there’s another in PubMed that said in a clinical trial of women with major depression, adding 5 g of creatine to their daily anti-depressant, Yes. doubled their remission rate over 8 weeks. That’s correct. Yes. And that group is from Perry Renshaw’s group out of Utah. Uh they do great work. Our hope and I’m collaborating uh with some colleagues now to look at creatine as a standalone treatment versus placebo. Could it have some beneficial effects there? So that’s very exciting to come out. If I don’t want to be supplementing with creatine, is there what are the foods that I can eat that are high in creatine naturally? They’re primarily uh animal based. So seafood and red meat. Um you know, herring is going to have one of the highest concentrations. uh salmon uh as well as beef. Uh very small amounts in milk and dairy. So you’d have to drink all the the milk in the Jersey cow to get a sufficient amount. So uh it definitely comes down to animal based flesh. Yeah. There’s some other studies that I that I love that I’ve I think I’ve heard you talk about before. One of them was um young athletes who took 5 g of creatine daily slept an average of 1 hour longer on training days. Yeah, we did that study a few years ago in in young biological females who were healthy and on the days that they train and took creatine. This is interesting because they actually slept an hour longer uh compared to a placebo. So this is a very interesting fact. So creatine, you know, we now know it has brain bioenergetics. And there’s two arguments. If it’s making the brain recover, wouldn’t you need less sleep right now? In this study, it showed that improved. So maybe these individuals trained at a higher capacity and allowed the brain to have more homeostasis to come back. So this is an a study that needs to be replicated in males as well to see can creatine improve sleep quantity and if it is I think that’s a gamecher. I I think everybody on the planet would raise their hand and say hey I need more sleep. Is there anything else we haven’t covered as it relates to creatine? You know the expected gains versus the hype gains. I think there’s evidence there that creatine can have an effect. I I think it’s getting overhyped especially around the brain for what it can do. It’s one tool in the toolbox and I think it’s it’s one of those things that I’d like to show or you know talk about for sure. Yeah. Well, what do you mean by that? So, if you think of a toolbox when it comes to a plan, whenever you need to go fix things, you simply say, “Where’s my toolbox?” You can’t do anything without a plan. And and the way I like to preface this is the most popular tool in anybody’s toolbox is the hammer. Now, from a lifestyle perspective, what do you think the hammer represents? What would you decide that the hammer represents? Um, as in like a Is it weight training? Is it cardio? Is it creatine? Is it protein? Or is it sleep? Sleep. Okay. So, I say weight training is going to be the hammer. Okay. Okay. Now, what about the screwdriver? Always need a screwdriver. Creatine. No, I think aerobic training or sleep comes way before creatine. Okay. But most people say, “Hey, I can fix a lot of things with that.” Now remember, we have a nice big toolbox. I like to think of creatine as the multiffactorial wrench or screwdriver because creatine has profound benefits for muscle, a little bit for bone, of course, brain and other areas of the body. So you can hit something with this. You can open it up and fix something with this. It’s heavy. You can also pull out the measuring tape. Your argument, sleep, this could be protein, whichever it is. So when you put all these things in your toolbox, you’re now having a greater comprehensive plan to improve health. So you said weight training was the hammer hammer. I like to consider if you were to choose one modality of exercise, weight training is a little bit superior to cardio. You get pretty much all the same benefits of cardiovascular exercise and then you get more with obviously an increase in lean tissue mass and performance. Uh weight training if done effectively can actually improve mitochondrial health. you can improve V2 max if done correctly. Uh and you don’t need a lot of it. So I think we’ve switched from just doing cardio to now incorporating weight training to be effective. So weight training. Yes. What are the the sort of misconceptions about weight training and why are you so positive about it? Yeah. I think one of the biggest myths is that you always need to lift heavy to put on muscle mass. And worldrenowned researchers in this area have clearly shown now that lighter weights perform to a lot of effort almost to fatigue. If done correctly, you can get as the same increases in muscle mass as then compared to lifting heavy weights. However, if your goal is just to get stronger, lifting heavy is always there. So, I think this is a cool thing for people. Some days if you have a little bit of soreness or you don’t have a lot of energy, you can lift lighter weights but just to