Can Trump & Costco Fix Healthcare? Shocking Moves, AI Monopoly Wars & America’s Identity Crisis | The Tom Bilyeu Show

Summary

Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu

Episode: Can Trump & Costco Fix Healthcare? Shocking Moves, AI Monopoly Wars & America’s Identity Crisis

Date: December 5, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Tom Bilyeu and co-host Drew dissect some of the most pressing headlines shaping American society—from radical healthcare proposals involving Costco and Trump, to the evolving landscape of education and work, Google's power plays in the AI arms race, and deep reflections on America’s identity amid technological and cultural turmoil. With characteristic candor and an entrepreneurial lens, Tom weaves insights about the future of competition, meaning, and personal responsibility.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trump, Rand Paul & Costco: Reimagining Healthcare Competition

Timestamps: [00:59] – [12:55]

• Rand Paul’s proposal: Trump shared a message from Rand Paul about revisiting association health plans to let Americans buy group health insurance through retailers like Costco, Amazon, and Sam’s Club.
  • “This collaboration…holds the promise of lowering insurance premiums. It …did not succeed because of Democrats AGs fighting it in court. We could pass it in Congress today with your help. It costs nothing…just changes labor law.” — [01:59]
• Tom’s controversial belief:
  • “People have to be allowed to fail. People have to be allowed to die of a horrible disease.” — Tom [02:55]
  • He argues health insurance should be based on actual biometric data, rewarding healthy living and real risk mitigation, much like "hardcore mode" in his video game project, Kaizen.
  • Critiques the employer-based insurance model as outdated and “resentment against entrepreneurs.”
• Comparisons with Other Countries:
  • Tom points out the difficulty of comparing the U.S. with smaller, more homogenous Nordic countries, emphasizing America’s unique, entrepreneurial, and risk-taking identity.
  • “If we’re willing to get back to America is hardcore…then yeah, we’re going to be giving up some of the welfare statey Stuff that you see in the Nordic countries…They are never going to be a meaningful player on the international stage.” — [10:06]
• On Solutions & Political Reality:
  • Trump’s moves to lower costs for the middle class may be more impactful than efforts to increase wages, as seen by this health care initiative.
  • “Instead of going…‘let’s keep giving them more money,’…we’re going to introduce competition.” — Tom [12:29]

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2. Palantir, College, and the Evolving Path to Work

Timestamps: [14:08] – [20:43]

• Palantir’s Bold Hiring Strategy:
  • Palantir is recruiting high school grads, questioning the necessity and value of college, especially if it means student debt.
  • Drew shares his parenting outlook: “I have a high schooler…she doesn’t need to go to college…maybe the tides are turning on that.” — [14:08]
• Tom’s Take:
  • “If she can go to college without taking on debt, send her to college. If she has to take on debt…it’s a mistake.” — [15:21]
  • He frames it as a debt problem, not a college problem. Emphasizes apprenticeships over formal education, citing historical greats like Da Vinci and Franklin.
  • “If you know what you want to do, go do that thing…You will learn and grow more in a year by orders of magnitude than you will in a college.” — [19:59]

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3. AI Monopoly Wars: Altman vs. Google, and the Future of Competition

Timestamps: [20:43] – [31:11]

• Sam Altman’s ‘Code Red’ & The Gemini Threat:
  • OpenAI responds to Google’s Gemini 3 launch and traffic gains with an internal memo to ramp up ChatGPT development [20:43].
  • Noted competitive threat: Google can subsidize its AI at a loss, potentially squeezing out all competitors.
• The Monopoly Problem:
  • “This is the cutthroat world of monopolistic behavior. That's why you have to protect yourself from monopolies at the government level. This is one of the reasons I am not a no government guy…” — Tom [22:50]
  • Warns of the risk of regulatory capture and regulatory burdens used to cement oligopolies.
• Competition as a ‘Secret Sauce’:
  • “Competition is the secret sauce. That’s the thing that really allows…all of us to win.” — Tom [22:50]
  • Discusses analogues with Apple’s ecosystem, airline pricing, and why collusion can arise even without conspiracy—just through algorithms [28:21].
  • Decries the lack of ‘honorable politicians’ to check crony capitalism: “They don’t exist, so nothing will stop them. When companies get big enough, they fuck us over. That’s what happens. Welcome to the real world.” — Tom [30:02]

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4. AI’s Social Impact and Human Meaning

Timestamps: [31:11] – [41:09]

• Tom’s Prognostication:
  • He envisions a world soon where AI revolutionizes personal health (diet, disease management), but cautions about psychological and social consequences:
  • “Everything that AI gets better at will rob you of your humanity. And it is going to be psychologically devastating.” — Tom [32:19]
  • Predicts a 10–20 year period of disrupted meaning and purpose, with potential spikes in opioid epidemics and violence, or perhaps just mass numbing via entertainment.
  • “For every awesome thing that AI adds…from the people already adults, it will strip something away.” — Tom [36:00]
  • Outlines four future life choices: addiction, challenge (Mars/hard mode), “back to nature”, and living in simulations — [38:08]

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5. America’s Identity Crisis & Cultural Rifts

Timestamps: [07:38], [41:09] – [50:02]

• The Need for a ‘Villain’:
  • Listeners point out that polarization increases when there’s no “external enemy”—so cultural and ideological rifts become self-fueling.
  • “I do think in America this is going to calcify pretty quickly into Muslims bad. And so that’s my concern.” — Tom [45:08]
  • “If we need to rally people…they will have no shortage of people to bang the drum about.” — Tom [45:40]
• Economic Hopium vs. Hard Reality:
  • Previews a coming interview with Arthur Laffer, challenging “hopium” about American economic resilience amid debt.

