All-In Live from Austin: Colin and Samir, Chris Williamson, and Bryan Johnson

24:03Some creators make the mistake of raising money to start making their content or some creators make the mistake of hiring a big staff. That creates too much overhead. You're going to start doing deals that maybe you don't want to do. You need cash to finance your content. First and foremost, it's like keep it lean, make good stuff, find the audience. Your first 100 videos are going to suck. Just build until you find the audience that you want. And then the business models will start to emerge whether that's hey, you know what? I built a great brand and part of my content. I'm Emma Chamberlain and part of my content is I drink coffee every day.

24:36So maybe I should launch a coffee brand. I take the coffee that I'm drinking every day. Meaning, meaning make your own brand. Yeah, right. And that's but that's hard. That means you have like critical mass big scale. You're reaching millions and millions of cost challenge, but payoff is higher. Yeah, and that's the big It can be, right. It can be. I think CBG's really hard. So I'll predicate it on connecting with an audience first. For the advice, I think what I'm hearing is, hey, connect with the audience and put on the back half of your career monetization. But just connect. And Mark Hez, I don't know if you've ever seen his early reviews.

25:13Of course. I mean, it's hilarious. He's like, how old is he? 15, 16, 17 years old. And he's like, I'm using this phone. It's the iPhone 4. Jimmy's first videos are still up on YouTube. Yeah, Mr. Beast's first videos. He's still up there. You got to go watch. I mean, I watched one of them. It's him counting to 10 ,000, I think. That was that by the way, that was a later video. It's very first videos. You got to go watch like the first 10 videos. I mean, he's playing video games. He can't even see his face. You're like, what? Yeah. And he's speaking, speaking, I don't really know him. I'm the most famous person in the world from from that.

25:39But you can see the evolution. He watches paint dry in a video. Yeah. So he's like a 20 hour long video. But just to go back to the question, isn't one of the other paths selling your content? So now we're seeing a bunch of deals, Jimmy's getting a deal from Amazon. Amazon paid him for the beast games. We're seeing more comedians that do live shows getting deals with Netflix. We're seeing a bunch more of those happen. We're seeing Hulu and other platforms start to bid. Even X might be doing some more content deals with folks that look more like journalists. So ultimately, how do you decide whether I want to monetize by ads and making a product, or is there becoming a more liquid market for selling my content onto bigger platforms that are losing their audience to be independent?

26:27So they need to basically go rebuild an audience. Is that a realistic path? Or is that just like the cream of the cream get to have access to kind of... I think that's a realistic path for the top. And maybe you could talk about the Spotify thing. Especially if we're talking about streaming. I think it's a realistic path for the top. And I don't look at it as like selling content. I look at it as selling distribution, like bringing distribution and audience to. Because the ads get layered on. To these platforms. Yeah, I mean, you're about amazing digital circus. Yeah, I think where it's probably going, an interesting case study, there's a YouTube channel called Amazing Digital Circus, which is an animated channel, and they did a deal that is super unique.

26:59I think the first of its kind, where they will be distributing on Netflix at the same exact time as they distribute on YouTube. So Netflix licensed the content, and it's coming out at the same time. So it's not their content, it's not proprietary in Netflix. No, right, it's licensed. So yeah, in that regard, he's making money on advertising. But he wouldn't be getting, he's not getting paid as much, or they're not getting paid as much as if they sold the content in the rights to Netflix. Is that right? Yeah, and maybe it feels like an original, yeah. I guess if it was exclusive. But this is a watershed moment in many ways, because Netflix was really about them being the taste maker, them deriding it.

27:35That's right. You know, at least in this like Netflix post licensing DVDs, then they became the creators, the arbiters, and now they're going back in some ways to say, we're gonna cherry pick people off of YouTube, give them money for their quarter billion subscribers. It's a really fascinating moment. I think probably that if you've seen the Nielsen ratings of Connected TV usage, YouTube's at the top at 11%. It's the most used streaming app on Connected TV's Netflix is at 8 .5 % and in December after Beast Games, there's a night football in that movie that they did with the rock, Amazon. They've made a move.

28:12moved up to 4%. But YouTube. Netflix moved up, you mean? No, Amazon Prime Video. Oh, because of 4%. 4 %. 4 %. 8 .5%. And YouTube, but YouTube's at 11%. The reality is, there's a really interesting quote from Ted Surandos when Netflix won their first Emmy for House of Cards. Netflix was an aggregator beforehand. So Netflix goes from aggregator, starts producing original programming, and it was a massive moment when they won an Emmy. Because that was pretty new. that some internet tech company can win. That's very strange. And Ted Serando said, television is television. It doesn't matter which pipe brings it forward.

28:48And I think it's a really important thing that the major difference when it comes to YouTube is Netflix is going to spend 18 billion on content this year. YouTube doesn't spend on content. YouTube does a revenue share. They actually technically don't know what's going to get uploaded today. And it could be the biggest video of the day. It could be something like amazing digital circus that did 500 million views across three episodes. Wow. It's also interesting Netflix. I'm sorry YouTube premium taking the ads out is that a hundred and ten hundred and twenty five million Subscribers that a hundred and twenty five now.

29:17Yeah, you're there. You TV how many people here pay for Netflix red or the premium version that takes out the ads You two to Brad. Oh, you two premium YouTube premium. Yeah, you two premium. Yeah, how many people here you two great wow That's pretty significant second third of the audience and what is that 12 bucks? It's like 20 bucks. Yeah, it's 20. Yeah, I think it's the best 20 bucks I agree. How do the guides that are losing audience, which are the traditional broadcasters, how are they going to respond as their audience gets to trit it away? Like we're seeing as long form is taking up more time and attention from the independence, Fox News is losing an audience.

29:56CNN is losing an audience. MSNBC is losing an audience. I mean, their audiences are gone. Like they're just vaporizing right now. What are they going to do? They've got a lot of cash. They've got a lot of advertising dollars still flowing in. And for now, they're well capitalized. They've got very motivated shareholders. What's their response? If you guys are an executive running Fox, what would you do? We spoke about this recently, but there already are some shows on cable that are starting to act more like digital channels, more like YouTube channels, right? If you look at Saturday Night Live, or you look at late night, those are actually just a bunch of segments that can work really well when uploaded to YouTube or to the internet.

30:34and I think when you bring up Fox News, news is actually one of the last genres of cable to try and figure out or be able to figure out how to put themselves into segments that work at the 20 plus minute range, which is what's working on YouTube right now. But the long form is crushing, too, right? Like the hour long, I mean, our show's 90 minutes, Lex does three and a half hours. I would say 20 plus of like... Robins, like, hours long, he's number one. When I say 20 plus, I mean, like, that's like the minimum. I see what it's like. like 20 and continuing to go. Yeah, but does that mean that they're gonna try and license Rogan, they're gonna try and license legs, they're gonna try and license one of these independents in, is that the move that they're gonna have to make ultimately?

31:15That's gonna be like a big changing of the guards because there's like some risk mitigation that I don't know if they would be comfortable with. Like pat McAfee. Yeah, I guess pat McAfee's a good example on ESPN. This is a sports guy, yeah. Yeah, sports. ESPN just picked him up. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he does independent. Well, he came onto ESPN, but that also created some, You know, ESPN tried something similar with Barstool a while ago, right? And Barstool got taken off the air within an episode or two. Because again, there's a risk factor. They said some stuff on air and they were like, we can't do this.

31:44Get them off the air. But MacAfee is the more mature iteration of that as both spaces have kind of matured. That's like a YouTube show that was brought to television. And MacAfee is really good where he's doing, I don't know if you guys have saw the college game day stuff where he's doing the big field goal kicks for $100 ,000. It's essentially a YouTube title, but built for TV that then gets clipped and put onto YouTube. And so I think that's what Colin is saying. Try not to be in any moment. And it looks like you're watching a podcast. When you see his show, the production level is pretty low.

32:11So is the media exec going to go out and find the next or the up and coming and say, I want to bring you on. I'm going to pay you to come and do this on my platform now. You're going to become a Fox News show. You're going to become an ESPN show. They have to give irrational deals to creators. Versus like. versus the talent agent showing up and saying, here's a good. The other problem is distribution. So like Jimmy, for example, like Jimmy is, yes he's in the media business, but he's in the chocolate business, right? And so being able to get to 200, 300 million people in a video is really significant.

32:44And YouTube being at the top of the connected TV streaming apps, like you'd probably choose YouTube if you're just going pure distribution. If you're selling a chocolate brand or some other type of CBG product, you choose distribution over not. Totally. And so I think when you're getting offered a deal to go on to Fox News, do stuff on linear TV, it has to be such an irrational deal because it limits my distribution, right? Even if I go on to a Netflix, technically, I'm actually limited in distribution if I'm Mr. Beast. Yep. Not if I'm another crew. Also, the money and control issues are also very acute.

33:17When this week, my star was doing good right before all -instarded, I met with a serious XM team. Yeah. hand, right? They were like, hey, you know, we think you might have some like Howard Stern potential. And what if you got Travis from Uber who was very hot at the time, and a couple of guys to come on and do like a, you know, roundtable thing and make it fun. And then when I, like we started talking money, I was like, that's less money than this week and startups makes already. And I own 100 % of it. Would I own the IP here? And they're like, well, no, no, we own the IP. And I'm like, I mean, this is what we're talking six years ago, seven years ago.

