Reed Hastings on Netflix, Powder Mountain, Anthropic's AI warning

29:30I want to go back to when you were growing up momentarily. They've been told your family life was quite stoic. You yourself have said emotions were not discussed. Give a little color to that, if you don't mind. Sure. This is 1960s and New England. And I think particularly for boys, you know, talking about emotions was not something that was ever developed. And so I don't know that I was that untypical. But it really wasn't until I went to college that I started realizing how rich emotions could be. You said you felt kind of lonely back then. Yeah. If the friends are just people you do things with and not people you share feelings with, that's a fairly thin definition of friends, but that's what I had.

30:27What do you think you learned from each parent? From my mom, you know, a sense of doing things right, kind of justice, kindness. Those would be the big ones. And then from my dad, a kind of super hard work. He was a lawyer, piercing intelligence, kind of probing, you know, Socratic method. You guys relocated to D.C. at one point for his job, I think, right? Yeah, he went to work for the government for Nixon for a couple years, five, six years. So we were in D.C. for those years. You mentioned your mom. One article read, his mother was a Boston debutante from a social register family who married a lawyer who later worked in the Nixon administration.

31:17She was repulsed by the world of high society and taught her children to disdain it. I don't know who wrote that, but I would say that's probably a little overwrought. But she had no love of sort of Boston society and wanted to break out of that, which she successfully did as an entrepreneur and as a social service founder. In speaking to your early entrepreneurial ambitions, is there something with cinnamon sticks? Well, cinnamon sticks was, it's when you take wood sticks and soak them in cinnamon oil and then sell them five or ten at a time. It was a hobby slash business I did in, I don't know, seventh, eighth, ninth grade in there.

32:02And then vacuum cleaners door-to-door, right? Yeah, I sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door after high school. So a number of kind of formative experiences. What was it in high school that made you realize, like, you wanted to be an entrepreneur? over? I don't think I really ever thought that, that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I didn't know any entrepreneurs. So I was content in like taking classes and doing well in traditional things. And it was only coming to Stanford graduate school after the Peace Corps, when I was around the Silicon Valley magic potions. And you know, when you'd meet people who had started companies, And I was like, well, if that guy can do a company, I can.

32:47OK, it really up until that point, I'd never met anyone who had like started a company. So, you know, it was just like doctors, lawyers, engineers. And I was going to be an engineer. Marriage. You have tied, you know, in past stories it back to kind of your views on culture and kind of some of the early insight that you had on that. And look, I mean, obviously, all of kind of your professional success has got a ton of coverage over the years and rightly so. But, you know, it's a rarity these days that marriages successfully last as long as yours had or yours has. What makes that work for you? Gosh, that's a mystery.

33:35I mean, you know, giving marriage advice is something I'm not qualified to do. We've been married about 35 years, have two kids, and I feel very, very lucky. And now that I'm retired, we get a bunch more time together, and that's great. Two or three things during my working career that I would talk with other executives is when your spouse calls, always take it. In a meeting, wherever you are, interrupt whatever you're doing, take the call. The feeling of availability is very valuable. And so I would do that and demonstrate that. The other thing was setting a budget of how many dinners and nights you were going to be away.

34:1812 days a month, 15, 10, whatever it is, and then stick to that budget. And then it gives your spouse a sense of control, you know, and that it's not constant negotiation or it might creep up to 28 nights out of 30. So that's another way to go in for the long term. You referenced a point in the mid-90s when you were killing it professionally, but the net impact of that was challenges on the personal life front. What was kind of the toughest moment and what did you learn going through it? Score more with the college-branded Venmo debit card and earn up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash. Got paid back?

35:04With the Venmo debit card, you can instantly access your balance and spend on what you want, like game day snacks, gear, tickets, and more. The more you do, the more cash back you can earn. Plus, there's no monthly fee or minimum balance. Sign up now at Venmo.com slash college card. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A. Select schools available. Venmo stash terms and exclusions apply at Venmo.me slash stash terms. Max$100 cash back per month. Protein is now at Starbucks, and it's never tasted so good. You can add protein cold foam to your favorite drink or try one of our new protein lattes or matcha.

