Smart and Brilliant People Saying Smart and Brilliant Things (w/ Oprah Winfrey, Mel Robbins, Ken Burns, and More)

17:37Rob Lowe:That makes perfect sense, but then I'm going to be devil's advocate. But I'm going to say what I know if I tried to say that to my kids aren't 14 now. But if they were coming to me for advice and I hit them with that. Well, hopefully you don't hit them, but you know. Yeah, yeah. They would go, well, what if they fill in the blank?

18:01Mel Robbins:Uh-huh.

18:02Rob Lowe:Well, give me one. Let them. Yeah. Go ahead, give me one. But what if my suspicion that so-and-so is actually the not good person for me that I think they are, what happens? What if I'm right?

18:21Mel Robbins:Meaning that you're in a situation where you're dating somebody or you're in a situation. Okay. So there's a couple things I'm going to say, and we're going to start to unpack this because I've only told you part one of the theory, which is saying let them. Because you're never going to be able to control another human being. So you have a fear.

18:39Rob Lowe:And the answer to the fear is let them.

18:41Mel Robbins:Is the fear that they're dating the wrong person?

18:43Rob Lowe:Let's make up one. I was just making one up. You give me one. There's a fear that we have that is keeping me stuck that you need to say to me, let them. Okay. I'm going to get fired. How about this? I'm going to get fired. Let's just use that one. Great. Let them. Let them.

18:57Mel Robbins:You want to know the greatest teacher in life, Rob? Life. Yeah. Let people learn from life. Why are we shielding people from the consequences of their decisions? And what I have learned is that every time you step in and rescue somebody, you cover for your kid who was out partying late last night and now they're sleeping in because they're hungover. And so you call work or you allow them to call work and say, oh yeah, well, we have a family thing today. I can't come in. That is actually enabling somebody to stay stuck in their behavior, right? And so what you want to do is, first of all, we'll kind of layer this in because it's the exact same dynamic if you have an adult child who's struggling in school.

19:45Mel Robbins:It's the exact same dynamic if you have somebody who has let their health go. And wanting somebody that you care about to do better, that's amazing. Seeing the potential in somebody, Rob, and knowing that they could do better, that they could be healthier, or that they could make more money. Seeing that somebody is dating somebody that's treating them horribly or very, very badly or whatever and knowing they deserve better, that's an amazing thing. Wanting that for somebody is what we should be all doing. Wanting it is not the problem. The problem is how we go about it. And how we go about it with other people when we're worried or when we have an opinion or when we have expectations is that we express those things in a way that doesn't motivate change.

20:28Mel Robbins:It actually, if you look at the biology and the neurology of the way a human being is wired, you actually create resistance to change. And so let's take the example that you have someone in your life who is in a relationship with somebody who, whether it's, they're just not bringing out the best in the person that you love, or they are not treating them well, and you see it. Here's the thing I want everybody listening. So as you're listening to Rob and I, and you're spending time together with us and you're on your walk or you're in your car, I want you to consider something. Who is the hardest working person in a classroom?

21:09Mel Robbins:It's not the person getting A's. It's the person who's failing. See, people know, Rob, when they're in the wrong situation. If you're dating somebody and you know they're not treating you well, you don't feel good in that relationship, you know it. You're busy in there in conflict with yourself because you wish this person would treat you better. If you're struggling in school, you know it. You know, you wish that you could snap your fingers and get straight A's because you'd feel better about yourself. So the last thing you need is your mother or your father's judgment about the fact that you don't have motivation because it's usually not an issue of motivation.

21:49Mel Robbins:It's usually an issue of some skill that's missing or some confidence that's missing or some hope that's missing. But there's a lot of effort going in. People who are out of shape, they know it. You don't think that they'd rather be in fantastic shape. And so any kind of judgment or pressure, and especially the kind of thing that we typically do, which is like, hey, you know, maybe you should go to the gym today. You're like, you don't think I've thought of that, Einstein, that I would actually feel better. The reason why it's hard to change is because our brains are hardwired to do what's easy right now.

22:26Mel Robbins:It's a simple fact. And we are hardwired to resist what feels hard. And there's this line in addiction and in therapy and some of the world's leading psychologists that I spoke to in researching the Let Them Theory book, it just struck me. They were like, look, Mel, nobody gets sober until being drunk is harder than facing the thing you're running from. And so if you're in a situation where you're in a relationship with somebody who treats you not great and you want to be treated well, I choose to believe every human being wants to thrive. I choose to believe every human being wants to feel good.