33:49And then even now, you know, I've once in a while I'll talk to CMBC or somebody will come and say, hey, you have any ideas? And I'm like, does it economically make sense for a creator who has escape velocity to go backwards? And I wonder, Freiburg, if the answer to this question is, anybody who is actually talented enough, like a Megan Kelly, or somebody who, like Mr. Beast or even Tucker Carlson, how could they ever go back to Fox now? at some point, I don't think they will. I think it's entropy. It's only going in one direction. I think there are audience of roads. They're advertising dollars of road.

34:30And then they're getting whatever broadcasting distribution deals they have on cable are going to slowly be worth less. I don't know what it's going to be worth. It's cost over. Isn't this calling like because Fox and Sirius XM and CNBC have a cost infrastructure? So when they meet talent, they're like, talent gets 20%. And then we need to get our 20%. and then the other 50, 60 % has to go to the shareholders. Yeah, and the building and the 50 fucking camera operators. No, you're 100 % right. The model's broken. The model's holding on. The greatest thing about your guys shows it's on Zoom. We talk about this in the context of creators like, Batsky, advice to up and coming creators.

35:08It's the same advice. Keep your overhead costs extremely low. Creators are the startups of Hollywood. We always say like think out on a 52 week schedule. Could you do this every week for 52 weeks? If you're someone who loves to set up cameras and lights, It's sure you might be able to do that. But if you're 100 % right, basically people, you're like, yeah, we can hop on Zoom every week for 50%. And if this, if it were like what you're describing, there's no friggin' way I'd do it. Like zero chance. Like the only reason I do it is because I can get on Zoom for 90 minutes and be done. And then I go on the rest of my day for work.

35:36Like the turning point of the pod really was when you used to run out of my operation. I said, you guys have to commit to Thursday's the same time. We cannot, if this is gonna work, everybody has to agree that Thursday's at 11 a .m. Pacific, our Sacrissingte, and everybody agreed. We all blocked it out. We all blocked it out and we said, no, if anybody has to move, then we go to our list of, you know, fifth besties, sixth besties, and we rotate them in, but we're not gonna, like, move around Chimaltz schedule, and we're gonna schedule three books. And that's when the show really, like, actually, let me take the conversation in the opposite direction now, which is we're going from like points of high, low leverage Fox News, lots of cameras, as lots of buildings, expenses, to low leverage, being on zoom and a laptop.

36:24So let me talk about the lower leverage. Are you guys seeing any success in Gen AI only content channels out there? And maybe you could talk about as Gen AI gets better and better and better, do we have agents that ingest the news, ingest content, ingest data, repackage it, and then create new versions of through an iterative process to kind of hacky algorithm to figure out how do I get stuff to people stay on? What's the right cut rate? What's the right color balance? What's the right sound? What's the right audio? What's the right music? And ultimately the Genie Genie AI does what great content creators like Jimmy took 10 years to do in a couple weeks and ultimately creates like a whole new category and I'm just thinking ahead here now, but like maybe you tell us today on the ground if you're seeing any Genie that's like got realistic traction out there.

37:16For me personally, there's no Gen AI channels that are 100 % Gen AI that I am watching, or at least that I know of, that I'm consuming, and that I'm enjoying. But even within our organization, I'm with a lot of other creators. The amount of AI tools that we're using from scripting, to even cutting the angles on our show, we're continually adopting more and more AI tools. And I think, which is the way it should be, the audience, I don't think even really can tell. Yeah, right? So it's like slowly seeping in into production. Yeah, but not taking it over. Have you played with notebook LM? Yes, so it's pretty amazing my vantage point with the first time I fed a PDF into notebook LM was the Spotify earnings report And I was like I have a 20 minute drive.

37:57I want to cure this and it was nine minutes and it was perfect Yeah, and you can if you don't know what notebook LM is it's a project by Google You can you can feed in a bunch of text it'll turn into audio to have two hosts They host it like a podcast. Yeah. So then I started to think, okay, well, actually, you can just custom make yourself a podcast for your drive, right, and go, hey, I'm driving 30 minutes. I want to know about the NFL scores. I want to know about the Netflix earnings call. Right. And I'm also interested in what's going on in the world of the creator economy. And all of a sudden, you have the aggregate of news and articles, and it gets turned into audio, and it's compelling.

38:35And - Does that replace the time that you would otherwise spend and listening to podcasts and watching videos? It's a more, so what's interesting about Genai content I found, especially with notebook elements, it's a more efficient way to consume content. But I don't think we prioritize efficiency always, as you know. Oh, of course, that would be right. Well, that would be like, soil int, you know, it's like, well, this is easy to take out. No offense, Brian, but I'm just saying, like, this nutty pudding concept, my wife makes me the nutty pudding, I'm like, you know what, I kind of want the regular pudding.

39:02Right, anyway, no it's healthier. But this is, it kind of takes out the spontaneity of what, you know, if you want that MBA content, I watch this next thing, Nick's Fan TV. And this guy takes all the clips, and last night the Nick's won in overtime, the Kell Bridge is amazing buzzer beater. And I was as excited to open up Nick's Fan TV. right. You know when he comes on 15 minutes after the game and watch the community's reaction to it. And every time the next win I will give a hundred dollar tip and a super chat. I probably give two or three thousand dollars a year just to support this creator because it reminds me of WFAN in New York and he has all these regular callers.

39:46It is such a spectacular product and then I notice that I'm like into Corvettes and I'm in the YouTube thing and I got the Corvettes in my sidebar. And this motherfuckers are like creating fake AI Corvette announcements that aren't real. And they're using gender value and they're saying, the new ZR17 is here. And I'm like, what? I'm going to get the ZR1. And then there's just 17. And I click on this thing and it's just AI voice. Chevy Corvettes are known for having the greatest engine. But that's the thing. And I blocked that, mother. No, but that's the day. I blocked that channel. So look, you're right.

40:23But I hit the triple dot. But, bam! Look, I would be less dismissive, as we all know, every month, we're a little more surprised by what Genai can do and the power of it. There's a really important human directorial role in the early days of this Genai revolution, and I think that it enables an incredible fragmentation of media even more than we're seeing today in their creator economy. Maybe you end up getting your personal news feed with the newscaster or the podcaster or the Nick's super fans reading to you what happened at the game last night, that's Genai completely. And it's indistinguishable from reality.

41:01That's where I think things may get a little more funky in the next couple of years. I don't think it's like that far off. That's just also like this kind of far move away from monoculture into like, 100 % extreme microcultures, which kind of already existed. Each of us opens our phones. Well, I got a point of view on this one, which is like, I do think that there's shared cultural facts but different cultural experience of the facts, meaning like the game is the game, but the commentator that tells me about the game is different. And that's where I think this all plays out, where I'm gonna have like my own tuned broadcaster, she could be really beautiful.

41:38I don't know, and she could be really cool. She could be talking to be, you know, one -on -one. I don't know, it could be really weird. It's really funny. I actually, I get on on a chat GPT advance voice, And I have this female voice in one of my wife's in the car. I'm like, hey, baby, what's going on? And my wife gets so upset. Yeah, I was about to say, Freyberg, as your counsel. I'm going to go ahead and advise you to do that. No, but you don't have to talk about that. And I think that's where it might start. By the way, we're going to come back and talk again in a few minutes. Yeah, Colin and Samir, thank you guys.

42:06Thank you guys for coming out. Thank you guys so much. Austin's unique. OK. There's a lot of podcasters here. So, you know, I came to town, I got a lot of podcasting friends. And as you know, I'm podcast famous, which is the fame that goes right below reality television. And we're incredibly lucky because our next guest is both podcast famous and reality television famous. And he's an Austin. And when I came here, I was like, you know, I'm going to come here and I'm going to hang with all my podcasting bros. So I texted Tim Ferris, I was like, Tim, let's get dinner. Tim's like, yeah, I'm trying to find a girlfriend wife, you know, I gotta try to grow up, make a baby, all this kind of stuff.

42:57And so I'm out and about, I'm not in town. Then I texted, it's okay, well, I'm old for one, but I'll text Lex Freeman. Text Lex Freeman. He's like, I'm having panic attacks. I don't know, my life, existential. I had Kanye on, you told me not to do it. He was, you were right, and then I had Zelensky. I had Zelensky on, then I had Putin on. Everybody hates me, but everybody loves the pot. He's a hot mess, and he's like, I can't find a girlfriend either. So then I text Chris Williamson, and I'm like, hey, you know, what's up, Dan? And he's like, Jake, how? Let's eat a steak. I need your help. I'm trying to find a girlfriend.

43:38And so ladies and gentlemen, Chris Williamson.

43:44We're going to find out. That's a good wingman. You can see about it. Get over here. Oh man, you know, we, um, Chimoff is off the program. And now we've got a real man on the pod. Chris Williamson will be taking Chimoff's seat going forward. So handsome. What's going on? You and I had a little stake. And I think you double booked, but I appreciate being the first seating on your Friday night. You went out. I'm a sloppy third for this choice. No, no, we said the best for last. There it is. Let's say. Yeah, I'm full. Chaulma, that's why you said you're good wingman. I'm a solid wingman. I helped Lex out a bit, but what's going on on the dating front?

44:32Let's be honest here. Did you, where are you at? Because a lot of ladies want to know. Is Chris Williamson still on the market or not? Often market currently, but I did shave the handlebar on the stash, which I think sort of straightened me up as well. People were worried about it. He shows up for our state dinner with the porn stash of all porn stash. He says, unbelievable, this handlebar thing. And I was like, you know, Chris, we don't know each other. Whatever. Are you straight? It's like, has an arrow. I spent 50 % of the meal asking me whether I'm straight. That kind of sounded a little bit like a wishful thinking I thought there was a window.