35:37Try it today at Starbucks.

35:43Well, we had this great marriage counselor in about that time frame. And then he got me to see that I was a pretty systematic liar. That I would say family is the most important thing. And yet it's six o 'clock. We've got dinner plans at home. and then some exec or some other employee comes in with some crisis. And there was no question in my mind that I would stay with that employee as opposed to say, sorry, I've got dinner plans, I'm going home. And would your wife call you out on it at the time? I think she just was disappointed. But it was made worse by preaching sort of the virtue of family first, etc.

36:31And so I was essentially a hypocrite or not living with my values. And so then this counselor got me to see why I felt that professional obligation, how hard it was to disappoint that professional obligation. And then I could see that that was too extreme. And so two things came out of that. One, I was more honest about both family and work are important and it's trying to make some compromises there. and then actually do less of that. In other words, more often come home and allow myself to occasionally be disappointing at work, like there'd be some great event I should go to and not go to it, back to having the budget about the number of nights out.

37:13But I would say the big one for me out of this was the value of surprising candor. There's so many things that are conventional wisdom that we just say because we don't think that much about them as opposed to we live by them. And this was the one of the first. And that was the period where you started consciously making that change through your own first-hand experience. That's right. Netflix culture. What were the benefits or the perks that you put in place that you found made the most positive difference? Well, the Netflix culture was back to truth-telling. How are we, really? and it started off with we're a team, not a family.

38:01And by saying not a family, that was very shocking to lots of people because most organizations over history have been family organizations. Most countries were run by families. Most companies were run by families. Everything was family. And only in the very recent past have we had corporations and teams. So again, the default model that people have is that work should be like a family. And there are aspects of it that are that way. But that's not the primary path. The primary path is as a team where the coach's job is to have a winning championship team in place to do the goal, to win the championship.

38:47And so then we were directed about it. We want talent density. We want high performance. We want all the things that you would want if you were running a professional sports team. I talked to Roku founder Anthony Wood yesterday, who you recruited now almost a couple of decades ago to create a Netflix player for you at the time. And he said one of the things he most remembers from that period of time is he has never worked in his life with a stronger group of people. and he said he even remembers himself saying out loud at the time, why are we selling DVDs and not curing cancer? Yeah, well getting to talent density by constantly trying to upgrade is both hard because you form relationships and satisfying because you develop a team of all stars that could do many different things.

39:42So that is the benefit and it's not for everyone. In other words, many people mostly have job security needs And they're okay working around uneven talent levels if they have job security. Other people are willing to give up job security for working around consistently excellent people that push them. And so if that's your orientation, then a place like Netflix is fantastic, which is why we wanted to be clear up front with people about how we were. And we've taken that culture forward in Powder Mountain also. So there's one aspect, which is we have a safety culture around skiing and lifts that's different.

40:24And we try to be very careful on that. But for the most part, it's a team, not family. You know, it's very hard work. It's very honest, very direct. Like all of those culture things have worked very well here. And, you know, that's the tradeoff for having unlimited vacation time or, you know, some of these other perks. Explain how you personally would use the keeper test over the years. Sure. The keeper test is we generally view a job as like a property right. You have to really screw up to get it taken away. And so then we want investigations and, you know, was it taken away fairly, that kind of thing.

41:04And we want to shift the model back to the team to be in the keeper test. The test is, would we try to keep you if you resigned? And if the manager would not try to keep you, then that's their detection that they should let you go with a generous severance package and try to get someone in that they would fight to keep. So instead of you have to screw up to lose your job, it's a test around would the manager fight to keep you. you threw just that test to demoted at one point your co-founder. At another point fired your HR head who had been with you through, you know, multiple companies and was a close friend.

41:52While in theory, you know, it's easy to kind of talk the talk, you walk the walk. And I guess I wonder in what ways is that difficult when you were in those two specific situations? Yeah, both of them are difficult, partially because I was younger. It's gotten easier and easier as I've done more of it. Where if I feel like I'm serving the organization by pushing that person out, then I'm at peace with it because that's my job is to serve the organization. So then I have less feelings of cruelty, which are unpleasant, and more feelings of I'm a guardian, you know, for basically the effectiveness of the team and that that's my job.

