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Remarkable People Podcast Notes: Why Interdependence Matters with Baratunde Thurston
Episode Overview In this episode of Guy Kawasaki's Remarkable People podcast, Baratunde Thurston, a multifaceted cultural critic, author, and host, discusses the significance of interdependence in the context of democracy and technology. The conversation explores how to navigate a world that is increasingly driven by technology while remaining connected to each other and our values.
Key Themes and Discussions
- Understanding Interdependence
- Concept of Interdependence: Thurston emphasizes the need to recognize our interconnectedness, particularly in the face of a divisive political climate and advancing technology.
- Value of Community: He discusses the importance of being grounded in communities and how technology should facilitate relationships rather than replace them.
- The Role of Technology
- Living Well with Tech: The discussion raises critical questions about how technology can enhance our lives and democracies.
- Common Misconceptions about AI: Thurston describes AI as a predictive tool lacking genuine intelligence or personality, encouraging listeners to remain skeptical and informed.
- Challenges of Modern Life
- Divisive Political Climate: Thurston reflects on his experiences filming the series *America Outdoors*, highlighting the increasing polarization within communities.
- Civility and Human Decency: He stresses the necessity of maintaining basic human dignity and decency, especially in how we treat one another in the political sphere.
- Personal Stories and Anecdotes
- Background and Name Origin: Thurston shares insights about his name, Baratunde, and its cultural significance, illustrating a sense of identity connected to his roots.
- Experiences with Humor and Satire: His past work at *The Onion* provides a humorous lens through which he examines current societal issues.
- Call to Action
- Community Engagement: Listeners are encouraged to engage with their communities and ask critical questions about how technology and policies affect their lives.
- Redefining Goals: The conversation urges individuals to define collective goals that prioritize human connection and welfare over profit.
Key Takeaways
- Interdependence is Vital: Recognizing our interconnectedness is crucial for fostering a healthy democracy and society.
- Technology Should Serve Us: We must interrogate how technology aids our relationships and community building.
- Engagement Over Disengagement: Active participation in local issues can lead to meaningful change and help in navigating modern crises.
- Embrace Hope: Despite current challenges, there is an opportunity to design a better future rooted in shared values.
Conclusion Baratunde Thurston’s insights offer a powerful reminder of the importance of community, interdependence, and the need to redefine our relationship with technology. This episode serves as both a call to action and a message of hope for listeners striving to create a remarkable future together.
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Recommendations
- Watch the TED Talk: Listeners are encouraged to view Baratunde Thurston's TED Talk titled *How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time* for a deeper understanding of his perspectives on race and technology.
- Explore *Life with Machines* Series: Thurston's series provides a critical examination of how we can interact meaningfully with technology.
Feedback If you enjoyed this episode, consider leaving a review or sharing your thoughts on social media to continue the conversation about interdependence and responsible tech use.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
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1:08So residing in that space, and I've been learning a lot over the past couple of years about the deeper truth of interdependence, even to the foundation of the United States.
1:22Good morning, everybody. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast. and as you know because I've said it now 300 times we're on this quest and mission to find inspiring and informational and quite frankly remarkable people and we found another one and I hope I get his name right because he said no one has ever mispronounced his name I don't want to refer to it's Baratunde Thurston did I get that right yeah you crushed it guy yeah yes I like to have a short introduction of people, but he's a difficult one to introduce because he's like a cultural critic. He's a comic. He's a writer.
2:11He's a commentator. He has this great series called American Outdoors. And he also has a podcast called Life with Machines. And by the way, he just won some Signal Awards. So congratulations, Baratunde. Now I have to over enunciate your name. Guy. You can call me Guy. Guy. Yeah. So you won some signal awards. What does that mean? This was our first award for Life with Machines. It's a one year old show and it's a new awards thing. So I wasn't even sure what it might mean. But then I look at who else was in the company of victors. and it was some serious people. It's NPR and the Financial Times and Colin and Samir with their big YouTube show.
3:02So they say that they're making a show to acknowledge people who shape culture and shows who shape culture. And certainly for our show, Life with Machines, it's really not about tech and AI as much as it is about people and us setting the right culture to live well with tech and not just survive tech, which is too often the dynamic we're finding ourselves in these days. So if your mom asks you, son, what exactly do you do? What do you tell her? I say, I hopefully make you proud. That's what I do. And what I would tell my mother is that I am using my voice as best I can to weave a better story of us and how we might live well with our fellow humans with our fellow life forms on this planet and increasingly with these machines all right so you tell your mother that and then will you ask her for me how did the r in your name become an r instead of a b because babatunde is about the father returns or something like that.
4:17So did they make a typo on the birth certificate? Were they trying to get a custom license plate and Babatunde was already taken? What's the deal there? Guys got jokes. Good morning. I'm waking up. The coffee didn't do as much as your opening lines about my name. This is great. There actually was a typo on my birth certificate, but it was my middle name, not my first name. So you're right and you're wrong. We'll get to that. my parents found my name in a book. It was the late 70s and a lot of Black Americans were trying to find their way back to Mother Africa and plane tickets were way too expensive.