fatigue. Whereas other days, you come in Monday, you’ve had your coffee, whichever it is, you’re ready to go. You can lift heavy. So, I think there’s not one concrete way. There’s a little bit of variety here as well. And why are you putting it above cardiovascular work? Yeah, I I think the benefits there is that cardiovascular exercise will make you live longer and and healthier. But the downfall with cardiovascular exercise, it doesn’t stimulate strength or the muscle sceal system as much as we we’d hope. So improving muscle mass and that is very difficult to do with cardio. Maybe sprint interval training will do that. But the cool thing with weight training is you get cardiovascular benefits, but you also get those profound muscle sceal benefits. So if I was to tell anybody if there’s one form of exercise to do, it’s weight training. But you’ve got to do cardio as well. So do both. And if I just do weight training, what am I missing from not doing cardio training? Yeah. If you do weight training improperly, where you’re lifting heavy heavy weight with low repetitions all the time, you’re likely going to jeopardize capillary density or mitochondrial health. These are things that sort of move blood flow to and from uh your muscles. You could decrease V2 max or a fitness parameter for uh metabolic health fitness. So at the end of the day, everybody should be doing both. But if you only have time to do weight training or cardio, you still benefit because the majority of the population doesn’t do any. And how how much how often do you think? It’s amazing that it’s a small amount. So, let’s just do cardio. Most countries will say 150 minutes of physical activity at a moderate level over a week. Uh I’m okay with that. I’d like it to be higher. I’d also like the intensity to be a bit higher. So, when you tell an average individual 150 minutes a week, most people say, “Well, I’m going to do 70 or I’m going to do 30. I’m going to hold the couch down and watch Netflix. So, we’ve given 150 and we say, you know, if you can do 21 minutes or 22 minutes a day for 7 days a week, that’s going to be a brisk walk or whichever. We’d like to be at a higher intensity if possible. Now, when it comes to weight training, this might be surprising, but 2 days a week or more is all you basically need. And you can do a whole body routine. So, you don’t need to go in there and just do chest and biceps Monday and then legs Tuesday. can, but if you say I want to do whole body of training Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that is great as well. So, a little bit of volume or frequency goes a long way, especially as we get older. That’s the key. Why, especially as we get older? Well, based on this graph here, it’s clearly showing a detrimental effect. So, if you can see here, you know, you have muscle mass on the the x-axis or the y- axis, and then you’re having all the catastrophic effects as we get older. So unfortunately, you know, 20 and 30 looks great when you’re 20 40 years old. When you’re 20 and 40 years old or all the way from 20 to 40, you can see great. That’s probably the area that you’re going to have the most muscle. Yeah. But look what happens. 40, age 60, 80, and if you live to be 100, it’s catastrophic. You’re losing muscle mass at an accelerated rate on average is about 1% per year after the age of 40, even if you’re training. So if you’re training, you’re maintaining that. So this is the average sedentary inactive population. You lose strength at about 1 point or 1 to 3% even faster. Now if we were to maintain resistance training, that muscle mass would plateau. So I can’t stress this enough. Although we focused on creatine, if you were to choose one thing to do today is exercise. And the only form of exercise that really maintains muscle is weightbearing or um resistance training. And if that’s the case, you’re going to have way more muscle later on in life. So you can pick up the grandkids, you can walk those stairs, you can do more functionality things later on in life. Can you not just at, I don’t know, 60 years old, start training then? You can absolutely. And you get profound benefits. You can be 80 or 100 and you still get benefits. It’s never too late to start. But one of the things we’ve already talked about is if you do weight training and add in a little bit of creatine, it gets a bit higher. If you added in protein, it gets even higher. So again, nutrition, you know, if exercise is king, the queen is going to be nutrition. They go hand in hand all throughout lifespan. You got to have both. And on the subject of protein, you’re saying that when combined with creatine, it’s a force multiplier. It’s it’s a force multiplier when it comes to performance and lean tissue mass. So there’s been a few studies when you combine high quality protein with creatine, they been shown to increase lean tissue mass and muscle performance a little bit more than each alone. Yeah. Does the average person get enough protein through their diet? You know, I think nowadays we do and and I think this is overhyped