23:03Mel Robbins:I choose to believe that every human being deserves to be happy and to feel fulfilled in their life and to have support in terms of friends and family that encourage them to go on and to keep moving. But most people, when they find themselves in a situation where they're not thriving or they're surrounded by friends or family members, or they're dating somebody who's treating them poorly, they know it. They just don't know how to get out of it. And so that creates a problem for the rest of us because when we're worried about somebody or we see potential, We usually express it. We usually get worried for them.

23:42Mel Robbins:So we start to feel intense pressure about it because we want them to change because we think we know best. And the thing that I've realized over and over again is that when you operate that way, you're not creating an environment for change. You're actually creating resistance to it and more pressure on a person that already feels it. And so the reason why the let them theory is gonna flip all this on its head is because the second you say, let them. Let them live their life. Let them be adult. Let adults be adults. Let them sit on the couch. Let them lose this job. Let them struggle in school because you've gotta first detach from the outcome and you've gotta detach from your emotions and the tension that you feel so that you can go to step two.

24:37Mel Robbins:Because your power in this situation is never in applying pressure to the other person because it backfires.

24:43Rob Lowe:It's in detaching. That's the only power you have. Correct. The only move you have. Correct. Detach.

24:48Mel Robbins:That's number one. Then you're going to go step two. And step two is where you say, let me. And let me is the more powerful part of this theory because this is where you remind yourself that you have something that's within your control. and that is what am I going to think? What am I going to do? And what am I going to do with the emotions that I feel? Because that's where your power is. It's never in the other person. Your power is in tapping into what you can do. See, you can't change another person, but I never said you couldn't influence them. And so when you say, let me, you now get to choose.

25:27Mel Robbins:You get to choose how you're going to show up.

25:38Rob Lowe:Dave Bazzucchi. Before Roblox, I had started an educational software company. It was about learning physics and simulating physics. And we expanded that company into physics simulation for engineering and education. What does that mean? I saw that. What is a physics simulation? Way back in the early days of the Macintosh, all of the educational software was boring and pre-canned. So it's like ball on rope, swing the ball on rope. What Roblox was much more like one of those early paint or the prior company was interactive physics, build whatever you want, ball, springs, whatever, see what it's going to do.

26:20And when we launched that long time ago educational product, we saw all these kids trying to build cars and houses, like ignore physics. We want to build stuff. And we don't want to just build graphical stuff. We want to build cars that roll and we want to build, you know, things that blow up and all of that. So that was an initial idea of Roblox is this isn't just a graphical. This is a physically simulated thing. The 3D cars on Roblox, when a wheel falls off, that car will skid along the ground. It's kind of inherently built that way. So the very, you know, I sold that company. It was acquired.

27:02I took a couple years off. And I had an interesting career deviation because I just thought, okay, we sold the company. I'm going to go get a CEO job somewhere. You know, just plug into that. Yeah, yeah. You know, just going to be right. Silicon Valley guy, tech dude. Exactly. Like it's just going to be right there in front of me. And it was interesting over about a course of six months or a year. It's just like, man, I'm just not finding much. That aligns with what I'm doing and what is out there. And so I did have an interesting career moment where instead of going straight, I almost felt, you know, I have to ignore all of that.

27:45and go on a more meandering, curvy path, which was like, yeah, I'm going to get together with Eric and we're going to start coding and we're going to hack up this cool thing. That in retrospect was exactly what we were passionate about. Like we were passionate about 3D simulation, interactive environment, and the initial spec for Roblox, pure passion projects, new category, 3D simulation, use GC content, all of that. We had a business plan slide literally 18 years ago that was new category, you know, like this intersection of all these things. And when we started the company, it was just like, man, it'd be cool if we could have a four person lifestyle company just write code all day long and like that'd be really fun that is that's where my head was at for several years and that became an obsession over time that is

28:52Rob Lowe:that's like i remember interviewing ringo star he goes i remember just thinking if i could ever play drums around liverpool i'd be super happy he ended up ended up in the beatles yeah so there is a little bit of a learning there that if you happen to be really, if you are lucky enough to be reasonably good at something and really interested in it and those things line up, go that way rather than what I was trying to do, just grab some CEO slot somewhere.