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6. Student Free Speech, Bias, and the College Experience

Timestamps: [51:24] – [58:49]

• OU Essay Fiasco:
  • A student failed a gender studies assignment for using biblical arguments against traditional gender roles; the transgender professor graded it zero and called parts offensive.
  • Tom critiques both sides:
    • “You made a political statement, and you got the grade that reflects your political statement. The transgender teacher is being dumb…The odds that the merits of something with complete sentences is a zero is basically zero.” — Tom [54:38]
  • Emphasizes: College is a “game”, best played for grades if that’s the goal, but real-world mastery of valuable skills is what actually matters:
    • “All that matters in life is are you good at something that will make money for somebody. If you can solve real problems and make them money, you're going to do just fine in life…” — Tom [57:33]

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7. Personal Stories and Reflections on Meaning

Timestamps: [58:49] – episode end

• Memorable Teacher Story:
  • Tom tells a gripping story about a truly unhinged high school French teacher, illustrating how authority and bias can derail young lives—even for the smartest, best-behaved students.
  • Quote: “She picks up the pencil, breaks it in half, and tells me: ‘Don't you think for one second, I don't know you were trying to kill me?’” — Tom [61:41]
• On Isolation, Purpose, and Relationships:
  • Responding to live chat:
    • “Real relationships suck now…Everyone is in their isolated silo of reality with loose bonds.” — Martin Fort Knox, [64:16]
  • Tom on the crisis of meaning:
    • “As we move farther and farther from [meaningful cooperation], we really do run a hyper risk that we become unaligned with the algorithms running in our brain. And that’s when things really…begin to feel a profound sense of disease.” — Tom [64:33]
  • Reflects on the need for meaningful work and contribution, particularly for men, as a core of purpose and stability in society.
  • “If people could get their heads around [cherishing difference in relationships], life would be so much better.” — Tom [69:06]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “People have to be allowed to fail. People have to be allowed to die of a horrible disease.” — Tom Bilyeu [02:55]
• “Competition is the secret sauce. That’s the thing that really allows the all of us to win.” — Tom Bilyeu [22:50]
• “Everything that AI gets better at will, rob you of your humanity. And it is going to be psychologically devastating.” — Tom Bilyeu [32:19]
• “All that matters in life is are you good at something that will make money for somebody.” — Tom Bilyeu [57:33]
• “Don't you think for one second I don't know you were trying to kill me?” — Tom’s teacher, as recounted [61:41]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

| Segment Topic | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|-------------| | Healthcare via Costco/Trump & Competition | [00:59]–[12:55] | | College vs. Apprenticeship/Palantir | [14:08]–[20:43] | | AI Monopoly Wars, Altman & Google | [20:43]–[31:11] | | AI’s Social Impact & Human Purpose | [31:11]–[41:09] | | Identity Crisis, Division, Economic Reality | [41:09]–[50:02] | | OU Essay, College Speech & Real Skill | [51:24]–[58:49] | | Teacher Story, Isolation, Relationships | [58:49]–End |

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Conclusion

Tom Bilyeu’s Impact Theory continues to be a blend of hard-nosed realism, entrepreneurial insight, and cultural commentary, challenging listeners to cut through the noise of media narratives, nurture personal competence, and brace for vast technological/cultural transformation. This episode offers sharp perspectives on competition—in healthcare, in tech, and in life—and pushes listeners to confront the reality that the future will demand both adaptability and meaning in equal measure.

Transcript

[A]

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manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters.

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But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to another Tom Bilyeu show live. I love doing these. I'm so glad you guys are here. Thank you for joining us. Rand Paul and Trump are working on a way for Americans to possibly get health care through Costco. Palantir is hiring high school grads who are skipping college. And Sam Altman has called a code red as Google and others are coming for that AI crown. Drew, welcome and good morning to you.

[B]

Good morning, man. I'm excited.

[A]

Wonderful to have you as always behind the camera. We've got G, we've got Eric. Gentlemen, how we doing? Eric's on the move here. Not sure what's going on, but it's like when you see the guys in the backfield start running, he's like, wait a second. So Drew, the world refuses to chill out.

[B]

We had.

[A]

It's getting crazy out here.

[B]

Rand Paul, who we just talked about was condemning Trump for the Venezuela boats breaks. He was one of his loudest opposition against the Epstein files, which got approved. We still haven't seen him though.

