Conversation with Bradley Tusk — The Intersection of Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, and Politics

24:18And then, of course, all they really have is not all, but it's the power of their rulemaking and their enforcement because they're not getting anything through Congress. No one's getting through Congress one way or the other. And then, look, if Trump wins, who knows? I don't even know what his views on crypto are. He doesn't know what his views on crypto are. So, like, he could appoint, it certainly won't be Gary Gensler, but he could appoint someone around the SEC who's wildly pro-crypto or anti-crypto. Like, you know, with Biden, it'll presumably be a continuation of what we have. But it's possible in 12 months that, like, everything's different.

24:50And so you're raising a fourth fund. You're small. You've raised kind of your bite size, if you will, as you raise. Your first fund was$35 million and$70 million, then$139 million for fund three. How much are you trying to raise in fund four? Target is$200 million. Okay. So$200 million is real money, but in the world of VC, it's a pimple and the elephant. So in order to do that, you have to have a niche. You have to specialize. What is your pitch? What value add do you bring as opposed to just investing in general catalysts? Yeah, I mean, we are, as far as I know, the only venture fund that handles all of the regulatory political media work for our portfolio company.

25:28So I spent the first part of my career, as you know, working directly in politics. I was Mike Bloomberg's campaign manager and reformator of New York. I was the deputy governor of Illinois. I was Chuck Schumer's communications director in the Senate. and then pivoted into tech by running the campaigns to legalize Uber and ride sharing all over the U.S. Did it again with Clear to get them to airports. And then it finally hit me that there was a nexus between tech and regulation that I hadn't realized before and launched an early stage venture fund that in many ways were like every early stage venture fund.

25:59We're looking at the founder, at the TAM, at the underlying concept and technology. But we asked two questions that I think are unique to us. First, is there a gating regulatory issue or opportunity that if it worse solved can really drive growth and valuation? And if so, can we solve it? And when the answer is yes to both, that's really going to make sense for us to invest. So our first deal ever was FanDuel. Then we legalized fantasy sports betting in 16 states. Our second deal ever was Lemonade, got them their insurance licenses everywhere. Roman, legalized prescription via text and so on. So we are useful if you are a founder where your company is either taking on entrenched interests that are regulated, we're going to try to use the political process to keep you out of business or put you out of business.

26:39Or if you're in a white space entirely, whether it's crypto or AI or autonomous vehicles, and there's no regulatory framework at all, and you've got to create one that works for you and for your industry, that's when we tend to deploy capital. And the sales pitch is pretty simple. I meet with a founder and say, okay, if you succeed, you're going to have the following six regulatory and political problems. You have two ways to approach them. One would be hire a bunch of different law-based political consulting firms, pay them millions of dollars. Hopefully they'll solve the problem for you. Or I can give you$5 million and do it for free.

27:13As a result, we tend to win most of our deals. In terms of an actual space, other than a company that might need some help on the regulatory side, are there specific industries or sectors that you're most bullish on? Yeah. So digital health, I would say, is our number one sector because it is, one, so big, right? Each individual category is a massive industry unto itself. Two, so fragmented, three, so regulated, and four, so screwed up that there's tons of opportunity for us to be involved. So for example, we invested in Roman, which is a men's health company. Now they've pivoted to GLP-1s. And for them, it was, can you legalize prescription via text?

27:51Because no one knew. For Alma, which is a mental health company that does all the back office work for therapists, so the billing and scheduling and insurance and all of that, it's about cross-state licensure and making sure the therapist in one state can treat patients in another online. For Wheel, which is a telemedicine staffing company, it was about ensuring that when California and other states tried to declare all sharing economy workers as full-time employees, that nurses and nurse practitioners stayed out of that legislation and weren't part of it because that would have totally destroyed the business model.