45:05I thought there was a window. I felt there was a window. But you started in reality TV, yeah? Technically, I suppose so, yeah. I mean, that's how you got your first taste of media and fame, yeah? You're on Love Island? That would be fat. Yeah, so I actually did a reality TV show before that. I have a illustrious history of reality TV. Oh, OK. It was a nightclub promoter, commercial model, DJ, reality TV. And that's my career, too, by the way. It's about to say. Yeah, actually I did a little summer stock as a brace similar to your reality television comedian told me the other day commercial male model Club promoter DJ reality TV is otherwise known as bingo

45:51So I had a full house Yeah, look did some reality TV stuff that was kind of like an existential crisis that was captured on a television 24 hours a day being trapped in a house for a little while and then got to the end of my 20s and Rogan, Sam Harris, Alander Boton from the School of Life, Jordan Peterson are all coming to the front and I thought wow I'm learning a lot from these people I'm less of an adult infant as I was when I first started listening to them maybe if I started my own show I would be able to have these sorts of conversations they felt really nourishing to me and 900 episodes and a billion and a bit downloads.

46:30Did you think about it as an interview show? Were you like, I want to interview people? Or were you like, I want to explore the world? Or I want to teach people? Or what was the kind of? I had nothing to teach people. Right. Not at all. Yeah. So it was very much, yeah, I'm going to find these interesting people who understand how the world works. I want to understand myself in the world around me. But you start off with who you've got around to your friends. in like, Kai Wei, the guy that invented the light phone. He was episode 10, so super obsessed with digital minimalism and what social media was doing to our brains.

47:00And then there was a season of relationships and a season of health and fitness. And there was a season of evolutionary psychology. So it's a thinly veiled autobiography, which I actually think a lot of people's sort of true bodies of work are. If you're following your instinct, you're just, it's a little trail of breadcrumbs of where your mind was at at that time. Yeah. And you figured out the great hack of podcasting, which is if you want to learn really quick, if you hang out with smart people, and you ask them very simple questions, and you're present, and you'll listen to the answers, maybe you're really good at the follow -up question, by the way, which is always how I judge an interviewer, how good they are at being present, and not being like, okay, question number one done, check.

47:41Now let's go to number two. You're really good at listening and finding that next question. But it is such an amazing hack to learn, right? And to build a network and to even build a group of friends. Look, I always felt reticent that I did business at university. I did two business degrees, including a master's. And I can't remember anything from either of them. I spent a lot of time partying, again, club promoting, and bingo. And I always thought, we should go and do psychology. We should sort of follow something more approximating a passion or philosophy or sociology or something. And then I realized a couple years ago, I was like, well, you have done that.

48:19You've got to design your own degree only speaking to the best in their field about the very specific niche part of their topic that you want to learn on your terms with no coursework or homework beyond what you want to do and you get to call it a job. So whatever version of the simulation that we're in at the moment, I need to sort of thank the designer because it's wild. I get to call this a career. It's a, I think we all feel that way in many respects. Tell me about, you know, Sam's a good friend of mine. We had the same book age and for a long time. And I remember I had him on my podcast and he said, what's podcasting?

48:54And I explained it to him and he said, well, how do I do it? And I said, well, you get two microphones and a guest. And he's like, then what? I'm like, well, then we hit the record button. And I helped him start the pod. What are your thoughts on what he's done is influence? Because I know you've really had him, you've had him a couple times, yeah? No, he's been on once. Only once, oh yeah, his wife's been on as well. Oh, Anna has been on as well, yeah, she's fantastic. So tell me about your favorite guest, Sam Jordan Peter Sin, I don't know, in some countries. He's pretty great. It's kind of like I'm an achiever from 900 children, I suppose.

49:32One of the most reliable guests actually, a guy called Rory Sutherland, you know, Rory. Amazing, a lot of people who don't know. Imagine a gruff upper -class British sweary uncle who also happens to be one of the best behavioral economists on the planet. So this guy understands consumer behavior like nobody else. In fact, if you go into Ogle, these website, and you look at the job description on the board members, it says Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogle, the advertising, Rory got to design his own job title, specifically so no one actually knows what he does. And he's just, he's fantastic.

50:06Just speaking to Jordan, was great. Alan, the school of life, he sees the human condition very accurately. It's fun. I get to indulge my own curiosities and follow my instincts. Do you think other people can do it? Should do it? This is a big thing. I see is like folks that want to kind of create a business through this kind of new creator economy. There's all these paths to monetization, build the audience and they're like, what I'll do is I'll go find people to interview and I'll interview them. What's the barrier for folks? What makes folks really great at this? What's the challenge in the business and how do you kind of do it better than others?

50:41Yeah, I think Chris Vahitian says everyone has a buck in them and for most that's where it should stay. And I wonder whether podcasting may be something similar. But it's certainly a skill set that you can develop. Look, I think the best thing is a project so personal to you that you would do it if nobody listened. And for me, if everybody switched off tomorrow, I did this one no one listened. Your conversations with people that you were truly interested in learning from. Right. It's a private, it's an autobiography for me. It's a repository of my own. I think that's really interesting because kind of like our podcast was us literally talking with each other about the things that were going on in the world and how we were maneuvering in COVID and talking about markets, stuff that we would literally do at the poker table.

51:31Look, and then we just did it on Zoom and put on the internet. Yeah, I love the people that are here. I listen every week, I think the pods fantastic. I get to tune in and just listen to between three and five guys, depending on who's available that week. Just have a hang, and it feels like you're dropping in on precisely the poker table or the private room at the stake dinner, and that's why I think people are massive fans of the show, because it feels like, I know, you're... Genuine, authentic conversations that you want to have as an individual that you're interested in having. Yeah, and it'll go...

52:01It's like, if your friend list was just a little bit better educated than you, and you're like, okay, I get to find out, it's a little bit more elevated as a conversation. By the way, this is a little different than what we talked about, which is the other side of this creator economy, which is hacking an audience, Making stuff for an audience, growing the audience where your focus is on algorithmically, technically, tactically identifying things that the audience likes and then focusing on those things and building from there. And it's a very different kind of tack, both work. This is the right tack, by the way, is to pursue your muse and to do something that's authentically interesting to you.

52:37You and I both agree on film and the importance of great film and great directors are the ones that were left to fuck alone. and the great directors are the ones who got the deals at the studios where they were told they had complete creative control. Final cut. Final look. You can still play that game. I have two full -time front catalog strategists and two back catalog strategists as well for YouTube. So we have a big team that's playing the Algo game, they're chopping down clips. So look, I think that what is it that Ferris says about, in the short -term your results are determined by your intensity and the long -term your results are determined in by your consistency, but don't trade the latter for the former.

53:16And if you try and go too hard, if you try and do things where you're being ventriloquized by the audience, I'm going to try and reverse engineer what I think the audience wants from me, which means that if they stop loving you, not only do you not have the one thing you used to have, but you didn't even make a body of work that you cared about either. So you end up resenting the audience. And yeah, for me, it's kind of like a bulletproof strategy. You're going to keep going for longer because you like what you do. So can we talk about monetization? How you think about making money? Before we get to that, I really want to bang on this just a little bit more you.

53:49You also made a decision. We were talking before about we did something low -fi to just get ourselves in the same space virtually with Zoom for a couple of hours. Your production quality is absolutely stunning. You care about aesthetics, you care about the lighting and the location. Just for the audience here, take us through that decision. And I don't know the earliest part of the catalog, and if you did it to that level, you have done some zooms, I believe, because Rory's only available on Zoom. But take me through the aesthetic choices you made and why. Yeah, so I realized about three years ago that most podcasters are something with a podcast.

54:32They're a UFC fighter with a podcast, they're a comedian with a podcast, they're whatever, investors with a podcast, right? It's not their profession. So I asked myself, what would it look like if we turned pro at being a podcaster? And part of that is the lift needs to be very low for most people that are busy doing other things because they're busy doing other things. So they can't spend ages going towards this, you know, one big production. So I started working with cinematographers. I got one of the best directors of photography in America. He's out of Nashville. I got a producer. We got grips, gaffers.

55:02We started using location scouts. And we started to dial in a very specific look. We started to use handheld cameras on tripods, monopods, dollies, doorways, allies. We did the first ever five camera podcast on the LED video wall, the same technology that was used for the Mandalorian. And as we were talking live, the video controller changed the scenes based on what we talked about. So if we moved from a war story to a scary story in a spooky house, we went from Afghan and base with trucks driving around and helicopters coming in to a spooky house that had. Is it like literally the opposite of what call it a tomato scene with keep the budget low?

55:43No, but it's interesting. I mean, just knowing what I know about production costs, that sounds like you're spending 30, 40 times an episode. It's not far off that. We can get it down by squeezing here and there. Thankfully, my line producer is sort of bully when it comes to trying to get that stuff down. But look, I like pretty things. And I think that one way that you can excel is to stand out visually. Same. Look at what I'm on stage with. I like things to look nice. And I didn't see anyone that was really elevating the way that stuff looked. Is it change the subjects mindset and the interview itself when they see how beautiful it is?

56:27When they see the investment in it, does it change something in the subject? So I have this belief that at least in the world of podcasting was sort of splitting into two directions at the moment. One of them is perhaps a little bit more elevated. It's the modern wisdoms, it's the Stephen Bartlett's of the world. And then the other side is the more sort of low tech. It would be all in, it would be Matt and Shane's secret podcast. And then you've got sort of a rogan or a flagrant that sort of sits somewhere in the middle, which is good quality, not insane. It's just facilitating the hang. And I think that barbelling both of those is a good way to go.