[A]

That's a good point, Drew. So far, you're undefeated.

[B]

Now we're talking about boats. All of a sudden, all of a sudden we care about Venezuela.

[A]

Every time I think we're gonna get

[B]

him so close, Drew is gonna be wrong.

[A]

And then non, there it is.

[B]

But Trump shared a text between Rand Paul that said, I know we've been at odds recently, but in your first term, you signed an executive order to legalize association health plans that allow individuals to buy collectively health insurance via Costco, Amazon or Sam's Club. This collaboration brought us together and still holds the promise of lowering insurance premiums. It did not succeed because of Democrats ag, Attorney Generals fighting it in court. We could pass it in Congress today with your help. It costs nothing and simply changes labor law to allow people to buy insurance at a group from realtors retailers. Let me know if this is something you might want to partner on. Ran. There is an insurance problem in America. Whether you love aca, there is an insurance problem. I think now people are starting to throw ideas together. I know you haven't done the deep dive on this yet. I do think that this sounds good and this could be on the path of something more positive. What's your initial reaction when you kind of hear about them?

[A]

Yeah, how have we allowed our government to remove competition from anything, let alone health care? So you 1000% want people competing for your business. And here's what. Here's what I think is the problem. And this is. I'm not sure if people track this as my most controversial belief. This is my most controversial belief. People have to be allowed to fail. People have to be allowed to die of a horrible disease. And once you understand that genetics plays a brutal role in your life, nobody can help you with that. And that's a very sad and tragic thing. But if you want to get cheap insurance, good health care, you've got to let those companies go. But how are you living your life, man? You've got to let them take your blood pressure, all of that. Like, do a physical on you, get some biometric data so that if you're living life clean and healthy and all of that rate should be super low. And then what you're going to get is all of a sudden people don't bullshit themselves about what diet or sleep protocol works. It's like your insurance rates are tied to how physically fit are you, dude. If Kaizen is successful, and for people asking, it's a video game that I'm building, if Kaizen is successful one day this will not be within years of launch, but one day I want players to be able to play on hardcore mode and. And in hardcore mode, we upload your biometric data from like your ring and stuff like that. And your character reflects your actual health. And so now you can influence the character by what you do in the game and in real life, if you can gamify something like that, all of a sudden, like getting more sleep, reducing my stress eating in a more healthy fashion is driving the cost down. Dude, now I'm not being fucking drugged down by all the people that are making terrible fucking life choices. And the people out there are not being drugged down by the choices I'm making. It's like, let me Run this game. Let me see how well I can do and let me take advantage of that. The only way you're going to get there is if you let these health care companies compete. And so a healthcare company very much should be able to come into existence that says, hey, you're going to give me a lot of data that you might not otherwise want to give me. And I've had to go through this, okay, as when you get. It's called DNO insurance, like, or key man insurance, I think is actually when I had to get it. So back at Quest, we had key man insurance out on me and so I had to go through this insane physical. I'm talking like they were checking for skin cancer. They were checking every fucking biometric, taking my blood, blood pressure, like all of it, right? To see, like, is this guy going to be here or not? Because we're not going to give you key man insurance that he might die only to find out that he's got a disease. So I've already had to face this down, so whatever. But now if I can go through all of that, I should have the option and this company can come up and create these incredible plans for people that are in killer shape. And I can then drive my cost down and offer the same things to my employees. This is awesome. And not being tied just to your employer, which is fucking stupid. And I really believe all this, like make the employer do it thing, that's resentment against entrepreneurs and is not logical in any way, shape or form. Your retirement shouldn't be coming from your job, especially not in now where people stay at a company for like 18 months. It's all stupid what they're doing now with kids and giving them the, the investment plan. I'm so excited about this. So this is awesome. More competition. You have to accept that for some people it's going to be a rough ride. And if we want to do something where it's like there are provisions for like if somebody has a genetic disease that we. You can't like preclude them from that. Cool. But if you've got type 2 diabetes, bro, that is not only is that controllable, that's controllable by what you don't do. So you don't even have to like go eat it erewhon. You just have to not eat the horrible shit. And because I know so much about diet, no one is going to be able to convince me. But Tom, there are food deserts. I don't give a fuck. This is about what you don't Eat. And so it is. You can not be a type 2 diabetic and poor as of this, I assure you. So yeah, that that argument is stupid. So. But people in America, this is why I say this is my most controversial belief. People in America are not ready to see other people fail and be like, oh, fuck, like that person is really having a bad time because they can't get their diet together.

[B]

Yeah. And I keep hearing com like conflicting things in the chat of like, well, other countries have figured it out. Why can't we figure it out? Things like that.

[A]

Would you like an answer?

[B]

I'll go say, I feel like we underestimate the 350 million people population because you keep comparing us to a country with 5 million white people. Like it's, it's a.

