Everybody knows about ChatGPT, but few people actually know the mastermind behind bringing it to
market. And no, I'm not talking about Sam Altman. I'm talking about Zach Kass. There are
few things more controversial than AI right now. Some people hate it, and some people love it.
And when it comes to what this technology means for the future, nobody has the perspective
or the background that Zach has. And I guarantee you that his approach to where the technology
and society are headed will absolutely shock you. Zach has spent over a decade at the center of
the AI industry, culminating in leading the go-to-market strategy at Open AI, bringing the technology to
hundreds of millions of professionals around the world. He had every reason to keep being the
industry's biggest cheerleader. It got him wealth, status, and a seat at the table. But instead,
he stepped back at the peak of his career, because he believed that the current direction of
technology made a promise to society that it has since broken. His big swing wasn't leaving Open AI.
It was standing at the front of the very people building the future and naming the real threat
that everyone else is missing. As a society, we are standing on the precipice of a major technological
revolution. If we get it wrong, the consequences are dire. But if we get it right,
Zach argues that we could be standing at the doorstep of what he calls the next renaissance.
A world where technology finally delivers on its oldest promise, driving down the cost of
what it takes to live a good life and opening it up to everyone, not just the wealthy few.
This is the story of Zach Kass. Welcome to Big Swings Only.
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take your marketing further with Brevo and Aura. Why do so many people hate AI? And why is your
perspective on AI so surprising when people hear you speak? I don't think most people hate AI.
I think they hate the idea of what AI might do to them. And they hate the story that is being told
about the costs associated with it. Most people do not hate air conditioning. Most people do not
hate antibiotics. Most people do not hate plane strains and automobiles. Most people do not hate
the internet. Most people do not hate vaccines. Well, that's a little more complicated.
Most people do not hate refrigeration. Most people do not hate electricity. And the reason
that 99% of people like most of the technologies I just listed is because they have advanced the
human experience over time. They have diffused to the benefit of the average person such that
the average person cannot imagine their life without these technologies because they have
raised the standard of human living. And for most of human history, the technologies that we
invented, we didn't really have to ask in an acute moment, should we adopt this technology,
because the diffusion took so long by the time it reached the individual at the end of the chain,
people were desperate for it. I mean, plumbing is a great example, right? By the time plumbing
arrives at a lot of places on earth that only recently received fresh water, including,
by the way, India and a lot of China and much of Africa, the debate wasn't, should we install
plumbing in these places? The debate was how have we slept with ourselves? That plumbing didn't
arrive here sooner? How have we felt comfortable with the idea that technology should be reserved
for this group but not for this group? The very interesting thing about the AI debate is no one
is arguing anymore, will everyone get AI? Which is fascinating to consider because the diffusion
debate was always the problem, who will get this thing? And you don't hear the debate around,
well, will a child in Africa get AI? You hear the debate around, what will a child in Africa do with
it and won't it harm them? And the reason for this, the reason that we have made the AI debate,
about harm instead of opportunity, is the context in which it is arriving,
which frankly is a pretty sad absurd context because for the last 30 years, two things have happened
related but actually orthogonal. One, we have become horribly addicted to our machines, our devices,
and they have harmed our brains in observable and unobservable second order ways that we are
still finding out. And these machines have caused real dehumanization and real anti-social patterns
but they also principally have fed us the worst news on earth. They have told us all of the terrible
things that are happening all the time. We gave kids smartphones when they turned 12
on average in the United States. That's when Gen Z got their smartphone and it instantly started
displaying them, porn, gambling, violence, comparison in the most addictive way. And we have the
gall to be like, why are you so unhappy? Why would Gen Z be twice or three times more likely in some
parts of the US to be depressed and anxious than the prior generation? Well, pretty fucking obvious,
we told them all of the horrors of the earth, the most innocent empathetic creatures. Most
adults cannot metabolize this information. Einstein could barely metabolize this information. He
talked about discovering awful things and it making him really sad. A 12-year-old should not
know about most of the conflicts on earth. They should know about the conflicts
on the playground with other kids and how to resolve them. They shouldn't even know about their
parents' conflicts. So that's the first problem. And ignoring that is perilous because it ignores
the thing that we must atone for before we atone for anything else. Giving kids smartphones and
access to the horrors of the world is a cardinal sin and we have to acknowledge all of the damage
it's done in order to move forward. It's not that the world got worse. It's that we told everyone
all the awful things that were happening and we didn't let them look away. And in fact, we incentivized
companies. We built trillion dollar businesses on the backs of these businesses or in the backs of
these content farms. But a second thing happened that is even in some ways more absurd and more sad,
which is while we made telecommunications and entertainment and gambling and pornography,
dirt cheap, while we gave everyone with access to the internet infinite reams of awfulness and
spiritual dereliction. We made housing, healthcare, and education 300% more expensive.
Consider that, right? Like there's a Falsteen bargain. There's a world 30 years ago where we go,
everyone's going to get a smartphone and it's going to make everything inexpensive. That means
everyone's going to get porn, but everyone's also going to get a better house for less money.
Nope, we gave everyone a smartphone, we gave everyone the internet and they got dopamine dirt cheap
they got
Vice and sin and
Spiritual bankruptcy dirt cheap and they got the pillars of a beautiful world
The 300% more than their parents
Why through that lens?
Would many people be excited about the next wave of technology?
Hmm, that seems pretty reasonable like it seems pretty reasonable if you're a young person
Staring at this moment
You go cool. So I
Go to I sleep for on off for five hours a night on average. That's what Gen Z boys are doing
I've got eye problems because I'm addicted to blue light
My parents house is prohibitively expensive
AI is going to take my job apparently and
Make me more addicted to this machine
well
Sorry, what am I missing?
And why would a parent who's watched what this moment has done to their kid feel any better?