57:02You can lean into the real sort of high -end production stuff. And when the guest turns up and they're like, wow, we're in 25 ,000 square foot warehouse in the middle of LA, and there's a team of 15 people here and there's huge lights and there's guys holding dollies. Like they're luckin', you know, they're really there to, oh, this is an occasion. This isn't me just turning up for a chat, but that wouldn't work for every type of show. So in fact, what you want to do is facilitate a little bit more ease. So that's why I still like doing stuff over Zoom, or I guess, like, Riverside or whatever you use, because I want to have that casual sort of conversation.

57:41Everyone wants to turn up and it feel like it's a, you know, the World Cup final of podcasting. Yeah. Should we go to the monetization? So like, I just started thinking about building the business, high quality content, authentic content. Was it a conversation about, hey, let me just put this out there. make ads and I'll figure it out later or was it very deliberate and has the model kind of evolving for you? Yeah, so it was emergent over time. You start off just taking whoever you can get. A lot of supplement companies and teeth whitening companies, whatever, whatever is available. You read ads.

58:10Yeah. And they come in or you call out? I did outreach for the first five or 600 episodes of the show. So I was managing my own ads. I was sending the invoices. I was slowly scaling up the CPMs. You can get between a $15, $25 CPM, something like that, audio only. I made the commitment not to do ads on YouTube because if it was a virtual episode, it felt like it was such a low lift that that kind of didn't justify making people sit through baked in ads at least on YouTube, but we got away with it. I mean, were you have the option to turn them off? No, these are hard coded into the file itself. You're just, yeah, that's what's referred to as baked in.

58:47And then look, we've got ourselves to the stage now where we have some pretty interesting setups. I think I'm one of the only podcasters that does this where we sell an entire ecosystem. So if you come on board as one of what we call our flagship partners, you get a set of impressions across the entire year. Let's say 40 million, 60 million impressions. Then you get a number of Instagram story sequences on my Instagram. You'll get newsletter drops on my newsletter, which has got 300 ,000 subs and a 50 % open right, lots of click through on that, and then maybe I'll come speak at your AGM or I'll do something else and we build out this big package that will elevate the level of the partner too because they're being thoughtful.

59:29So you're going to remove the niggling, diming people who should just be buying cost per quick ads on a meta, and now you've got people who are actually thinking about their brand and what they want their brand associated with. I mean, function health, who I think are on here somewhere. We did a two -year deal with them. And I love what they do. I use them to track my blood work. And I thought, why would I not want to be in bed with a company that I use all the time? Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, in our case, it's... And you deepen the relationship as well. So, element, James from element, if there's something he wants to talk about to do with brand, have a good insight when it comes to brand, especially from a creator side, or ad reads.

1:00:06I don't happily just do a couple of hours of, well, this is what we've seen that's been working with. It's interesting when we were talking about the old media model. I'm new to all this stuff. So I'm not like big in this podcasting space, but I just observed. So maybe what I say is super reductive and obvious, but it's like, you got these pharmaceutical ads on Fox News and it's in between the segments. And no one on the, none of the anchors give a shit about the pharmaceutical ad, nor do they talk about or promote it and have no connection to it. There's no authenticity to it. But here there's an opportunity to be selective and to have it be part of the content, part of the experience.

1:00:37And it actually probably does better as a result with the audience than you would get with that, you know, have you talked to your doctor about? Yeah, well look, I mean, diarrhea, like, or whatever. In the same way, you know what it is, in the same way as following your instincts on the show when it comes to what you talk about, if you can get yourself to the luxurious position where you get to choose your partners as well, every single product that I partner with I use. So let's talk about, so you got leverage in the white. Yeah, white listed advertising was something we started on this week and started from the beginning, which was if I don't use the product or don't like it, We turn it down.

1:01:12We turn down all kinds of crazy offers from services that you'll hear. I was on Megan Kelly and I heard her read one of the two of these ads and I was like, God, I would never read that ad. Because I know that if you type in that product and scam or complaints, it'll be like a long list of people complaining about it. And then we were talking about her business. And she's using a third party agency to sell her partnerships. and I said, Megan, you're making Kelly, like just get to ad reps and partnership people and you have to build that leg of the stool. You've got the content, you've got the distribution, you've got the advertising and the partners, you have to have all three of the stool or else, let me ask, let me ask all of you guys, two questions.

1:01:56Who would you turn down? Like advertising wise. Look, category, just something to category. Anything, anything which used to do with investing, we've said no to. By gold, by gold. Jonathan Mayan's guys stood there and he hates it because these guys are prepared to spend big money. You don't want your customers losing money being upset at you. This is really amazing. I don't have the chops to be able to assess whether or not this bank or this new investment opportunity. Can you turn your Roth IRA into a 501K back by guy? I don't know. I have no idea. Now hear these things. I go Ben Shapiro. You don't know either.

1:02:28So it's a good thing. Well, let's let me ask you guys both a question. In the old internet world, there were these companies that emerged within DoubleClake, a quantum that were the site rep firms. So there were a lot of independent websites out there. They didn't have the most sophisticated sales force. They couldn't go higher than the two great sales reps to go do the work in Dilan. There wasn't a very liquid market. So the site rep firms would rep your site. They would go out and get out. Do you see more of those kind of emerging today? Are they getting more sophisticated? Are they getting better to enable smaller creators to be able to kind of be successful in this space right now?

1:03:03Maybe. I mean, I think it's a difficult. And you've never done it. Finish your thought in an outlet, Maya. It's a difficult game to play because people can go to create a sort of a round about my size. And it's very reliable. You know what you're going to get in terms of plays, what you're going to get in terms of demographic. But the shows that are smaller are growing. So you don't actually know what it is that you're going to get. So maybe you can bundle all of these guys together into some weird sort of dispersed multi -channel network type thing, and they will bulk be sold by some company that sits above them.

1:03:35But it's it's so effortful and when you think Some podcast gonna do 25 ,000 plays. You've got to go through all the rigmarole and the red tape and the ad read to hit 25 ,000 people Oh, you could go to Rogan and hit like 100 ,000 times that have you ever used site reps? No, I know I'd reps. I always hated the concept even when we're doing blogs because Yeah, you wind up If you're going to take it seriously and you want to make it into a great effort, I think you have to have that relationship and not somebody mitigating it. I think it's better to just focus on the content until you hit to Chris's point, the reach that is necessary to have people calling you on the phone and then being able to choose it.

1:04:21There's other monetization that's available now, merchandising, creating premium content that people can do. And so it's just those are those are better avenues right then using these rep firms and the rep firms It's a terrible business because if you do your job and you actually do make money and the creator does break out Then they will leave you like Megan Kelly will leave hers or Tucker this I don't know what the the one that does all the Tucker Carlson and all those folks, but I'm just shocked like Tucker and Megan we're getting paid 10 20 30 million dollars a year They can afford to have one or two Ed people doing this for them and not giving 40 % to somebody and it just Crubs the whole relationship.

1:05:01Okay, let me ask you guys both another question. So you you've now got a great Content creation engine which is you you have a great content creation at this we can start up which is you and Then you got this advertiser set up so you got add dollars coming in How do you get leveraged so that it's non -linear any great business has a non -linear scaling function? And in your business, you guys are limited, and you know, this is something we've talked with Jimmy at Mr. Beast about. Like, if it's just you making the content, you can only make X number of units of content per month per year. So that limits the scalability of the revenue for your organization in terms of how big this can get.

1:05:37Do you ever think about creating leverage in the system where you do almost like what a Spielberg does with an Ambulent Entertainment or any great director or producer does where they scale up, they become the producer. They create a network. They create a studio model. And then you have several content shows that are under your brand and what have you ever thought about that is that kind of the model where this is eventually going to go where some of the great breakouts Are going to end up realizing they can kind of scale up and build the next studio model if you want to do that then fine But I have no desire to start managing a ton of other content creators managing myself is what if you still did your show But you have others that you kind of bet on basically Perhaps, I guess, it just doesn't speak to me all that much.

1:06:14And I think a question is, what do you need this additional money for? Is it that you just need to continue to build more and more profit? Because I quite like where I'm at. I quite like the level of revenue that I make, the workload that I have, the fact that I get to spend a morning reading. And I don't feel like I should have been on more Zoom calls. So my ability to put the foot on the gas I'll take it off is exclusively on me, as opposed to having other obligations. So it's very much a lifestyle business and I understand that that's going to cap the upside now There's some things I can start CPG.

1:06:46I can start to do some clever stuff with ads Where that will begin to ramp and ramp and ramp but yeah, I'm you've got unlimited upside with how you spend your time now That you don't have to do work 24 -7 absolutely and you know, there may be a day when I decide to press that button again But it's it's not right now, but just like before Jason jumps in You've got YouTube AdSense partners, Spotify partner program, which is brand new, and that's actually cranking quite a lot. And then the one area that I think way more podcasts is need to look at, which is monetizing clips. So you do mid -roll ads on a long podcast episodes, you know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 50 minutes, 120 minutes into an episode.

1:07:27But you can also be seven minutes into an eight minute long clip. And you can crank clips out all the time. So you can be putting out one a day. So there's other points of leverage. Exactly. So you can look at, OK, how can we a little bit more innovative? We can put Instagram stories up. We can use newsletters, these sort of 360 deals, and fill out all of the ecosystem where you can without obliterating the viewing experience and making the audience hate you. You know, I think that's well said. And there's going to be international as well with AI. I don't know if you've experimented. We have a company podcast AI.