as well. I think if you’re getting about 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram. So, you know, if you’re 70 kg, that’s going to be on average about 84 to about 115 g of protein. I think we’re so conscious now of the health benefits of protein uh that most people are. I think if you’re training really intensely, 5 6 days a week, and you take a gram per pound, that’s probably the max. But a lot of times when you take an excess protein, it doesn’t go to your body area that you’re probably hoping it doesn’t all go to your muscle. It’s used for other things like hormones and uh blood cells, things like that. But I think nowadays most people are likely getting enough protein. The question is, are they getting enough high quality protein? So vegans and vegetarians can definitely get enough protein. They might just need to eat a little bit more to get all those essential amino acids which we need. Menopause. Yes, we talked a little bit briefly about menopause. Bringing both together the subjects of muscle but also of creatine. Yes. How how does those two things impact a woman’s journey through menopause? Yeah. So we know from animal cells that estrogen is highly involved in creatine metabolism. Estrogen seems to be implicated in the enzymes that are needed to make creatine and then estrogen also has a huge impact on uh uh not only brain bioenergetics but muscle metabolism as well. So as the the female goes from a premenopausal stage to permenopausal stage to the post-menopausal transition if estrogen is decreasing uh and then independent of their diet we think creatine has bone effects and muscle effects and of course we’ve talked about the cognitive effects there. So from a whole skeleton perspective, I think everybody should be, but of course the permenopausal, post-menopausal transition uh is good. And then that brings up a question about what about really young premenopausal females, you know, optimal health. What if we built up their tissues more? Maybe that would offset the rate of this decline over time as well. So that’s what we’re hoping to get to. Is creatine safe for kids? So it’s interesting you bring that up and the current body of evidence suggests yes at recommended dosages. uh good researchers uh in in the United States have put out multiple reviews at looking at creatine in uh adolescent children and teenagers improves balance, agility, body composition. If anything, they want to get at least one gram per day because in children they want to have an optimization for bone health as well as muscle development. Um but again, if any parents are watching, obviously talk to their medical practitioner. Uh but all the current reviews um currently suggest that it’s safe. And we’re talking about we’re not talking about babies here. we talking about? Yeah, we’re talking about adolescence all the way into teenage years. When it comes to baby or infancy, um, out of Australia, Stacy is starting to do that work there as well, but we don’t have a lot of data in humans yet. But that is an area to to pay attention to for sure. Yeah. What is the most important thing we haven’t talked about that we should have talked about, doctor? Yeah. I think one of the big things is the safety profile of creatine. Uh, there’s been uh, you know, hundreds of randomized control trials now on creatine. The safety profile is is exceptional. Uh last year they put out a study looking at over 25,000 cases and creatine even over 10 grams a day for many years has been very very safe and effective. Uh one area that comes up is what about the timing? Does it matter when I take it? And and the cool thing is we just got a paper accepted 2 days ago putting the nail in the coffin on this and at the end of the day you can take creatine at any time of the day. You can take it in the morning with breakfast. You can take it right before workout. I take some during. You can take it after go to bed. It doesn’t matter when you take it as well. So you can take it right before sleep and it won’t impact your sleep. No, currently we haven’t exactly assessed the effect on sleep but uh another study looked at it in the evening and it had no detrimental effect there as well. And what else? What else is the other questions that you get messaged with or asked most often? Dr. Yeah. Can I spread out creatine all throughout the day? So for example, we have like if we were to take creatine in a gummy form or a candy, you can actually have, you know, one or two of these every hour all throughout the day. You can have it uh periodically. So, you don’t have to take creatine all at once. You can take it in smaller amounts all throughout the day. And if anything, there’s been a study a few years ago showing that one gram every 30 minutes up to 20 gram dose uh seem to retain more in the body and that was beneficial as well. What do you think of these gummies? You know, there’s only been a few companies that have actually shown some validity and reliability. Um, as long as they’re third party tested, they’re very, very effective. You