29:31The GLP-1 pill you've been waiting for is now on Rho. Yep, it's finally here. With the same clinically proven ingredient. Now in a pill. And now on Rho. It's the first FDA-approved GLP-1 pill for weight loss. At the lowest price available, that's one daily GLP-1 pill for big results. Now on Rho. Go to Rho.co slash listen to see if you qualify. Rx only. Go to Rho.co slash safety for serious side effects and boxed warning associated with GLP-1s. The Serta Labor Day sales event is here. It's the unofficial end of summer, which means shorter days and longer nights. So fill them with perfect sleep night after night.

30:13Save up to$800 on Serta Perfect Sleeper X mattresses and adjustable base sets. See how the Q4 support system helps relieve aches and back pain. Limited time offer. Visit Serta.com to find a retailer near you. Perfect sleeper. Perfect sleep. Night after night.

30:33At DSW, we ask the important questions. Like, what shoes are you going to wear? Whether you're prepping for wedding season, festival season, or just planning the ultimate vacay, the right shoes can make or break an RSVP. So own the moment. You've got big plans and we've got just the shoes. At the perfect price, of course. Get ready to get ready with Designer Shoe Warehouse. Head to your DSW store or dsw.com today. And let us surprise you.

31:11Rob Lowe:Ken Burns. It's kind of, in a weird way, surprising to me that it took you as long as it did to get you to Leonardo da Vinci in a weird way. Yeah, well, now I feel like, what an idiot, 40 years. And it's a funny story because I was working on a film several years ago on Benjamin Franklin. And one of his biographers, one of many biographers that we had interviewed and was a friend of mine, Walter Isaacson, and I were having dinner in Washington, D.C. And he tells me, you know, I also wrote a biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I said, I didn't know that. He goes, yeah, and I think you should consider it like a twofer.

31:44Like you should do both of them because they're both artists and they're both scientists. And I said, Walter, you know, I don't do non-American topics. And then after dinner, I was talking to my daughter, Sarah Burns, and her husband, David McMahon. We've collaborated on the Central Park Five and Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali. We've got a whole skein of American topics up ahead of us. But when I said, yeah, and Walter kept pushing Leonardo. He said, that's a great idea. You know, so years later, they then go to Florence with my two oldest grandkids for a year from 22 to 23. And they wrote the script.

32:17And, you know, now that it's done, you feel like, oh, I've always known him. And what took me so long?

32:23Rob Lowe:I have so much that I want to talk to you about. And you kind of just piqued my interest with they wrote the script. is the process for every documentary you've ever done the same or does it change based on who your subject is? Like, you want to do Leonardo, you want to do Da Vinci. Is that the same as you want to do baseball? You want to do the Brooklyn Bridge? Like, it all starts in the same fashion? Yeah, so, and I'll tell you though, we're a little bit different. You know, it's all public television, right? So we've got one foot tentatively in the marketplace and the other proudly out. We don't have investors.

32:59We're not looking for buyers. We are interested in underwriters, people who, like for Leonardo, are going to be patrons, you know, that will say, do this. Unlike Leonardo, I finish all the stuff that I do. He's only got 20 paintings, half of which are unfinished, but that's his prerogative. We also do things a little bit different. There's traditionally, even within documentary, a kind of set period, you know, to research, three weeks, three months, make it up. set period to write. A script is produced. It maybe goes through a couple iterations and then you inform the shooting and the editing.

33:39Boom, done. Yep. We never stop researching. We never stop writing. We shoot from the very beginning. We sheet stuff we're interested in, whether there's a place in the script to fit it in. The worst place in the world. If you see a talking head in our film, it is not because we said, can you get us from paragraph two to paragraph three on page three of episode two. It's because it's a happy accident of trial and error. And that what happens is a much longer, more attenuated, but more organic form. And so if you're courageable to the end, that allows you to change things up to the very end. Editing is a much, much longer period, but what a wonderful grace that is to be able to evolve and to understand that you need, in this case, a new kind of visual grammar.

34:25As Sarah says, my daughter Sarah says, he's a lateral thinker. So why wouldn't we split screens? You know, we have, this is a guy who's born in the last half of the 15th century and goes into the first 20 years of the 16th century. There are no photographs, there are no newsreels, but we've got photographs and newsreels and all sorts of stuff going on in two screens and four screens and eight screens and 12 and rocket ships and footage from the early 20th century. and we filmed models doing movements of their muscles to emulate his studies. We have pictures of live drapes as we're looking at his studies of drapes.