1:08:00I have stuff. Dubbing stuff. And then that'll be built into YouTube. So all of a sudden you'll be in Spanish, Japanese, and French, and the whole cycle will start all over again. But you know, I did actually try that with this week in startups. I got the domain name this weekend .com and we did this week in poker with Annie Duke and this week in Blank, this week in Blank, this week in comedy. We did we tried a bunch of those. The problem was... But you did. You did different shows? I did some different shows in the beginning. I did it for about a year and what I realized was you could get You know, average hosts, broadcast hosts, but you couldn't get someone like Chris or Annie Duke from a long term.

1:08:38We had a guy Dave Pinsato, who's a music producer, and I wanted to do this week in music. He wanted to do the Dave Pinsato show. He had his own view, and the really great creators, what they realize is, I want control of my art. I want control of my brand. I want to own my IP. I want to pick my team. I don't want to be part of a machine. And so what we're seeing is people like Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson now are free. Ben Shapiro started with, he was on AM radio in Los Angeles and then he worked for Brightbart. And now he's got his own company. He makes his own decisions. So I think a lot of the talent, the most talented people will want to be independent practitioners.

1:09:21True, there's a sort of a weird level that people get to. Anybody who is sufficiently talented for you to think that they're an A -grade player is probably not going to want to sit underneath anybody else. And if someone isn't that good, you're kind of just filling the air with something that maybe isn't going to come. So in the new media world, is it all just lots of independent producers and there is no studio model? I think so. Absolutely. I think so. Because a lot of people want that lifestyle. But what happens when you get rid of distribution? It's not like we have to ask somebody for permission anywhere.

1:09:52It's not like the record labels where you had to have distribution. You had to go to Columbia Records if you were a Bob Dylan to be in a record store. You can just do it. Yeah. Well, I think the question is, the economic mode being, can you reinvest capital in creating high quality content? Because if that capital is invested well, it builds and it creates an audience. So, you give certain people money, people will show up. The moment money comes out. Yeah, more money comes out. Yeah, some high points of leverage would be getting a strategist who understands the YouTube algorithm and can ensure that no matter what it is you're recording and how honest and truthful that is to your instinct, it's being presented in the best way for the algorithm.

1:10:32We can repurpose clip. What are the sections that we're choosing? So one thing that hasn't been spoken about today, which is interesting, on YouTube is timeliness. So YouTube is increasingly becoming where people go to find out their news. So maybe you see something that trends on Twitter and you'll catch you know some clip of some kind Yeah, but then you quickly over to you to okay, where's the breakdown? Yeah, and you'll have seen to use Shapiro as a good example daily. Why me? I think it's called Ben after dark or something like that It's not Ben after dark. It's Ben in his living room because something's happened today And before we can get back into the studio tomorrow They need to get a video at trump get shot today You need to do your video today because people are going to be going and that's the hack to get to the top because we've had this issue where we put out a show because we record Thursday mornings and it doesn't publish usually until Friday afternoon.

1:11:17Something happens Thursday after we record. And the show starts. And it literally no one watches it. Yeah, no one will watch the show. That's not true. Well, I mean, we'll watch it, but everybody complies. But the volume goes down like, break out. 40 % out. What are we going to do? Yeah, but it literally, it's like 24 hours on a round. It's like, sorry, that's stale. That's old. That's right. Which is crazy when you think about it. I mean, I think this is the next great opportunity will be somebody who just is sitting there and has the ability to go live at any time. This is what a lot of streaming is doing, right?

1:11:46You look at Hassan Abbey, you look at Destiny, you look at Asman Gold, Charlie, Penguin Zero. All of these guys are doing it. Now, yeah, they're also playing video games too, but they're commenting on a lot of culture, and they crush on this, not because they're insane cultural commentators that are really deep in the research, but because they're timely and they've usually got some take. But it'd be really fascinating if somebody with depth, you know, imagine if Sam Harris when some breaking new story happened Turned on his live stream and you're like, oh my god. We're now we've got Sam Harris commenting on this assassination attempt Or etc.

1:12:24And you see it in sports. I noticed Bill Simmons has started Whenever there is a major trade when the Kyrie trade happened when the Luka Donchik trade happened and he just goes emergency pod. And I think they're really starting to embrace it. That is like a hack and I think that will become a thing. I often go to the live tab on YouTube now, just to see what they're talking about, right? It's typically low quality, but once in a while somebody will do something and we're talking about the relateability authenticity thing before. If somebody is talking about a developing situation which happened three hours ago, It has to be really, you haven't had time to become contrived.

1:13:03You know what I mean? Totally. Yeah, I think that's a big point. What other content do you think is going to win, going to continue to accelerate time and attention away from other forms of content? So the long form podcast conversation, learn about the world with me. Are there other forms that are out there that are interesting to you, that formats that you think are new or merging or that are real winners that are important? I would continue to bet on Substack, I think. and that style of blogging, very frictionless, you know, to enabling writers to work out loud. I think Jonathan Height basically wrote his entire new book, chapter by chapter, published on his sub -stack, allowed for that.

1:13:39The English generation? Is that there's another one about the Tower of Babel thing which he's working on next? Yeah, but yeah, it's this seamless transparent door. So writing, I think, has got like just huge, huge upside down. I'm not too sure what we're going to see from short form. I'm aware that algorithmically it's able to get the bottom of your brain stem really well But you were talking about this before it doesn't seem like TikTok creators are able to convert one TikTok sub is worth you know a hundred TikTok subs is maybe worth one YouTube sub correct and 100 YouTube are worth one email By the way, it's a lot it's a lot like having a cigarette like you need it, but you don't want it You know you end up being like I'm not really looking forward to that TikTok tonight You're not really sitting there and being like, can't wait to watch that TikTok.

1:14:28But you get home and you're like, I need my TikTok, but you do look forward to seeing this great new movie that's coming out this weekend. Or the latest episode. Or the latest episode. I want that. I don't need it, but I want it. And I think there's a big difference between that. And I think that's where the short form really hits the limbic system. It doesn't actually activate the rest. I think this is a form of addiction that's going to wind up like MTV going away. MTV and music videos. we all as gen Xers. I think you're on the toe end of Gen X or millennial. millennial. we kind of got addicted to it and then it kind of went away as a format of just sitting there and watching three minute videos.

1:15:06and everybody thought our brains were getting scrambled because we were watching the aja video and then this talk's that hold my beer. yeah and tick -tucks like yeah wait one second, seven seconds and I think it's fucking with people's dopamine to a level that they don't understand it. you do because you dip into this stuff and you have interest in it. But you can't fire your serotonin and see the moment, the most exciting, terrifying, funny moment in every piece of media, back to back to back. Oh, dopamine addiction. It just breaks. And the next day people are feeling hungover. It's because they're fucking with that dopamine receptors in their brain and then they can't have a normal conversation.

1:15:42They can't go to a normal dinner or have a conversation like this. I feel happy having a walk in a long talk. I think this is one of the reasons why I wouldn't bet against the reading thing. I'm aware it's limbically way less hijacking, but it feels like going to rehab your dopamine system. It's one of the few things that you can only do it, right? You can watch a movie in double screen. You can be listening to a podcast while scrolling Instagram. You can, you know, you cannot read and do anything else. I'll tell you what I think might win. My personal point of view on this is I think that that content will get turned into like an AI chat experience.

1:16:19I, Jason, makes fun of me about this, but I do sit in my car when I do a lot of long drives now. It's at my office, like Santa Cruz and the city is driving a lot. And I talk to chat GPT advanced voice, but I'll talk about a topic, and I'll learn about it, and I'll engage with it, and I'll kind of go back and forth. But if I find, if I flip on like a book on tape or something, my brain wanders off, and I got questions and ideas, and I'm like, oh, then I start thinking about it, and then I realize, oh man, three minutes have gone by. And so for me personally, and maybe this is just the way I'm wired, I kind of like the interactive model, but I do think this great content like Jonathan Heitzky book It's put out as kind of an interactive mode where I get to go engage it starts telling me about it I can ask questions and I it's almost like I'm having a conversation with the author Well, I'm not going back to the earlier point like the cultural experience is the book written by the author But the way I experience it is going to be different than the way you experience it in an AI world I would love to look at how people pay attention to a conversation between multiple people like a podcast compared with an audiobook.

1:17:15And the author is trying their best to come across with bounce and energy and engagement and stuff like that. But really it's not. And it's one person. Just one tone going through, recorded very carefully, whereas when you've got stuff bouncing around, even that author talking about that book on a podcast, why am I so much more engaged? There's something about that, which you're not compelling. It's the way humans aren't designed to sit on the floor and be lectured to by another human, humans are designed to be social creatures to have engagement, to have that process. And I think that that's how it plays out in our brain.

1:17:49There's more of a responsive chemistry to that. I'm excited for this pendulum to swing back and for people to like read a book again or to watch a curusava film. Well, you know, that's 100 % right. No, I mean, you can't watch a curusava film and not feel. I'll tell you what, you know, I think for a lot of young people, they're missing out on some of like the great beauty in life is to be able to give yourself over for two hours to occur a solo film or to give yourself over to a book for an hour, just but an hour. And that's what we're going to see, I think, in the coming years, is people are going to look at this, like they looked at junk food, like they looked at cigarettes and say, this is not healthy for me.