want to try one? Are they Are they third party tested? They’re third the green ones. Yeah. And the bottom ones third party tested. Yep. Well, but you know the stuff that makes it a gummy, is that stuff is that stuff good for you? So, the issue there is does the manufacturing trying to keep the uh creatine together uh influence it? It can. And there’s only been a few uh uh companies out there. The one you’re eating is by Create from the United States. They have had multiple trials. They’re the first uh company to actually look at randomized control trial to show improvements in volleyball players with the gummies. Children love them. older adults. This has become an area of interest where uh chewing ability or taste sensation has gone down. Uh they seem to be very convenient and effective. Uh you can have these at your desk, whichever. You don’t need the white powder to mix. So there the companies are coming up with more viable ways to get creatine in there. But to your point, you always want to make sure the company’s third party tested. It uses a high quality creatine and it actually has a source of creatine in there as well. Cuz I remember watching a YouTube video by a guy called James Smith who’s been on the show before and he did some testing on the offtheshelf creatine um and found that a lot of them didn’t contain any creatine. 90% and there was only a few and the one that you did uh consume it did. Yeah. 1.5. Isn’t that crazy that you can go buy creatine and it has no creatine? Yeah. So that’s why I think for the consumers watching you got to do a little bit of homework and look at those three things. Make sure third party tested. It has a logo clearly on the packaging. If it doesn’t, I would strongly advise you not to consume it. all the of all the studies that you’ve encountered on all the subjects we talked about muscle, protein, creatine, are there studies that were pivotal in how you think about these subjects? Yeah, there was so the the Lamark study came out in 1992 uh and it clearly showed that five g elevated creatine in the blood, but if you took multiple 5 g dosages, it maintained that throughout the day. So, this is where the dose of five grams seems to be very very viable. And the other one showed that, hey, I don’t want to take five. What if I only want to take three grams? So 3 g seems to be the lowest most effective dose and you just need to take that for one month and you’ll saturate your muscles. So again, you have options. Take as little an amount or a high amount as as you want over time. But I think one of the biggest studies is that we did was a 2-year trial in post-menopausal women where we gave.14 gram of creatine and it really seemed to improve or have an effect on bone preservation as well as muscle performance. So these are the the studies that seem to come to my mind. We’ve done quite a few uh but they seem to be the landmark ones. Yeah. And what are the supplements that you take outside of creatine? Yes, for sure. So, on a daily basis, it’s a probiotic uh with food in the morning and evening. And that’s something I just recently learned. I was taking it on an empty stomach, but probiotic, I take uh two forms of magnesium uh one before bed and then one in the day, three and eight for uh uh cognition and function. I take uh 2,000 international units of vitamin D. Um I always take protein on a sufficient basis as well. And then I take about four grams of omega-3 fatty acids. And I always take one of the omega-3 fatty acids post exercise cuz that seems to be the best time to take it. So omega-3, magnesium, vitamin D, vitamin D, probiotics, of course, creatine and uh protein. I take powder andor through uh dietary food. Every now and then I don’t eat a lot of red meat, so I’ll take iron um but um not on a consistent basis. And I’m hoping the new one is this is an area of controversy. NAD this is the you know it’s a precursor for a main enzyme that’s highly involved in metabolism there’s been evidence to suggest it goes down with aging so my eye is closely on that uh to see if that’s going to be something to come up into play and a multivitamin you know started with Flintstone vitamins as a kid and I take a multivitamin day as a safety net I noticed that when I looked at your video in the interview you did with Dr. Ronda Patrick. A lot of the comments were from people in their 60s, ‘7s, and 80s. And I wondered why that was. If you just I was just looking at the top three or four comments, and it’s a 71year-old, it’s an 82y old, it’s a 53y old who’s um contending with Alzheimer’s, right? Why is that? Yeah, I think it’s the awareness and education now, and social media has really helped with this, getting our evidence-based research out to the public, and the awareness that creatine is just not for young males to get bigger, stronger, faster. If anything, when you go to an aging body and they’re predisposed to aging related muscle loss, strength loss, functionality, bone loss, and atrophy in the brain, creatine has been shown to have effects there as well. So, I