35:01We have people who in Florence to this day recreate the relatively simple pigments in clamshell and how they made the painting. We found a guy who writes in the backwards mirror script. He's a lefty like me and instead of smudging, he wrote everything backwards, right to left, but in a mirror script. So just think about if you're writing a grocery list, you're doing that. I mean, everything he wrote down, 6 ,000 pages of his codexes are philosophies and principles of flight and of birds, of water dynamics, of human anatomy, of dissections, of botany, of, you know, and also sketches of people and all sorts of things.

35:41It's all doing it in a backwards mirror script as he's writing all this stuff.

35:45Rob Lowe:Wait, wait, explain to me. What is backwards mirror script? Why wasn't he just writing it? So if you're like going to write the word damn, right? As in, let's just say, for brevity's sake, the thing that you build to hold back water. Yes. Would do a backwards D. Yep. And then an A and then an M. Like that. Yes. He would just write very quickly across the page in Italian, in a variety, in older Italian dialect, but one that you would recognize. Every single thing. So that if you think about, you know, rubbing your tummy and patting your head, you know, it took us a while when we were seven or eight to be able to do that.

36:34He's doing a much more complex version of that as he's writing the most complex treatises on the nature and philosophy of painting.

36:42Rob Lowe:Why would he do so? Why wouldn't he just write it? As a lefty, as all my life, if you look at this area, it's all smudged. So rather than go left to right, in order to not smudge, he goes right to left. He's leaving no trail, just as if I assume you're a righty. Yes. And so you're not leaving a trail because you're ahead of whatever you're writing. Yeah, understood. I'm not. And even signing autographs for book plates, no matter how hard I try, I've got Sharpie all up and down my hand like this. So he decides not to do that. But it isn't just backwards. It's mirror script backwards. So it's only going to work if you hold it up to a mirror.

37:26You can see what it is. Everything he wrote, everything, grocery lists, Mike complained about an assistant, his idea on the Pythagorean theory, how squaring the circle takes place, What the anatomy of the similarities between the anatomy of a hand and the anatomy of a leaf. How the aortic system of the human body, the circulatory system mirrors this. I mean, he doesn't have a telescope. He doesn't have a microscope. And yet he's at that fundamental thing of the microcosm and the macrocosm. Everything is recreated. So we, beneficiaries of those strong devices, know that there's a profound similarity in the architecture of the atom and the solar system.

38:09He's already figured this out. I mean, he may not know what an atom is. He may not even have identified the solar system, but he certainly sees within nature all of these patterns. And nature is his greatest teacher. So at an age when people are emerging from a kind of orthodoxy, literal and figurative of the church, he's liberating himself even in the thing we call the Renaissance, which is also centering humanness too and is interacting with the rest of the world. so Italians can have pasta and ravioli from the Chinese. And we can also be into mathematics from the Muslims and into experimentation from the Muslims where Aristotle and Plato, who were now emerging enough to go jump back over the Dark Ages and pick them up and say, it's all about observation.

38:54He's doing all of this stuff, all of it. And he knows more than anyone else. In fact, at the end of his life, when King Francis, the first of France, takes him to be his final patron and says, do whatever you want. I have no commission, so you can do whatever you want. He's telling everybody, look, I've got the smartest guy on the planet on my court, right? And it's like Steph Curry on another kind of court. And he's saying, basically, this is my Aristotle to my Alexander, right? And the only thing is, is that Aristotle, as great as he is, as completely dominant as he is, is a philosopher and a writer and a thinker.

39:36Leonardo is that and the greatest scientist of his age an anatomist, anabotanist and somebody who understands about gravity and oh by the way an inventor and a drawer of machines and military stuff he does the first landscape we think in western art he does the first aerial view without the benefit of a balloon and he's also the greatest painter of the age and maybe of all time that's subjective but we certainly know the most famous painting in the world is his And so, you know, if we're using 10 % of our brain, as we're told in the cliche, then he's using 75 % or 85%. And don't you want to be like Leonardo?

40:17That's my whole thing that I've gotten out of this. I just go, what have I done with my life?