4:53So they thought, all right, we will import these names and attach them to our kids as a way to reforge a connection severed by the United States and our system of chattel slavery and total disruption of lineage and culture and language and self-determination. So this book had a bunch of African names in it. And there's a bunch of us who were born in the late 70s and early 80s who have no direct African ancestry that we can cite, but have Ghanaian names and mostly West African names. And the book identified Babatunde. It's a very popular Yoruba name from the Nigeria region. And it said that you could change it to Baratunde, if you so choose, that they were interchangeable letters.
5:37They are not. I have been lovingly reminded of this just this weekend. I met a Nigerian who brought this to my attention and then caught himself and was like, you've probably been asked this many times before at this point in your life, haven't you? I have from early childhood through to now my late 40s. It's a good question. And the answer is slavery. So I blame it on the system of enslavement. and that I'm grateful to the Yoruba people for not taking too much offense. Wow, that's a great story. I don't know if it's politically correct to say this, which is probably why I don't win any Signal Awards, but I have to tell you that every Nigerian I know is a remarkable person.
6:26So there's the CMO of Autodesk, right? Yeah. There is this doctor in Canada that Mattel made a doll about, right? And finally, the pinnacle of Nigerian awesomeness to me is Lavi in Chicago. Lavi Ajayi, yes. Right, right, right. And then now I meet you. So I want to be like honorary Nigerian. I just... I want to be honorary Nigerian. I did the 23andMe thing years ago. And I do have, according to that data set, ancestry in the region that is now called Nigeria. All of these borders and names were created largely by European powers. But the odds are quite high that my ancestors are from the same region as the people of Nigeria's ancestors are.
7:20So I take a little solace in that and just try to wear the name. My mother was trying to attach this meaning of father returns in my birth. And she was really attempting to honor her grandfather, who she loved a lot. The book also said that the name could mean one who is chosen, which is not the chosen one. I got to be real clear about that. That's a high pressure, high mortality rate occupation. I am not interested in that. I'm not applying for that or declaring for that. But I was very late to show up after she had several miscarriages. And so there was a lot of strain and anxiety leading up to my birth and a lot of relief once I decided to finally show up.
8:04And where does she live right now? In the afterlife. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that. 20 years ago, almost to the day. All right. As I was doing my research on you, I said, this guy, he's like a little bit of Marquez Brownlee. He's a little bit like Bear Gryllis and he's a little bit like L.A. Mistel, all rolled into one. You are just a Renaissance kind of guy. And yeah, I was really impressed. Now, can I go into your dark past and ask a question of, all right, so you work for The Onion, right? I used to. Yes. Yeah. So back then in The Onion, I had this impression that if you were a writer or a producer working for The Onion, you really had to struggle.
8:49How can we make fun of this president? How can we make fun of this CEO? You really had to be creative and stuff. And is that how it was? Because it seems to me today, working for The Onion is almost easy. All you have to do is like, well, why don't we have an episode of The Onion where the president of the United States is in a jet wearing a crown and he's dropping shit on everybody. And everybody would say that is the most ridiculous thing. How could you have an episode of The Onion about that? So how did The Onion work back when you had to really be creative to get funny stories? Thank you. I wouldn't say today it's easy.
9:28I don't work there anymore. I am a subscriber, though, probably so, and love what they've continued to be during all these changes in politics and media and tech and whatnot. Back then, there were similar concerns. We keep moving the ball or moving the threshold of what is success and what is even satire. So back then, George W. Bush seemed beyond satire. People said it was over and it wasn't. I sit here right now in lower Manhattan, staring at the World Trade Center just out my window. And that was a big moment for The Onion. I hadn't worked there at the time. But how do you take such a moment of tragedy and turn it into healing slash comedy slash satire?
10:13So I showed up to an institution that was really great at that, at finding a joke where others thought there could be none, and that's pushing the bounds. What I saw in the room was thinking, a lot of thinking, and people who were in touch beyond just being New York City dwellers. The Onion was not an elite institution in terms of the people who went there. It was people who went to state school in Madison, Wisconsin, or people who dropped out of school. And so it was really area man, area woman kind of energy and vibes. And I think that has helped that institution stay grounded throughout his whole history.
10:53And then I saw debates. There was a lot of stuff that never got published because it felt too lazy or too easy or maybe too obvious, or like it was picking on targeting sort of the wrong party in terms of how that joke would be structured and laid out. And then lastly, The Onion tapped. There was the core writer's room, but there was also this network of contributors who were around the world. And that allowed the organization, it wasn't quite crowdsourcing, but you have this work from home network, essentially, of people who aren't full-time doing this. They're living their lives somewhere in Australia, all over the US.
11:31I feel like there were some in Europe too. And you just have multiple perspectives. It involved a word that I don't think we're allowed to use anymore. One of these banned words, diversity. I'm probably going to have to pay a$10 ,000 fine to Brendan Carr just for using that on the internet, but I'll say it again, diversity. It's 20 grand. Yeah. Yeah. And it wasn't like a very racially diverse place, but it was an economically and geographically diverse place. And I think I saw people trying real hard to be sharp, to be thoughtful, to be original and to be funny. And that's a hard game to play over 20 years now and still be going.