think a lot of older individual populations are becoming more aware of the effects of creatine. And of course, as we produce more research, it gets out to the public more often. So, is I’m really excited and encouraged that creatine has sort of taken on a life of its own in the last decade. And are there direct weight benefits if I’m trying to cut fat by taking creatine or is it indirect? It’s indirect. So it seems that if you increase lean mass, it might stimulate energy expenditure or turnover. And then in animal models, it has been shown to have some beneficial effects from a cellular perspective on fat. But at the end of the day, if you are seeing a reduction in fat, it’s likely that you’re improving your metabolic health with lean tissue mass. Do you think much about how to get these habits to stick? Because I imagine there’s lots of people that are aware by now that creatine is a a useful thing to take, but for whatever reason, they still don’t take it. Exactly. And I think that’s one of the biggest reasons people don’t. So, we got to come up with ways to maintain consistency. And I think whatever vehicle you want to choose to maintain that in the in the run of a day is the best. So, if it’s putting in your coffee in the morning cuz you won’t forget it, great. If it’s putting a little bit in Greek yogurt, if it’s using the gummies, whichever it is, as long as it’s a viable source of creatine, that makes it very practical and consistent for you. Uh that’s the best way. Yeah. I found that um having it on route to where I’m going being really really important. So when I come to my office in the morning, it’s all on my desk. Um so I have the supplements just on my desk and actually even before I walked into the studio today, in the green room that I have, it’s on the green room. When I’m at home, it is where the coffee machine is. Correct. And that has radically helped me. Um, otherwise I if it wasn’t within my my routine, it would wouldn’t happen. Yeah, we have a jug on the counter with all our other supplements. It’s in the pantry, it’s close by. Because if it’s in the garage, you’re like, I forgot about it. I think the other thing is with some things like creatine, it’s hard to really notice the difference sometimes. Ah, excellent point. Yeah, this is not like caffeine, you know, it’s an immediate effect. So, unlike uh caffeine, creatine takes a while to notice the effects, and they come in direct. You don’t immediately notice a massive increase in energy or alertness. It’s like after a week of weight training or even two, you’re like, “Wow, I did more repetitions. I could do more weight. Uh, I recover quickly.” Is one that we hear uh quite often. You’ll never notice with with your bone, but we have heard anecdotally with cognition, especially sleep deprivation, people do notice the effects. And I’m a n of one, but I noticed jet lag goes down quite a bit uh when I take a high dose of creatine. And you know when you start taking it, if you start taking it today, yes, if I start taking so 3 to five grams of creatine today, am I going to notice the differences today? No. It’ll probably with 3 to 5 g, you’ll probably notice it in a few weeks, if not to a month from a muscle perspective. From a brain perspective that low, you’re likely not going to notice any effect because the brain is probably making enough. But if you’re really metabolically stressed, then you might notice some memory or cognitive uh benefits after a few days. But at such a low dose, you need to be a little bit patient. But again, 3 g could saturate your skeletal muscle in 30 days. So it’s not that long of a weight. And on the cognitive side, the cognitive benefits that were observed when doing these stroop tests, had they been taking it previously or was it just administered on that particular day when the test happened? Yeah. So that one was in a week in advance with the loading phase. So they really saturated the body to try to get the effects. Okay. So they were taking it for some time. Yeah. But on the sleep deprivation study from Germany, they just gave it one bolus mega dose for 21 hours of sleep deprivation. in those individuals did perform better from a number of tests like this the next day. So if you’re like wow I got something coming up Friday unfortunately I’m not going to get any sleep at best one or two hours then a high dose might come into play and then you can go back to your more consistent routine. I think what happened or is happening is a lot of individuals who are now thinking I need to take 20 or 30 grams on a daily basis based on those studies and I’m like wait a minute are you getting enough sleep the next day because at that dose we don’t know if the neuron will swell with water and if that’s the case is that potentially causing any detrimental effects in the long term. So again, I would not uh uh recommend taking a mega dose for consistently over time. Could that downregulate your natural synthesis? Uh these are all questions that we need to look at. Yeah. So outside of the realm of creatine, outside