So my argument in all this is we are in a moment in time where our humans relationship with the technology that was meant to lift us up
Is actually corrupted and it's corrupted principally by the screen
We at we are experiencing this moment in time where the screen has done so much damage to our brains and didn't deliver on a promise
To make things less expensive such that we live in this absurd economy and
We're exacerbating the problem right now because we're not actually addressing that issue
I mean, we're some people are doing it you've all Harari
Jonathan Hyde I have stood shoulder to shoulder with these people outside of school districts fighting for safe spaces for kids in classrooms
I was one of the first teachers at UVA to tell my students you cannot bring a device into this classroom
I start every keynote by telling people to put away their phone
I am doing what I can to to point attention to the screen as a demon which I think it is
But policy makers are still ignoring it in part because meta's tentacles are wrapped around them
But also in part because it's actually not popular. It's still not
It's still not a politically popular idea to take phones away from kids, which is crazy
It's still not a particularly popular politically popular idea to to create social media bans for certain age groups
Or or device policy limits so
I think we got to start there the other thing. I think we need to acknowledge is everything else that we are talking about right now
future of work
Data center job creation
Economic spoils
It doesn't actually it doesn't address the root issue, which is the average young person's future of living
What is the future of their life look like and if you cannot show people a straight line?
Between new technology and lower cost of goods
Well, then you have failed as a society
Because every technology for the in the history of human experience has driven down the cost of goods and services over time and expanded access
AI will certainly do the same
But at some point it's no longer a technology failure housing health care and education are not prohibitively expensive because they must be
They're prohibitively expensive because we've chosen to make them that way
This the screen in front of you that you're viewing me on used to cost $20,000 now cost a hundred bucks. Why?
Well, we deregulated that at market and a bunch of people who make TV screens started making them less expensive until the market was flooded with TV screens
Super computer in your pocket flight around the world thousand dollars in some places
Why can you drive across Los Angeles for $10 in an autonomous vehicle?
But a trip five blocks away in an ambulance might actually bankrupt you
well
policy a
In anti-social government
That has been in power so long we forgot what it is like to have a good government
That haven't been held accountable for all these decisions and they're now pointing at the technologists and I'm not trying to relieve the technologists, but
There is a way out of this and it is putting unrelenting pressure on policymakers to allow AI and other technologies to do
For housing health care and education the pillars of a great society what it did for our TV screens and our supercomputers
And all the other things in our life that feel dirt cheap. Why can I get gas station sushi for seven dollars?
But if I go to college for four years, I'll be indebted for the rest of my life like how does everything we allow to get less expensive?
get less expensive
And until policymakers stand up and say the brave thing this data center is first going to be going to power
Housing robotics to build cheaper housing
or
hospitals to provide lower cost of health care or
free economy or other
Other online education services and by the way it won't power gambling or pornography
Like what a interesting
policy measure
Hmm. I don't know about a work because gambling and pornography power a lot of data center buildouts
But it would be an interesting approach because you don't hate technology you hate right now what it is being used to do
Which is which is warp our brains
That's a very reasonable take if if all the next wave of data centers does is make us more spiritually bankrupt
I don't blame any young person for rioting that all good for you
But if we can if the next wave of technology plus policy right pro-housing
Pro-human policy
Can diffuse the benefits of this technology to the average person?
We're going to talk about AI the way we talk about electricity
I had only only the the humans in the
And the you know
The only only the the the groups that refuse to use technology will will continue to fight it
And by the way the other reason I can prove this is I go to China about three times a year
And I go to China for three reasons one. I really like Chinese people. I also really like Chinese food
to I
They want to know what is happening in America because Americans don't actually go to China
And there's a lot that I can talk about and I and actually I'll start over I go to China for three reasons one
I really like Chinese people in Chinese food
It's an amazing place to
There is a lot to learn
And one of the things to learn is that 80% of Chinese people view AI as a means to make life better
Why why does AI pull so well in China? That is a important question now some of this and the cynic in people go well
The Chinese people are lying about the polls. I've been on the ground
Chinese people are pretty excited about AI
And they're excited about AI I think principally because
They live in a world where the internet and the mobile device
built a new middle class
The young people in China remember that their grandparents literally nearly starved to death
I mean China's middle class is born from abject poverty
We don't really know what that's like because the US has been so far out in front for so long economically
I mean we have poverty we had abject poverty 50 years ago, but not like the Chinese right the Chinese were starving to death until very recently
and
Policy measures to diffuse the benefits of technology to the average person were put in place China's 45,000 miles of high speed rail
So the average Chinese person can get from Beijing to Shanghai for a hundred dollars in a comfortable seat
We the American mind cannot comprehend some of this
G fires hospital administrators whose health care doesn't get better faster cheaper year over year
Because he's like we keep inventing new technology. Why would you not actually build better hospitals? What's what's your excuse
Hmm, so the average Chinese person is like cool. AI's gonna beat make us even better and
That is the context in which this technology is arriving. They don't view it as more social
dereliction or spiritual dereliction. They view it as cheaper living
More opportunity
We have an opportunity we have we have it we have an incredible important opportunity right now to
Not let the policymakers point at the technologist and blame them. It's true that meta is a bad act
I mean, I think a bad actor, but it's also true that Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell and all the people have been in power for
50 years could have made everything less expensive by now and they chose not to
The technology was there to do it. We could have built more housing. We could have built more schools
We could have done so many things to make this stuff better and we just chose not to
Let me summarize before I ask my next question to make sure we're on the same page because it sounds like what you're saying is a big reason
Why people don't feel positive about technology is because in the last 30 years we haven't been given very good reasons to believe that
Things are going to necessarily get better because the tech has not there hasn't been a clear enough nexus between the technological advancement and the improvement of people's everyday lives
Yeah, and then also when you think about it, it's just for myself actually to your point there's been a degradation in their everyday life one exactly
That's a very important distinction and then you also have the the reality from a psychological
perspective of the availability heuristic, you know, when jaws came out, everybody was afraid of a shark attack even though
Statistically unlikely, but since it's always in your face, you think it's more likely. Now when you think about the algorithms a lot of the time
It's on social media and with YouTube whatever it happens to be. We're feeding people the darkest parts of humanity
Because that's what people resonate with the most and then as a result when something new comes they're going to assume that is going to be more negative and
Now this is an extrapolation. I'm wondering when it comes to the distinction between the the Chinese perspective as it relates to AI and
The American perspective in general when it relates to AI. I wonder how much of that