12:12yeah sounds a little bit like the literary version of the macintosh division seriously yeah really yeah really there's a shared aesthetic there's an appreciation for craft and quality there's some insularness a little bit of like we're better than the others trying to do the same thing there's a commitment to quality yeah yeah we should have all gotten shares in Apple at the time. Thank you. I agree with you, Zach. Listen, I have four shares of Apple. Hold on for dear life, as they say. There are front desk receptionists at Apple who have made more money from Apple than me. I guarantee you that.
12:57Anyway, and now I go to the Apple store, I stand in line, I pay full retail like any fool. I've come a long way. That would be like Ferdinand Porsche's going into a Porsche dealer and being on the wait list for a 911. Maybe not. No, it keeps you grounded. I'm just like you. I'm just people. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You're just like me, except you have signal awards and I don't. But anyway. We're going to get you some signal awards for your remarkable podcast. I'm going to have a write-in campaign. Listen. There you go. So I saw your TED Talk. And before I watched the TED Talk, I read the review of the TED Talk.
13:42And he said, this is one of the most magnificent TED Talks ever. And I said, wow, how can that be? And so I watched it. And the guy was right. I don't know who said that. Some white dude said it was a great TED Talk. And just from, you know, okay, besides the message, which was magnificent, The way you use your slides, the way the text changed and the text changed color and all that. Man, you must have rehearsed that a hundred times. That was extremely well done. Thank you. Yeah, it was a painful, powerful message. The title of the talk is How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time. And I was commenting on this phenomenon of white people calling the cops on very innocent black people whose only crime was being black in the wrong place at the wrong time.
14:32And I was angered by this relentless onslaught of first images of police killing black people like that. That's been a thing for a while. But then you start to see the upstream of that. How do the police end up there? Sometimes it's a quote unquote barbecue Becky who doesn't think black people should be barbecuing, unlike Merit in Oakland or Permit Patty, who's like telling this little girl she needs a permit to sell lemonade on the street and things like that. So, yeah, I did a dance with the technology to try to choreograph some movement and not just be like a dude angry about racism. And I had some really good partnership in it.
15:14In many ways, my computer has been my creative partner for a really long time. Born in 77, had Apple IIe early in the day. And so my whole childhood was deeply affected by co-creating. and then using keynote and slideshow, almost like a puppet, right? And doing this back and forth between me and the slides. So it could land some of the jokes for me. And yeah, I got to work out that timing. But the concept began as a game. And I want to thank Anil Dash. He was running a company at the time called Glitch. And the very first version of this, I workshopped with him. A few blocks from where I am right now, it was lower Manhattan, actually, in like 2018.
15:55I think. And we had designed an interactive game, a real or not headline picking game, inspired by my time at The Onion, where the headline really is such a strong element of comedy and the statements, but also this racial message and this justice message that I was trying to bring forth without a luxury tone. So we built a prototype together on the Glitch platform. And I presented it at the XO conference in Portland, Oregon. Sometimes we could call it a occupied Portland, Oregon, thanks to the excess of military personnel who have somehow found their way there. And I hope they find their way back home to their bases and to their families where I'm sure they'd rather be.
16:38But until then, let the stuffed animals and inflatable frogs show them a jolly good time with street performance art. So yeah, that's a long answer. I did rehearse it a lot. I ran it in different stages and places. I rehearsed it with the TED people and I just tried to get like deeper and deeper into it. So by the time it got on that TED stage, it really was like I had been almost like in a residency in terms of doing this performance much more than just a talk. And I was shooting for, like I wanted to move people and shock people. I also wanted to disarm them and really make them laugh and try to do both those things at the same time and i tell you everybody listening to this podcast you should go watch that ted talk not as i said the message is magnificent but just the technique and how you did it with no big graphics and all that kind of magical effects it's just text and colors and it's words yeah it's really really really magnificent And I got to tell you that a couple of weeks ago when there was the Pentagon offsite at the Ritz-Carlton Quantico.
17:51And then there was like a lot of there was a lot of people were saying Pete Hegseth gave a speech like a TED talk and was up there on the stage ranting and raving. And I really I was offended by that because I have given many TED talks. I've seen TED talks like that. That's not what a TED talk is like. It's bullshit. That's a very unfair comparison, but I agree. I'm in Hawaii right now, Baratuni, and when I see a white guy in a pool, I'm going to call the police and see what happens.
18:23Just make sure he has his papers on him. That's all. You're just trying to keep America safe. I am. I respect him. I am. They better not be having a picnic and being in the pool, but anyway.
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19:17Because at Capital One, it's not just business, it's relationships that help you do more business. Learn more at CapitalOne.com slash business cards. Do you think the time has come that there needs to be a Hispanic version of your TED Talk? Oh, huh. Why do you ask? Because it seems to me that if you're Hispanic male today, you've got some of the same kind of issues. We need the Hispanic baratunde to give the talk about what it's like to be a male Hispanic man in America right now. I appreciate the credit you're giving me. While I do think my talk removed 98 % of racism in America, there remains a really immovable 2%.