[A]

But you also are comparing us to small countries that don't give a fuck about being America. So America has a character. Remember America was, ooh, I'm a guy in England, I'm a guy in Ireland, I'm a guy in wherever. China, Japan, insert country here who feels tyrannized by my king, my emperor, whatever. And I would rather go to a place with an 80% kill rate than stay here because I'm going to be in the 20%. That's America. Okay, Imagine the kind of person that that attracts. Very disciplined, very hardcore, very what we would now say entrepreneurial. They believe that they're going to be able to figure it out. They are willing to face down death like it it is. Read about Theodore Roosevelt who believed in basically Goggins type shit before there was a Goggins. And so Roosevelt grows up sickly and very weak. People used to make fun of him for being small. What's his response? He starts working out. Dude, working out. No one worked out in the 1800s. What are you even talking about? But this guy got tired of being sick and so he ends up putting himself through like this physical misery because he's like, my body is not going to be the boss of me, no fucking way. That's America, man. And so we attracted people like that. And for 170, 180, 90 years, ish that we celebrated that. And then we started getting very prosperous, wanting to take care of more and more people, which I get and I love. But you have to look at the realities of what that does. Show me the incentives. I will show you the outcome. And so if we're willing to get back to America is hardcore, then yeah, we're going to be giving up some of the welfare statey Stuff that you see in the Nordic countries, which is always what people are talking about. Remember, the Nordic countries are not only small, as you pointed out, not only homogenous, or at least they were, but they also tax the life out of everyone in the country. They do not care about innovation. They lag way behind America and innovation way behind. They are never going to be a meaningful player on the international stage. And if you don't care about any of that, great, go immigrate to a Nordic country, get the fuck out of America, which is a totally different vibe. I do not want to see America become Europe. Europe is managed decline. Europe is, I know you used to do cool shit, but what have you done lately? That's Europe, okay? Europe is fucking falling apart. They have no identity. They are not hardcore at all. And in my opinion, they are not interesting in the least. I want to see the people who are really trying to play. China is really here to play. I've got mad respect for China, obviously. I want to see America return to her glory. The UAE is here to play like they're not around. So I want to see, I want to be one of the countries that's here to play. And so you're going to give some things up. And the biggest thing you are going to have to give up because it's the only way to balance the budgets is, is entitlements.

[B]

We're not getting around that. We're not getting around that. Social Security.

[A]

Yup.

[B]

Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, all that. Yeah. Do you think we're actually going to fix health care?

[A]

I'm bizarrely encouraged by all the stuff that I see like that. So if Trump fears he won't get elected unless he makes life better for the middle class, then we really might, because he's going to have to make more money for them, which is going to be very hard, certainly attempting some of the right things. And he, he can either make them more money or reduce their costs or both. And so this feels like him going, I'm trying to make them more money, but that's going to be very hard. So let me see if I can reduce meaningfully their costs. And so this is way more interesting to me than going, all right, we have a terrible health, health care system. It's very expensive because we're fucking morons. And we've created a situation where the drug companies are making money hand over fist. Look at their stock prices since Obamacare went into place. It is wild. So look at who's winning. The healthcare companies. That's bad. So instead of going, we're just going to keep giving them more money. This is so crazy. It's so dumb. It's so economically illiterate. Instead of doing that, we're going to introduce competition. And I, Trump, am going to start negotiating the way that Europe negotiates, which is this one block. And we're going to, like, get these motherfuckers to give us the best price. Yeah, I'm here for that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need, all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock, so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need, all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock, so your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

[B]

All right, jumping over into this, Palantir thinks college might be a waste, so it's hiring high school grads. This is very interesting to me, and I'm like, I said, I have a high school, and now I'm currently dealing with it. I do not. My daughter, I love her to death. She doesn't want to be a anthropopic surgeon. She doesn't want to be a forensic accountant. She doesn't want to be a biomedical engineer. I feel like she doesn't need to go to college. And I'm, like, starting to kind of really not necessarily push that on her. But at the same time, it's like, okay, she's really, she's obnoxiously good at makeup at a young age. That doesn't make sense. Like, she does her, like, mom's makeup, she does her aunt's makeup, and she's, you know, 14. So it's one of those things where it's like, well, you can make Side hustle from that make a makeup brand. So I'm already like, okay, we could get you make some content around it. You get it. You could get a TikTok check, or you could have your own clients and you build up and you can make a makeup studio. So it's like we can do all these things that will make you have a sustainable living for yourself that you won't need to have to pay $140,000 a year for. But I do feel like I'm so indoctrinated on College is 13th grade that you have to go to college, but I feel like maybe the tides are turning on that. What's your kind of gut check on it?

[A]

If she can go to college without taking on debt, send her to college. And then if she doesn't like it, she can bounce. If she has to take on debt to go to college, it's a mistake. So, I mean, look, quantity of debt, of course matters. You're staking on $1,000 a year, whatever. Not a big deal. But, yeah, if she's going to go, even with double digits in debt, it's probably a bad idea.

[B]

And so with Palantir now saying that they're recruiting.

[A]

Sorry, I didn't mean double digits. I mean 10k or more.