1:18:30You've seen that a list of five regrets of the dying. It's things like I wish I'd allowed myself to be the person I wanted to be, not the person that is expected of me. I wish I'd worked less. I wish I kept in touch with my friends. I would bet an awfully large amount of money that one of them in Starting about 30 years time is going to be I wish I spent less time on my phone. Yeah, and that's gonna be great I wish I don't need a ticket for a point. Yeah, by the way We're gonna continue the conversation guys join us a banking Chris and we're gonna invite the rest of the crew back out

1:19:01Brian come on up is my friend Brian Johnson come on up Brian. Can we get him a mic? Can we get him a mic? Can we get him a mic? We'll introduce Brian. Yeah, Brian Johnson created a payments company. He was on this week and started up years ago. And then I looked up and he was sharing his nighttime erections on social media. It's three hours and twelve minutes, yes. Three hours and twelve minutes, we just... Brian, you're Kardashian famous now. Yeah. Yeah, oh really you were on the Kardashians. Yeah last week's episode you were on last week's episode and Who was you hanging out with Kim or which Chloe this and your human who was the star of the show?

1:19:46Who was Andrew Cuban and Brian that was my Trump's a lensky moment you two in a room. I'm aware Oh, it's just like East Coast West Coast is like Crips and blood You guys get along or is he we do it on yeah, we're friends your friends. Yeah Okay, what do you do together? Like the twirl of duty? A secret. I mean, do you guys exchange blood? What's that? It's just a secret, yes. Sus all in. If you lab test, then you lab test on Saturday morning. Spotify, move to video. I think that's an interesting one to talk about. That's something people aren't really sort of factoring in. Because you turn what was an audio platform into.

1:20:21Is this audio? Is this video? Now there's trailers that you can see as well. And they are paying creators a pretty penny. So we were a part of the partner program for January and February. And we made more money from them with only 10 % of our catalog uploaded than the entirety of our YouTube ads since. So they are throwing everything at it to take. Well, you do. We don't. And we're working on it. Yeah, but we're working on it. But I think also like there's, I think in all these platforms when they announce a new monetization model, they need model citizens. And I think Chris, like your show is a model citizen for Spotify.

1:21:01Like they've put you on billboards. They're definitely going like, hey, the golden child. Yeah, modern wisdom is the show you want to be on Spotify. It's video, it looks beautiful, it uploads quite a bit, it has a big back catalog. So I think it's a really interesting model. To me, it feels experimental. I think if it works, it's great. share of premium subscription revenues. Awesome. Right, are you gonna be able to be within the vicinity of that passive smoke? I imagine this is, you're gonna be counting down how many minutes it's gonna knock off your life. Jason, what is this? That's a point day, it's a nice guy.

1:21:32You can just chew on it. What's gonna happen if I chew on it? You can get a little nicotine hit, and you're gonna enjoy life for the first time in three years.

1:21:44Go ahead, go ahead. I don't know, I don't know if this fits into protocol. I mean, just do it, come on. Like that. See what I'm doing here? Should I hold on before you say something? Don't die is in your hands. Do you want it? No. Yes, yes. Do it. Give it a shot. That was a very clear response. It's either the Vatter you got to do Chris's ketamine. It's one of the other. Chris, you do ketamine? We'll do it backstage. I'm an expert promoter. I do everything. Yeah, do you want this to go? I'm okay, thank you. You did ketamine recently, didn't you, Brian? I did, yeah, I used, so we did, we built a brain or phase at my company kernel.

1:22:24We were trying to build a wearable FMRI, and we had this question, what happens when? You know, there's like, when you take an SSRI or when you take ketamine, and so yeah, I did a dose, and too much through the dose, and we measured my brain 30 days before the ketamine, during ketamine, and then, 40 ,000 times. Was it an injection? You're snorted, and you did this. injection. We did the max FDA a lot of amount. And what was cool is we saw you just did it on your like I'm just gonna max out right? No we had an IRB we had it approved ethically and what we saw so sorry just real quick have you done ketamine before this?

1:22:55No for some. So you're just chilling you're like I'm gonna max out on ketamine. I just want to make sure I really get this. Yeah we wanted to see the effect you know so like we had when you say we you know that's just you right like well okay so we We spent six years building this brain interface. We built a custom ASIC. We pushed it through COVID. It was like an all -in effort. You don't have an intern or 23 -year -old analyst or something to be maxed out on Academy. Well, I was also doing Blueprint. So I was like, this is interesting. What actually happens to the brain when? And so you think about it.

1:23:28So you put this helmet on your head and think of your brain like a globe. It has airports all around. You see traffic, New York to Tokyo. And so my patterns were very fixed in that 30 -day different in the Academy. And then I did Academy and it just scrambles your brain. Like all the traffic patterns are just remixed. And then two or three days afterwards, it drops. And so now you can open -minded to new patterns. And then days three, four, five, you come up to your old patterns again. So that's why it makes sense. There's this therapeutic window where if you do a psychedelic, you're open to new ideas and doing things.

1:23:58Yeah. So on the second day, I was in the office and we were walking in between meetings, we had these big walls. And I thought, why don't I just jump over that wall? like, why am I going to take this long route? I just jumped over the wall and not thinking about it. And I'm like, Brian, what are you doing jumping over the wall? But it just, I did really behave differently. And I had the way I thought, the way I behaved. I couldn't always see my patterns very well, but because we were all watching it so closely, but it was cool. And now we have the ability to say what happens when anything. But you could have done, gotten that information without doing that.

1:24:29Well, no, I think what you're referring to is this phenomenon where it kind of refrags your hard drive a bit and you disconnect from reality. Did you just associate a bit? Did you see yourself outside of your own body? Did you see like, you're here and Brian Johnson's here and then there's a universe and then you go past the universe and you're in that space that's outside the universe. How much time have you done? Six place, same place. Same place? Yeah, I've been there. That's pretty great. Sorry, Brian, let me just, so there have been a lot of studies on this kind of neural plasticity that arises when you take these, you get like maximal neuroplastic, like basically the neurons are out searching for new connections.

1:25:07It really kind of activates those cells to go hunting and people get rewired and that's why trauma can get rewired out of your brain and you can learn new stuff and develop new experiences. But it can also have profound changes on people's psychology, motivations, other sort of factors. Have you noticed any of that kind of residual effect? Motivations change, point of view has changed. Emotions change. Personalities are different relationships where people like your X, Y or Z, you're not Brian, were that kind of affected you in a way? It was only one time, so I didn't notice anything in particular.

1:25:36It was really that acute, like two or three -year window. I think if I would have paired some therapy in there, I probably could have done something meaningful, but I didn't. Like, we were really looking at the quantitative measurements. But yeah, I mean, it really, you're right. Like, it scrambles the brain. It was cool to see it, because before this, nobody had ever seen ketamine on the brain. You don't see the patterns that are in place. You don't see what's scrambled. You don't see when they reform. And like, you could take these patterns. It's a thing of like a 96 -96 grid. You can use these patterns to assess intelligence, emotions, and character traits.

1:26:05It's very informative. And so these things, when you assess and reassemble, you really can't do a lot of, for a lot of things about the person. Yeah, I mean, we're joking about it here, but I have some friends who have spent a great deal of time, money, and effort on the Maps project, Tim Ferris. A number of my friends have really worked on this in a clinical session and setting. And it can have a profound impact on PTSD, on relationships, on trauma. But I just want to give people like a caveat here that these are extremely powerful modalities. And you need to do them in the proper setting. The set, the setting, the dose are all extremely important.

1:26:50But people with PTSD are coming out of 9 -11, my brothers and firefighters. a lot of firefighters in New York and first responders, they haven't gotten over it, and they've gone to some of these sessions and they've come out of it, and they've found peace. And it can process what can't be done in 100 sessions of psychotherapy can get processed in two or three of these sessions. I think it's very important that we take it seriously, even though some people are doing it up burning man and having fun with it, I get it. People want to do that. Is it a dependency risk with catamene that there isn't with a lot of the other substances that you can use to?

1:27:28This is the problem. It's interesting. My friend Tony Shea passed and he got addicted to catamene specifically and it disassociated him. And that's the problem with the recreational use or the use alone, Chris. There's a lot of very notable CEOs, I know friends, who have gotten into it and they've had good intention and then maybe they're at home watching Netflix or YouTube and they are doing it out of boredom. And that's where it gets very pre -nicious. And I just be careful. Can we go back just to the content creator piece? I mean, you basically started talking about, don't die, and you've created quite a bit of content around this.

1:28:11What's the model for building a business where you actively think, hey, I got to build an audience to get this effort to be successful? Yeah, no, we actually didn't. It's a Kate, my co -founder, too, with me. We were posing the question. We thought it was a cool question to ask. Are we the first generation who won't die? It's kind of like in 1870, you're back in there. You hear in town, people are like, hey, there's just new weird idea. There's this guy saying that there's these microscopic objects. They're called bacteria or something like that. They cause infection, they're the two death. And then others are like, that's stupid as fuck.

1:28:45Because really, it's just bad spirits. we know that's just causing the situation. And so if you're getting a surgery, you really care to know, is this a correct idea or a incorrect idea? And turns out, bacteria are real, they actually cause infection, they can be to death. And I think that parallel here for us right now is like, are we legit the first generation who won't die? And so that was our effort, just actually scientifically go doing that. And then someone did a Twitter thread on this and it just went viral. They affect 50 million views and we're like, what's going on? The tsunami of hate came our way.

