Joe & Tayler Lonsdale on Tech Investments, Life in Texas, & Homeschooling | KMP Ep. 26

19:49And so since then, we've kind of been watching California spend. And Taylor had been pushing me because I pay a lot of taxes when we have wins. It's great. We're doing very well. And then California takes a lot of the money. So he's like, is it ethical to be funding California to the tune of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars? And she'd been pushing it harder and harder on that. And so it'd been something we'd kind of been talking and thinking about. And with our kids, just being at the age, I think at that point we had just three children, right? And you're pregnant with a fourth. Oh, no, I was pregnant with Annabelle with a third.

20:19You're pregnant with a third, that's right. I was flying back and forth between San Francisco and Austin in the middle of COVID. And people were looking at this pregnant lady on the plane. What are you doing? You're crazy. No, but it's like you're going to die, lady. We had to figure out like schooling. We had to figure out we're going to build our life together and our family. And we just put all this effort into this stuff in Woodside in California. But we realized it's not where we want to have our family long term.

20:43Katie Miller:What are your thoughts on the billionaire tax in California? Do you think more people should have heeded your advice and gotten out sooner? Well, you know, I do think it's unethical to send money to a corrupt and broken government that you disagree with fundamentally. So I think people who live in New York, people who live in California, should think about the ethics of the dollars they're paying because by paying money towards those governments, you're supporting a state that you think is wrong. And obviously expropriation, stealing people's property is just beyond the pale. It's totally un-American.

21:15You can't allow that. I think any revolution necessary to withstand that is appropriate. Fortunately, it's probably not going to pass elsewhere this time, probably not even there, but we'll see. But I'll tell you what, it's really kind of cool that it's woken up a bunch of my friends because there's a bunch of these people who are finally like, wait a second, we got to stand against this. So obviously a horrible thing. I kind of love that people are kind of seeing what's going on now, you know?

21:36Katie Miller:Polymarket has a 22 % chance that Mondani is also going to pass a 2 % millionaire's tax in New York before 2027. Do you think it happens as well? Or is you, you know, thinking it's going to run the same course as what happens in California? I think that people like Mondani, unfortunately may be strategic. Their goal is to overthrow the entire system of the United States. They're against fundamentally what our country stands for and its values. And so I think that in order to achieve his ends, he's probably going to wait and try to do things nationally. It would be a smarter thing as a bad guy for him to do.

22:11So I hope he makes the mistake of doing it and showing what a dumb idea it is there. But my worry is he's smart enough to try to do it nationally instead, which is terribly destructive, but would probably be a better strategy if you're a crazy Marxist.

22:22Katie Miller:Probably. So when you left Palantir, did you immediately start your VC firm? So I started something called Adapar, which is about$9 trillion reported over it. It's a major wealth management technology. So it didn't do well at all. It's doing pretty well. Everyone who manages money knows it. It's like a wealth management thing. And I started OpenGov out of the California Common Sense. And we had 3 ,000 cities and state agencies with my friend Zach, co-founded it, and a couple others. And it actually fixed a lot of that stuff in government. We sold that for a couple billion dollars a couple years ago.

22:52So I started these two companies, but I was helping a lot of my friends at Palantir as they left figure out what to build next. And I was actually working with a dozen new companies. So a lot of my mentors kind of convinced me, Joe, you already are doing all this. You should have more money and more people helping you. So I started to find out that.

23:07Katie Miller:What's been your biggest success that you've invested in? Gosh, I mean, famously, probably being in the first couple rounds of Andrel is pretty amazing. That's the top defense company. leading the seed round in Quince, which she loves, if you know this one yet. It's like super high-end luxury for affordable prices, like for like a fifth the cost. I mean, they just manufacture the exact same thing, really high quality, and it's doing billions of revenue there. You know, Serrano here in town is building ships for the U.S. Navy. It's the fastest built big ships in the country since World War II, and we're delivering hundreds of smaller ships as well.

23:44We helped create that out of the firm. So we've got a lot of things that have worked out.

23:48Katie Miller:And what's been your greatest failures? You know, there's been things that went to zero. There was one where it not only went to zero, but the founders defrauded me, and then it went to zero, and they fled the country. So that was bad, you know. So it's venture capital. You know, you're doing really well on venture capital if you have half of them work, which is about where we are. And so, you know, it's just in general, like sometimes these things just really don't work. Because I think about this when someone says, oh, I'm a VC or do, you know, and you're starting something from scratch or you want to become an entrepreneur and you only want to get in front of somebody like yourself.

24:24Katie Miller:Right. And it's to say, what are the keys that you've seen are successful? And then what leads to where even someone like you doesn't see like, holy mother, this is probably not going to work. You know, I mean, there's one thing where we helped Lady Gaga start a company, which was really fun. And she was sitting in the engineer's lapses before me, too. so I guess that was okay back then. And it was entertaining. And we did really well for her, but then it didn't scale to other performers and it went to zero. And we were probably distracted by the fact that we were working with Lady Gaga back 10 years ago.