[B]

Yeah. Palantir now saying they're recruiting high school grads, skipping the whole internship, you have to get a fellowship, thing like that.

[A]

Peter Thiel has been encouraging people to do this for a long time. I don't know for how long, but like 10 years he's offered a grant. I think it used to be only one person a year, but he offered a grant for anybody that was willing to skip college. So you basically had to have gotten accepted probably to an Ivy League and then reject it in order to take that. That grant. So, yeah, this is. Given Palantir's connections, I think Peter Thiel's on the board or an investor, but I. All those guys are connected to Peter for sure. Given that, I'm not at all surprised by this. And yeah, I mean, listen, dude, did Leonardo da Vinci go to college? No, he did not. What did he do? He worked with another artist. And so we used to do these apprenticeships and. Benjamin Franklin, same thing. Apprentice. Like, it's. If I had to do it all over again, I would have been so much better off being an apprentice. Oh, my God. Now, knowing how I learn, that would have been way better for me. Way, way, way better for me.

[B]

But with those individual situations, I understand that for those specific people, it was Better. And you know, I went to school for engineering. I'm not using my engineering degree. So I get that. But it's one of those things of certain people will figure it out. But for the masses it should be that way. Like is this like a.

[A]

Is this is a debt problem? This is a debt problem. That is if, if this had become a parasitic organization of indoctrinating people into madness, I would say, yeah, college is wonderful. It's a great time to meet people. It's fun. You are in a structured environment, but you're on your own for the first time. Really, really wonderful. Unfortunately, we allowed through money printing and debt, we allowed the schools to not be competitive because the government guarantees their loans and we force students to hold those loans, they can't discharge them in bankruptcy, which is morally bankrupt. That's disgusting. And people should be absolutely outraged. So we're saddling kids with an unimaginable amount of debt, launching them into an economy that also is parasitic and that, that is a non starter. So unless you can find a college that she can go to that isn't going to saddle her in debt. It's not that college is bad. It is that this is a debt problem. So going to college and then not using your degree doesn't matter in the slightest. Going to college and getting a degree that you could never possibly use to like pay off your loan is pure insanity. So yeah, that, that's just crazy. And in the age of AI and the Internet, you can literally learn anything. And I do mean anything. I'm including doctor surgery, all of that, you could learn the basics of that stuff without going to college. Now no one is going to let you operate on that without becoming a legitimate doct. But like I'm saying that, I say that not to say as a doctor, you should go perform surgery without going to school. I'm saying that if you're being charged by an institution that is acting as if things have not changed completely.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What the fuck are you doing? So my sister actually teaches doctors how to use medical equipment. And my sister does not have a medical degree, but what she's really good at is building like 3D programs, AI programs that will like explode the chest and show you to heart and all this stuff. And so all of that exists. So we, we are in a fundamentally different world and colleges are a racket. So people need to be very careful.

[B]

Yeah. So if I'm hearing you correctly, it's not necessarily that college is a waste. It should be on one hand, apprenticeship, internship, if you can go learn a skill immediately out of high school, that's a better route. Or if you are able to do it without a burden of debt, you should do it. But if you have to take on a 40k student loan in year one, it's probably a bad.

[A]

I'll say it slightly differently. Yeah, college is an option. If you can do it without debt, it's probably not the fastest way to learn. So if you're going to do college, it's probably more I need a halfway house. Between living with my parents and every minute being accounted for and hitting the real world. The fastest way to learn, if you know what you want to do, is to go do that thing with somebody who is ninja level at that thing. And if you do that, you will learn and grow more in a year by orders of magnitude than you will in a college. So yeah, my advice is if you know what you want to do, go do that thing. You will learn very, very quickly.

[B]

Nice. Cool. All right, this has been a title story for me. I feel like this is a much bigger deal than what the stock market is saying, what people are talking about. There's so many different conspiracy theories about what's actually happening. But let's talk about Sam Altman in this Code Red that he issued in his internal memo. So for those that don't know, when Gemini 3 came out, it fundamentally sent a chill down Sam Altman's spine and he sent an internal memo saying that he's going Code Red. The plan is to allocate more resources to improving ChatGPT, with teams concentrating on features that allow more personalized interactions. Other core priorities are talking about advancing the image generation model Image gen, improving model behavior, strengthening leadership leaderboard competitive with systems like LM arena, enhancing ChatGPT speed and stability, and reducing unnecessary refusals to harmless questions. He also mentioned planning to release a new reasoning model next week ahead of Google's Gemini 3, and several projects such as advertising, AI agents and pause are expected to be delayed. It's interesting because I think when it started ChatGPT had such a big lead. I don't know if they just got lazy or what might have happened. But with Gemini 3 releasing, there was a traffic spike that a noticeable decline. For those that said, it was a 6% decline as soon as Gemini 3 and Nana Banana released to ChatGPT's traffic app downloads. Gemini has spiked up over the last quarter. You can kind of see there was actually more active users on Gemini last month and on ChatGPT.