28:22So what we found is there's just so many different ways that we can play in this space. So that's kind of become our number one sector. FinTech after that, transportation, gaming. And we can really do anything that is regulated. But obviously, the more and more we learn about a particular sector, the more valuable our expertise becomes. So I'm just curious to get your take. Well, actually, let's go metaphors. You wrote a book called Obvious in Hindsight, which is a satirical look at how capitalism, politics, and entrepreneurship intersect. Give us a sense for what you think, after spending so many years in politics, what was now obvious in hindsight.

29:00What I have found is people in the tech and venture world fail to understand how people in politics and regulation think, and people in politics and regulation fail to understand how people in tech and venture think. And once you sort of understand the core motivations of each, even if they're different, then a lot of the decisions they make are actually obvious and predictable, or more importantly, in my real life of running the venture fund, things that we can influence and change. So this story is about a campaign to legalize flying cars in New York, L.A., and Austin. On one side is the flying car startup and their vicious political consultants.

29:36The other side is Uber and Taxi United against it, the Audubon Society, the Socialists, the Trans Unions, and the Russian mob. And it's a satirical novel, but ultimately it's really about how do the politics at the local level work where flying cars are clearly on their way to becoming a thing. but it's going to gore a lot of people's ox, right? Whether it's the Audubon Society worrying about sort of the destruction of birds in the sky or taxis worrying about the value of their medallions or trans unions worried about self-flying cars. And the book is really how does the startup and their consultants navigate the process so they make the political process work for them and so they're able to convince the people they need that doing what they want is more likely to help them result in getting reelected.

30:20Because that's really all it ever it comes down to in politics. If a politician thinks that you can either help them win their next election or you could cost them their next election, which in reality is just the primary because of the gerrymandering, they'll work with you and they'll do what you want. And if they don't think you can have an impact on that, you are completely irrelevant. And so the book is really how do you hold those levers of power? So you struck a chord there because I've always thought it enrages me that it takes me anywhere between 27 minutes and two hours to get to LaGuardia.

30:51at some point, and helicopters seem somewhat inefficient or strange, loud, dangerous. The VTOL space, whatever you call it, it strikes me that someone's going to win there. I'm just curious. I know there's a bit of a digression. Who do you think, or what are the dynamics there? It sounds like you think it's going to happen, and who do you think will be the winners and losers? Yeah. So I do think, if now I think it's going to happen, it is happening. And I think in a lot of ways what eVTOL is today are quiet helicopters, right? So the challenge with helicopters from a political standpoint is they're really loud and noisy and no one in Queens, when you're trying to take your helicopter from wherever you are in Manhattan to LaGuardia or JFK, wants it going over their house because helicopters aren't that high up in the sky.

31:36eVTOL, the E stands for electric. So as a result, it's silent. So the first piece is, is that enough to make the politics work? I think the answer is yes. So Joby, for example, is a company, I don't have any investments in the space one way or the other, but that did an event here in New York with Mayor Adams a couple of months ago where he was touting it and saying this is something the city would want to promote because we need ways to get people to the airports faster because building trains to the plane hasn't worked and would cost tens of billions of dollars. And if you could use Z Vita instead, that would make a big difference.

32:08So the first piece is, can you get through the regulatory? On the FAA side, they are issuing certifications that vehicles are flight worthy. I mean, it's making progress. On the local regulatory side, the fight is just starting. That's what the novel is about. But I think we have seen politicians like Eric Adams embrace it. And then the other question becomes the time for you, right? So you're right that the trip to LaGuardia is super variable. you also know that you could take an Uber to Battery Park from your apartment and then a Blade to LaGuardia. But there's multiple segments there, right?

32:47So the reason I never do that is because I got to get to Uber to Battery Park, then I got to get out and wait for the Blade, then the Blade's got to take off me a tie, then land on LaGuardia, then I got to get to my terminal. It's kind of a pain in the ass. Why don't I just sort of, I can, if I get in a car in front of my apartment or my office, I can just be on calls and work the whole way throughout. And so I always land on that. They've got to get the point of predictability where the friction is reduced enough that you and I say, okay, I'm going to have multiple moving parts because I know it's only going to be 23 minutes guaranteed total as opposed to up to two hours.