24:53It was fun. I mean, in terms of things that really matter is having a very great tech culture really matters. So the same way if you're running a professional baseball team, you have to scout players, get the best players. You really have to scout the really top talent in the world. One of the biggest success stories we're in right now called Cognition, The guy who started it, he used to work for me at Adapar. He won the gold medal in programming three years in a row. So he's like the king of the nerds three years in a row.

25:18Katie Miller:There's gold medals in programming? There is. There's Olympics for programming. It's the IOIs, the Olympic Programming Contest. There's also Physics Olympiads and Math Olympiads. And he was a top math performer too. And he hired like 20 other kids who were the top gold medalists and silver medalists at these Olympiads. And, you know, there's the fastest growing company I've ever been in. And, you know, not that big a surprise with that much talent there. You still have to get other things right too. But I'd say number one is like the depth of the technology talent. And they should all own a piece of the company.

25:43They should all fill theirs.

25:44Katie Miller:And so you've worked with throughout your career, multiple founders and multiple CEOs who are household names now, who are incredibly successful. From your perspective, I'm going to go through just like the three off the top of my head. And you're going to tell me why you think they're successful. And what comes to mind when you think of them? Palmer Lucky. uh i was texting palmer yesterday he uh just really really high raw horsepower iq of course which is quite true for all these people and just very creative and just willing to like go outside the bounds and have fun in a creative way i was i was at his wedding actually sitting we were there you were there we were sitting next to like senator cruz and peter teal and there's like really fancy flowers and people and dresses and violins and and the music goes off and all of sudden the Top Gun music comes on and this helicopter flies right over us.

26:39And he, in his classic, you know, I think it's, I think he actually had tails on this time, not the Hawaiian shirt, but he landed the helicopter next to the thing, got out, went up to it, took off, went away. And then, and then his wife came in the traditional way with her father, but he's just, he's just having fun and he's, he's America's Iron Man.

26:53Katie Miller:Peter Thiel. So I've written a lot about Peter and lessons I learned from him. I have this, there's like a bunch of stuff online. I sure Sure, we're looking for the stuff that's not written. Okay. Peter, well, Peter, he comes to the world from a contrarian perspective. He'll find the view that others are missing, and he'll put a lot of weight behind it, and he'll identify the one factor that matters people aren't thinking about. And he's really, really good at talent, and he's really, really good at just coming at it from an angle no one else is and just pushing that and being right. What do you think stuck out about you specifically versus all of the other people who have come before Peter that are looking for similar mentorship or opportunities that he's been able to provide so many people that have come from that network?

27:40I think Peter has a pretty broad footprint of intellectual interest, whether it's in history and economics and philosophy and otherwise. And I think I'm pretty similar in that regard. I was able to keep up with him or argue with him in a bunch of these areas. We both have very high confidence in ourselves and are willing to kind of push back even in areas that are somewhat new and extrapolative. So being able to converse with him and have opinions and debate in those things probably was pretty relevant.

28:07Katie Miller:Alex Karp. Alex is awesome. My co-founder from Palantir. You have to understand on his background, he was like the star philosophy student to like the top philosopher in Germany. And it's very funny if you haven't explained this to you because it's like in America, if you're like on the NBA, like all these women will follow you around. he claims anyways in Europe that's what happens in philosophy philosophers and so and so and so because of that all the billionaires want to be philosophers in Europe so he's like this like super cool kid that all the billionaires want to hang out with and he just somehow through this whole thing like within like a minute or two he'll like know all these things about someone it's like a magic trick actually it's like there's a weird form of wisdom where he'll just interact with you and he'll know tons of things about you and know if he wants to hire you or not know how you fit in I'm sure there's tons of stereotypes being involved there that are inappropriate but it's okay because he's black and Jewish so he gets to do what he wants.

28:58But it's like, no, he's just a genius about people and institutions. He really is.

29:02Katie Miller:Elon Musk. Elon is the most alpha of all of my friends, I'd say. I'm willing to go three or four standard deviations too hard in terms of working too hard and pushing people and being bold and just cutting nonsense and driving towards things. That makes me a great entrepreneur. Elon's my only friend who's clearly a standard deviation further than me along those lines. So it's just the most alpha of all the guys. I think you're the most alpha. Well, thank you, love.