Faith in the technology being used to improve the everyday life that
Exist in China that doesn't exist here
Comes as a result of the Chinese faith in Chinese institutions and policy makers to ensure that it steers in that direction and in America
We have less faith in the the powers that be to steer us in that same positive direction
I would avoid using the word faith in China because it's actually it's not a place that is a good one
I actually in oh strictly out of like semantic. Yeah purpose. I think that the I think Chinese people
have a
Agreement with the government which is that they will give up a lot of liberties in
Exchange for a lot of economic benefit. Yeah, and that agreement is
tacit in most cases and spoken in some
And with very few exceptions including some universities and private dining rooms
Most Chinese people don't even talk about the government
It is not it is a thing that exists
But the party is is left unspoken and it's it's a ghost in the machine
President Xi is
revered
But not actually discussed in media except for state media and actually social media influencers cannot you just you know
You don't talk about the government at all
Unless you want your your stuff to be banned. Yes, there is an incredible confidence that the Chinese people have in the technology because of
a recency bias
But also you made the right point which is there's a attention bias that
Plagues the Americans that doesn't plague the Chinese because their social media is not
And again, this is a free speech issue. I would much rather live in the US
But their social media looks nothing like ours, right kids social media in China is filled with mostly educational content
There is no beauty influencer
until you're a certain age
there are
Time limits there are time of day limits kids cannot scroll endlessly and unless you like hack your device and
They've figured out pretty well how to how to stop VPN so even VPN access goes in and out in China if you want to access
You know American media
and
It is a you know pretty clear violation of civil liberties that we enjoy in the US that I think are important
But it is consumer protectionism and in the case of the party it is party protectionism because it
The party doesn't actually want people one of the reasons that I'm welcome in China and I'm particularly welcome
Is that I'm willing to get up in front of a room of thousands of Chinese people and I do and tell them that the device is destroying their lives
Like I'm very willing to to say and I spoke at the
Business school at the at singwap business school
Month ago while I was there and in front of I don't know dozens of professors and hundreds almost a thousand students
I said look I'm really bullish on China. There's lots of stuff you're doing well
But if I had to bet if I had to bet against you my bet would be that none of you are actually capable of maintaining
Meaningful relationships for much longer like when I start talking if I don't actually call out the demon in the room
They will not look up and it's not because I'm not interesting
It's because they have normalized staring at their phones. Wow for everything meals
Doesn't matter and and the party hates it. The party sees this not as a means to control people
But actually as a as a potential loss of the individual. They're not they're not so hell-bent on
securing power that they are willing to or they are but they see they see the the loss of the self as
Being really problematic. It also is destroying their birth rates
And this this is the point we were getting to earlier the dehumanization effects of social media and the device are
having
Which which come at the same moment that a lot of people are now making enough money that they don't need a family in order to survive
Right, we've for a long time you write it if you needed a family unit to survive
You don't need that anymore a lot of people can live on their own a lot of people can afford a home on their own in China
that's great because people are the very few homeless people in China and
Housing health care and education are getting less expensive in China
Huge wins and also families are not economically necessary anymore and if young men and young women are staring at their devices all the time
The Chinese have a huge problem. So they passed. I don't know if you know the singles day is the biggest day
It's the biggest holiday in the world that no one it's certainly the biggest holiday in the world
No one knows about holy might be bigger in India in terms of never people who celebrate but
In India singles day is like their Valentine's Day
Oh quick quick thing did you say India or China?
Holy in India is bigger
Got it and then okay because last time bigger than any other holiday on earth, but the second biggest holiday on earth
perfect okay is
singles day in China
It's like
It's Valentine's Day. It's a weekend now. It's Valentine's Day times five you you you have to be there to to appreciate it
the entire
country turns into a celebration of dating
And it's and it's so couples celebrate they they you know usually do stuff, but singles celebrate and every bar every club
pops off for singles day and they do now a weekend of it
In fact, I have a friend in Santa Barbara
Shout out
Who met his wife who traveled from Inner Mongolia to Beijing to celebrate singles day
So that's like that's like a you know at the time probably a five-hour train ride
And it's it's understood that if you're a single girl your parents are like go out for singles day go get yourself a husband
and the government has to
promote this as a means to convince people to get together and it's one of these holidays where it's understood that like you don't want to be on your device as much because you want to be looking around
And you got to keep your head up to find your to find your soulmate
But this is all to say to go back to the you know, I don't know how we got here, but to go back to the original point of your question
Yes, the Chinese government is trying to do their best in a very specific way to defuse the benefit of this technology to the average person
and
By the way, there are policy measures that are not talked about enough that China
Have passed that I think should come to the US
One of them they passed a non-resident tax a long time ago
Vancouver did the old double Uno reverse
Vancouver had this problem. I don't know if you know but like in like 2010 the Chinese
out of fear of
Their currency deflating but also in an effort to sort of hedge against any political
Issues started buying up Canadian real estate and and they love the Vancouver real estate because it was closest to to them
Well, it destroyed it destroyed the Canadian housing or the Vancouver housing market
Because 40% of downtown became vacant and young people couldn't afford to live in downtown Vancouver
So Vancouver passed a non-resident tax they might as well have called an anti-Chinese landowner tax
But it basically said if you own a building in China or if you own a home in China and you don't live in it
We're going to charge you 5 or 10% a year so it it's going to cost you a ton you cannot speculate on on Vancouver housing
And it worked tremendously well
It's it is a it is a beacon of what could happen if we if we got brave enough to pass non-resident tax which is my most progressive policy
Promotion and I don't believe in government to to pass a lot of good law
taxes, but this would be an amazing one
Well
The Chinese passed a non-resident tax in most major cities if you live in the city if you own a home in the city
And you don't live there you pay a premium
But then she went a step further and said you can't get a mortgage on a second home
So you said to the Chinese people you cannot speculate on housing
You buy home you buy the nicest home you want we're going to build tons of nice homes
I mean Shanghai has some of the nicest departments in the world
By far and there are beautiful homes in in the suburbs surrounding Shanghai and and Chenzhen and Beijing
We said if you want to buy second homes you can you just got to do with cash
So you can't borrow and it drives down the demand for housing
Yeah
Which is great because it doesn't actually drive up any you know the homelessness in the process
It just says look I'm going to make
Speculating on housing slightly less interesting and it's one of these measures that even
It's it's one of these points now where Ron DeSantis and Mamdani are arriving at the same conclusion
Which is that whoa, which is crazy if you Mamdani passed this pd this called a billionaire tax
It's a pd tear tax which says if you own a second home in New York City you pay
a higher price, the higher tax on it.
And Ron DeSantis is now saying,
if you own a home in Florida that you don't live in,
I'm gonna charge you more on it.
But he's spinning it.
He's like, I'm gonna charge residents less on tax.
Fine, call whatever you want.
I don't care.