[A]

Whoa.

[B]

So it's one of Those things that is ricocheting through it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

This is the big one though, and I really want your take on this. These are from efficient market and Ross Hendricks. Gemini winning the AI race is like super bearish for the market if you think about it. Ross retweeted. This is the correct take. Gemini winning ensures zero profitability for all. For any other LLM model, Google will force every other player into an endless sea of red ink by keeping its model free until they bleed out. And then it will monetize more once it's monopoly is secure.

[A]

Yeah, that's so gangster.

[B]

Yeah, dude.

[A]

This is, this is the cutthroat world of monopolistic behavior. This is why you have to protect yourself from monopolies at the government level. This is one of the reasons I am not a no government guy, because there are certain players that are just going to be able to outperform the next person and they will do exactly what they're describing, build a monopoly and then everybody's fucked. And it is the worst experience ever. Because as soon as you get to the top, you stop caring about the customers. You know they have nowhere to go. And it's, it's just terrible. You really want there to be competition. Competition is the secret sauce. That's the thing that really allows the all of us to win. So the government coming in and saying, we're going to make sure that we create an environment where there's going to be competition is exactly how you want things set up. And at the same time, it's a brilliant move by Google to do exactly that. Oh, no, no, we can, we could run this at a loss. Billions of dollars of loss for years.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And nobody else can afford to do it. And so they're all going to tap out. This is why, if people watch my Deep Dive where I was talking about the AI bubble, it's like we think we know who the players are right now. Dude, we don't know. It might not even be Nvidia. Like Nvidia may be about to get just absolutely obliterated by this new Chinese company where they're building their own chips. And they may do to chip manufacturing what they just did to intercontinental ballistic missiles, dropping the cost from like $10 million to 99,000. That is a real number. So that's possible that Nvidia just gets completely blown off the map. But as consumers, I get it, as shareholders, why, you'd be traumatized. But as consumers, do we give a fuck? No, we do not. Like, we want the coolest, cheapest thing that we can get our hands on. So, yeah, we've got to make sure that the government protects us from that monopoly. And I love seeing Sam Altman respond to this. And I love every time somebody calls out anthropic for trying to use regulatory capture to do exactly this, where they're like, all right, there'll be five of us. I only have to worry about these other four. Everybody else's iced out because they'll never be able to get over the regulatory burden. All of that stuff is so sinister, man. Like, it's, it's really gross. And remember, I'm a guy who's built a billion dollar company. I know what it's like to be like, I could do things that are protective. I could be in Washington lobbying these guys and trying to get things in my favor. We didn't play like that. So it's just, dude, earn your own respect. Anyway, I know that's not going to work for everybody and that's super naive, but I just hate that people do that. It's so gross.

[B]

No, yeah. And I think the interesting thing is, to your point of Nvidia, because Nvidia is stacked on top of this. And I didn't even mention the 1 and 1,050,000,000 in commitments that OpenAI has, whether it's with Oracle, with SoftBank and all these other deals out on the table. Google's new model uses the Google chip. So it's another type of disruptor on that level that can break this AI stack that's kind of already existing. Somebody tweeted, I couldn't find them where they said, like, people forget. There was Netscape, that was the first Internet browser, but then Google's the one everybody uses now. So like ChatGpt, although they were the first, they weren't necessarily the best. So at this point, now is it just. I just need to deliver a better project to win. That's the way to sure for sure.

[A]

These guys, like, there are things that people want to do. They've got to build that. And the person who your customer has effectively no loyalty. They just want the thing that does what they want it to. Like I've forever been using Chat GPT. If Google wins and ends up being better, I don't care. Like, there are things I need the AI to do and if Gemini can do it and Chat can't, or if Gemini is roughly the same, it has a better interface or whatever, it's easier to log into. Whatever, whatever, it's like, I'm going to go use that One. So this is the world. Everybody should be competing to win over the customer. And this is how we as the consumer win. This is why we don't want Google to get a monopoly. We want there to be a bunch of people fighting to make the greatest thing ever and then they have to continue to earn our loyalty. Think about Apple. Like, I know a lot of people are worried about getting trapped inside of the Apple ecosystem because it allows them to not continue to innovate and be the best. They're just like, listen, I know that some huge swath of humanity is never going to go well, but my iphotos, like how do I, how do I even migrate? So you just like iPhone, iPhone, iPhone, iPhone. Honestly, that's where I'm at right now. If it wasn't for the photos

[B]

and bro, that's the easiest, that's the easiest.

[A]

But here's the thing, I don't want to have to think about it. So I'm just like, oh God, I'd be terrified to lose my photos, Whatever. So yeah, you want competition, okay, I love competition.

[B]

I feel like I'm team competition. But I do think that we do have this crony capitalism problem. I bring this example up as much as I can where I was trying to take a last minute flight from, from LA to Phoenix and, and I pulled up on Google. Like I pulled up all three different companies, whether it was American, Southwest, United and Delta, all four of them had the exact same price at the exact same price. And I was like, how is this possible? You guys are supposed to be competition. Somebody should at least have it $2 cheaper. So that way that would just migrate everybody to go that way.