29:32Katie Miller:So we just did a heavy section on men who are in tech. I want to go to a bit of a softer subject, which is motherhood. So you have six children. How do you guys manage a typical day? Well, we have a lot of support at home, and we really couldn't do it without our support system. So they get huge kudos for keeping us on track. and um yeah i mean you're you're working but you are basically popping in and out throughout the day to hang out with the kids or take them outside yeah i went upstairs to say good morning to everyone and most of them were in good moods and a couple of them were grouchy this morning and give hugs and hang out and chase dava around our three-year-old a little bit yeah we've got four in school which opens up a big chunk of the day we hang out with the two the two little ones joey joey and i joey's joey's not quite two when we were throwing around uh this ice snowballs outside they're all frozen at this point because it's snow this weekend and we're having a lot of fun with that and then he slipped and fell and it was sad but he's doing fine typical dad thing he actually he actually fell and then I got I freaked out so I went fast over to him so I fell too next to him but it wasn't too bad I fell and we both slid and we both slid together and then he was crying for a few minutes but he's okay oh I'm sure it's toughened him up um yeah exactly and then uh usually I'll do homework with the kids when they get home from school and um we try to do family dinner together as often as we can.

30:50I probably make family dinner three or four nights a week and then we try to always make it on Friday unless something really unusual is going on. So almost all the time there it's the Shabbat dinner. So we do that. And then we have sort of a three-hour bedtime extravaganza every night, which is shocking that it takes that long. I think we start at 6.30 and basically by 9 or 9.30 everybody's actually asleep. That's a huge part of parenting is getting them to go to sleep. A huge part of parenting is like the bath to bedtime run. I do a lot of stories for the kids. We do stories for the big girls.

31:17I always make up new stories it's a good it's a good time for quality time because everything's kind of quieted down and so we can do individual time with them and we have a whole we have like a whole fantasy world with like all these different lessons we try to teach and stuff and it's funny because like one of the daughters like i want to hear the story to be more about business and the other daughter says no that's boring i want more magic tonight and so i mean it's fun though yeah

31:38Katie Miller:there is in well reported ongoing fertility crisis not only here in the united states but across the world, yet you two are people who are married, have six children. What would be your message to other young women and men who are either delaying, waiting till they're older, or not understanding the importance and truly the satisfaction that it's very clear both of you have from raising children? What do you think? I think having kids, ideally you've found your life partner before you have kids. So you don't want to rush into that. But when I was in college, I went to Stanford. And so everybody was very ambitious, very career oriented.

32:21And nobody really ever talked to you as a young woman about, I think my mom brought this up a few times, but nobody really talked to you about your fertility window and how much time you had and how much harder it was to have kids as you get older. And I'm sort of an unashamed, or I should say a shameless sort of ambassador for more babies. When I meet women and men who are still in their twenties, I say, you know, your, your husband or wife seems pretty nice. Why don't you have babies yet? Come on. And so the grandparents always love us. We're always pushing their kids to make babies. Yeah. I think, um, I think that it's, uh, maybe a mistake to wait until you're quote unquote, have everything figured out financially.

33:06I know my grandparents got married when they were 20 and 21 right after school and they had a great marriage together and I think it's just it's nicer to be a younger mom if you can swing it because you have more energy you're healthier you have less complications and yeah women's bodies were actually evolved to have babies in their teens and 20s mostly yeah we started when I was 30 and exactly and the older I get the harder it gets and it's harder to recover and I feel tired I hope you're doing great I yeah I hope our kids will have babies in their 20s. I think that's actually, I mean, and maybe you should wait.

33:42I don't know. I can't say what's exactly right. I feel like you keep changing to your mid-20s. You don't want to like lock down the wrong life partner or something in your early 20s as it's complicated. But I feel like by the time you're in your mid to late 20s, if you find someone and have a baby, that's the right thing to do. Yeah. And for me, having kids is the most meaningful, exciting, fun, challenging thing that I've ever done.

34:03Katie Miller:so do you think that it's caused by young women who want to be in the workplace who want to derive value from a career or do you think it's that young men are not understanding the value of having a life partner and the support that that ultimately brings to their career it's probably both it's probably both i mean i think the culture is just broken on this score like there i saw something the other day where it was like a warning at a concert like be careful what choices you make tonight you might be changing a diaper in nine months or something instead of coming to another concert and it's just it's kind of sad the culture is just instinctively anti-baby and anti the the stress of it and something and i think our culture everything's gotten really easy right i think it's like like everyone just press a button and food comes and just there's not much effort for anything and i think i think children involves a lot of effort and a lot of things you have to do that are inconvenient.

34:59And so I think if your whole life set up instinctively to avoid inconvenience and make it more and more convenient, there's something a little bit unhealthy about that. And it kind of pushes you away from families. And it's too bad because I think even though it's hard to be sleep deprived, I mean, you know, you're living this right now. I find that service to another person and the self-sacrifice and the kind of the sense of duty and responsibility is just infinitely more exciting and fulfilling than, I guess, it's still good to do things for yourself and take care of yourself. It's tough to get her away on the airplane to party or something, but she does, like, we get away every once in a long while.

35:37Yeah, I just think it's great to be able to do that for another person.