20:08I don't know what to do about that. So I just be cautious in encouraging other racial, ethnic groups to follow my lead. You may not get there with the one TED Talk. One of the things I tried to do in that talk is what you're referring to with just the use of words is I was deconstructing sentences. and highlighting the grammar of the headline, but also revealing the structure of power in society. And at the end, I take this jump from all these headlines about white people doing X to black people to men doing X to women. And the point wasn't just to highlight oppressive structures, it was to remind us that we can change that structure and reorder those words, change the verbs and do something different with our power.
20:56An executive harasses female employee could become executive mentors female employee, right? It's just like a real simple substitution. And the subjects and the objects can also be played around with. So essentially, I offered an open source extensible data framework for justice that I think would apply whether you're Latino or Muslim or you just look brownish, which is quite the charge of suspicion and apparently justifies use of Black Hawk helicopters in American cities right now. So we could all use a reminder of that. And for those who are not in those smaller but growing minority groups, the way this system is going, there's another set of sentences which we've heard through history.
21:45First, they came for X and I did nothing because I wasn't X. Then they came for Y. And so I think we're potentially in that scenario as well. So if you're not a black person, if you're not brownish, give it a little more time, right? They're already weaponizing and abusing the powers of the state just against people who think different and express their free speech and criticize the government. And that's really not what the United States of America is supposed to be about. So let's remember ourselves. What I really want to ask you is, so do you think it's harder to be a Mexican man or a black man in America today?
22:24I really reject the premise because while I have meddled in the oppression Olympics myself, I've done some great arguments for my own suffering against the suffering of others. I think that's not a useful competition. And in terms of the difficulty of being, I really do. I mean this. I think it is actually hard to be a white man in this society right now, but not for the reasons that like a Pete Hegseth might say who struggles to do a pull-up effectively. Like there's so many concerns for the well-being of people of color because various forms of repression and internment camps and forced labor and dehumanization, yada, yada, yada.
23:09We know all that. But there's another type of loss for the people who benefited from all that. And if you've grown up in a story that says the only way you can be is to put somebody else beneath you, that is a very sad narrative to be force-fed, to be told to accept as normal, to expect that. And to grow up with a culture of fear and insecurity around your own position is really sad to me. To fear people who look different, because the most you can think of about their impact on your life is what they can take from you as opposed to what they can offer you, you're missing out on so much of what it means to be alive.
23:57If your default setting is assumption of threat and fear of loss, and the world has so much more to offer and life doesn't work that way. Like the tree doesn't fear the bird, right? The tree needs the bird to help with its life force and pollinization, the flower and the roots. Everything's interconnected. And we're not separate from life. We're a part of it. This is something I was able to beautifully learn even more deeply while I was making America Outdoors. I'm connecting with people. And I think our business leaders and our tech leaders need to be reminded that we're connected with and interdependent with the earth.
24:38yeah, it can be very hard to be a black man or Mexican man, it'd be even harder to be a woman because of the way we set up social and economic rules. But I feel the most sad about those who think the only way to be is to be alone. Just one podcaster to another, you just used the metaphor of the tree shouldn't fear the bird. Did you just come up with that in real time or have you used that before? Because that is a freaking brilliant metaphor. I want to know, is your brain so fast that you're answering Guy Kawasaki? Why don't I come up with a metaphor about a tree not fearing the bird? So have you used that 50 times before or is that brand new?
25:25Yeah, yeah. I've never used that before. Wow. However, I live in a place mentally and attempt to spiritually where I try to anchor into that truth. And one of the things that I've been trying to learn and to share is this through line of interdependence. that Western culture, European culture, modern life demands that we become further separate from each other, from the earth, from our history. The technological tools being promoted right now are selling loneliness. You don't need people. You don't need employees. You don't need human relationships. You don't need human friends. Here's an AI companion for you.
26:16here's an AI agent that can do the job of all these people for you. So you can build a$1 billion company all by yourself, as if that's a feature and not the most dangerous bug of all. So I'm residing in that space. And I've been learning a lot over the past couple of years about the deeper truth of interdependence, even to the foundation of the United States through indigenous democracies that predate our own. And so the metaphor of trees and birds, I've never said that before, but I have felt and thought and said that we need to be able to see trees as more than just resources to turn into lumber, to build houses.
27:02We have to see them as our lungs beyond our bodies. And that recognition is one I found a few years ago, and I've repeated that went a lot the trees and birds that was a guy kawasaki exclusive and original but it is built on a body of experience and exposure i mean it into the past couple years this is why you're baratunde thurston and i'm not man let's just say i appreciate the genius of what that simple statement to thank you man thank you we all know it we all know that truth and it's time maybe now more than ever, to reconcile our business systems and our political and governing systems to acknowledge that essential truth.
27:49We have a beautiful opportunity to do that. So we seize it or are forced to do so. We got a great segue here. So talking about interdependence, this American Outdoor Series, you're going all over the country and you're looking at snakes and you're getting rice and all this kind of stuff. But do you think if you did that now, is the feeling still the same? When you get past the CNN headlines and the Fox headlines, when you're actually in this place with these people, do you get a very different feeling from people that's not in the headlines, not the drama, not the conflict? Yes. And headline is an important jumping off point.