1:29:16And it was just like, there's so much raw energy under this topic. We didn't know that was the case. And so yeah, we've just been trying to basically take people along the journey of like, this is what we're doing. So it's been like a, um, an afterthought to a primary mission. And now it's a primary modality for us to go up to. And you've productized it. I came home. My wife was, I was joking about the nutty pudding. It's, I mean, it's not my favorite, but it's healthy. And I've had it a couple of times. I eat it and my wife's got the whole cupboard filled with blooper and stuff. I was told the whisper numbers over a hundred million dollars in sales.

1:29:52Yeah, we'll be a hundred million dollars in less than 12 months. But the goal was not to make money. It was like, it went viral and people are like, I love this. I want to do it. But it's so damn hard, right? You have to like, source all this stuff. And we've learned ourselves that when we source things that most labels are incorrect, most things are toxic. And it's like a disaster out there. So we started sourcing our own stuff. And so I was like, well, why don't we just package this up? Like CPG sucks. It's the worst business in the world. So we were legit, like, do the world is solid, like make this available.

1:30:22Like we forked so hard to make this available, and it's impossible to do in the show. You're losing money or you make it just a very modest profit margin? Very, yeah. So we're almost basically breaking. Yeah. So it's a for -break even, not a for -not -a -non profit. And Chris, you're drinking this new category of beverage you created, maybe you could talk a little bit about your intent with your product. Yeah, I think one of the easiest. And can we get a couple of these out here? I want to drink. I'm losing my energy. Thank you. I think let's go Jonathan. Hurry up. One of the easiest hacks that you can do, if you want to be successful in CPGs, take something that people are already consuming, source it better, improve the formulation, and then put it back out.

1:30:56A better for you dot, dot, dot. A better for you, pair of underwear. A better for you, chocolate bar. A better for you, hydration drink. So we made a better for you energy drink. So evidence -based research -backed, neutropic ingredients, efficacious doses, blah, blah, blah. We bootstrapped it, and I got to build it from the ground floor up and create the brand, and come up with the copy, the shoots, and everything else. And I love it. And now we've got to this stage where some really big players are sniffing around, and we've only been in the market for 18 months. Are you guys going to do a CPG business?

1:31:22It's kind of the trend of the genre. No, I don't think so. What would you do? What are you going to do? I mean, we're a little bit different in that our value prop is a creator education. So we try and think of what is an extension of our value prop. And for us, digital goods courses, that's a direct extension. So that's what we have. As much as Brian is a content creator, I will say like I came across Brian's content. I was marginally interested kind of like, you know, confused by it. Then got invited to one of his dinners. And I really commend you for doing the dinners. Because I think the dinners, like it's very unscatable, but it actually creates a lot of scale.

1:31:55And people comes to those dinners like me. I've been talking about the dinner for, I don't know, when that was six, seven months ago, and telling a lot of people about it. And it was a very impactful event. And I think actually like the creators today who are doing things like this, getting people together physically, Last week when we were here, there's a creator named Jake Shane, sold out the Moody Center, it was about 3 ,000 people. He started as a TikTok creator up there for an hour and a half by himself doing comedy. Amazing. And it's amazing. And I think like getting people together and actually having like face to face impact, that's where I think you can build a product like that.

1:32:27You know how we were saying it's going to be lovely if there's a counter movement against the TikTokification, very short form video. I do get the sense that coffee and chill, you know what that is? You know, the sort of coffee and chill or mushroom cowboy. These are daytime sober rays. Oh, I saw this on TikTok. Yeah, so paradoxically, you know, a couple of hours on a Saturday or a Sunday from 10 a .m. or midday or something like that. And I think that what we're seeing is the equivalent here of the work from anywhere, digital nomads, degenerate, wake up whenever you want, fuel yourself with caffeine and get back to get to work.

1:32:58And this is the backlash against that, which is people are desperate for in -person events, they're desperate for stuff like this. And it's not just this. You think about any conference you've ever been to the speakers cool whatever that headline as you go to see But what you're really there for the conversations in the foyer in a little between the different events I'm gonna say like the higher the higher the barrier sometimes the bigger the fan right like your episodes are three hours long That's a pretty big barrier like you get to the end you're invested You're a fan of you guys that's the same thing with events right like there are brands and creators now they're starting with I think it makes so much sense.

1:33:32Think about you give up your time, your form of social engagement in a kind of free way, not a structured way, as soon as you're done with college. And then you're the workplace. And at the workplace, if you're working in an office, it's like you got the thing to do and you're done. And you go, where else do you have this kind of social engagement at scale? You're also pre -selecting, as you say, if it's a three hour long podcast, it's a really niche topic. It's a particular series of Warhammer 40K that not many people know about or it's some weird Japanese anime. Like, you are pre -selecting for people like you, assuming that you're interested in it.

1:34:06This is why Reddit is so good. Right? Reddit is a website filled with people who couldn't find others to have that discussion with in the hometown. Right. That's true. It's very true. Well, I just want to point out with these CPG products. The creators who are making them, like when YouTube General makes something or sacks is making this all into kill. Or where's my super gut bars? And yeah, super gut, which is fantastic. The peanut butter one is pretty good. You know that freeberg's not making super gutter. You're not making blueprint or you're not making new tonic. New tonic. You're not doing it because you want to maximize profitability, you want to be proud of it.

1:34:49You want to know that the person buying it had a great experience and it was good for them, right? It was a hole that didn't exist and the other thing which I'm sure you guys have sensed as well The online course is the best way if you want to the margins are amazing the scale is just fantastic But you never get to see someone holding your course If you get to see someone if you do it as cohorts which we which we have done You do get to see them digitally and now our you know our idea is to actually go Hey, can we take that and have that be also entry into a live workshop or live session. That's going to, so.

1:35:26Parallelistically close. I'll probably create a Tony Robbins. Yeah, I can see you on stage. Yeah, I'll make a bet right now that'll make you guys more money than anything else combined. Yeah, I think that's like, your question that you asked before was like, how does that compare? Like right now the reality is like in a single check a brand deal, you know, makes more money when it's one client. But as what we're watching right now in the course business is like, you know, a hundred people on an $800 product is significant. Again, a thousand people, it gets even more significant. Because you guys will sell tickets to the live event, but the sponsor is to get that targeted audience in a captive way.

1:35:59We'll pay you more than they'll pay for the online. That's right. That's what you guys will make. We'll also think about the value prop for people go to school, they go $50 ,250 ,000 in debt. And then what I hear from young people all the time is they go take a course afterwards. And that course for $800 does more from them in the marketplace and getting jobs than the degree did. And I think this role your own education is very similar to function health in a way which is like I'm going to take control of it I'm not going to have an MD direct my health care. I'm going to get my blood work myself I'm going to do my research.

1:36:35I'm going to go on chat GPT or GROC or whatever I'm going to ask about peptides. I'm going to ask about this. I'm going to cross reference that I'm going to listen to your podcast or Huberman, you know, whatever and I think that this self -reliancy and this new category of products and services that are available it kind of resets this industrialization that occurred. I'm sure Proctor and Gamble and some of these things didn't start out with the evil intent that is now in their products. And you've got to cut that out. Well, I don't know. Honestly, Proctor and Gamble give a shit. They're pretty dying in kids cereal.

1:37:10You know, we watch, I talk to that Proctor and Gamble. Like, they're cereals. General males can go f**k off the set. They're the enemy. They're that guy. I don't give a shit about their sponsorship. I guarantee you're using Procter Enable toothpaste in about three years. No, I got that Tom's. Procter Enable. I'm telling you, they literally are putting die in children's cereal. They're putting coin syrup in children's cereal. They're poisoning the fucking country to make an extra two or three, four or five cents. What's the word you used? We were talking about the word, the England you used, the C word.

1:37:45Ah, yes. It's a lie, great Jason. and he's got it, right? So we can cut it, but I agree. But I mean, so we just launched a new endeavor called Don't Die Certified and we're testing foods. Oh, yeah, baby foods, pet foods, all packaged foods. And we got the earlier results back. You got the receipts. We do. And so how bad is it? That's worse than you think. Yeah. Sorry. What do we have? Brian, what do you test? I'm not in size. Yeah. So we're doing heavy metals. Heavy metals. we're doing glass of fate, some other agrochemicals, and then maybe a few valleys, business along. What's the worst product you got so far?

1:38:24So we got results back from a diet. Have you done any bailouts? Have you done plastics or stuff like that? Yes, we're doing that too. So we'll probably have that later. There's less evidence around that. But yes, the cool model we're doing is if you can, you find your food, go to the website. We'll launch this next week. Find your food and say, I want this tested. So you can put up the money if you get enough money. So it's triggered. What's that cost? 3, 4 grand? No, like 500 bucks. Wow. Wow. I'm doing 10 -year -old crowdfunding. Exactly. So the people who also eat that thing from sweet green can be like, I don't know if it's got lots of plastics in it.

1:38:55Exactly. So then the test gets triggered, the results come back, and then we go to the brand and we say, hey, come claim your product. So they then come back and we say, now you pay back the people who funded your test. Like you should have been testing in the first place. So they're doing the work for you. So we want to do the food on the US. We want to test 20 % of the foods that make up 80 % of the US diet. So then we could say on average the average American consumed blank, you know mercury per day Academy or whatever so we tested a few of the things we looked at diapers That was a dangerously high level of glycophate in diapers Con exactly round up ready.