35:41Katie Miller:Do you think this is over time that society has pushed this onto women and it's the feminist movement, or where do you think this kind of originates from? I think there's a modern strain of thinking that Joe is alluding to, which says that your self-actualization, your own happiness, your own comfort is the highest pursuit, highest value. And I think that's a completely incorrect paradigm for looking at the world and life happiness and fulfillment. Yeah. I mean, I'm very obviously pro-markets and pro-capitalism. There's probably some part of our consumer culture that's frankly pretty unhealthy.

36:17And it's tied into like, getting ahead by being like, by having what the other people have and by having these like higher end experiences. And I think if you're focusing too much on those and too much on your own fun with those, you're missing the things that really matter in life. And there's, I don't know, it's probably the lack of faith and religion is probably also a big part of it. But there's just a lack of centeredness in our culture. So they don't realize what really matters.

36:41Katie Miller:Do you think it's the loss of communities and the individualism that has kind of led to? Yeah, I mean, it's certainly easier to raise children when you're in a community and you have support. You have the older generation helping you out. American society has always been very mobile. So I think that's a unique challenge for American parents in particular. And when it comes to feminism, yeah, it's been kind of a double-edged sword for women. And I personally feel really happy to live in the 21st century with all of the legal protections and the opportunities and the options as a woman. But I think that we are we're biologically different.

37:21And it's also it's good to acknowledge and value the fact that we can help continue the species. And that's also really, really important and should be honored. I mean, there's this crazy stat I'm sure you saw where people on the right now are having a lot more kids than people on the left. And it's something, listen, I mean, also like young women who are on the extreme left, I think half of them have mental health issues right now. There's something really broken about the state of mind of how we're treating women and where women are politically that's probably tying into this.

37:48Katie Miller:You, we briefly talked about newspapers and the importance of shaping thought. you along with Barry Weiss co-founded university. What was the moment you said, I need to do this in order to help kids be more educated in the way you wanted to be educated, the way you want your children to be educated? Yeah. You know, it's something I've been talking also about with friends for a very long time. And, you know, I, you know, things were not as crazy when, when we were in university, you were there right after me. It was like, I did get, I got my first B ever after I argued in support of John Locke or something, you know?

38:20So there were some things that were like more left, but it wasn't like, it wasn't the end of the world. And, and it was, it was really, I think a lot of people who are our age don't realize what's happened at these universities, like over the last 10 years when the woke was him and the liberalism took over. And it was, you know, Neil Ferguson, uh, who, who's also our co-founder with Barry. He's probably one of the great living historians in the world is taught Oxford and Harvard and et cetera. And, and so he's exposed to this more intimately. And it's, it got to the point where like if you are in these fields of sociology or education or history and you believe in markets and you don't think the British empire was necessarily the most evil thing ever you're just not allowed to go to these places anymore so so so there's really really great talent that Neil was actually seeing that we were talking about who were some of the great minds of our generation and they just couldn't get hired anywhere and like one of one of these economists I met who would have been like a famous guy at Harvard in their generation the only place they would hire was West Virginia University and I stole him out and he became my head of policy instead of policy for Manhattan Institute.

39:21Now, just a genius guy. And it's like, and it's like, even he maybe probably couldn't get hired anymore at these places. So like we have to, you know, so that's one thing. And then, and then I'll say the other thing is that basically all of the young people that I hire out of these top schools, we hire for companies out of Stanford and Yale and Harvard and all these other places. And they're very smart people, but they're all afraid. They're all been taught to kind of narrow themselves and not walk outside the bounds. and you see it in our cities, you see it in the fraud going on in our country where there's really broken stuff and everyone's taught, don't look that way, just like virtue signal and say the correct line and don't actually think for yourself.

39:58And this is really dangerous. Like that's how you lose a republic. And so our goal with the university was to have one great university that competes with the other top universities that's not run by communists and where the kids are courageous.

40:11Katie Miller:Did any of, you know, what strikes me now about any university across the country is that when a conservative goes to speak, they have to have armed security. And no liberal has that same problem when they step onto university. Is that something that goes into your mind about how only one school of thought is accepted today? Oh yeah, no, listen, we were also friends with Charlie and he was supposed to visit a month after when he got shot. And you don't want to maybe put this out in public too much, but there are a couple of things I had to reconsider where I didn't want to necessarily go, I have six young kids.

40:43that I didn't necessarily want to put myself in public in front of a thousand kids at a place where you just don't know if there's a crazy person there or not. And it does, it's sad because it does definitely like partially science us. I'm not gonna let it fully science me. Obviously they can't do that until they off me, I guess, hopefully that doesn't happen. But I'm gonna keep speaking, but you do have to be more careful and it's definitely coming from the wrong side.

41:03Katie Miller:What surprises you most about the response to the University of Austin so far? You know, it was interesting. We had some really talented people help us get it going, but it was kind of funny seeing some of the people come in who are from that industry, who are trying to bring the standard way of doing things, even from other universities, that frankly is not how we want to do things there. And it's just so hard whenever you do something to make it different because there's so many people who are used to how everything else is working. So I think we've done a really great job now with Carlos as president being really bold and really making sure we're driving in the correct direction where it's a very patriotic mission and where we're going to make sure these kids learn intellectual courage.