[A]

Well, here's the bad news. They may not actually be colluding, but if you have an AI that's running a sophisticated algorithm that understands how to price in context of the other price, and it's constantly querying and all the AIs are doing it, they will naturally gravitate towards the same price. So now every now and then I'm sure they'll do something crazy and it will like bump or move and then the other AIs will realize, oh, they got an advantage. So. And then they'll sort of equalize again.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it doesn't take human collusion to get to that answer. If everything is done on algorithms, this is like the trading algorithms that are being used. This is why when people are trying to day trade against algorithms, I'm just like, all right, good luck with that. So that's the AI world and so now what are people going to try to do? Like regulate it? So it's like, no, your AIs can't be that efficient or. And they might. I mean, we regulate the AI inside of a gambling machine, so that's possible. But that strikes me as a terrible idea.

[B]

I bring that up because I'm saying in that example, I feel like all the prices being the same is there's a loser there because there's somebody like me that like, you know, f it, I don't need to go no more. And I would stop versus somebody that's like, okay, if this one was $50 cheaper, I could have sold two more tickets or something. Hypothetically speaking. The reason I bring that up though is because on the AI side now what is to stop them from now saying okay, to Anthropic's point, it's just going to be me, chat, Gemini and Grok, that's it. It's us four and we're going to do it. So deep seek meta all these other people. You guys are open source. We're not really messing with you. Anyway, you're for the Internet. You are.

[A]

The thing that's supposed to stop them is honorable politicians. They don't exist, so nothing will stop them. When companies get big enough, they fuck us over. That's what happens. So welcome to the real world. And then somebody will try to find a way to innovate, but it'll come 10 years later than it needed to. And this is why people absolutely despise crony capitalism. But until you're prepared to get money out of politics, this is the rodeo. Yeah, taking a short break. But there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products and fast dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.

[B]

Man. How do you think it all pans out with the AI race?

[A]

Okay, so my real prognostication on AI goes something like this. Every day AI gets better and is a tool that is incredible. And we are beyond flabbergasted at what is possible. Things that we thought would never be possible start becoming possible. I think that you will have an AI that does things like Drew didn't know. Don't eat that. You can eat that in 20 minutes. But where your blood sugar is, if you eat that now, you're going to spill over, and it's going to interrupt your Krebs cycle, and it's going to be problematic. But if you wait 20 minutes, it'll be just fine. And your life from a diet perspective is going to get insane. Your toilet is going to read your microbiome, and it's going to adjust your diet and all that stuff, and it's going to be a miracle. We're going to start curing diseases. It'll take 15 or 20 years, but just one by one, they'll be like, HIV, where it was like, HIV, dude, in the 80s, you were just dead. And if you're too young to know what it was really like, dude, that was terrifying. Like, you were just terrified. I didn't know how I was gonna get it. If you had HIV and somebody knew, it was like you were a pariah. Magic Johnson couldn't play basketball because it was like, people were like, but wait, if somebody busts his nose or something and blood, like, are other people gonna catch it? And so he had to retire, like, immediately. It was just wild. And now it's like, people just take a couple pills, and it's manageable. Look, nobody wants it, but it's manageable. So it went from death sentence to manageable. It's just gonna be a bunch of like that, Just manageable, manageable, manageable, manageable. So that'll be wild. And everything that AI gets better at will, rob you of your humanity. And it is going to be psychologically devastating. I can already feel I'm with Kaizen. I am in a race against AI, making game development irrelevant. And that's devastating. And the devastating part is I know that humans are going to do whatever is easiest, best, cheapest. And so, like, listen, I went to film school. How many movies do I watch now? Very little less than one a week. I used to watch one a day. Do the math on this. Actually very hard to do. So I now watch maybe one a week. It's probably a little less than. I probably average, like, 0.7 movies a week. And the reality is that a very meaningful time, amount of time that I would have otherwise put into watching movies goes into watching funny reels with my wife. And it's like, is it brain candy? Yeah, it's delicious, and I love it. And we have a great time sitting there watching funny Videos and sharing funny videos with each other. So is it better for the soul? No, but that's not what humans are optimized for. So it's like, I get it. Like, will AI video games be better? No, probably not, but they'll be fast, they'll be very easy to create. And so now I can basically play any game I want for free. It'll be so optimized to what I'm in the mood for right then and there that there'll just be like a for you page of games that are being created by the algorithm based on things that I've played. And it's like, here, try this game and yeah, you'll play it for a bit and then like a locust, you'll chew that one up for all of its fun and you move on to the next. And for me, that's the loss of an entire other industry. So I've already lost film. Now it's like, I'm right, I'm trying to get this game done and it will go away. And so I think all of us are going to collectively mourn the loss of the way that we have interfaced with the world, which is get really good at something that matters and contribute to the whole and, and the group. And we have an algorithm in our brain that will punish us if we don't do that and reward us if we do do that. And so that's very meaningful and it drives people and oh, by the way, you do that so you can get laid. And it's like this very complex dance and it's been incredible and it's created the world that we know and it is going to go away. And so I think for every awesome thing that AI adds, it will from the people that are already adults. It will strip something away. And that is going to be hard. And so there's going to be a 10 to 20 year period where we just completely disrupt meaning and purpose. And that will have dire consequences. And I think that there are going to be opioid epidemics the likes of which we have never seen. I think that there is going to be, I, my prognostication is that there will be violence of some kind, but there's also the possibility that it just numbs young men out who are the only people you ever have to worry about. And so it may, like, we may all get so sucked into the algorithms that it's, it becomes drug like and so we don't ever end up revolting or rebelling. I think society begins to fragment and I wrote a whole comic series about this called Neon Future. So there will be a disruptive period. And there's no way around that. On the other side of this is a world of abundance. So if you get on the other side of the 20 years we have not completely killed ourselves, or the robots have not completely enslaved us or killed us, then you can quite literally have anything you want. And then people will only be charged with, can you play Minecraft forever without getting bored? And the answer for most people is no. Now what do I mean by that? Minecraft is the entrepreneur's game. It is for the self starters. Minecraft invites you into a world and it just says there's a set of rules, period. And so at night you're going to get attacked. You can take any object and do anything you want with it. You've got to feed yourself, you can tame animals, breed animals. Right? The whole set of rules. And now do whatever you want to do. Do you want to turn a mountainside into a discotheque? Go do that. You can do whatever you want. Do you want to build a house inside of a giant cave with pink blocks? You can do that. Do whatever you want. If you can give yourself goals, then it's fun. It's unbelievable. It's greatest video game ever made for someone with my gamer archetype. If you're a person who's like, no, no, I need the game to tell me exactly what to do, you're going to have a rough time because, no, you're not going to need to do anything. You're not going to need to make money, you're not going to need to acquire food. You'll literally have a device in your house that was free and you press a button and it mixes chemicals together and a robot to output food. And a robot is going to do the ordering and the delivering and the setting up.