40:21Rob Lowe:I know. To say it's humbling is an understatement. To what do you ascribe his—to say genius is the understatement. Yeah, right. Where does a guy— Is it from the universe? Is it from God? Is it from where? Why him? Why then? How? So I think it may be all the unanswerable ones, a gift from God of the universe, just a spectacular gift to humanity to remind us of capabilities periodically. You know, and I would say he's the man of the last millennium and William Shakespeare has an argument, Mozart has an argument and Bach has an argument, Thomas Jefferson, George Will said in my biography 25 years ago as an argument.

41:08But none of them do all those things and then more as he did.

41:19Rob Lowe:Here's Oprah Winfrey. You know what I've always wanted to ask you, because you know I have this book out, What Happened to You? And as I was preparing to talk to you today, I was thinking, I wonder what happened to Rob and how it shaped. So obviously you grew up being a cute little boy and have now the thing that people remark, because when I told people I was going to be doing this interview, it's like, God, he never ages. He doesn't age. He doesn't age. He doesn't age. How does he do that? So I'm wondering when you are born, the cute little kid who evolves into the man who is the handsome guy, how does being what you look like affect who you are?

42:08How has that affected who you are? Well, it's, well, the first part of it is

42:16Rob Lowe:I wish I was, when I, I wish that when I was younger, I was cute. What I actually was, was pretty. And that as a boy is not what you want to be. Ah. Because, I mean, I, you know, I was, you know, people called me f*** all the time. I mean, I got that 24-7. Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I never talk about this. This is the first time I ever talked about it. Because it's one of those things when we were talking about your book, What Happened to You, in the previous interview that we did for you, it is one of the things that happened to me. And I've always been in the like never complain, never explain, you know, kind of vibe where I'm not going to revisit it.

43:09Rob Lowe:So people talk shit about me. So what? But the truth of it is we know today that that stuff affects you. Absolutely. I know that today. And actually, if it had happened to me in today's culture, there would have been an audience for me to come to and say, hey, this is going on. And people would have been like, oh, no, it's not. We're going to fucking step in and stop it. In those days, people are like, so? Yeah, you're going to complain about being pretty? You're going to complain about being pretty? That is so interesting because I was thinking, I remember years ago when I had Sybil Shepard and a bunch of other models on, and it was actually Sybil Shepard is the first woman model that ever admitted that the beauty was a power.

43:55because every other interview I'd ever done with models, they always say, oh no, and I have this and that and my thighs and I have cellulite. They wouldn't admit that there is actual power in beauty. And it was Sybil who said, not only is there power in beauty, but she remembered when having her own daughters, the moment you feel like you've lost that power, when all the eyes turn to the younger women and are no longer on you. And I was just thinking as I was preparing to talk to you today, wow, that must have had an impact on you when your external presentation is how people view you and so much of how people see you is connected to your beauty.

44:45Rob Lowe:Well, you were talking about phrases that we love and truisms. This brings up my personal favorite, which is never compare your insides to someone else's outsides. And, you know, I have never felt like, well, for a long time. For a long time growing up, I never felt like the way I looked. Like I looked like the guy who should be king of the prom, right? Yeah. Like almost a caricature of it, frankly. Yeah. And I wasn't. I was a child actor in a time when people weren't. And everybody, like I said, everybody thought I was gay because I liked the theater and it was pretty. So, you know, because I can sing you the entire book of Oklahoma.

45:33Rob Lowe:So, I can't. So, and so I always felt different, you know, in that way. And then I got to the point where I owned it and do feel the Sybil Shepherd of it all. I mean, let's face it, it's, you know, I'd rather, you know, be, you know, leading man than not. So, you know, looking like a leading man is a good thing, right? Yeah, yeah. It's great. Right. And so it has you at some point moved into ownership of it and accepting it and letting it work for you and not trying to push against it. 100%. And by the way, that's in every aspect. We talked, we opened this by talking about Arnold. And the one thing, I mean, I love Arnold.

46:22Rob Lowe:Arnold's very flawed and he's very wonderful and very accomplished, but he's a hero to me because of what he's done with his life and where he's come from. and but one of the things I loved most about him when I got to know him is how he owns, for better or for worse, he owns every sense of his like life. I always remember going into restaurants with him and people are like, oh Mr. Schwarzenegger, we have a quiet table back in the VIP. Why would I want to be there? I want to be out there where the action is. Yeah.