28:34And what I got to experience making that show and what a lot of us get to experience when we leave our screens and our human made infrastructure is we leave the head and get back into the body. And the head can be a source of a lot of confusion. We tell a bunch of stories up there. We are influenced by propaganda, which is promoted to us for profit and sometimes don't recognize that. So I got to have a bodily experience with people that wasn't about bullet points and words and argument. It was about movement together. It was all breathing together. It was about accomplishing something as simple as walking down this path together or navigating this waterway in this boat together or learning how to shoot these clay targets together.
29:29but it was a really small example of what we've been missing at the collective level, which is shared reality, shared experience, shared purpose, less about rhetoric and more about an embodied sense of being together. And it was humble. It was a real humble reminder that we do still share common ground. It's getting harder. And I think it will be harder if I was filming this week than when I was out two years ago. But I know the truth enough that if we did a bit more of that, we could see past those headlines, which are often overstating what's really going on. We are very, very divided. And we're still not as divided as they would have us believe about ourselves.
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30:16So you're saying it would be harder to shoot American Outdoors now because the divisions are greater? I think it would be both more necessary and more beautiful right now and harder. I'll give you some examples. So we filmed this series in 2021, 2022, 2023. And I was in a lot of places that I wouldn't naturally end up. I spent a ton a time in the Southeast and in very rural small towns in Florida and Georgia and Arkansas and in very, very conservative places in Utah and Idaho. It's a big country. There's America, there's America, and they don't often meet. And I got to visit both and they both got a lot to offer.
31:04But while we were filming, I would see signs. We did this episode along the Sewanee River that crosses Georgia and Florida. Really important river for life, human and otherwise. And I'd see these big banners on the river, almost like highway billboards. And they were proclaiming, fuck Joe Biden. Now, first of all, who is that for? Is that for the alligator turtle? Who are you trying to convince? Is that the best you have? And I would see this in people's front yards and there's kids, like their kids running around. And I have very strong political leanings in the other direction, but I would never take out like a full profane ad like that.
31:50It lowers you, it lowers your whole community. And you're not really saying anything about Joe Biden, you're saying everything about yourself. We were in that same shoot as we were setting up to film with the manatees, 90 % of the people, 95 % of people, gracious and great, and we all are here for these manatees. One guy harassing my crew. You guys are trying to bring your liberal values here. And my Australian film DP, director of photography, he's like, mate, we're just making a nature show. We're trying to film manatees. But this guy wouldn't let go. He was trying to provoke a confrontation and more.
32:30So I know that kind of tone and attitude. I would encounter that even more if we were out this week, for example. And that, I think, would make things harder. It's very sad. Wow. I don't even know what to say about something like that. I'm sure you have people who listen to this show who believe all kind of things, who voted all kind of ways. And that's fine, for the most part. But I think outside of what people's thoughts are about taxes or immigration, there is a basic human decency and human dignity thing that we got to remind ourselves of. And do we want our children behaving the way we see our leaders behaving?
33:17If the answer is no, we should stop that. And so what I experienced out there was people lowering themselves to the level of their political leadership. And that is just objectively not a good thing. We coarsen everything. We start to other each other. We start to dehumanize. And that becomes policy. And then it becomes even easier to do what's happening now. We're just snatching kids out of their apartments at the end of militarized armed guns while they're naked at 3 in the morning. We shouldn't be here. And we're okay. So we're still drinking our coffee. We're still going to work. And apparently the stock market is doing great because of seven companies.
33:57And that's definitely not a problem. It's definitely not a problem that the S &P 500 is relying on seven companies for a third of its value. So we're just going to ignore all this and pretend everything's great. Like we're literally out of balance. Yeah, you can have thoughts about immigration, etc. But we got to agree. We don't behave this way toward each other. We don't teach our kids to behave this way toward us or each other. And we got to just repeat that. This is some basic stuff. This would be like the tree killing the bird, right? Right. And the thing is, once we start doing that, ecosystems, yes, there are predators and prey, but there is also balance.
34:39And we're out of balance in a lot of different ways. We're out of balance politically. We're out of balance economically. And if we don't correct that, like the system long term balances itself. We're still within the wheel of life. We'll be brought into balance by climate change, right, by disease, by all kinds of forces. But I'd so much rather choose the self-correcting method, right? We can be more compassionate about it. We can make money along the way. We can build beautiful things together. So as our FCC chair, Brendan Carr, might say, we can do this the easy way or we can do this the hard way.
35:16And that goes for balance in our system. And so currently, I think too many of us are choosing the hard way. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like when you hear all these tech bros and they say, we got to settle and move to Mars. So you're telling me that we're going to go to someplace tens of millions of miles away that is completely the most hostile place to human life. Wouldn't it just be easier to fix the Earth than to move all this shit over to Mars? But what do I know? That's why I'm not a billionaire. there? No, you know a lot because you also value something more than money. And I think there's such a trap and a lie that money fixes things.
35:59Like at a certain point, yes, we could fix roads with money, but we can't fix holes in our hearts with money. We can't fix like lack of spine and backbone with money. Sometimes it makes it worse. What's the point of making all these billions if you're just going to bend the knee to a really petty wannabe tyrant who flip-flops on things on a daily basis and uses presidential power and authority and resources to mock up a video of King Trump's plane dumping feces on people exercising their First Amendment rights in America. That's your king? It's like the line from Black Panther. Is this your king?