Just don't let people speculate on housing.
And it's one of the ways that we're gonna survive this moment.
And by the way, this comes back to another point.
If we keep talking about the future of work,
my head's gonna explode.
Not because I'm tired of the debate,
but because there's a bigger one to have
and we can have it right now in a really interesting way,
it's the future of living.
How do I know this?
If a recent college grad has to work until he's 90,
or she's 90 to afford their parents house,
what difference does the future of work make?
- Right.
- Designing the perfect jobs until Kingdom come
in an absurd economy, where it doesn't matter
what your job is, you're not gonna be able
to get the life your parents were promised or get.
Doesn't work, and this again is the confidence
that the Chinese people have in the government
to allow young people to do better than their parents,
which our young people in the US,
and basically, actually, you wanna look at the three countries
that hate AI the most, Germany, Canada, US,
and the three countries with the most disillusioned young people.
- Yes.
- So, it's not a coincidence.
It's not at all a coincidence.
If you grow up in an absurd economy,
what that has had unbelievable technological progress,
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- Yep, yep.
And one of the things that you talk about
as we enter this potential AI renaissance
is essentially we have to have a renegotiation
of the social contract.
The established ways of doing business
and living life will fundamentally change
if the technology becomes
what it could potentially become.
We can talk about unmetered energy,
unmetered intelligence, those types of things.
If we get to that point,
we have to have a completely different conversation.
So can you talk about the potential renegotiation
of the social contract that needs to happen
and then what the future could look like
if the technology fulfills this promise?
- We are vilifying technologists to point to the stars
'cause we go, why, why would you?
Well, there's a time where mega projects were awesome
and it's how people move forward.
Kennedy's great speech.
We will go to the moon, not because it's easy,
but because it's hard.
Yeah, 80% popularity in the polls.
Now people say this and they go,
you're an idiot.
You're insane.
You're a narcissist.
We don't even talk about exciting stuff anymore.
So AI arrives against a backdrop
where everything's more expensive, not everything.
The pillars of a great society are more expensive.
Dopamine and social dereliction
and spiritual dereliction are dirt cheap.
And we've stopped describing a beautiful city on a hill.
We've stopped describing all the ways
in which the world could be so much better.
And the social contract that people keep talking
about negotiating, I'm like cool, maybe.
But what if we just described high speed rail?
It exists, China's built 45,000 miles of it.
What if we literally just,
what if a president ran on the idea of,
hey, I'm gonna connect every major American city
through high speed rail, we're gonna do it.
I'm gonna do it less expensively.
That's not a new social contract.
That's a big, interesting project
that is imminently achievable
that would give everyone a belief
in social improvement and mobility
through physical infrastructure.
Cool, let's do that.
Let's describe the ways
in which we are going to improve American schools
through by removing physical devices from them
and making ed tech something
that doesn't require the child's attention.
Mm-hmm, what if we also described a way
in which everyone could get a great college education
without paying the rest of their life for it?
Imminently doable, not hard requires telling the universities,
they no longer have tax exempt status.
There is a bunch of stuff to do
that doesn't require some esoteric philosophy.
Right.
Yeah.
It's just like, people do this, we can do it.
We can do these things.
We could build, in 1980, we built, in the 1980s,
the United States built 18 million new homes.
In the 1990s, we built 17 million new homes.
In the 2000s, we built six
and we haven't recovered since.
It's nimbism.
Yeah, robotics would make housing less expensive,
but also just build more housing.
Let, build more housing
and don't let people speculate on it.
Cool.
I don't want to worry.
Sorry.
No, this is great.
This is a really good point.
Because essentially, when we think about the concept
of a social contract, it's very, like you said,
it's very ephemeral.
It's very esoteric and just nebulous in general, too.
When I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about
your description is truly just a more practical social contract
where we say, all right, let's essentially take big swings,
do big things with the new technology that we have.
Because you're saying that from essentially,
in order to do this, there needs to be a blend
of a cultural shift in the zeitgeist
where we start to believe that we can
and should do big things
and actually try to make big changes at scale.
But then at the same time, we recognize
that the government plays some role
in creating incentives that could either incentivize
or disincentivize the behaviors
that move us forward.
And it's what's interesting is coming into this,
I was thinking, OK, AI is the big swing
and it's part of it.
But what you're saying, and tell me
if this is a fair conceptualization,
it sounds like it's not just AI.
It's technology in general.
And if technology in general fulfills its promise,
it drives prices down, increases the rates
of technological advancement.
And we now have an opportunity to actually
have a meaningful conversation about the trajectory
of humanity and what meaning and purpose actually
means to us as humans.
Is that a fair synopsis?
I should have just said that at the outset.
This is where it's made.
Let's just make that the podcast.
Oh, man, it's brilliant.
It's brilliant because you've really
created a record scratch here because you're saying, listen.
Hold on, is it that brilliant?
Or is it actually?
I mean, I appreciate you saying that,
but isn't it pretty reasonable?
Here's the thing.
This is taking big swings is something
we've been doing for a long time that we just stop doing.
Stop.
Yes.
Well, here's the thing.
I recognize that the sign of a brilliant insight
is that it looks obvious in hindsight.
Because you can see it.
You can see the force from the trees.
You get that.
And again, and it said this to off camera,
I think it's the fact that you are somebody
who's not just coming at this from a techno optimist
with a recency bias.
You appreciate the philosophy and the history
and the entire trajectory of humanity.
And when you zoom out and widen your aperture,
then you can say, hold on.
We are at this really exciting inflection point,
but we're hyper-fixating on these networks.
negative things where the ultimate outcome of the hyper fixation on negativity is going
to keep us stuck, but if we zoom out, we could say, hey, everybody, we can have a really
serious conversation about how we can make things better.
I have to remind people in these moments that mothers, pregnant mothers, expecting mothers,
smoke and drink for thousands of years, and we're going to go, what the fuck does out
of doing? I go, we've been, we've been damaging our bodies and our future generations with
vices for so long. It took us 20 years to figure out social media was bad for the kids.
I'm not actually saying there won't be more problems. I'm saying that it's, we now live
in a world where we can really quickly stare at the bad stuff and go, this is bad. Yeah.