33:21They're not at that yet. It's funny because I'm living in London and I want to be supportive. So I'm thinking about making some investments in startups. And this is not a startup, but the company I've actually been looking at, and it's publicly traded. I think it's a broken SPAC, but I just like the company as vertical aerospace. Is this like a winner take all thing where there'll be one company that gets a contract from, I don't know, or gets an investment or Boeing, or do you think there's going to be multiple owners here? No. I mean, first of all, there's, I think, over$8 billion has already been invested in the space, some of it from the strategics like Boeing.

33:57or Airbus or whoever, some of them from venture capitalists who focus on this area. And there's different segments, right? So like, you know, there are some that just focus on cargo, right? There are some that are self-flying. There are some that have pilots. There are some people that envision a world like the Jetsons, where you just have your own self-flying car and hop in and drive, you know, and go from point A to point B. Other people see it more like a bus where there's a pickup and a drop-off location. So there's a lot of different competing visions for it. So I don't think it's one or take all.

34:26And I think that we don't really know yet which vision is going to win. Like I think back in the early days when we did Uber, we started off with the black car service and it was successful, but the market was somewhat limited. It was only when we shifted to Uber X did the whole thing really explode. But in the very, very early days of Uber, Travis didn't know that that's the direction the business was going to go in. Right. So I think people are going to try out all of these different models and some of them are just going to work for consumers and some of them are not. Some are going to work politically, some are not.

34:54But I think you have multiple winners. So I appreciate you indulging me there. Let's get back to your ballywake. You were and are a player in politics. Give us your no mercy, no malice view of the election right now, the handicap, the presidential race, what you think is going on. And then more specifically, I would just love to get your commentary on the most recent public flogging of the big tech firms. Yeah, sure. So on the first one, look, I think that we may be entering a world of one term presidents, governors, mayors, because the public is fundamentally unhappy. Right. So a few things. One is social media, I would argue, is basically the unhappiness machine.

35:41It does two things. It forces you to compare your life to someone's fictional life. So you feel inadequate immediately. And then it shows you everything bad happening everywhere in the world all at once, compounded by the views of a million idiots. So you feel bad about your own life. You feel bad about yourself. Then the next step is existential risk. So when you and I were kids, there was one major existential risk, which was nuclear war. That risk still remains. It's probably worse right now because the proliferation of nukes is getting there. And eventually, Iran is going to have it. North Korea has it.

36:09But now you lay on top of that climate change, the risk of a real serious pandemic. I mean, COVID had a major impact, but while it was highly transmissible, it wasn't that lethal. But I am sure that a version of COVID that is much more lethal exists in a lab in China or the U.S. or Russia or Israel or the U.K. or somewhere, or more likely all of them. And so the risk of any of those getting out. And then with AI, like I'm a believer in AI, but none of it's too early for any of us to really know yet what it's going to be. So the amount of existential risk has increased significantly. And the third bucket would be a lot of the choices that we made in the 1990s, which is sort of the last time that we had a period of real kind of world peace and coordination, was to embrace free trade and globalization and the birth of the Internet.

36:53And globally, that's worked really well. Billions of people are better off than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago, where there's fewer people living in extreme poverty, longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, higher literacy rates, all those metrics. But those tend to benefit the people who were the worst off to begin with. And when you take a market that's closed and open it up, then people who are succeeding in the closed market aren't going to do as well. And a lot of those are Americans, right? So when Donald Trump does a MAGA, America First kind of platform, I don't really think that him saying or doing these things is going to change the underlying economics of anything.

37:28But I understand the political appeal to it, which is people who felt like a generation or two or three ago, they were guaranteed a certain level income, a certain lifestyle. And now that no longer exists. And then you layer in the opioid crisis, terrible public schools, wildly expensive health care, guns, immigration, everything else. And like, it is no surprise to me that people feel scared and upset and unhappy. And every politician runs for office promising to fix all these problems. And the problem is between low voter turnout, gerrymandering, dominant special interests, and tons of extremism and polarization, they can't really do anything.