41:42But it was surprising how hard it was to kind of overcome the pull of just the standard way everyone else is working.

41:48Katie Miller:Is there something you're doing differently to screen teachers or professors, I should say? You know, and this is, I think it's really important to differentiate between like how you run the university, between the kind of ideas that are there. So we have professors who are both on the right and the left, I'd say. And I think it's probably a pretty good balance. and it's but it's really important the reason I got in trouble there's like a big hit piece on us last week in Politico you may have seen where I like basically the reason you can't let in the radicals like the commies and the extreme socialists and the other people is those are people who cancel other ideas and so it's really important the professors are able to have discussions and respect differences of opinion and frankly if someone comes in on the right I want them to have to understand Hegel and Marx and everything else and have to debate it and have to be good at debating it because otherwise they're not going to be as good at being a smart person on the right.

42:36And if they're on the, if someone comes in and there are some students coming on, I'd say on the left, moderate left, and they should be exposed to both sides and be forced to defend their ideas. Like I think microaggressions are a good thing, actually, intellectually, like they should be uncomfortable, you know?

42:48Katie Miller:What's your vision for the university in 10 years, 20 years? Well, we're scaling up. We're doing our third class right now. Each class is getting stronger. A lot of these kids are turned down the Ivy League. I think the average SAT score is about 1500 now is the new one is coming up for the high 1400s. And, you know, we want to be a place that steals away the very best talent from the top schools. We want our students to be so much more successful than those schools that we force them to consider more of our ideas and ways of doing things because otherwise they're just going to lose all their best students.

43:14Katie Miller:Are you extrapolating what you're learning at the university for the homeschool and vice versa? Yeah, I think so. They're driven by a similar energy. You know, within elementary school, the mission is much more, Joe mentioned having values-free versus value-laden education. I think all education is values-laden. It's just that some people are more honest about what their values are than others. And I think when you have a quote-unquote values-free environment, it actually is a certain set of values you probably don't agree with as a conservative. So yeah, with the school, we're much more forward, obviously.

43:53By the time a child's entering university, a young adult, they should be able to step into a marketplace of ideas with a lot more confidence. In the elementary school level, I think where you're starting from is, hey, there's a lot of things that are true and good and beautiful, and we're going to teach those to you as truth. And then as you get older and mature, you'll be able to argue against those. But I think certainly the focus in the early years is much more about saying, here's our values, here's our truth, and we're going to teach you about that because we actually think it's the best information for you to get as a kid.

44:23At elementary school, I think for who you hire, you have to be more explicit about heresies not to teach there. We're not going to teach the gender heresies. We're not going to teach the eco-heresies. There's just a lot of nonsense you just want to keep out of these places because if you're not careful, there's going to be a nice, well-meaning teacher who bumbles along and is like, now we're going to learn how it's so important to recycle and protect the earth. And actually, it turns out the majority of recycling is economically inefficient. I don't want my kids being taught like bad economics.

44:48Like, you know, paper straws

44:49Katie Miller:are like just as terrible. It just turns out a lot of these ideas are wrong and they're just default ideas in our mainstream culture. And it's almost like a religion to these teachers. Like they're, they're less Christian than they are eco, you know? And that's not, that's not energy I want in my, in my kids' school. Now when they're older, let's just debate everything and learn everything, but just like keep it out from the kids. So in every episode we play a fun game of would you rather? I want you both to answer. Don't look at each other until like one person bill you out of the other one. Okay.

45:18Katie Miller:Would you rather always be 10 minutes early or have an hour of extra sleep every night? Hour of extra sleep for sure. Hour of extra sleep. That's not true. Every time we're on time, you're nervous. That's fair. Joe loves to be on time and he will never be late. In theory, I think she's right, but I don't like making people, I don't like being late. That's different than not being 10 minutes early. Theoretically, he would like the extra sleep, but in real life, he's always on time. And God forbid you stand in his way. Okay. By doing your hair for too long. By doing your hair for half an hour. Would you rather your kids walk in your office during a serious Zoom meeting or rearrange all of the apps on your phone?

46:01Walk in my office during a serious Zoom meeting for me. I don't really have any serious Zoom meetings. They're all important, but they're not too serious. Taylor's always on with the architect for something or other, so. But now we're designing the school campus, which is the most exciting thing. It's very exciting.

46:17Katie Miller:Would you rather every college student take a course in entrepreneurship or on ethics? I would say ethics. I think entrepreneurship, because I'm not sure the ethics is going to teach them anything anyway, unfortunately, but they're both good things. Would you rather have endless tacos or endless barbecue? Barbecue. Oh, tacos. I'm allergic to barbecue in Texas. What? In some cases. And Tex-Mex. Yeah. Not to the barbecue. The barbecue is just too salty and sweet. And Tex-Mex, I'm deathly allergic to one of the spices in there. So, yeah, tacos. I guess, but Mexican tacos. We have this giant steamer out there.