We also now live in a world where people are like, make it better immediately or I'll
write it and I, yeah, I will kill you if this gets any worse for much longer. The, the
impatience is not a bad thing, I think. I actually just wish people routed their, their
iron at the right places. Like, instead of saying no data centers, the prohuman movement
is cool. This data center needs to power hospitals and it needs to power Khan Academy classes
for every, every kid in, in the neighborhood. Take it a step further. I don't care. Make
it, like, it needs to make all Wi-Fi for children free. Like I, I don't care. Pick, pick your
thing that's clearly good because there's a ton of ways in which data centers power good
stuff and then insist that the data center in your neighborhood first goes there. Hmm.
But it is paramount to saying we don't want power lines and it's like, well, no, what you
don't want is a casino to be, you know, to what, you don't want to live next to a casino,
but you do want to live near a hospital and you do want that hospital to be powered by
power lines. You do want to live near a grocery store and you want that grocery store to
be powered by power lines and the infrastructure that AI is going to produce is so much bigger
than the stuff on the app. I actually think that the strangest thing about this moment, too,
is the reason big swings are so hard for people to conceptualize right now is that the diffusion
of the technology has happened so quickly that they no longer think about AI in a mystery.
It's no longer magic. It went so fast from AI that makes magical images where anything is
possible to being like, no, AI is slop. Yeah. It's like, no, the current generation of AI is slop.
But like if you actually make an infrastructure, it's electricity. It's a current of intelligence.
And by the way, I'm not saying it doesn't disrupt a bunch that again, I'm not like, I don't
sit here going, this will solve all problems. I'm saying this will solve the current set of problems
and it will create more. Right. Yes. See, I'm with you. I'm with you. And I think again,
this goes back to what I was talking about with we have to renegotiate our relationship with the
way the world fundamentally works because it ain't it ain't working right now because the thing is
we have so many conflicting directions when it comes to interests and then a lot of the people
who are in power are conflicted in a way that makes it fundamentally difficult for them to do
their job. And so I'm wondering from your point of view, but do you think that most people in the
United States have conflicting interests actually? No, they've not the people. I'm talking about the
politicians though. So it's the people who have their hands on the steering wheel. So why do the
politicians have conflicting interests? Like why don't they why wouldn't they want housing
healthcare and education to be less expensive? And by the way, this is a serious question. I don't
know. Yeah, 100% and I don't think it's that they don't want that. They have limited political
capital and they have to if I'm being 100% cynical, not 100% cynical is just real. It's like if
somebody pays you to get a job, then your loyalty is to them first. And so it's not the everyday
person who wants lower prices, who's bankrolling these campaigns. It's people who have money and the
people who have money, they have interests as well. And those interests might not always align
with the interests of the individual people. So why is everyone not clamoring for campaign
finance reform? Like what why are we why are we not actually talking about the I mean, I think a lot
of people are talking about their politicians being bought and sold, but they're talking about
it. Yes, terms of wars. And I'm like, yeah, okay, we're funding the wrong wars. Sure. Also,
why is why is university prohibitively expensive? Sorry, just to make this point even simpler,
the big swings issue is a result of it would seem special interest policy, government corruption.
Yeah. And an electorate that has become cynically disillusioned with its government's ability to
accomplish anything 100% and let me add something else to that because it's a it's a populace that is
disillusioned over informed, under informed and misinformed to because when you think about the
focus campaign finance, I mean, it's it's a direct precise laser light precision on on on what
one of the core issues that we're facing is, but it is a very deep media issue that is not easily
understood just instantly like something that is a little bit more salacious that can be
weaponized algorithmically. So it's easy to divide us with things that are not very not very
important, but very emotionally urgent at the time. Right. So here's why your podcast is important
and here's why all the I'll look to the camera. This is important. Here's why your podcast is
important. Here's why all the listeners need to care. Taking big swings isn't just important
because it might make you a lot of money. It's not important because it'll be deeply fulfilling
which it will be almost always. It's important because your kids are watching. Yeah. It's important
because we gave up on big swings circa 1990 and we started to vilify people who started taking them
and we created this really pernicious recursive loop of anti-social, special interest policy.
The tyranny of incremental gains set in, politicians started talking about housing health
connect and education getting five or 3% better year over year or term over term. And if you're
going to try to do something really impressive, whether or not you succeed, you're showing people
around you that trying to do something order of magnitude better or different is something worth
trying to do. Yeah. All the, which actually speaks to the message I deliver on stage, which is
at the very end, I tell everyone optimism isn't naive. It's actually a moral obligation.
And I tell people, I say, if you cannot get out of bed happy in the morning, I understand.
I might, my heart breaks for you. I get it. I've been depressed in my life. I know what it feels
like. But if you have kids, you have an obligation to tell them and yourself why the future is going
to be better than the present. It's just, it's, it's, it's a moral obligation. And people before
me have said this, this is not, this is, there's philosophy attached to this. But the cynicism that
erodes our trust comes from the fact that we let the leaders in this nation off the hook for 40
years by not being optimistic. We let them win elections, pass policy, stir, stir excitement,
stir their base on cynicism and pessimism. And we stopped looking to the stars. We stopped
looking to, to, to what was possible when we started describing the ways in which we were harmed
in ways in which people were going to harm us more. And there, there is nothing more noble than
trying to do something really amazing, whether or not you succeed because it tells people that
it's important to do. Yes. Oh, by the way, you don't even have to do something amazing.
The other thing I remind people is big swings. Sitting at your dining room table and describing
small ways over time that you are going to fight for the family to make their lives better.
For a lot of people, a big swing is just taking phones away at the dinner table. Like, I actually
want to normalize the idea that doing something really big and hard doesn't actually require doing
something that is seemingly impossible. A big swing is deciding you're going to go to the gym
every day for six months and then doing it. A big swing is telling your kids that you're not going
to stare at the phone during their volleyball game ever again. Immunately doable, really hard to
rewire your brain, really important to show them that when they look up after a play, whether they
want or lost the point you're watching, that repairs households, that repairs communities,
that eventually repairs cities and then a nation. Like the spiritual awakening and revival that we
all crave requires small, but big, incremental big swings. Every family deciding they're going to
do something that's really hard in service of each other. Even if it's not impossible,
that will repair us. That will go a long way in convincing people that they can have a good
relationship with technology and that AI, like all the other technologies, can eventually be pro-human
and serve us. Brilliant. Oh, my goodness. Simone, you see, we bring them on. He cuts a promo for us.
I appreciate that, Zach. No, and I agree. Real, speaking legitimately, hey, I agree. I think
it's so important because again, it's that-
that optimism, I love seeing that as a moral imperative.