38:07So everyone fails all of the time. The public gets angry. They want blood. So they hold the incumbent accountable and the incumbent loses. So Trump was a one-term president. Biden very well may be as well. And we may have five more of these until things write the shit. So when you say that Biden may very well be a one term president, I mean, although I'm a moderate, I think of myself as fairly sane, which means I'm for Biden. I know we're all supposed to understand and reach out to the other side. I think to reelect an insurrectionist just makes no fucking sense to me. So the fact that someone who's much more in touch and quite frankly, I think you're better regulating your emotions than I am, sees that there's a decent chance that Trump will be reelected.

38:48If you were advising the Biden campaign, and for all intents and purposes, maybe you are, what do you think the message needs to be? Yeah. So there's two things. So the first question is, I mean, what what he should really do if his interest was the public good and not his own good. And he's a politician, which means his interest is his own good. It's not right. Right. Because when the election is a referendum on Trump, which we not only saw in 2020, but we saw in the midterms in 2018 and 2022, Trump loses. There are more people that choose not to have him than have him. But when the election is a referendum on both Trump and Biden, the incumbent president, in a time where people feel really unhappy, then all of a sudden the math changes a lot and it gets a lot better for Trump.

39:28So the best thing I would argue Biden could probably do is not run at all. and you let like a total cipher, like a Gretchen Whitmer, someone that just no one has any opinion on, let them be the nominee because the point is you want to make the entire election just about Trump and nothing else. Do you still think there's, I mean, we've all secretly hoped that, I mean, deep down, I wish he'd picked what I would think is a VP that better resonates with the U.S. and then stepped aside and said, I'm going to go down in history as the greatest president ever, best economy in the world, more jobs created exponentially than anyone.

40:00I saved you from this orange nightmare. Now I'm handing the reins over to Governor Newsom, Widmer. Is there still time for that? Two things. So one is, is there any human nature in history that would say this is possible? The only real example I can ever point to is George Washington, right? Otherwise, everyone clinks to power no matter what. Yeah. And so in a weird way, I think the best thing the Democrats could do would be not to put a new person forward until the convention in July because you want the shortest general election possible because you want it to be just about Trump, not about Trump and the Democratic nominee.

40:36And so I actually think the less time the public has to get to know and start to dislike whoever the new person is, the better off you are. So, you know, at the convention, Biden could step down and then there would be a giant fight. What would be cool about it is the whole world would be watching because it'd be like the first time since the 50s that a convention actually picked the nominee. America loves a winner. And even now in our totally artificial conventions, you still come out of it with a three or four point balance for a little while. And then you have a much shorter general election with a lot more attention being paid to it.

41:06So I think he could, but I don't think he will. Right. So then the question becomes, what's the winning message for Biden? And I'm an independent at this point. If you think I hate your favorite party, I do. But where Democrats keep getting wrong is they just keep insisting that if the people only knew about one more terrible thing Trump said or did, then they would finally wake up and get it and nobody would vote for this guy and he would lose. They get it. When 47 percent of voters are telling NBC News, we prefer Trump over Biden compared to the 42 percent who are picking Biden, they know every bad thing Trump's ever done.

41:40They know he's been indicted on 91 different felony counts. They know all the horrific things he said, and they have still made the decision that in their mind, their life was tangibly better off under Trump than it has been under Biden. And therefore, that's what they care about. And what you've got to show those people is actually your life under Trump would be a lot worse. So, like, for example, if you take Trump's own advisers that they're worried about their plans if he were to win, dismantling the federal bureaucracy sounds great. But let's use air travel. We've talked about that as an example.

42:10if you cut the number of TSA agents in half, that means the line is twice as long. And if you cut the number of air traffic controllers in half, that means ultimately the number of flights that can run at any given time are only half as many, which means flights become more expensive and a lot less frequent. I've said to people, okay, if you'd like to spend now three or four hours at the airport because of Trump's changes and have to pay twice as much for your flight, which now is only going to run every other day instead of every day, then vote for Trump. And I think that there are corollaries to that in almost every single sector where you've got to show people your real life is going to get worse in these very specific ways.