46:57It's like a submarine. I don't know if you saw it when you came in. It's like a big giant submarine thing. We had our chef go around to the four best barbecue restaurants and learn from all of them. It's really good. That's pretty good. That has a healthy spin on it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. what's the best barbecue in Austin? Franklin's is still the best. Terry Black's is great. Frank's is really good.

47:14Katie Miller:I'm going to finish out this section. I'm laughing as I'm going to read this. Would you rather do couples therapy with Elon Musk as your therapist or Ben Shapiro as your marriage counselor? Ooh, that's a good one. Can we do both? Let's pick one. Probably Ben Shapiro in this case. Although Elon would probably be on my side and everything. that would just be so entertaining both of those conversations oh man she's a big fan of Ben who we know is that's that's any lot of course but yeah that's funny what's a conspiracy theory that you believe in uh I think we have to pass the save act because there's lots of cheating going on in the voting that we need to fix and the people are very naive about why this is true conspiracy theory nothing nothing's top of mind for me on conspiracy theories I'm I live a closeted life where I...

48:03Katie Miller:Do you want me to give you some conspiracy theories? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did we land on the moon? Oh yeah, for sure. Are there UFOs? No, I don't think so. I think a lot of those are probably just drones and things that visually look a little bit odd. Does gliophosphate cause cancer? Does what kind of? Glyophosphate. This is the, this is the, um, I would, I would have to read. I would have to, I would have to read more of the, I, I feel like any conspiracy theory you, you have to, um, you have to go online or you have to You go get some books and you have to read about it before you make a flash.

48:35Was the election in 2020 stolen? I don't think so. I think it was. See, this is where we're different.

48:40Katie Miller:Was the FBI involved in January 6th? Like I can keep going on conspiracy theories all day. For the 2020 election, I think it comes down to was it stolen in a legal way or not? I think I would fall on the side of there was no legal action, but it could have been legal means that I think perhaps we should change certain aspects of our voting system. I think there's bad legal things and illegal actions. So that's where we're different. So that they're no longer legal, shall we say. Yeah. And then, yeah, on January 6th, I don't think everyone behaved as well as they should. But I definitely think the deep state was also involved in making it worse than it was.

49:11Katie Miller:Do you think Palantir should still be working with ICE to help them arrest illegal aliens? Yeah. Yes, 100%. I think we should be way more aggressive than we are. And I think that all of the pushback in Minnesota is ridiculous because there were 10 times as many arrests in Texas. And you don't hear any noise because there's no corrupt people interfering. It's like, this is ridiculous. The other thing about Palantir that I think most people don't understand is that when you use a tool like Palantir, you can be much more surgical and precise in your law enforcement actions than you could be if you weren't using that kind of tool.

49:40And you can audit the auditors. It's just strictly better.

49:43Katie Miller:It creates an audit log to keep people accountable. What do you think then of Palantir employees who come out and are so upset that this is happening? I mean, there's 4 ,000 people in the company. There's 10 libtards. What are you going to say? Am I allowed to say that?

50:01Katie Miller:Do you think that we should continue with mass deportations and try to remove as many illegal aliens as possible? Or are you in favor of a different type of approach? I think that in general, we should remove as many as possible, but I would focus that ideally on the ones that haven't been here working well for a very long time. So I think I'd like, I think recent arrivals, criminals, like, like, like, you know, all that kind of stuff. But if someone's been here for like a very long time maybe i wouldn't help someone if they're working responsibly and they're not taking medical or whatever it is you know what's something you splurge on without guilt this is really inappropriate stuff there's like the plane like you're not supposed to say that what are you supposed to say i have really nice cigars i don't know she doesn't like when i smoke cigars that's like that's like one of our few points of contention i mean i'm a sucker for skincare products it's just a lot of good stuff and And they get me every time.

50:57There's weird rich woman skincare products that I always confuse.

51:00Katie Miller:What's your favorite skincare products? Do tell. Okay. Oh, no. The latest one is a mask that combines two different ingredients to create carbon dioxide. And you stick it on your face and you leave it there for an hour. And there's something about carbon dioxide sitting on your skin that's supposed to be beneficial. She's looking really good for someone in her 60s, you know.

51:20Do you believe in a cougar relationship?

51:26Do you believe in red light therapy? Yeah, I think it's really beneficial. She has this ridiculous thing she wears on her head, actually. I do walk around with a red light helmet around the house. You mostly do it in private, which I prefer. Oh, my gosh. I'm trying to bring it within the Overton window. You should not be ashamed of the red light therapy. No, it's not in my Overton window.