It's crucial.
And if you don't have that underlying belief,
then you're not gonna take those big swings.
And you're not gonna achieve the things
that you could in your life where you have the quality
of life that you could possibly have,
simply because you didn't believe you could.
And one of the things that I really appreciate
about your approach and your vision for the future
is the focus on community.
And part of that is the ability to communicate effectively.
And so we had a fun back and forth before the show started.
I want to get your thoughts on the importance of communication.
What is myth and hype about the status
of human communication today?
What do we need to change in order to make sure
that we can have the communal aspects
of that positive future that you see?
- So your argument earlier was we are getting
worse at communication and my take is maybe in the short term,
but in the long term, we've never basically been better, right?
90% of the population, 92% I think now is literate.
That number used to be 50 years ago.
That number was 70, 100 years ago.
That number was 40 or less, 30.
We're definitely getting better at communication.
We're also hyper aware of what other people are saying.
So we're far more attuned to how stupid some people's ideas are.
And to your point earlier,
we've created this barbell in communication interest.
So you basically, at this point in the, you know,
it's like, I watch Love Island.
I admit it, I watch Love Island.
- Oh my gosh.
- I watch Love Island.
- How can you keep your eyes open?
- Let me explain.
I'm actually quite willing to explain why I watch this.
There is a certain amount of pop culture
that I find, like I don't actually enjoy social media
that it creeps me out so I don't use it.
My team uses my Instagram.
I don't watch, we don't watch TV otherwise.
Pop culture is quite fun.
It creates a water cooler effect.
There's a zeitgeist.
It creates this idea of like shared culture.
Same reason I watched the last season of Game of Thrones.
I hated every episode, but I needed to finish the show.
I mean, it was terrible.
It was so bad, but you needed to finish the show
'cause you wanted to be able to talk to people about it.
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Love Island is a fun thing to watch with my wife
because it's a chance to turn off my brain,
which is really helpful.
And it's here to do something that like,
millions of people are doing at that same moment
that has no meaning.
It is tantamount to me to watching the World Cup
group stages, right?
These games don't really matter.
Watching, you know, Germany beat Paraguay by 40 points,
whatever 40 goals, it doesn't really matter,
but everyone is watching it together, so it's fun.
So I think that we are actually getting better
at communication.
We're also, there are two problems.
One of them, I just described,
the polarities are becoming enticing, right?
Extremism is drawing all the attention,
but the other problem is Derek Thompson called this out
and I really liked it.
And he cited a professor who I can't remember.
It's the Unicontext problem or the Uniculture, Unicontext,
which is that like everything is amalgamating now.
It's like, there are days where you're like,
I don't wanna, I know this, you don't need to,
I'm putting words in your mouth,
but I'm sure there are days where like,
I don't wanna do this podcast again.
I can't record more content.
And the reason for that is not that like truly,
it's probably not that you don't enjoy talking to people,
you clearly do.
It's not that you don't think their ideas will be valuable.
It's like, what is anyone gonna say at this point?
There's new.
How could we introduce ideas at this point
that actually feel new?
And at what point am I just part of the amalgamation of content?
I feel that.
I mean, social media is really hard for me,
'cause I'm like, what new thing needs to be said?
And that is not actually communication.
It is culture information, it's society, to some extent.
The individual ability to express their opinions
to each other has a separate problem,
which is the dehumanization problem.
And that's the one that you were really asking about.
And that is the one that concerns me the most.
An individual's interest in a virtual reality
over a physical one,
and the degree to which it harms their ability
to communicate with other humans.
That's right.
The ideas online are getting sharper.
Thanks to AI, thanks to people learning more.
The average kid cannot, dude, I speak at high schools.
The average high schooler asks me insanely smart questions.
To say nothing of the questions
that junior high schoolers ask, right?
It's that the average high schooler can't look me
in the eyes very well.
That's the part.
It's the dehumanization of the current culture
that is so disconcerting.
And I think that conflating that with communication,
which has its problems, right, is different.
I think it's actually this like, anti-social ways
that has swept through, not, I mean,
I used to say Gen Z, but it's everyone now.
And not everyone, it's a lot of people now
who struggle with eye contact, who have normalized,
I was at dinner the other night,
and we have a practice putting our phones away.
And I was watching a table across from us,
and this dad probably looked up three times,
and he would do this thing, or he'd be on his phone,
he'd look up to be like, oh yeah,
and he'd interrupt his kid, and he'd go back to his phone.
And I was like, dude, you might as well just change,
like you should just be chain-spoken cigar.
It's, there's no way that is a healthy family.
I don't know.
It's not that he was like busy with work
and couldn't come to dinner.
It's not that he was really focused on something
and then returned.
He was somewhere else quasi-participating.
That's not a communication problem.
That's an anti-social dehumanization problem.
That is upstream of communication.
It's not that he's interrupting his kids,
it's not that his ideas are half-baked,
it's that he's not present.
He's not there.
He's somewhere else.
That's bad.
That's super bad.
And the extent to which AI and data centers
proliferate that problem,
we should write.
We should say no.
I mean, we write it's the wrong word.
I'm not trying to inside violence.
We should say no.
We should say we don't want that.
We don't want that world.
To the extent that data centers can make
all of the stuff he's doing moved to the background
so that he is required.
Maybe he doesn't want to be there,
but is he required to at least pretend
that he wants to be there?
Yeah.
That's a good world.
That's the world that we want to live in.
And the communication problem
is I think downstream of something much greater,
which is this presence,
this quasi, this anti-social presence that people can,
oh, I was there.
No, you fucking weren't.
No, you weren't.
You weren't, you were physically there.
You were spiritually gone.
And by the way, you are spiritually gone.
You haven't been there for quite some time.
This is powerful.
And I love the specificity too, Zach,
because it's, you're right.
When you think about communication,
that entails a lot. And again,
going back to why I appreciate your perspective
because it's informal.
historically, there's no doubt that communication skills and capacity have improved over time
on a macro level. We're seeing a deviation here, but making it very clear that it's in interpersonal
communication, in vivo, one-on-one, human-human interaction, and then also the anti-social effect
of communication or of technology rather, pulling us further apart so we're not even present.