of the realm of muscle, outside of the realm of I guess nutrition generally, what are you doing to keep yourself healthy? What is what is your routine? Yeah. So I’m religious with exercise. So I try to exercise at least 3 to four days a week with weight training. uh and add in at least 20 to 30 minutes of either moderate intensity cardio or um like a spin class. I personally like to do alternating days. Okay. So, I’ll do weight training like maybe Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then cardio Tuesday, Thursday. Uh and then on the weekends, hiking, things like that. Um pretty religious with nutrients as well. Try to eat a really balanced diet. And my god, my failure is getting enough sleep. So, I’ve had to cut caffeine out quite a bit by past noon to allow me. I’m probably a slower metabizer um with caffeine. So, uh, I try to really optimize evidence-based research, take it into my daily life and try to promote it that way. Yeah. And is there anything you’re particularly excited about in the work and research? I’m super fascinated with the movement from the neck up. I think we know a lot about the neck down with creatine and exercise or other nutrients. I’m fascinated with the ability. What about concussion? You know, can the UFC fighter take creatine before they get hit? Could that decrease CTE or concussion or brain trauma later on in life? I think a boxing Muhammad Ali uh things like that. So there’s evidence in in in rodents that if you take creatine before head trauma, it really speeds up concussion recovery. So I’m fascinated with that as well, like almost a prophylactic. Anybody involved in head trauma, I think you should definitely look at creatine as something to be taking just in case you get hit. And then of course everything with Alzheimer’s or other areas of depression. So I’m fascinated that this nutrient which was you know 1832 it was discovered boring for the longest time because we thought we knew everything and now it’s taken a life of his own as having these profound benefits we never even thought would happen yet. A lot of people continue to be the sort of leading expert on this subject for many reasons. Do you think there’ll be a time where you you stop researching creatine and you move on to something else? You know that’s interesting. I would have said yes about 5 years ago but now no. There’s too much to do even with skeletal muscle. If you were to say, “What’s the best dose Darren to take?” I say, “I have no clue.” Every creatine researcher said, “I don’t know.” We still don’t know the best dose that every person can take that will check off all the boxes, especially in the brain. We’re just giving an estimate that I take 10, maybe you take 12, someone might take 15. At the end of the day, we still don’t know the best supplementation protocol, the best dose. Uh, so there’s so many areas. So, for the next 20 years, I bet y’all still be focusing on creatine with other things as well. Yeah. And on that doses, is that different for different people? Excellent question. So the thought was that the larger you are, you have more storing capacity in your muscle for creatine. So it makes sense if you’re 50 kg and 150 kg, you’re going to have a greater storing capacity. So the dose on a relative basis is likely higher there as well. The more stressed the person is, it’s likely they’re going to require more because their natural machinery in the brain can’t keep up. So it is very individualistic. I think we give out general recommendations to make it easy, but again, some people can take it very scientifically and base it on body weight. And you can’t go wrong with both of them. I bet there’s a lot of people that are this far into the conversation and their their central question is, “Right, I’ve got loved ones.” Mhm. That I really really want to start um considering creatine supplementation for whatever reason. It could be cognitive benefits, muscular benefits, whatever. All the things we’ve talked about, they might end up sending this conversation to their loved ones. something that I do sometimes when I when I have episodes that are particularly moving for me. If their loved ones are now listening y and you had to make a case to their loved ones about why they should take creatine. Yeah. What would you say? I would say creatine is one tool in that health promotion um toolbox that might help you live longer and better and allow you to maintain activities later on in life which you wouldn’t have been able to do. And unfortunately that leads to accelerated aging and a poor way to go. It’s like it’s like saying I’m going to save everything for retirement. My question is why? You might not make it to retirement. So that’s one of the things. Yeah. Aging. Yes. What is aging in your definition of work? It’s catastrophic. Unfortunately, I’m going through it. You know, I’ve noticed ever since I hit the fourth decade, things hurt a lot more and muscle mass to retain it a little bit harder. Um, so unfortunately, think of the body’s ability to withstand stress