51:41Katie Miller:I'm not doing this. Do you stand on one of those boards that vibrate, too? No, I've never done that. I have one at my desk that I don't always use. But there's one that moves, and there's the vibrating machine in there to stretch. It helps you stretch. No, no. these are the ones that like have you seen this like on instagram or tiktok like the women stands on the thing and it just goes like this and it's supposed i don't know what it's supposed to do i'm gonna have to go look that up after this you watch like women on like tiktok and instagram like with their like red light mask on standing on these boards uh-huh and that's apparently like the ultimate probably helps your core strength a little bit i don't think i should do when pregnant we first started dating i got in way better shape because i was kind of shamed i have to work out as much as her, which is good.

52:22So what's the workout? What do we, a lot of HIIT workouts. Yeah, you just, she has Peloton, and she does like all these like half an hour videos that are really hard.

52:30Katie Miller:Yeah. What's a hill you're willing to die on that nobody else cares about? I think lately, it's not that nobody cares about this, but in our home situation, I think, this probably goes for every parent. You really want your kids to understand consequences and have boundaries. and sometimes it feels like you're the only one trying to enforce the system against this tidal wave of chaos. Put some boundaries in. I guess the little girls are better at manipulating me though. We both have boundaries and I think it just takes a lot of energy to enforce boundaries. So that's not something that the world at large doesn't believe in, but when you're a parent and you're outnumbered, I think sometimes it can be hard.

53:12Yeah. I guess the hill I'm willing to die on that I don't think enough people care about is maybe too obscure, but I think the red states should be cracking down on the blue cities, and we should be using our power to stop that and then get away with horrible things for our civilization. And none of these older R's have the balls to do it, and I have to convince them it's the right thing to do, and it's driving me crazy.

53:32Katie Miller:Do you believe in gentle parenting? I think that gentle parenting, my understanding is it means that you should cater to the child's emotions above all and refrain from any kind of harsher consequences that would cause emotional or physical discomfort. And I actually think that kids need firm boundaries. Life is not kind. I mean, life is hard. And I think to a certain extent, you want to mimic those conditions inside your own house so that if they make a bad decision, they do feel a little bit of the sting of making that decision. So I would say I don't buy in wholesale to gentle parenting, although I think it's great to be empathetic and for your kids to know that you're a safe harbor and that they can always come to you.

54:21Yeah, you don't want to train spoiled whims. That's not good. Yeah, Joe just sums it up. You say it much more eloquently than I would have.

54:28Katie Miller:Much more eloquently, which is like, no, one child should not rule the house. They should feel like they're a working member of the family and not the center of it. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think we have to spend time figuring out how to make them have chores and stuff because we have so much help. So that's like the trade-off we're still figuring out, which is important. Yeah, when kids grow up with a lot of privilege and wealth, I think the biggest danger is that they don't ever experience consequences because they're always shielded. And I think that's something that we think about a lot because they are going to grow up to have resources and we want them to use that responsibly and wisely and to be a net contributor and not a train wreck.

55:05One of my friends, his dad sent him to work on the cattle farm one summer because he was too soft. And I don't know, maybe just something like that that's a good idea at some point. But we got to try to make it tougher.

55:14Katie Miller:Do you think often about how not to raise spoiled children given your level of wealth and access and all of those things that... Yeah, every day. I mean, I want them to have duty. I want them to care about the country and care about working hard to serve their family and their community and their country. And that's something that you really try to inculcate and you just discussed. and we're still trying to learn how to do that. I think we're doing pretty well, but it's a lot of work to figure it out. Yeah, I think it's been really helpful with the homeschooling and the school to build into the curriculum a really good appreciation of history.

55:48I think the Bible is a great place to start with that kind of education for children because no matter how wealthy and privileged you are, if you understand history and kind of the various calamities and tragedies that have happened, I think you can't help but feel that A, you're really lucky and B, you've got a responsibility to try to preserve what's good and avoid those kinds of... I like to try to expose them to tough and scary things. You're the mommy, so you're trying to protect them too sometimes. I'm trying to show them too much. I will say, I don't recommend having your kid read the original Grimm's fairy tale 100 % of the way through.

56:21We got through about a third of the way. I think it's great. Our eight-year-old was coming to us describing the 11 different ways in which people were tortured and murdered. And I thought, maybe a third of the way is enough and we could stop after that. They are intense. I mean, they used to expose kids to really intense things. I don't think it's so bad. That's what we got to figure it out.

56:40Katie Miller:Why do you think so many other billionaires give their money away to causes that would eventually make their children's lives or grandchildren's lives cease to exist? Because they're cowards. Because they're cowards. Like the vast majority of billionaires, they want to give money towards things that virtue signal because that's how they got here in the first place and it doesn't interfere with their business. and they're not willing to do something that exposes them to criticism and exposes their life to inconvenience. That's the problem. So the only really valuable philanthropy that's like really valuable cause-wise is stuff for which you will be attacked.

57:15And the vast majority of these people are just, they don't want to be attacked, so they just do the milquetoast things.