So it's deeper than a skills issue, skills just the tip of the iceberg because we have a cultural
issue where we are, even though we might say we give lip service to the fact that, oh, you know,
you shouldn't do that. There's really no true cultural force that's forcing anybody or really
compelling them not to do that. And then there's a complete lack of presence too. That is a one word
that has been coming up more frequently in these conversations I've been having just presence,
the ability to be there. And for you, it's clearly something that you and your family have
have cultivated with intentionality. Even though you are surrounded by the tech world and you're
at the forefront of it, you're still optimizing for human connection. Can you tell us about how you
prioritize that in your life? Well, I'm married a woman, I fell in love with a woman who could lose
her phone and notice two days later, which is, there are moments where I'm like, I don't know where
this person is. But Adley is, she's a special soul. She's, she's, she's the most amazing woman
I've ever met. And she's a first grade, she's a Waldorf teacher. So she found a community that
celebrates the things she loves in this world most, nature and children and wonder. That also happens
to vilify the device that where it's like the phone is not welcome at the school teachers
shouldn't have their cell phones out ever. Students are not allowed to bring phones on campus,
parents are encouraged to put them away, etc. I actually got barked at. I left and was walking
off campus, took out my phone to check my email in the principal sawman, she's like, put that away
please. Wow. And so it's true. I've tried to cultivate it, but actually I was just drawn to it.
Like we have, we have created a place, our home, our community, where it's just not, it's not
part of our, it's not part of our lives the way it is for so many people. To a certain extent that
where I don't even relate to the problem, I have to like project, I have to talk about it a little.
I see it a lot. But like, Adley will bark at me if the phone is within eye shot of our daughter.
It's not even just like, hey, Frankie's looking at you. It's like, hey, Frankie can see your phone.
That's my daughter's name. Frankie can see your phone, put it away. So it has always mattered.
It also, I said this in 2020 when AI started, when I started it realized how much better it was
getting in 2021 when we launched CBD 3 and I've said it every day since and now it's become
pretty mainstream. As technology gets better, the humanistic qualities become more accentuated.
This is true. This will continue to be true. Storytelling becomes more powerful when everyone can
have access to the same ideas. Novel ideas obviously have unique power and if your mind can process
and comprehend and produce novel ideas, you'll be uniquely advantaged. But even if you can't,
storytelling is really powerful. And I figured out how much communication, I figured out how
much human quality has mattered to me over the last 39 years of my life. But the moment that
really had the most profound effect was the moment that I realized why my father was so important
to me and to his community. He, for context, is a doctor. He's an oncologist. He is a very celebrated
oncologist who in the 80s and 90s, like all oncologists was a mad scientist. They were trying to
create drugs in real time to save people's lives because you had to throw spaghetti against the wall.
I mean, if you were dying of cancer, as most people are, you're willing to do anything it takes.
And when we didn't have particularly good drugs, it required a lot of experimentation.
He was also a lawyer before he was a doctor. And I, growing up, had talked about him and
saw him as a really smart person. My vision of my dad was my identity was sort of attached to his
identity as a brilliant person. And he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Breast Cancer
Association of America three or two years ago, as I was finishing the book. And I went to this
award ceremony the first of three Lifetime Achievement Awards he would receive over the next 18
months. I'm very excited to hear people talk about how smart he was. I had never actually,
he doesn't like public speaking public events. And so I'd never actually been to a space where
people talked about him in public. And his, his, a patient of his stood on stage just before he
received his award to present him with it. And she spoke for five minutes about my father.
For the first 30 seconds, she talked about her patient outcome. She had survived cancer and was
now giving back to the community. And for the next four and a half minutes, she talked about how
my dad made her feel. And she described getting a cancer diagnosis and going to see three oncologists
and getting the same three prognosis and the same three treatment recommendations. And she said
two things I will never forget. She said she realized after the third identical prognosis and
treatment recommendation that the doctor was no longer the smartest thing in the room. That the
that the medicine and technology had progressed so far that anyone with an internet access
could tell her her next best course of action. And then she said that the bedside manner was no
longer a feature. It was the product. And that moment changed my life to such an extent that it is
now the story. I will tell anyone who will listen over and over because it helped me realize
in that moment that my father is not important to his community because he is brilliant. He's
important to this community because he is courageous and compassionate. The two words that she would
describe most in that talk I now think about my father the most and realize that I loved him as a
kid for the same reason that she loved him as a patient. It's not that he knew everything. It said
he was willing. He was brave enough to say the hardest thing and compassion enough to do it with
the degree of care that helped me. Whatever it was I was experiencing believe that he both knew
it was going to be okay and he was willing to help me get there. Or in some cases told me how hard
it was going to be. And I he stood on stage and then said a thing that I would not have said. He
said to a room full of his his peers and patients and community leaders. He said I am past my
intellectual cell by date. He has since retired by the way. He's 78 years old. He said I'm past
my intellectual cell by date but I've never been a better doctor. The technology has progressed so far
that I can now care for every soul and spirit who walks through my doors. He said I'm no longer
a mad scientist. I'm a caregiver. All the tools I needed to launch were already there ready to go from day one.
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You know, and I think for anyone who's ever first, for anyone who has survived,
Brezk.
cancer in the last 40 years, that survival rate went from 35% to 91%.
It's a reminder that we don't hate technology.
It's a reminder that lots of technology serves us really well, including drug discovery.
It's also a reminder that the more the technology advances, the more we expect from the individual.
And whereas my father may have once been a mad scientist, he is now the guide of a soul
and spirit, either to the afterlife or somewhere else.
We should celebrate that.
And then it's not, it's not my father, we should celebrate.
We should celebrate the people who are doing the drug discovery, such that the people
who on the other side of it can actually be great caregivers.
And if your father is a surgeon, I'm sure he is recognized.
The importance increasingly placed on surgeons and those who have been seen as doing work
while a patient is asleep in the preop and postop is growing.
By the way, and your dad knows this, why do people, why do doctors get sued?
Well we used to be like, well, doctors get sued for malpractice.
Actually, there is no correlation between patient outcome and malpractice.
There is a huge correlation between doctor perception and malpractice suit.
People sue doctors.
They hate.
They find reasons when there is a bad outcome to sue a doctor they hate and they forgive
doctors who make mistakes who, who, and this is like, this is a patently provable empirical
observable.
Now, it may not be the right way to do this, I acknowledge, but it is, but it is how we
perceive care.
And the best surgeon I ever had brought Adley into the OR while I was going under and
he said, now you can dream about your wife.