46:59Rob Lowe:Mark Andreessen. You know, there was always, when disruptive technologies, and I don't think there's anything more disruptive than AI, and I know you agree with that, there was always a breakout success by sort of the non-incumbents, which is what we were just talking about with IBM. But do you think with AI, will that offer the same opportunity? Or do you feel like the Googles, the Microsofts, and the Amazons are inevitably the winners in the space?

47:26Marc Andreessen:No, so actually, I think it's already happening. So, you know, the leader today in AI in terms of the products that people actually use, you know, is measured by usage and revenue. The leader is actually a new company called OpenAI. Right. And it's actually, history actually repeated itself in a very interesting way from what we were talking about, which is, so Google has had an AI research lab basically since, you know, for like almost 20 years. Google actually invented the key AI breakthrough, which was a thing called the Transformer in 2017. And then they did the classic big company thing, which is they put it on the shelf and they didn't do anything with it.

47:58Rob Lowe:Tell me what the transformer, just briefly, tell me what the transformer is, does, was.

48:03Marc Andreessen:Yeah, so the transformer, it's an algorithm. So it's an algorithm or a mathematical formula. And it basically is, it's the sort of key algorithm that makes what's called neural networks work. So basically the way that AI system is built is they're built on this architecture called neural networks. And so they're built basically on a software architecture that is modeled after how the human brain works. And it's not exactly how the human brain works, although it's interesting, actually, how close you can get, which we could talk about. There's a lot of philosophical questions you get into very quickly around AI, which is like, what is intelligence?

48:34Marc Andreessen:What is consciousness? What does it mean to be human? You know, and all these things. But basically, the neural network is kind of the core architecture. The neural network is an idea that people actually came up with in actually in 1943 is when the first neural network paper came out. And so there were like very smart people at the very birth of the whole idea of the computer. there were very smart people at the time who said, actually, we should probably model these after the brain and here's how we do it. But between 1943 and 2017, this was an idea, but it never quite worked. And you could get it to work in like little cases.

49:04Marc Andreessen:And so like the post office had a system for like being able to tell the numbers, you know, zero through nine, to be able to do like sorting by zip code by machine. So you could have these like little versions of things that worked. So it like worked just well enough where people kept experimenting with it, but it didn't work well enough where it ever became the kind of thing you see today. And then basically, this squad of very smart people at Google Research in 2017 came up with this algorithm called the Transformer, which runs on top of a neural network, basically. And basically, it sort of steers the neural network to the right answer in the way that you get when you talk to OpenAI.

49:37You had to talk to JGPT here if you use any of these systems today.

49:42Marc Andreessen:And so, basically, it was the big breakthrough. I talked to a friend of mine who was a senior engineering leader at Google during that period. and I said, you know, if Google had invented, if they invented the transformer in 2017 and then if they had run as fast and hard as they could to basically get to the equivalent of ChatGPT today, you know, just like gone for it. When could they have shipped the equivalent of ChatGPT? And he said 2019, right? Like they had everything they needed. They could have done it and they didn't do it. And then here again, you get this big company thing. It's like, okay, why didn't they do it?

50:13Marc Andreessen:And I think basically there's two reasons they didn't do it. Well, maybe there's three. So one is just this thing we say that applies in situations like this, which is the motto of any monopoly is we don't care because we don't have to. And so it's just like, if life is good and everything's going great, why bother? It becomes an extraordinary act to do things that require additional effort just because everything's going great. Why put effort into it? I think that's one reason. I think the second reason they didn't do it is because it's a threat to the core Google business model of search results.

50:44Marc Andreessen:right? Which is, and you see this today. So if you go on Google and you ask a question, you know, if you go on Google and you're like, you know, what are the best episodes of the Literally podcast, right? Which is something frequently that happens. Yes, exactly. Exactly. You get a list of blue links, right? You get your famous list of blue links so you can click on the one you want and then their business model is they sell ads and so some of the links that you see are for ads. And so an ad might be for a subscription sign-up page or t-shirts or like, you know, whatever else, you know, somebody might advertise.

51:14Marc Andreessen:If you ask ChatGPT the same thing, it will just answer the question without giving you the links and with no ads, right? Because you don't need the links anymore because it'll just answer the question. And so, in our industry, we call this the innovator's dilemma, which is like, okay, the existing business might no longer be relevant. It might not only be necessary in the new world, and so are you going to cannibalize yourself? And so, that's issue number two. And then issue number three is everything that involves this term safety that gets used a lot now, which is basically all reduces to what if it says a bad thing?