1:39:30Exactly. And then we also tested tampons Hi, which brain should say your high heavy metals which brands heavy metals? Calm out right now. Yeah, we can't yet so we We got the test soon. Exactly, so we're gonna reveal the first feelings, but dog food was really bad. Which makes sense, dogs have been living their shorter lives now. But yeah, once you start seeing this, it's really pretty. Have you guys checked out plasticlist .org? Do you see that? Not the live, see everything? Oh, yeah, that's another rich dude spending his money and telling him, I love it. No, I'm totally not. But I mean, like, this, hold on a second.

1:40:04This guy, I know it's super hyperbolic, but like just the plastic thing, it's really important to know, They rank things, but you also have to look at the absolute numbers. This is where this can get a little too carried away. I think that there's a lot of shocking shit in there that's super bad. But you've also got to recognize that a tiny amount that's like one, one trillionth of something that could ever affect your body, they'll flesh out, may not be that bad. So we've got to be really cognizant on how we interpret this stuff. These motherfuckers knew a whole time they were doing it. They knew.

1:40:35They were... This is like what the industrial complex is. Like, you're the main third of a new genre. You've got a higher -distance. Just like, you know. Thank you. This is great. No, I'm telling you, I'm so happy. I am so純 about this because these people, you know it's true. You know it's true. They knew they were doing this. And it takes some rich guy who's bored and principled, no offense. I love you. You know I love you. And who's the guy who's doing the plastic, that'll work? Zach. Not for you. Oh, sorry, that's pretty bad. It's another rich internet guy. He's like, you know what? I'm bored.

1:41:12These guys are screwing people over. I'm going to test plastics. And he harry turns up with 400 ,000 signatures outside of Kellogg's HQ and says you make in the same factory, the Canadian version, which uses beetroot coloring and carrot coloring to make it. And the exact same factory is throwing red 40. Yeah, so again, the back of Jason on this is so Gerber. So there's a lot passing by California that said, baby food providers have to disclose heavy metals in their foods. So it went into a factory annual year one and so we go to Gerber's website where all heavy metals. Yeah I think the four four big and so it's okay so we go to Gerber's website I can't find heavy metals results anywhere and then I realized my VPN's on and I'm coming from a server outside of California they've IP blocked.

1:41:55No way. To yeah California only IP origination they hide it and so this is what I'm saying these companies like these are nefarious. It's Really not not good. I mean what do you think of Bobby Kennedy friend of the pod and you know Him taking this on from aha. I don't want to make it political, but how do we get to this? Free bird. This is the good shit man. This is the good shit This is a little detours. Hey proctor Side quest worth taking Give me one of your nicotine drinks. KB, does that just in the other green room? Does that mean the other green room? No, I'm okay. I did a lot of drugs earlier.

1:42:42What do you think about the chatting? I think he is going to challenge status quo power. And I think that's going to create a lot of conflict and a lot of reconfiguration. I think it'll refrag. I like the refrag. There's a lot of really important questions being asked that are not asked in the way that they're being asked now. That's the most important thing. Is the system need to be challenged, and whatever's left will get hardened, and whatever shouldn't be there will get blasted away. That's it. Did you got a name in shame? You got to ask the heart for it. That's the thing that really pisses me off.

1:43:12You got a name in shame in order for them to do what's right. That's what's so fucked up. They want to do any of the AMAs, or... I mean, I don't know. I felt like this was going in a nice direction. I enjoyed the conversation. I got to do the conversation I find enjoyable. Just see if there's any cool image. People ask these questions. I've got a question for Brian in the meantime. I'll work for a good question. Brian, if you were to, without someone having to completely decimate their entire diet and never look at me again, what would you say a sort of top triaged lifestyle changes most people should look at making based on what it is that you guys have looked at?

1:43:48Yeah, I mean, the power laws are so clear. Sleep is like, by far away, the biggest power law. Then exercise number two, diet number three. And so it's just being consistent on those three things. And then once you get those three layers, you can go down other layers. But what we've tried to do is we try to say anything which increases my speed of aging is a form of die. So how do you eliminate that? And then we just started with the power loss. I start with zero all the way down and just, yep. Top three things for sleep. So the thing you want to do is you want to lower. So the key marker is lowering your resting heart rate before bed.

1:44:23I would say if you could optimize one marker in your entire life, it's that. So before you go to bed tonight, look at a wearable or take your pulse. It's your resting heart rate. So tonight this is say you're at 55. So your goal of the next week or two is to try to get down to 50 the next month, 45. And as you do that, so the way you drive it down is you have your final meal the day at least two hour for bedtime. So if you go to bed at 10, be done at 8, and then push it back at hour, you're like, hey, 30 minutes each day. And as you push it back every day, your heart rate is going to go down incrementally because your body has more time to digest.

1:44:56So then you also find that food you eat, like feed a big pasta or pizza or something, it will jack up the heart rate. So mine right now is 44 beats per minute. So if I eat late the day, my last meal the day is at noon. And I did that after like a few hundred experiments of like what optimize the embarrassing heart rate? If I have a big meal like a five or six, I'll be up by low 50s. Now take away about 30 to 40 % of my sleep. So you go to sleep super hungry. Actually I'm okay. Yeah, my body is really adapted. So food is a really big one and then two is windower team. So you need to calm yourself down You can't have your phone up.

1:45:29You to turn it off. Give yourself like 30 to 60 minutes decompression the day because if you leave your kids in the house and go sleep in the garage. Yeah One shower that that could help and actually a book in hand Has probably the best evidence. Yeah, so what Chris was saying right is like you can't do anything So screen off, book in hand, spend even 10 minutes and you'll be amazed at how much I'll calm you down. Yeah, there's some cool stuff around. People thought it was the blue light from screens that were impacting Melatonin release and cord is on stuff as you went to sleep. It seems like it's much more what you're interacting with on the phone that you're so engaged, that dopamine's firing, you're probably getting riled up about you sending stuff to friends.

1:46:09It's triggering all of these ideas in you. Supposed to just sit down and read red rising or something by Pierce Brown and you go off to sleep dreaming about being in. Exactly. And you can measure it by how much your heart rate goes up or down. So you now have a quantitative benchmark every single day if you could peg that to those habits. Regularity versus duration, what's more important? Consistency is so important because your body tells time like a clock. When I did eight months of perfect sleep, 100 % sleep every night to show I could do high quality sleep. You're tracking on whoop or you're tracking on the eight sleep.

1:46:40Yeah. They tend to are pretty close. No.

1:46:46Relative comparisons, they're not absolute. So just find one, they're all fine. Yeah, I did. This has been the big unlock for me. I am now sleeping. I got a 94 last night. I got a 99, two nights ago. It's my higher score ever. I'm really dialing in the sleep. And it's changed everything for me. It's the biggest life improvement you can do, period. It's the best performance hands -in -drog. It is just better than anything on market. But be consistent because your deep sleep window happens in the first two hours of night. And that's one that the garbage trash collector comes through to pick up all the trash in your body.

1:47:21If you miss that window, you miss it. So you miss the garbage trash collection. So that's why pick your bedtime and be consistent. Otherwise, you get junk accumulation. On the inverse of that, I have a six -week -old baby. So I have the least consistent sleep right now. How long can I endure that? I'll tell you two things that also work for me because I sometimes sleep with my bull dog and that was killing it but I got these nice headphones and I'll listen to some really high fidelity sleep music and use an i -mass and both of those added a couple of points and that was really good on live from how about how you sleep in Chris yeah pretty good yeah good thank you yeah audio books are good to sleep turn that off and I'm you probably got a problem with the ionizing radiation not ionizing radiation you bothered about bluetooth headphones Brian oh no oh that's good That's the first thing I've proposed to you that I'm still allowed to do in law.

1:48:16Everything else is like the fun police that comes in and tells me everything to go to the die police, I guess. I'm actually the happy police, right? Like, the should I say, it makes you happy. People, they have this misconception that like staying up late and missing bedtime and drinking is happy. It's not. It is sad. It makes you depressed. Like, and we have to be honest, like, we think it's happy. It's not. Well, listen, thank you to all of our guests. And, you know, you're very busy. I really appreciate you coming here. I know that you've been busy and congratulations on the big win for No Sforatu.

1:48:45That was great. That's an Oscar's reference. Thank you to the people who got it. But seriously, you worried because, I mean, yeah, are you sure what you're doing like this extreme is a good idea? I'm a little concerned. You might be turning into a vampire. You are doing the blood transfusion. Yeah, you know, I did it because my dad was experiencing cognitive decline and he called me an panic And he said I will do anything to save my my consciousness and so I did it for him So I the headlines was all about my son and my and my me but what you did a transfusion with your dad Yeah, that was a hard work.

1:49:22You're doing it with your son. Yeah, so I Regeneration. Yes, my dad called me like okay. I'm experiencing so he was riding something for work He walked away and it came back and it was a jumbled mess And he's like, I'm experiencing cognitive decline and I can't see it. He said, when I thought I would start forgetting names or missing keys, but right there in front of me, I didn't see the jumbo mess. He called me, it's like, I'm panicking. And so I was like, Dad, we're actually looking at this new evidence on these plasma infusions. I'm happy to give you a plasma if you are triathlete. We don't know if it's gonna work or not.

1:49:53So then my son heard, he's like, I'm in. We'll do a tri -generational thing. It's great. It's a family activity. Is there any empirical evidence of this? Chris, Chris, we should talk about it. There's a lot of good work on this. You think that this is a path work for soon? Yeah, I mean, it's longer conversation. Chris, what are you doing after you want to do some for Transfew? I'm doing Academy with Brian. Okay, can we Transfews as well?