42:47Just taking this guy at his word for what he and his team say they're going to do, if people feel like, oh, I don't want that. And so I do think that there are tangible policy arguments that you can make to people, but people ultimately are voting on what's best for their pocketbook, what's best for their family, what's best for their life, not for democracy as an institution. And the left just never seems to understand that until you can pivot to a message of here's how your life would be worse. I don't think they can win. We'll be right back.

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44:36Do you think ultimately the undecideds, the only people that matter here, generally speaking, my view is they don't care about politics. It was like me in my 20s and 30s. I could give a shit about politics until the day before I voted and then I thought about it and went and voted. If those people determine those 100 ,000 soccer moms in those five states, whatever it is, don't you think at the end of the day, and again, I'm talking my own book here, I think at the end of the day, they go, you know, the economy, maybe it's not as good as they're claiming, but it's not bad. So I hope so. And by the way, that number can be as small as 45 ,000 soccer bombs.

45:11So we're really talking about six states and maybe 30 counties total that matter here. Look, before Trump, no U.S. president who was governing over, presiding over a good economy, and we were not engaged in a ground war with our own troops, ever lost for the election. And then Trump, now COVID obviously made everything especially weird, but the economy had generally been pretty good. We weren't at a ground war with anyone, and yet he lost because he's Trump, right? And so I think the script has just been flipped, and people's unhappiness now kind of overrides everything else. And you're right.

45:45There is a cognitive dissonance where all of the economic metrics on job growth and the stock market and even inflation now don't line up with how people feel. I mean, consumer spending is tremendous, despite the fact that people tell pollsters that they feel bad about the economy. So the hope is that those views start to rebound. But the reality is the main metric people seem to vote on is inflation. And the real thing there is gas prices and food prices. And those two are still a lot of risk. I mean, every time the Houthis send up a missile and take down a tanker, you know, gas prices go up.

46:20And so I'm not sure that's going to fix itself in time for the election. And I just think, generally speaking, we're in this era where things feel so bad that even if they're not that bad, like, I don't know, you know, you're in London most of the time now, but like New York City, the actual crime metrics are not that bad. If you compare crime to the last couple of years, it's safe. However, we live in a world where there's 5 ,000 illegal weed shops that are just allowed to operate. And that just makes you feel lawless, like who's in charge here? There's scaffolding on every block that no one ever bothers to remove.

46:54There are junkies whacked out on track falling asleep on the street. Every time you go to CVS to get a tube of toothpaste, you now have to get someone to unlock a case for you. And so it feels bad. The city feels unsafe. Eric Adams, our mayor, is at a 28 % approval rating in the latest Quinnipiac poll. That's the lowest recorded approval rating of any mayor in New York City history. And the reason isn't because the city is subtly that bad. It's because the perception is bad. And that's reflecting how people feel. So I want to I'm going to ask you about your your 50 reflections of 50. But first, just to wrap up on politics, whenever I go to Washington, I'm actually I actually end up feeling better about America.

47:33Strangely enough, I meet with senators and congresspeople and on both sides of the aisle. And I generally find that they're either very good actors or they seem like smart people trying to do the right thing. And, you know, I'm really impressed with senators Warner, Klobuchar, Bennett, people who just strike me as moderates and smart and are trying to do the right thing. Senator Blackburn, who I'm not a fan of, I think she's trying to do the right thing on social media. I don't I look at Senators Cruz and Graham and I think they're just total fucking whores pretending to give a shit. Anyway, the give us some hope here.

48:11What politicians would you want to bring some sunlight to that you think are willing to risk reelection to try and do the right thing? So. The risk of cynicism, first of all, the three people you named Minnesota, Virginia, Colorado, those are all effectively purple slash swing states. Yeah, moderates. Right. So as a result, they have the freedom to be reasonable because they're less hostage to the crazies in their party. Look, as you know, I was Mike Bloomberg's campaign manager for mayor of New York. Mike at this point is too old time for president. But in my view, he would have been the ideal person.