42:41But both of those people I love and have continued to love. And they say the same about you. And so that's why that's what makes it so interesting. You know, it's again, it hurts, but it's respectful. and again they knew what the rules were and the system operates. Okay, speaking of tough conversations, I wanted to ask you about Warner Brothers Discovery. I have heard that you weren't a fan of the idea of Netflix acquiring it. Why not? I am a fan, have been a fan, so that's a misunderstanding because I generally have not been a fan of M &A. That's why people think that. But the particular deal that we struck was at a good price, and I was very excited about getting it done.

43:30Now, the other bidder, Paramount, decided to pay more, and our CEOs, Ted and Greg, decided not to take the bid up any higher. And so ultimately, Paramount was willing to pay more and won the Warner Brothers. So at a certain price, where we were at, I thought it was great. What made you think it was great? Well, they have amazing content and amazing people. So it would be an augmentation of what Netflix did. And they're a great company. But they were great at the price we offered. Right. And at a higher price, we didn't want to pay that. And Paramount did. So that's the bidding process. So Warner Brothers ran a fantastic process.

44:16And when they got Larry Ellison, you know, very excited about buying it, and he's got a lot of money, and he's not subject to trying to steward it like we are. And for whatever reason, he was willing to pay more. Ted Sarandos had said, after getting in the Warner Brothers Discovery books, their theatrical business is more positive than we had seen and we had modeled for ourselves. We had a lot of assumptions that weren't necessarily true. What surprised you the most through that? I would say just how thoughtful the Warner Brothers team is. They were, I mean, they've probably always been thoughtful, but we didn't get to spend that much time with them because they're competitors.

45:00So the stories that I heard were just, again, that they were very thoughtful. So it's disappointing to not win the auction, But both Ted and Greg felt like where we stopped price-wise was the right place to stop for us. And wish them well. Don't you think Netflix would have been a kind of better custodian of the company? You know, we love them. I don't know if it would be better or not. I would say another five or ten years, we'll be able to tell. But Paramount was willing to pay more. We can certainly say that. By the way, over the years, from what I understand, you've debated the idea of buying electronic arts.

45:43You've debated Fox, even Disney. Outside of Warner Brothers Discovery, which one kind of in theory did you guys talk about the most over the years? Yeah, I don't remember those earlier ones. But I would say any large company should be open to doing M &A and trying to think that through. what combinations would make sense. So it's good that they're broadly evaluated. But you've always, and Ted's even spoken about this, you've always been a builder and you've been generally pretty averse to the idea of acquisitions. What's involved in kind of making that calculus for you? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of M &A doesn't work out.

46:31Some works out fantastically. So think about YouTube that Google bought. You know, it seemed like a lot they paid. I think it was$2 billion. And, you know, now look at how valuable that is for them. So some M &A works out fantastically. Others don't work out so well. So you just got to have your eyes open. One, kind of moving on from Warner Brothers Discovery, I want to talk about some of your early days at Netflix because we have yet to touch on this. Okay, 2001, tough period with the dot-com bubble, predating that, you're at a company retreat in, I think, Santa Barbara, and you guys get a call that Blockbuster wants to meet the next day in Dallas.

47:21What do you remember from that period? Sure. I we have been asking for a meeting for a while. So it's more like they were willing to meet. Yeah. And it was at our request. And we went down to Dallas, Mark and I, and they were quite polite, but they kind of didn't take us very seriously. We were thinking, you know, maybe there's a combination here that makes sense. where we still get to do the online side. They do the bricks and mortar, and they have a lot of ownership in us. So again, they were thoughtful about it, but it didn't end up in anything. In hindsight, it might have been smart for them, but again, who knows if that would have worked out.

48:09And despite the pressure on you at the time, it obviously ends up being the best thing to ever happen to you, but I'd have to imagine it was emotionally challenging then. Well, I think we correctly anticipated that the fight with Blockbuster would be big and messy, as indeed it was. And so if we could head it off early by compromising, selling them a big chunk in us, that that might be very advantageous. But again, they didn't take the bait. And then they later competed very vigorously with us. And we fortunately came out on top. There's a period of time where you're losing a fortune. I think on one hand, you're rightly investing 1 % to 2 % of revenue in this thing called streaming, despite it taking 16 hours at the time to download a movie.