You don't have to do this.
The doctors don't have to do this, but anesthesiologists are like, yeah, look, let's scrub
her in, let's bring her in here, you know, it's like it's a nice, it's, it's an incredibly
reasonable gesture that places the emphasis on, on this human connection that had previously
never been, you know, never been considered or ignored.
Now, we need to reinvent the practice of med school so that we actually emphasize these
things because I worry that that doctors are actually are not actually being trained
on these things.
But if we do, I think we are, we are approaching a world of precision and humanistic healthcare
where the patient care becomes far more integral.
Yep.
I agree 100%.
I love this story for so many reasons, like I mentioned, my dad's a surgeon, but both
of my parents had cancer, mom had breast cancer, dad had prostate cancer, both survived.
And it was really interesting while my dad, he had a pretty bad accident.
And so then he was on the receiving end of these emergency surgeries.
And that's when he, he's always known for being very personable.
But he's like, that's when I fully appreciated the bedside manner because he got a surgeon
who just kind of treated him as like, it was almost like a procedure on a cadaver.
Okay, this, this, this like very robotic, hey, does this hurt?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Actually, the worst pain that I've ever felt, just no empathy at all at that.
It was very interesting for him to be on the receiving end of that because it gave, he
would not describe it this way because he's humble, but it gave him a greater appreciation
of his empathy, because he didn't realize how indivisible that was to, to proper health
care.
And my wife's a doctor too.
And she says that's a, when she gets in with her patients, she has great ratings.
I always compete with her because her ratings are always higher than anything I ever produced.
But that's okay.
She's great.
And she's like, they, they love her because they, she listens.
What kind of doctor?
Family doc.
Amazing.
So, so she's on the front line.
And it goes to what you said, it's the, the, the, the humanistic element that's going
to really put people up, apart.
And for you, if you're given a people advice, if they're, they're taking their big swings
and they're concerned, they're like, what should I even learn?
What, what skills should I have?
What would you say are the top skills to keep in mind while at the same time being true
to yourself?
Because I know you have a perspective on agility that's pretty unique too.
Well, I, I think one, this idea of behavioral adaptability, which is really important, you
know, for, for the folks listening, they're already thinking about, hey, how do I achieve
a lot?
So behavioral adaptability, I think for a lot of people, they have an idea in their mind
of who they need to be, which limits their willingness to take big swings.
They, they want to take big swings in a direction that they think their identity needs to
go, which I think is sort of backwards.
I think what they should first do is describe, again, the city on the hill, the castle on
the hill, the, the, the mission and vision and values described this, this ultimate outcome.
And then work backwards to figure out how they need to get there.
And I, and I would challenge most people.
I think a lot of big swings will actually feel smaller.
They, these are, these are hard things that we've said we cannot do.
But they don't actually have to be impossible and they don't actually have to be earth shattering
in nature.
Yeah, I don't want to sound like a self-help guru, but I do think it is, it is remarkable
the degree to which I get emails constantly now from people who say you changed my life
because I went home and told my kids we're going to put away our phones.
And we, we protected the dining room table.
That's a big swing that, that has a huge, huge change in, in your life.
And it's a big enough swing that people email me to say how proud they are, very accomplished
executives.
Go, you changed my life because I, I reshape my, my relationship with the device.
The other thing I would say to people who want to take big swings is you need to learn
how to learn because what you know your skills today will feel potentially obsolete economically
anyways in 10 or 15 years.
But your ability to acquire more skills will never feel obsolete.
And so taking a big swing also might be learning or mastering something that has no economic
value because the nature of learning that thing will allow you to learn more.
And this is what I say to every kid who goes to college, he says, what should I study?
I said, listen, unless you're studying math or, or physics at Stanford and Harvard, probably
doesn't matter.
I mean, there really is like a declining correlation between major and economic outcome.
And of course, there are some outliers, EE and, and CS still and math and, and obviously
physics.
But for the most part, if you go to a liberal arts school or even a large university, large
research university, what you study isn't going to make that big of a difference.
So tell every kid, study something you love.
And for everyone trying to do something really big, it is okay if the only thing that
big thing produces is your ability to do other big things.
Like there is an enormous amount of value in learning a language even if you don't speak
it regularly because you can learn more.
We know this.
I tell every, every young person who asks, how'd you get here?
I go, look, I was not a grade student.
I barely got into Berkeley being grade at volleyball was the most important thing I ever did.
Because one, it taught me what it feels like to master something at a young age.
It taught me what it's like to watch people who had, what it feels like, I should say,
I didn't master something.
I was a good center.
I then went to the US training camp and watched the great ones and you can get a glimpse
of how much they sacrifice to be exceptional.
Six hours a day, sending a ball in a gym.
You go, maybe I don't want that.
But you know what it is like to be exceptional at something and you've seen it.
And it does, there are lots of things in this world to be exceptional.
People go, I'm not a grade volleyball player, I go, okay, do you want to learn a language?
People say, the kite serving is really cool.
I go, do it.
Do something that you can be really good at or you can at least taste what it's like
to be good at.
And it will give you, I think, what we don't give college and high school students anymore
in the United States, especially a taste of mastery.
We tell everyone go an inch, an inch deep a mile wide, fill, stab, pad your resume, do
it for the apps I heard the kids say.
And I'm like, cool, it's just not going to, it's not going to teach you what it feels
like to be great.
And if you're not great at something, it's going to be really hard to do something exceptional
and big.
Big swings generally are accomplished by people who can go very deep on something.
Zach, this has been great.
I appreciate you coming in and sharing your vision for the future.
And especially giving the audience the hope and optimism they need to take their own big
swings to.
Now, before you go, I want to make sure you have a chance to let folks know about the
book, the work that you're doing and how they can work with you too.
I wrote a book, The Next Renaissance, and the expansion in human potential.
You can read it.
I think the, the blinkest summary is actually also pretty good.
I listened.
I have a sub-sac, they, I actually recommend people, if they want to connect and be my sub-stack,
which is, which, you know, you can link here, that's, I really like writing.
That's where I like people following along.
And I'll probably start doing some YouTube content, maybe, I don't know, by popular demand.
But, but most of my work centers around the idea of, of, of watching others or helping
others tell bigger, more hopeful stories, which I hope your listeners will do.
Amazing.
- Thank you so much, really appreciate it.
- Thanks so much for having me.