48:49And he's the only politician I've ever worked with in my life that genuinely said, and it helps when you have all the money that he has, but nonetheless genuinely said, every decision is based on what I truly believe is best for the city. And you could disagree with his assessment of something, but it was truly how he decided absolutely everything. Yeah. If not, I'll go back to my life at private jets and St. Bar's. I'm going to be just fine. Right. I don't have any trouble getting reservations in restaurants without the political title. Right. Or anything else. So, you know, there are some people like that who are exceptions to the rule.

49:22But I'll now pure nepotism. My brother-in-law, Josh Gottheimer, is a member of Congress. He's from New Jersey. He happens to be in one of the remaining 25, 30 swing districts. He is the chairman and founder of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which is a bipartisan group that actually does try to get shit done. Josh is what we should absolutely want. And Josh is actually on bills like infrastructure and COPS. He's actually helped move some stuff forward in a meaningful way. But Josh, too, you know, has the luxury of representing a swing district. He had to beat a seven-term Republican to win the seat.

49:55But once he did, you know, yes, he gets a crazy primary from the far left every time. But in his district, the concern of them winning is low enough that Josh can ignore that and just focus on the election. Who would you like to see president? And it can't be someone related to you. I mean, I think of the, to me, of the people who are at talked about right now. Whitmer probably is the combination, I don't even know her personally at all, of someone who seems well-qualified, has a good record in Michigan, and also is a cipher. Because again, as we discussed, you want to make the election solely a referendum on Trump.

50:32So Gavin Newsom has done some really good things. I mean, the stuff he did around housing and actually kind of making it possible to build in California, I think, was excellent. But can you paint him as the typical California liberal smug, whatever it is, you could. So arguably, the election becomes more about him. So the more it's about someone that everyone's like, yeah, fine, which probably that was Biden in 20. Nobody had any opinion. Everyone's opinion. Biden's like, yeah, fine, whatever. I think Newsom and you as his campaign manager, president of the fifth largest state, most Nobel Prize winners, reelected with 62 percent or that recall vote, he got 62 percent.

51:09And my sense is, and I want to get your response to this, that this is all about contrast, because you're right, everybody hates the incumbent. You put Nikki Haley on the stage next to Biden. I think she kills him in an election. I think you put Newsom, quite frankly, it's his youth versus tired old people. You put Newsom or Whitmer on the stage with Trump and people look at Trump angry and breathing hard and looking like he's going to have a stroke when he's injecting himself with a govi. and they go, you know, I think I'm going to go with that Whitmer. It just strikes me that the parties would be so much smarter to put up someone under the age of 100.

51:48Yeah. But again, this gets back to the underlying point of our conversation, which is behavioral input-shaped policy outputs, right? Whether it's economic or political, who are the people at the parties? They are the people who stand to gain the most if Trump or Biden are the president, right? They're lobbying firms. They're friends. They're everything. It's not like there are these independent mechanisms that just say, we just want to do what's best for the party and the country, and we don't care about what the person at the top of our ticket wants. They're totally dependent on that person. If Trump doesn't want Ronald McDaniel to be the chairman of the RNC, she's not going to be the chair of the RNC, right?

52:24And so fundamentally, yes, you're right. But, you know, and this is why I kind of keep pushing mobile voting, which is we all keep banging our heads against the wall and saying, why can't they be better, right? And the answer is they're not capable of it. The kind of people who run for office are desperately self-loathing, insecure people who can't live out the validation of holding office. And they're never going to pick the public good over their own personal good. And that's true throughout politics, which is why you can't ever get better people. What you can get are better incentives where you align the things that we want to see happen from a policy standpoint with the underlying politics.