36:40if we're going to do the king thing in America, I can think of a lot better candidates than this guy. This is really shameful. And so for the captains of industry with all of their resource and self-proclaimed brilliance, this is dumb. This is really, really stupid. And it's a waste. Why'd you spend all that time hoarding all those resources just to give them away to a little petty like mob guy who's shaking you down for a percentage of sales like really this is what all your education has led you to have you read any of the books in your large language models that you stole what is going on here ask your own ai what to do next i don't think it would suggest you do what you're doing i want these guys to like find their human side too because i don't want to be vilifying and making them out like they're not people they are but they seem very disconnected from life.
37:33I have made a decision that I am going to limit my net worth to under$1 billion because I swear at a billion, something happens to your brain. And now I'm nowhere close. So I'm pretty sure I'm not going to have billionaire's disease, but I just don't get it because whenever I was raised by my family, my father and mother always believed that if you're fortunate, you go through these stages in life where first you learn, then you earn, and then you're supposed to return. But to me, these people, they learn, they earn, and then they burn. Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you should take the high road and make society better, not just increase the value of crypto and make sure that long-term capital gains is lower for the billionaire class.
38:29I do not understand this at all. I gotta say. Here's the, I think a true thing. These individuals, someone like a Mark Zuckerberg, and I'm not, it's not just him, but he's just like to put a name to the examples and not be so vague about billionaire. Okay, let's say someone like Mark, I don't think it's just down to individuals who should make better choices. I think we make choices in the context of the systems we're in and of the incentives that we have and of the social groups that we're a part of. And we have let the guardrails off. We, not Mark, right? We decided to celebrate and lionize business people as the only type of leadership that has any value.
39:18And we decided that political leadership was good only insofar as it mimicked business leadership. And we decided that we'd rather torch our social safety net and let people swim on their own than to take care of each other. Now, I didn't decide that. I doubt you did. But the outputs of our political system have led us there. And it's been happening since long before that particular person, Mark, was even born. We're in this 50-year project of dismantling the commons and public space and hyper-valuing wealth concentration and hoarding. And that's a very particular agenda. And the people seeking that have used our political system to achieve that outcome.
39:58So we're living with the consequences of a bunch of collective choices to set the field in a certain way. So we can't be totally surprised that folks are operating within the rules of that game playing to us, it looks dirty, but the refs aren't calling them. It's because the rules of the game have been changed to favor that kind of behavior. So we can't just be appealing to the individual. Hey, you should give more of your money away. Why? I clearly get more advantage this way. And I've been raised from zero to pursue personal advantage. So we got to do a couple of things. We got to like collectively reset some of these system rules.
40:37And I think we got to get below the surface even of rules. And I had a recent conversation with General Stan McChrystal at the Masses of Scale Summit. He has a beautiful book about character. And he's saying, we need to have more of a national conversation about character. Who are we? And this comes to some of the points that you and I talked about earlier in this conversation about some of the democracy that was already here before any Europeans ever showed up on this land. the Haudenosaunee Confederacy to name it often known as the Iroquois had a practicing super functional democracy still running to this day it's literally the longest running in the world not ours we were inspired in part by them but there are some deeply held principles that undergird it and the role of women being equal in governance the respect for nature and having a seat at the table long-term decision making along with federalism and impeachment and liberty the injustice for all.
41:36We already have a good set. We should expand on that and recommit to that. And fortunately, we've got a big birthday party coming up in July 2026, 250 years since the Declaration of Independence. And what a time to revisit our founding principles and ask ourselves, are we still committed to those? And what else might we commit to in a refounding moment? If the wheels are going to fall off the car anyway, we might as well question the whole vehicle and decide where we want to go and how do we want to get there. Yeah, we can just fire some artillery shells over the highway and celebrate that way.
42:17What's the problem? And obviously an MMA match on the White House lawn. Oh, yeah. And then there'll be a reception in the new ballroom after that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, we are faced with overwhelming opportunity. to get right. Every day reminds us we get this bigger and bigger gap. Someone read the Declaration of Independence. It's pretty good. It's like a list of grievances against a particular person in the form of King George. So it comes across a little whiny, but it also declares some things. The right of the people to change their government. It's not meeting their needs and meeting the common good.
42:55There's so much value in that. So just read that and then look out your window or at the nearest screen in your life. Look at the decisions and outcomes of the society that you're in, of how your government people are operating, and ask yourself, are we living in alignment with that? And if not, how do we update that document to better reflect who we are? Let's just get really honest about it and be like, we the petty, in order to form a less perfect union, we'll use our authority and overwhelming might to troll and subjugate the weakest among us. That would be an honest declaration, right? And we could just do that.
43:42Let's keep it real, America. Or we could decide that even those words were not enough and that we must rise to something greater, even as some seek to lower us all. We, the living, declare interdependence with all forms of life because it's really the only way through. This is the opportunity in front of us. when this episode gets out Baratunde you and I we might end up in Manzanar and we can be roommates
44:16I would love to be your roommate you can have the upper bunk because I will be too old to climb up to the upper bunk but we might get arrested and carted off I am enjoying these last moments of free speech
44:33Oh my God. Up next on Remarkable People. The AI that most people are talking about, understand that is probabilistic statistical prediction to generate tokens and thus words, essentially, and pixels and other forms of media. It doesn't know anything. It's not your friend. It has no personality. It is a very good mimic, an incredibly useful bullshit artist. It has helped me save thousands of dollars in my home and manage home renovation projects. I have no business doing it. None. Basically, be curious, engage, learn a bit more than you know.