57:19Katie Miller:Why do you think it is then that Laureen Powell Jobs and Mackenzie Scott Bezos, I can think of Melinda Gates, all give money to causes that work in the office? A lot of them have friends. A lot of them have friends they hire. I mean, listen, I think Laureen's actually a very bright woman, and she's pretty moderate. But then I think she hires people around her, in my experience, who many of them are even far to the left of her. And I think there's something in these communities. I've seen it with Mark and Priscilla, the people they hire. And I know Mark's not that left, but the people under him are.

57:46And they let them run wild, and they're busy. And I think it's just like at some point, it's just like really tough to be the bad guy. This is going back to being a great entrepreneur or something that I have and people like Elon Musk have is you're willing to admit your mistake and change things. Like when he was working on the America pack, he just would like keep changing who's in charge, different things that are broken. And in a way where it's like four different times I replaced it until it worked. And that takes a lot of psychic energy and a lot of boldness and a lot of willingness to be criticized to like change your mind and replace people.

58:15Most of these people who hire people around them that are not working out, like it's just, they're not, they're just gonna let them keep doing it. And it's very frustrating for me. And, you know, it's partially also because I guess you're just not criticized in our society is enough by those places for the damage you're doing when you are helping the far left and so i think they just get away with it in their mind and just just no one's attacking

58:34Katie Miller:them for it you know what's been the most luxurious date he's ever taken you on let's see where did we go i found you some nice places well when we were uh dating early on you flew me down to an event at hearse castle and i i don't think i'd ever that's fun that was an an experience I had never had before. That was very fancy and fun. Yeah, well, we, I'm always trying to fly her different places and she's usually opts to spend time with the kids instead, which is fair. So we were trying to figure that out right now. What keeps you up at night? Both of you, separate. She always locks all the doors.

59:13Yeah, gotta lock your doors. We have these like big, serious, like bulletproof doors and then bulletproof went in and she locks them all and she was like, that's good. She has a gun by the bed too, like in this like fake thing you can open up to air 15 silence and a couple pistols so she's she's

59:28Katie Miller:like seriously like focused are you on dates to the range we do sometimes yeah she's a really good shot i'm a huge advocate for women shooting and becoming comfortable with firearms it's a great confidence boost it's very very empowering i i'm scared of losing our country to the far left and we're like terrified and this is like you know it's a scary 10 years ahead and then we gotta we gotta solve our problems as fast as possible we gotta teach people about what's going on so that scares me. How do you choose what to invest in as it relates to politics? Doing your own thing, picking a candidate?

59:57Katie Miller:What goes through your mind? For all the other political watchers out there who are like, how can I get Joe Longdale's money today? Yeah. Well, I mean, I really want to fight for our civilization and do things that really matter for the next 10, 20, 30 years for our civilization. And a big part of that for me is what's going to let us not have the far left one voting. A big part of that also is how well is the average person doing in our country. So one of my obsessions right now is bringing down the cost of health care with AI, because it's very clear we could do it, but it's going to require legislation in states, it's going to require HHS, but if we can make health care cost half as much, which I know we can, like substantively, it's very clear you could do it, but it's purely a policy challenge at this point with what's possible in AI, that would probably get rid of a lot of the worst of the far left movements in our country and probably some of the other crazies too.

1:00:45And so, so, so for me, a lot of my effort right now is like, how do we fix these things for our country?

1:00:51Katie Miller:We end the podcast with the same question every episode. If you could host a dinner party with three people that are alive, who's at the table and what are you eating? Okay. We brainstormed about this one. That's right. I think it'd be really interesting to have Jefferson and Hamilton and maybe Thomas Sowell. Thomas Sowell that's cool and then talk about um talk about America then and now and kind of tell them how it played out and have Thomas Sowell kind of explain what happened it's and then and then see if they would change anything about the way they set up the constitution it's tough for me because I'm so interested I built all these defense companies and studied military history and so the chance to like sit with like Julius Caesar and you know like Napoleon is like kind of tough to pass up but I also I love our founders so that's gonna be like you can be at two separate dinners if you'd like.

1:01:38Yeah, it's gonna be hard. Yeah, it would be, for me, it'd be like a strategic thought exercise on how we could improve the Constitution, what would make the American experiment work even better. Did you say what you're eating? What are we eating? I think we just have sushi again. There's nothing better than Japanese food. You might scare the founders from that.

1:02:00Katie Miller:I feel like all Jews always gravitate towards sushi because everyone's like, oh, kosher, what can we do that's like I've scaled it nice sushi. It's so good. I mean, I like A5 Wagyu and caviar and that stuff too, but sushi is really good. So we can go with that. Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching this episode of the Katie Miller podcast. Please don't forget to like, follow, subscribe and share. Thank you so much for joining us, Joe and Taylor on this episode. Don't forget, we are 6 p.m. every Tuesday nights Eastern. See you next week.