is not as high and things start to break down quite fast. So, we all know, you know, things hurt more. We’ve lost muscle mass. I can’t run as fast. So, biological aging is kind of the deterioration of the human body. We need to with this conversation and others come up with ways to stop the deterioration and if anything come up with ways to maintain that ability to live longer free of disease. Young, we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last leaves a question for the next not knowing who they’re leaving it for. This one’s quite a tricky question. Okay. What is reality? What do you think all of this is? All this stuff that we can see and or we experience. What do you think it is? Do you think it’s a simulation? Do you think it’s this is all real for sure? Because I think we can feel it. It’s not a a big brother or anything that’s a game show. We all go through different emotions and things like that. So, I think you can feel it. Yeah. Are you religious? Yes. Catholic. Roman Catholic. Yeah. And you’re a family man. You’ve got got some uh French bulldog and a cat as we talked about and wife at home. Yeah. and uh really close to my family and stuff like that. And what is your goal if we get to the end of your career and this was your last day and you had been successful? Oh yeah. I think it would be a lasting impression on my students that wow he changed my life in some way. And if I can make one person live longer, free of disease and happier, I’m all for it. You know, when you start to see the human body as people get older, you’re like, “Oh, that person used to be young and vibrant.” And then when you hear other people that can’t do activities they live in or they can’t travel or they’re afraid to, I’m like, you need to embrace today. I I love that quote from Morgan Freeman Shaw Shank. Get busy living or get busy dying. Cuz honestly, we have the ability with lifestyle choices to improve optimization. And I want to see people live to be 120, 130, still active, still going. And I think we’re on the cusp with technology and I think awareness around nutrition, exercise, sleep, uh laughter. Oh geez. If I could ask anybody to do one more thing, it’d be just laugh more often. For me to be just a small piece of the the puzzle promoting it, I think it’s if anything, it’s it’s just beyond my belief. Yeah. Why did this pull you in? I I I asked that in part because it tends to be the case that the things that draw us in pull on our make us curious. There tends to always be a bit of a personal reason, right? Yeah. It was it was more that you know, am I scared of death? 100%. Yeah. I can’t I can’t think of it. Yeah. Why? Yeah. I just think it’s weird for me. I get to a point uh maybe being religious and then you think about it and then I my brain stops. I can’t think about it really. Yeah. And it’s this becomes almost like I want to live forever and if I can think of ways to make me live and partially get there obviously it’s not reality but yeah I’m uh scared to death of dying. Yeah. Have you always been? Yep. 100%. Scared to death of heights and I can’t even talk about the the death experience. Yeah. cuz I think it it sort of brings into perspective things that you just don’t know. Did you ever lose anybody? Uh just uh friends and things like that, but nothing um specific like parents or anything like that yet. But it’s always been there. I don’t know if it’s the Roman Catholic in me or not, but it’s like whoa, I don’t want that at all. Yeah. You can’t even talk about it. Can’t even talk about it. No. No. Yeah. Really? Yeah. It’s kind of like I can talk about it in a sense. I understand it and it’s realistic, but it’s it’s more um that for some reason I don’t even want to think about it cuz I have so much passion for life that I don’t even want to think about, oh [  ] this could happen. Yeah. And you believe you go somewhere after that? Oh, for sure. Heaven. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But if you do believe you’re going to heaven, that sounds like a good place. A great place. Yeah. I just want to spend more time here. There’s still a lot of things to do. Yeah, for sure. Makes sense. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for Thank you so much. This was great. Thank you. Yeah. I I have to say, you know, you’ve done so so much research on the subject that so many of my previous guests site and talk about and so it’s it’s great to have the source here and I I applaud you for the work you’ve done because at the end of the day, I think I think a lot of people do want to extend their health span which is to live healthier for longer. There’s a real sort of epidemic of people having short health spans, being medicated from the age of 40, 50 years old and then having that sort of last couple of decades of our life being, you know, incapable of doing the things we care about. Yeah. And I think a lot of this research gives us an option if we choose to take it to live a to live a better life. Thank you so much. Yeah, it was great. So, thank you so much later.