45:17Meet Nicole Nicholas, Capital One business customer and co-owner of Ansett Uncles, a plant-based restaurant and community space in Brooklyn, New York, that got its start from a need for unity. The inspiration, it was born from the desire to create a space that felt like home, where we can connect community culture, good food, and come together with family and friends. That's how we birthed aunts and uncles. Nicole and her husband, Mike, were fulfilling their dream of bringing people together out of their home kitchen. But they soon learned that the demand for community was greater than they knew.
45:48It became overwhelming and we were like, we need home, but not in our actual home. We realized that there was also a need in our community for something bigger in our neighborhood. So we had to find a place. Moving from a home operation into a storefront was a huge next step. But Nicole and Mike were able to take it on with the help of Capital One Business. It's not for the weak. As a small business, finding resources is super important because that's the way you'll be able to manage and scale. We would have never done that without having Capital One to be able to help us along the way. The cashback rewards are very helpful.
46:23So, you know, it just gave us that runway to be able to breathe a little bit. Then you get to focus on the cooking of the food and making the experience great. To learn more, go to CapitalOne.com slash business cards. Become a little more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People. It's found on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki. All right, so now tell me about AI. You have a series about life with machines. So give me the gist of what you think. Is it the worst thing or the best thing that ever happened? I reject binaries, man, but I'll take your setup and I'll pivot.
47:06I'll redirect off of that. Our goal with this show is to create a place where we can explore how to live well with technology and not just endure it. how to support the use of tech that helps our relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with the earth. And along the way, we're going to be critical when it's called for. We're going to be curious because that's probably the most important thing. We're going to try to be clear and occasionally comedic because this stuff is absurd. And so that's the broad mandate. Life with machines, very purposeful title. I love language. I believe in choosing words as best as possible.
47:49It's not machine life. I'm not about that. We're not about that. I don't think we collectively should be about that. We're about life. And I don't think we're going to really have any life without machines. That ship has sailed, so to speak. But what kind of life, that's what we should be asking ourselves. How do we want to feel when we interact with these technologies? What do we want the outcomes to be? If we want massive further concentrating of wealth and power, then great. Let's stay on the set course. Let's keep doing what we're doing. If we want something radical like peace or happiness or contentment or enough, then let's reorient to have our use and design of these technologies to support those goals.
48:39But my big take around AI isn't yay-eye or nay-eye. It's really like, for what? We're skipping that question. We have no goals with so much of this. The goal seems to be like, let's keep up with whatever Sam Altman imagines for us. No, he's not my king either. And so we should all, whether we're in a business or a school or a city or a household, start with what do you want? What do you need? Okay, cool. Can you establish that first? Don't even bring tech into it. What do you want? What do you need? What do you want and need for the people you care about, for your community? Let's expand that I into a we.
49:24And then, all right, how do we get there with the technology? What types of technology do we need? What's the infrastructure it should be set up on? What kind of business models? Multiple, not just private equity and venture backed billionaires trying to become trillionaires. That is good for a certain type of innovation, but not all of society. That's going to only benefit that part of society by definition. So that's where we're trying to get with the types of inquiry we have with the show. YouTube is our primary distribution now, Substack, where we write more. And then we do a lot of experiments.
50:01The last big thing I will say is we don't just want to pontificate and mouth off and pop off. It is fun. And I love words more than most, but we got to do. We got to engage. And I know there's a lot of folks out there who are really alarmed about AI and against it and against the people who are for it. And I do not think our path to the future can be like, I don't touch AI. So we've made a choice at Life With Machines. Like, we definitely touch AI. We use it a lot. We push beyond normal use and beyond reasonable use for the purpose of learning and sharing what we find out. So we built an AI as a co-producer character for the show.
50:43We named them Blair. We treat them more like a teammate than a tool because I think that's the transition we're on. And we're figuring out, okay, what feels good? What feels weird? What's absurd and what's exciting? And hopefully we can be of some service in helping the rest of us who don't have that kind of time decide what we should be demanding and building. and if i'm listening to this podcast and i'm doing fist pumps in the air because i agree with you and i'm not sam altman i'm not mark zuckerberg i'm not tim cook i'm not mark andreason i'm not peter teal what am i supposed to do these seven or ten people seem to control the world yeah so there's a couple of things and i'm still figuring out is there like a five point action pack for people who hear all of what we've just said.
51:35And I'm like, okay, so what do I do now? So one, I think mentally be skeptical and curious. If we're just kind of like reading headline level and overhearing things, then you're going to have some thoughts about what AI is that are not true and are much more capable than practically. So the AI that most people are talking about, understand that is probabilistic statistical prediction to generate tokens and thus words, essentially, and pixels and other forms of media. It doesn't know anything. It's not your friend. It has no personality. It is a very good mimic, an incredibly useful bullshit artist.