49:04Ted Sarandos has spoken about how even in your early meetings, almost a quarter of a century ago, So you could articulate your vision, your licensing at hefty costs, you know, content. When was the period where you were kind of feeling the financial pressure the most? Well, I would say two times during the blockbuster wars. So they copied our DVD by mail, as they should. and then it didn't work for a while and then they included it in store rentals and gave away a lot for free and were very aggressive financially, which, you know, a classic price war, which cost them and cost us. And we matched their pricing tit for tat and that kind of thing.

49:58So revenue came down. So that was a very difficult period because it was unclear if we could sustain ourselves against a company that was 50 times bigger. The second really tough period was the Quickster period. So that was 2011. And in that period, we were too aggressive in moving into streaming. And the customers weren't quite ready for it. And then there was a huge backlash and a big stock drop. And it took us a couple years to dig out of that. On that front, Eddie Q, Apple's number two, had texted me. My favorite story was how he went from beloved to hated when he split the streaming and DVD rental subscription.

50:46How he dealt with it and responded is what makes a great leader. Do you vividly have kind of a lowest point then and what it taught you? Lowest point was probably two months in and lots of people were calling for CEO replacement outside the company. And you're thinking what? That I was an idiot and, you know, this whole idea was idiotic. And in hindsight, it was too soon, but it's basically what's happened. So the DVD and streaming separated. The DVD glided on until 2025 was our last DVD shipped. And the streaming got bigger and bigger. So it was kind of the right idea just too early. and so yeah it was dark for a little while but you know within a year Ted really pulled a rabbit out of the hat with the original content with House of Cards and Arrested Development and we started to change the narrative about Netflix and then it was Netflix doing cool content Not sure how to tackle your taxes?

52:00Are you sweating the small print? you may be experiencing FOMO, the fear of messing up. The answer, using TurboTax on Intuit Credit Karma. They help you get your biggest refund, and then we help you do more with it with a personalized plan designed to help you hit your money goals. It's time to take your taxes to the max. Start filing today in the Credit Karma app. Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month.

52:40It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness.

53:07Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Are some of those toughest times, whether at Netflix or any of your other professional endeavors, while not fun in the moment, when you look back at it, some of the most fun experiences? No. Okay. No, the most fun are the victory laps and sort of, you know, this show sets new records like Stranger Things or new subscriber records or the joy of success.

53:55So, you know, they're intense times, memorable, I'll get into that, but not enjoyable. And in fairness, I've tried to self-select just some of the, you know, pivotal, tough times. When I was talking to Roku founder, Anthony Wood, you know, he was talking about the player. And he said, he's like, you got to ask Reed. I think we all, and he's like, in fairness, it worked out in my favor to the best possible way. But he's like, we all, I think, got fired because of a call that Steve Jobs made to read. And he's like, you got to ask him about that. Anything to that? No. OK. So Anthony's referring to, we became convinced that the future of the Internet player would have to be multi-service, not be a Netflix player.

54:49It should be independently branded and cover all kinds of different services. So you just didn't want it to be Netflix branded. And the plan had been to have this be the Netflix box. So we realized it'd be much more successful, independently branded. And then the second step of that is it'd be much more successfully independently marketed. And so we said, Anthony, you should take it outside. We'll own some stock. We'll give you some money. And you go launch it as the Roku player. And then it should serve everybody's content. And that's the way to go. He had said he thought, because he was also working on licensing Netflix, that he thought it was because of outreach to Apple and Steve Jobs saying, we aren't going to do it because you guys are a competitor that kind of woke up.

55:38No, they didn't really care about our hardware efforts. I mean, you know, that's like they're plenty confident of their hardware expertise and stuff. So nothing sexy that way. I think it was just our decision. And frankly, once Google got in the business, Apple got in the business, Amazon got in the business, we thought Roku would get crushed. And Anthony's execution has just been incredible. And that they still are a major player in the U.S. is impressive. And they've done many pivots along the way and become a very valuable company fighting head to head three other giants. The last kind of Netflix question for you is, you know, obviously there's been, you guys have gotten into original content.