53:00So it actually makes sense for them to do that. That's why people you cited, like Klobuchar and Bennett and Warner, they can actually get away with that. Right. You know, you got to align inputs and outputs. And if you don't do that, you know, all the frustration and outrage in the world isn't going to change it. So just to wrap up here on a more positive note, for your 50th birthday, and I love this, you published a list of 50 reflections. Can you distill them down to your top three pieces of life advice? Yeah, sure. And by the way, a lot of it is, you know, lessons that I've learned the hard way over the years.

53:30and you can find it on Medium if you're interested. Look, I've spent a ton of time studying happiness science and behavioral economics and behavioral psychology. And fundamentally, this is the way I see it. I don't believe in reincarnation. I don't believe in an afterlife. This is the one shot I've got here. And it's going to be at most 100 years, which is a blip of time in a 5 billion year old earth. And nobody owes me anything. It is my responsibility to make the most of my life that I possibly can. So number one is you got to be proactive. You got to make shit happen. You got to take risk. You got to put yourself out there.

54:07You have to be willing to fail. And I fail all the time because you can't succeed. If you're never failing, you're not taking nearly enough risk in the first place. So the first thing is you can't expect anyone to do it for you. It's on you. But the second thing is we do have kind of a warped view in this society, in this country as to what produces happiness, right? So what at least all of the data says is two things produce happiness, relationships and fulfillment. If there are people in your life that you really count on and you know they're going to be there for you and support you no matter what and vice versa, that really matters.

54:40And if you do things that you find fulfilling, and it doesn't have to be working in a soup kitchen, just things of intellectually engaging and fulfilling for you, you know, make you feel good about the work that you're doing in some way, whatever it is, that could be through your work, it could be through your hobbies, your faith, whatever it is. If you have those two things in your life, you're going to be happy. You know, the grant study that Harvard did? Grant study, of course. Yeah. So like, just for the listeners, basically Harvard took a group of sophomores in like 1934, I think, or 38, and then a group of working class young men in Boston, the same age, followed them over their entire lives, studied them, met with them constantly, and then said, who was happy and why.

55:16And it was the people who had really good relationships and had a job that made them feel good about themselves. You have to figure out the highest ROI for yourself. And despite what sort of Instagram tells you, it's not really status and wealth. Those are good things to have for sure, but it's really relationships and fulfillment. And so if you can construct your life as much as possible around trying to maximize for relationships and fulfillment, from a purely selfish standpoint, that will generate the most happiness, the best life for you. So if that's really, to me, that whole piece about turning 50, that was the point.

55:51Bradley Tusk is a venture capitalist, political strategist, philanthropist, and writer. He is the founder of the political consulting firm Tusk Strategies, as well as the co-founder of Tusk Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests solely in early-stage startups and highly regulated industries. Bradley is also the author of The Fixer, My Adventure is Saving Startups from Death by Politics and the Novel Obvious in Hindsight. He recently opened a bookstore, podcast studio, event space and cafe called P &T Knitwear on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He's also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School.

56:25Bradley, I always learn from you. I find you take a lot of the things I feel strongly about and are able to distill them down to more kind of actionable. And I'm just, I'm just a, I just admire the way you think and the way you acquit yourself. Anyways, thanks so much for coming on and congrats on the bookstore. Sure. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

56:54Algebra of happiness. I have a friend going through divorce and I was thinking about all the different downsides of divorce. It's financially very stressful. It's emotionally very stressful. It's also very hard on the kids. It's especially hard on boys. When you look at single-parent households, girls have similar outcomes as girls in dual-parent households. It ends up that their likelihood to attend college, the amount of money to make, their likelihood of some sort of self-harm isn't that much greater when dad is no longer in the picture. And when we're talking about single parent households, we're usually talking about single mother because usually it's the mother who gets custody of the children, which is a whole other talk show.