52:20Truly, truly. It's the best BS I've ever come across in my life, so much that it has helped me save thousands of dollars in my home and manage home renovation projects. I have no business doing, none. But me and my AI buddy, we're a little more capable. So just basically be curious, engage, learn a bit more than you know. You don't have to become like a data scientist, but learn more than you know. I would also say what you can do is engage, ask questions about, experiment with other human beings. Too much of this technology is foisted on us in an individualistic manner. I guess I got to apply this software update to my device.
53:03I guess I have to figure out how to keep up. I must understand if I'm going to have a job in the future. It's like me, myself, and I. And meanwhile, the folks who are developing this are working very much in a collective. They're coordinating money to affect political outcomes through hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying. They're literally pooling all of our data, right? They're not going to us one at a time asking permission. They're just taking it and coordinating amongst themselves on how best to get what they need out of it. So we got to receive this and engage with this in more of a we fashion and like multiplayer versus single player mode.
53:36So that's just an orientation thing. And I would also say, put it on the agenda, put AI on the agenda for whatever size society you feel like you have some influence. And spoiler alert, that probably doesn't mean Washington DC right now, But it could mean your school board, could mean your neighborhood commission, could mean your homeowners association, could mean your apartment building. Like, where are you in community with others where you have a little bit of influence? City council, et cetera. And just start asking the questions. So how are we thinking about the needs we have and what we want?
54:10And is there a way that AI can be helpful in us getting there? It doesn't even have to be like an anti thing, but make sure that it fits your circumstance. and then ask more questions. Where's the energy for this one coming from? Is it different for these other ones? And then we start to be able to make more informed choices. That right there would put us in a better place than we already are. And it's just some stuff off the top of my head right now. It's definitely not the whole answer, but I hope it's a bit helpful. I think this is the place to end this podcast because you're giving us a message of hope.
54:47We got to, we got to. Listen, everything is falling apart. Everything is on fire. We're in a climate crisis. We're in a democracy crisis. We're in an economic crisis. We're in a crisis of crises. That's how bad it is. And there's never true endings. For individuals, yes. For life, no. So endings are also beginnings. And we've been through a lot as people in the United States, as humans on earth, and we will continue to go through a lot. I would rather orient toward, okay, so what do we want next? Rather than just sitting in the depression and the anger of everything we're losing. Acknowledge the loss, let's mourn, and let's get to designing and building the future because we cannot let the people you just named be the architects of our future.
55:42Peter Thiel is obsessed with the Antichrist and wants to create a CEO monarch for America. No, thank you. Not even thank you. Just no. I don't appreciate it. I don't appreciate it. And as people who have said to me for many years, when I have been critical of this country, that's so un-American. If you don't like America, you can leave. If you want a dictatorship, there are plenty established ones to choose from. That's literally not what we're about here. So the rest of us can like whine about it and complain about it. Cool. Let's be in our feelings for a minute. But then we got to start building the future we want because these guys are already doing that with our money and our water and our energy resources and our psychological and emotional resources.
56:30We got to reclaim that, redirect it, have our own vision for the world we want. And I absolutely believe technology and AI will need to be a part of that. I've seen beautiful things that are possible. I've also seen that we leave it to these guys and it will be hard for most of us. And that, I'm not signing up for that. Hope you aren't either. I mean this in the most positive and, you know, praiseworthy method. You are a freaking walking TED Talk, my God. And I don't mean in a Pete Heggs sense. Thank you. He would never make it on TED Talk or a walking TED Talk, man. So now you're like Jane Goodall plus Marquez Brownlee plus Ellie Meistel.
57:21We threw out Bear Gryllis. We threw out Bear Gryllis. I will take Jane Goodall over Bear Grylls any day. I had an opportunity to honor her recently. Last week in San Francisco was on a panel about her legacy with some incredible people who have been working toward making it real. And she knew what was up. Dr. Jane knew exactly what the deeper truth is. that truth of that interdependence, that all life is interconnected with all other life. Yeah. And we can try. And in the short term, we can succeed in going it alone. But in the long run, that's to our collective peril. Let's use these big brains of ours.
57:58Let's open up these beautiful hearts of ours. Let's connect them. Let's reconnect them for some of us. Let's reconnect them. And then let's be about life. Come on, it's too beautiful to spoil it. Thank you very much. I just want to thank the Remarkable People team also, because there's a lot of people who helped make this podcast successful. So there's, of course, Madison Neismar, co-producer, Jeff C., co-producer, Shannon Hernandez, sound design engineer, and Tessa Neismar, also a researcher. So that's who's behind me, Baratuna. I really enjoyed this. Thank you so much. So did I.
58:42This is Remarkable People.
From the publisher
What does it take to stay grounded when the world feels increasingly disconnected and tech-driven? That’s the question at the center of this conversation with Baratunde Thurston. A cultural critic, outdoor explorer, author, technologist, and host of Life With Machines and America Outdoors, Baratunde is impossible to categorize—and that’s exactly why this episode lands with such force.
We dig into identity, democracy, interdependence, and the real stakes of living alongside powerful technologies.
This episode pushes us to ask: How do we live well with technology? How do we reconnect in a divided time? And how do we build a future rooted in values—not fear?
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