56:26You've gotten into advertising, live events, on and on and on. The rest is kind of, you know, history as it pertains to the success of the company. And I know you're no longer running the day-to-day of it, but you are still chairman. Like, what's your long-term view for the trajectory of where the company goes? Well, subscription entertainment I'm very confident of. People are going to want entertainment. So we have a couple risks, mostly around AI. Does AI transform content creation in ways such that young people only watch YouTube and YouTube content boosted with AI becomes cool and sexy enough that that takes all their time and then - And your gut tells you what on that front?

57:13Well, that's the risk. And so we have to use AI well enough to improve our content, along with all the talent that we work with, so that we're worth paying for. So YouTube's free, and we're a subscription. And so we have to justify, which has been the history of television starting with HBO, why pay for television? That was the initial thing. And HBO proved that they could do content good enough that it was worth paying for. And so the challenge for us is to use AI to improve the storytelling. I mean, do you envision a day where on the AI front, somebody types in prompts, you know, create me a two-hour feature-length film that's a rom-com set in, you know, London, and, you know, AI in a matter of seconds creates this personalized, curated piece of content specifically to that person?

58:12You know, it turns out that personalized content is not what people want. How so? They want to have content that other people have seen. If all you cared about was the art itself, you'd watch a lot of 25-year-old movies you didn't happen to see that are really good. Okay? But in fact, you want to watch something that other people, you want to enjoy it, but you also want to watch stuff that other people are enjoying. And in fact, you often will sit, say, with your family and watch something you don't particularly enjoy, but you have a good bonding experience with your family. So think of it as a piece of film or series is doing two functions.

58:51One is it's entertaining you, but also it's creating connection. And so no, I don't think it's going to go create me a fantasy world I live in and no one else lives in. That sort of dystopian vision, I don't think will get much traction nor affect what we offer, which is entertainment that lots of people are watching. And that's kind of what makes it special. And you mentioned a couple of risks and I interrupted you after, I think, the first one. Was there another? No, this is the big risk is sort of AI and how it changes sort of independent YouTube type producers relative to us. And then we have direct competitive risks, us against Paramount, us against other companies that we have to continue you to just tell the best stories on the planet.

59:39If you're tuning in to Netflix, you know, five days one month, but the next month we earn seven of your days and the next month nine, then we're off to the races. So it's around earning those moments where you choose Netflix instead of the competition. So many of the folks, a couple of the folks, I should say close to you, said you have to ask Reed about some of the boards he's been on over the years. And perhaps we start with Microsoft, where I think you were asked by a guy you idolized for a long time, Bill Gates, and to be the lead independent director for five years. And, you know, I know you've long loved Gates.

1:00:17You even went to his, I think, Stanford building opening back in the day. How about the most interesting time you ever had with Bill?

1:00:28Gosh, there have been many things, both in the initial phase of Microsoft and then since then on philanthropy. So he gets nowadays very jazzed up around curing diseases. And so I've been trying to learn how he thinks about that. And polio is one that they've worked very hard on, which were on the edge of eradication on a global basis. But the last two or five years have been really hard. There's still some in Pakistan, still some in Nigeria. Like what sorts of questions will you throw his way? He's building the team. What gets you excited about this? We call it, you know, an intellectual discussion about his approach, because I'm trying to think through, you know, how does that change how I think about education?

1:01:16I'd like to have a big effect in education like he is in global health. So it's sort of, you know, parallel. It's everything about health is kind of interesting. So it's those aspects. But I think the amazing thing is when they recruited me on the board of Microsoft, it was 2006. And they wanted someone from tech on the board. But most people competed with Microsoft and were therefore conflicted. And so they kind of went down the list of tech leaders down and down and down. And eventually, they got to a domestic DVD renter. You really believe that? No, that's the truth. I talked to the recruiter.