51:45Marc Andreessen:And specifically, what if it says a bad word or, you know, says the wrong thing about, you know, whatever topic people get upset about? And we've seen that happen a bunch recently.

51:55Rob Lowe:We've seen it happen.

51:56Marc Andreessen:Exactly. So, number one, like, if you basically just, like, run these things without a lot of what they call human training, like, yeah, they will say things. and then look the way these things work is they're just trained on huge amounts of human data so they're just like trained on all the content on the internet and they kind of composite it together and kind of do figure out a way to process it and give you kind of smart answers out of it and so you know look people a lot of people have said a lot of things about a lot of people and like you know if the machine and the machine doesn't know like the machine doesn't know like is this a person or a political movement or whatever this or that it's just like it's just it's processing words and it's just trying to give you like an answer that you like and so it is very easy for it to kind of give you an answer that's going to like really, really offend you.

52:40Rob Lowe:Here's Maria Shriver. Your self-curiosity in terms of growth is sort of, you know, insatiable. Were you always someone who is on a path to learn more about themselves or like, cause when I was young, I didn't give one shit about learning about anything about myself. I just like was out there in the world and eventually the world beats you up and you learn some lessons, then you look inward and you go, I better figure it out. Did you, did you have that? Or were you always as you are? Well, I've had moments where like getting the, you know, white beaten out of you and you have to like dig a little deeper, right?

53:14For sure, yeah. And, but I've always been incredibly curious, which is why journalism was so great for me. And I've always been curious about the world, about, always felt that I saw things perhaps that other people didn't see. So when I would say, do you see this or do you see that? People would go, no, what are you talking about? I was like, hmm. And so I've always led with my curiosity about other people, about myself. I've always wondered like being in a large family, a large political public family, where did I fit? I felt different in many ways. So how do I use that difference?

53:53Rob Lowe:How did you, where did you feel like you fit growing up in your family? I felt like I was the only girl. So I had all brothers. I had a very tough mother. I know you're, my favorite story of your mother's is, so Eunice was, how old do you think was Eunice the day that she asked me to put her on the back of a bicycle built for two and go on a race? Probably 80, late 70s or 80. I think she was 80 something. 80 something, yeah. Yeah, so, you know, it was a race for your brothers, for best buddies. My brother Anthony. For Anthony. See, Anthony. So many is Shrivers. And all these boys, Anthony runs Best Buddies, Timmy runs Special Olympics, and also Castle, which is the largest movement for social-emotional learning in our public schools.

54:42Amazing. Mark runs Save the Children, which is doing extraordinary work. And Bobby started Red with Bono and One, which has done such incredible work with the AIDS epidemic globally, which I often think of that epidemic when we're in this epidemic.

54:59Rob Lowe:Me and my brothers started a flag football league. Yeah, you play really good, really well. It's changed the world. Yeah. So your wonderful mother, who is not a physically big woman. No. Very thin. Very thin. Occupied a lot of space with her energy. Yes. But her body, teeny tiny. Yes. And she's like, I can't do a Eunice Shriver impersonation. No, you can't. I wish I could. If I could, you wouldn't like it if I did anyway. But you can't. All right, I won't. But she insists. Oh, you're an actor, actually. Thank you. Thank you. I love the way that Maria looked like she just discovered that. I did.

55:41Rob Lowe:I just remembered it. I just remembered it. I just remembered it. I don't think of you. But don't worry, you're not alone. I know, but I don't. I think of you, you know, I always tell people that I think of you as being super smart. Thank you. Super well-read, super opinionated on so many different fronts, super wise. And so when I think of you, I don't think of you first and foremost as an actor. I think of you first and foremost as a human being. Oh, thank you. Then I think of you as a dad and as a husband, as an advocate for sobriety in the world, as an advocate for honesty in the world. I think of you as someone who tries a lot of different things, puts themselves out there in spaces that you make up, actually.

56:29I think of you as a writer and I think of you as an actor. And I also don't like to lead with anybody with their profession.

56:37Rob Lowe:Right. I like to know who they are before I know what they do. You're great. And thank you for that. One of the things I also love, it was great, is the way when navigating kids and you would always sit your kids' friends down. Yeah. Unlike any parent I ever saw. I thought it was awesome. and you would just make them look you in the eye and talk about who they were. Yeah. And I think we're very much alike in that way. I mean, I know everything that that group of kids is doing today. I literally know it. Our kids are all friends and they have a kind of a larger group of friends, all of whom have their own identities and then they have a collective identity.