57:37But men kind of are young men. If you were to point to a single point of failure, when men sort of started downward or young boys start a downward spiral, it's usually when they lose a male role model. And there's some wonderful people who oftentimes step into that. But what I was coaching my friend about, and also I know his wife and soon-to-be ex-wife, is that everyone needs to take responsibility for trying to ensure that that male role model is still really involved. Now, obviously, the real responsibility comes down to first the man, the husband, and the wife. It's more than just about you.

58:13Marriage used to be a commitment. Now it's considered sort of a lifestyle enhancement. And once it's no longer working for the man and the woman, they oftentimes decide to split up. I think mature couples decide that, OK, it's more than just about us when they have kids, especially boys. Not to say that they should be more prone to divorce if they only have daughters, but it does seem to be especially hard on boys. is I think there's really additional incentive to figure it out. If you can't, if you can't figure it out, then what I would suggest is it's up to, there's a real onus on the father and the mother.

58:46The dad needs to sacrifice professionally, logistically to stay involved. When my parents got divorced, and granted it was the 70s and my dad didn't have a lot of male role models, but he immediately got offered a better job in Ohio and moved right away. It was a different age. I don't think most people would do that now. But my dad basically was like I was living with my dad. And within like two months, my dad was living in a different state. And I saw him twice a year, maybe three times a year. And quite frankly, I've never forgiven him for it. I, you know, intellectually and theoretically, I have.

59:20But there's just a certain level of lack of connective tissue there that will never be restored because I just can't help but think, you know, when I was 80, sort of decided to abandon me to be blunt. And also, I think there's some onus on the mother to not poison or contaminate the kids with a hate dad. And my mom did that for me when my dad would come pick me up every other weekend when he was still living in Southern California. You know, I was eight years old and we lived in a big apartment complex. I would go down at night and she wouldn't go down with me because she didn't want to see his car.

59:54And I think most parents nowadays know better. but I think it's very easy to, or very difficult, I should say, to not let your emotions and your herd infect the kids one way or another and turn it into sort of an us versus them. And almost always, almost always the kids are going to side with the mother because that's usually who they're dealing with. And society has a tendency to believe in any divorce, that it's the woman who's the victim and the male who's the perpetrator, even though data shows that 70 % of divorce filings are by women, usually after some sort of economic strain on the family.

1:00:30But both dad and mom have an obligation to ensure dad can stay involved in the kid's life. Here's a very scary stat. One in three men after six years or six years after the divorce, one in three men have absolutely no contact with their children. And, you know, we wonder why young men are coming off the tracks. Well, it's pretty simple. There aren't enough men involved in young men's lives. Men need male presence. They need male energy in their lives. And divorce tends to be this construct where if people don't make a real effort, it's easy to not have male involvement. In addition, kids, as they enter into their teen years, need to be, in my opinion, and this is a tougher one to counsel people on, a little bit more forgiving and to realize that life is complicated and there probably isn't just one guilty party here.

1:01:17And be more accepting. I'm heartbroken by a friend of mine who just got divorced. And quite frankly, his daughters want nothing to do with him. And he was a wonderful dad. And it's not because they don't love him, but it's because their friends and their mom kind of has priority on stuff. And they can't imagine their weekends with their dad. And quite frankly, they just make no effort. And maybe that's understandable for teen girls. But I really feel sorry for the father who seems to be trying everything he can. that divorce was not his idea. Divorce is ruinous on so many levels, but one thing you can't adjust for, and I do see a lot of parents that try to do this, let the kids stay in the house, trade off, and really make sacrifices financially, logistically, bearing your own emotions, your own resentment, your own anger, and recognize that when you get married, it's not only a commitment to that other person, and even if that commitment fails, your real commitment is to the kids.

1:02:14And so you got to try and put some of that shit away to ensure that the kids have a healthy relationship with both parents. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin, Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show.

1:02:48It's not easy to have a flat stomach for a great day. It takes a lot of work, very strict diet. It's very, but it's hot. Ooh, it's hot. She's got this little English spanner, this little cocker spaniel who just, ooh, can't keep his eyes off of her. Welcome to Dog Erotica. I'm your host, Scott Galloway. Uh...