1:01:59That's how far they had to go down to get someone who didn't compete with Microsoft and wasn't about to. Okay. And so and then they called me up and then I was, of course, flattered and then did a bunch of interviews and we hit it off on many different aspects. So and then I learned so much from Microsoft. I mean, they're an incredible, incredible company. Got to work with Satya a lot there. On that front, Satya, the current head, has called you a mentor and referenced your humility and humanity. In what ways do you think you helped him early on? We brought him into Netflix and had him visit with us several days and sort of see how, because he'd been at Microsoft.

1:02:44He had been some microservices very early, but then mostly of his career at Microsoft. So he'd seen one company, one imprint, which is a very good one, but it helps to see other ones. And so we got him permission to come into Netflix and sign all the NDAs and be, you know, like an executive for a couple of days and go to all the meetings and see the rhythms and how we operate. And he really studied our culture, some parts of which he thought would be great at Microsoft and others not. But, you know, it's sort of that's a good development experience for someone. You were on the meta board for eight years.

1:03:20In what ways did you work with Zuckerberg? Well, lots of different ways. When I got on that board, that was before they went public. So it was very early days and Facebook was cute and, you know, there was no Instagram at that point. And then the company grew up during that time. What I loved is Mark was always fantastically direct and honest with the board. How so? So, well, he was just always told us what was going on. You didn't feel like you have to play 20 questions to try to figure things out. So he would say what was going well and what wasn't and in a very candid and frankly secure way.

1:04:00So that was an incredible board in that dimension, too. Independent of the Peter Thiel stuff, which I know got publicity, like just, you know, having the opportunity to be on that board for eight years. What was kind of the toughest part of that experience? Well, I would say to see Facebook's brand fall and fall. How so? Well, it continued to fall all the way through that time. So that was tough because as hard as the company worked to turn around the fall of the brand, it wasn't very successful. and today it's part of why meta is good for the company and Instagram is fantastic and WhatsApp is fantastic and Facebook is, on the brand survey, it's not well trusted.

1:04:51How do you handle that when you're in it on the front lines of it? Well, that's what was hard. It's really for the management team to do. It's not the board's decision of how to do the tactics. Now is that the challenge? because you kind of want to roll up your sleeves more? No, it's not enough at a day, a quarter. There's not enough time for that. But it's like they would come up with one plan after another to reinforce or strengthen the brand. And despite, again, the brand distaste, both the usage and the monetization continued to increase. And then, of course, Mark really brilliantly got both Instagram and WhatsApp in and then has built a company around those brands.

1:05:40Was there a point where you started to see the light at the end of the tunnel? Not on the Facebook brand. Okay. Which is the one that I had grown up with. Okay, to young people today, they're like, what's that? Right. You know, but... You joined the Bloomberg board in 2023. In 2025, you were added to the Anthropic board. Obviously, interesting time to be there right now. What's your reaction to the recent news? Well, gosh, there's so much news in AI. I'm really driven by it getting better and better and better at a pretty incredible rate. So the figures that the company's talked about is going from, you know, 100 million to a billion to 10 billion of sales, you know, in three years.

1:06:27Like other than OpenAI, its primary competitor, no company's ever grown that fast. OpenAI, I think, has grown a little bit faster. But, you know, they're in crazy fast growth territory. And then, you know, Dario's been very clear in his comments that he wants to be a supplier to the Department of War and to the whole U.S. government. And he's still very invested in trying to figure that out. So we'll see where that goes. What are you thinking as you're watching all of that unfold? That Dario's a very long-term thinker. I mean, he's really got a set of principles that they abide by. Andy's a great patriot.

1:07:12And, you know, he's both super excited about what AI can do, say in health care or in job productivity, and super scared about what it might do in job replacement. So he uniquely talks about some of the scary scenarios, 20 % of white-collar jobs gone, those kinds of things, that a lot of people are like, why are you talking about that? That's not positive. And he's a truth-teller at his core, and he wants the world to know and be ready and aware in case that happens. It's not 100 % that it's going to happen, but it may. Okay, as it pertains to scary scenarios, I mean, obviously he's very publicly come out and said, look, we couldn't agree to the contract with the government because there were warm protections in place that would have prevented the government from being able to mass surveil U.S.