57:25They have their own fears. and their own challenges. And I think to me, that's what's always interesting about a person is their fears, their challenges, their view of themselves, their lack of their view of themselves. I'm always super interested actually in that.

57:46Rob Lowe:You have a great, every night, every Sunday, family dinner. Family dinner. Your boys come all the time actually. I gotta tell you, there is a, I have a little bit. You don't come, you don't come or your wife, but your boys do. I live in a different city. I know, but. But when I do come, I love it. But my boys are there all the time. I'm like, wait, it's family dinner, but that's, they're not with my family. They're with you. Yeah, they're with me. Yeah. And they're really great because they always text ahead and say, we're coming. Just wanted to make sure you knew, which is great because most of the time I don't know.

58:14And I'm just pulling in chairs and all that sort of stuff. But I think that that started with this kind of collective idea that people want to sit around a table. For sure. People want to be invited in. They want. It comes back to tradition. They want a tradition, even if they can complain that I have too much food or not the right food. Or I have one kid that says, you invite people to this table, you don't even know that well. And I go, that's the point. And I have to thank my parents for that because they invited people from all walks of life to our larger table. So you would come to our house and there'd be, you know, a member of the cabinet sitting next to a Special Olympics athlete.

58:54Right. Sitting next to an astronaut, sitting next to a religious leader, sitting next to a civil rights leader. That's how I grew up. And so I've tried to kind of emulate that a little bit at my own table. I've tried to have a lot of young people at the table, but people that they could learn from, people who had different points of view. But I learned that from my parents.

59:17Rob Lowe:I've had more good conversations, more great conversations at that table probably than anywhere else. And great Mexican. Rob always complains that he has only one kind of food in my house. So when you come over, I only want to serve Mexicans. So your storyline works. I know. We need to keep that going. Although, as you know, it's not true. It's like I'm very happy. It's your storyline. So I try to make it true for you. Listen, I never let the facts get in the way of the story. Ever. We have to change that. We need the facts now. No, no. We need facts. You're doing a podcast. It needs to be based in facts.

59:53Does it? Does it, though? Well, it's yours, so you get to do what you want. I don't even know what it is.

59:58Rob Lowe:I mean, I'm just finding my way through it. No, but I've had so much. You must have an intention with this podcast. I do. What is it? I do have an intention. Oh, here we go. See, I'm so happy for you listening because now you're all getting a little bit of a sense of what it means to be really close friends with Maria. Because she's turning the beams on me right now. Those big blue eyes are like lasering at me and she's asking me my intention. And now I'm getting a little bit of flop sweat because you want to be right or at least have a good articulate answer. And I don't. I do. I do. I have one.

1:00:36Rob Lowe:What is it? You know what? It's for people to be able to take an hour, 48 minutes, whatever the hell these conversations are, and kind of just take a deep breath and have some fun and levity and thoughtfulness and escape for that moment. And it'll take different – it'll be different flavors. Each episode is a different flavor. Right. But overall, hopefully, I have people in your chair like you who either people have never heard of and are like, holy crap, that was great. I didn't know anything about that. Or it's people they know really, really well and they're seeing a side of them that they've never seen before.

1:01:24Marc Andreessen:You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Sean Doherty, with help from associate producer Sean Calvano. Research by Jeff Fox. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel. Our executive producers are Rob Lowe for Low Profile and Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross for Team Coco. Booking by Catherine Cook. Music by Devin Bryant. Special thanks to Hidden City Studios. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally. Really?

1:02:22insurers. Not available in all states.

1:02:25Mel Robbins:In the U.S., there's a break-in every 26 seconds. But when intruders step near, SimpliSafe Home Security steps up. Stop. This is SimpliSafe. Police are on the way. Using AI alerts, U.S.-based live agents help deter break-ins. SimpliSafe. No long-term contracts. Save 60 % on a new system with professional monitoring during our 20th anniversary sale at SimpliSafe.com slash SXM.

1:02:47Dr. Mark Hyman:Outdoor deterrence requires a SimpliSafe Active Guard outdoor protection plan starting at $49.99 a month. Visit SimpliSafe.com slash licenses for alarm license information. Tennessee 2012.