1:08:02citizens. What concerns, if any, does that then give you when OpenAI steps in to fill that void? Well, there's many AI models. There's OpenAI. There's Google Gemini. There's Elon Musk's Grok. There's Facebook's. There's the Chinese. So we can't control all of them. Different people will do different things. What Dario is very clear about is the anthropic set of principles that we think are good for democratic values. And he's willing to lose a lot of business and take a lot of heat over that, which is super impressive. Can I ask your perspective on it, though? Sure. I mean, my perspective when I joined, I knew that they felt this way.

1:08:47Was that part of what attracted you? very aligned, that they see themselves as caring for humanity as well as shareholders. And they're the type of a company, you know, B Corp, that's allowed to do that. So they're really living their values. How do we be good for humanity? Which, of course, they have to make judgment calls on as well as good for the shareholders. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. listening to this podcast smart move being financially savvy smart move another smart move having state farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor state farm is there prices are based on rating plans that vary by state coverage options are selected by the customer availability amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney+.

1:09:44Let's go! Get ready for a new case. We're the greatest partners of all time! New friends. Gary the Snake. And your last name? The Snake. Dream Team. Get new habitats. Zootopia has a secret reptile population. You can watch the record-breaking phenomenon at home. Zootopia 2, now available on Disney Plus Rated PG. And right now you can get Disney Plus and Hulu for just$4.99 a month for three months with a special limited time offer ends March 24th. After three months plan auto renews at$12.99 a month, terms apply. In the remaining moments I have with you, what piques your interest today? Well, going out and skiing with you.

1:10:23I do love getting out on the slopes. But if you mean kind of broadly in the world, both creating this art destination here, that's so different from anything else I've been involved in. If we end up like Storm King or like Naoshima, I'll be incredibly proud. And we've got some great curators. I don't do the curation myself, and so credit to them. That would be a big sense of accomplishment. And then if I think about education and AI, can we bring about, both through charter public schools and through AI on a global basis, a real improvement in how kids learn. So they're less often bored in class if they already know the material or frustrated if they're behind and they feel like they're not smart.

1:11:14So I think on both of those ends, we can make some really big improvements with AI. I read a 2020 interview you gave, and this was when you were at Netflix, saying, I'm in for another decade. What changed? you know I'm not sure I would say mostly Ted and Greg were ready and so it was either you know give them the power or they should go off and run other things and then I would develop a different set of successors so they were ready and I was ready it was a good time they've got fresh perspective. And then when I retired, I was 62, I think. And so then, you know, I've still got lots of cool time to do things.

1:12:01So I'm very excited about how well that transition's gone. And deservedly so. How do you schedule your days today? You know, pretty similarly to how I always have. And, you know, we get different meeting requests and try to think if I can do that and prioritize this. And, you know, I've got my full-time admin, as we talked about, helping me get that schedule in place. I mean, I've talked to people who've said, look, there are periods where you'll have a travel schedule that would rival that of a secretary of state. You could be skiing on the mountain until, you know, 1.30, then have an afternoon meeting in San Francisco, a dinner in L.A.

1:12:41that night, and then fly that night to Africa. So, like, there will be periods where you're moving around. It's nothing like when I did it at Netflix. When I did it at Netflix, it was, you know, here to Istanbul, to Delhi, to London, to Buenos Aires and back. And now Ted and Greg are doing that. So high jet lag, constantly projecting and leading and gluing the global Netflix together. The stuff I do now in comparison is light duty. You know, so I am busy some of the time. But again, nothing like the intensity of the corporate leaders. Not something you're presently working on today, but that just interests you.

1:13:29As it pertains to this question, and I'll end here. Yeah. What do you think's next for you? As far as I can tell, the combination of powder and AI slash education, you know, is my focus over the next 20 years on the kind of professional side or retirement side. And then, you know, a little more time biking and hiking and skiing, all of those will be very enjoyable. and sleeping outside. Maybe that too. Thank you for doing this, sir. Graham, what a pleasure. Thanks for listening to this week's podcast. Don't forget to leave a rating and review. And for more in-depth interviews, visit GrahamBenzinger.com.

1:14:34With a full lineup of non-alcoholic beer styles, you can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stock the fridge for tip-off with a variety of non-alcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online at athleticbrewing.com. Your beer, fit for all times.