[B]

It's going to be a pill at that point.

[A]

And so it's going to be, well, the robot's got to make the pill, but some people have to. Some people are gonna wanna eat and all that stuff. So anyway, once you strip humans of meaning and purpose, how far do we derail? And I think the answer is pretty far. So it's gonna get weird before we get to the other side. Okay, then once we're on the other side, as I've said many times, there are four life choices. Life choice number one is that you basically become a drug addict. Life choice number two is that you put life on hard mode and you move to Mars. Life Choice number three is you embrace all things you revert to like the 90s essentially, or you move out into the woods or whatever and you farm and you live life like that. Very natural. And then life choice number four is you live inside of simulations and you pursue whatever goal you want in the most incredible environments ever. And I'll probably be wrong about the timeline, but given what I know about the makeup of the human mind, those are almost certainly the epics that we're going to move through.

[B]

You said two things that I want to dive into. The first one you said you don't have to worry about, you only have to worry about young boys. Why do you have to worry about young girls? Or like why are only girls aren't

[A]

violent so young women will savage you? Reputationally, we're living through what the quote unquote violence of women looks like. Cancel culture is a feminine phenomenon. So yeah, that. If you want to know what it looks like when women rule the world, this is it. This is that moment. I know people are going to push back on that.

[B]

But then when, when young men revolt, they're burning things down, they're breaking stuff,

[A]

they're doing stuff, they are violent.

[B]

Copy in this future utopia, when we get to the floor, what do you think crime and stuff like that is at that point?

[A]

Oh well, cyber crime is going to be the big place that that warfare really plays out. But I don't know because there will be. It will come down to what the incentives are. And if there is some incentive, even if it's just people have no meaning and purpose and so they derive that dopamine loop through destruction, then you might see people go on the attack. Forming cults and marauding might be a, a poor way to think about it, but that's the first thing that comes to mind where it's like they just want to go and break things. I could certainly see that. But it won't be, it won't be the kind of warfare for the acquisition of resources that we see now because that just won't make sense. You'll be able to get anything you want and so the impulse will manifest as something different. Break things. This is an affront to God, so I have to stop you. It'll be something like that.

[B]

Got you, got you. Okay, we have a couple.

[A]

And by the way, just to let everybody know, we have to stop at 8:50 today. We have a slightly early stop.

[B]

Yeah, Tom, got some exciting plans this weekend.

[A]

Yes. By the way, it's like a rumor in chat. People so want to know where you were. So it's up to you. I never tell people what you're doing.

[B]

Oh, I appreciate that. First Wednesday I was sick. Second one I was back home for the holiday. So I was back in Jersey with the fam.

[A]

There you go. You know, nothing crazy.

[B]

Nothing crazy, guys. I miss you guys too, though. Oh, thanks. All right, we had a couple super chats. First, shout out to Mr. B. Saw for your 49. 4999 super chat. We appreciate you. You have indeed you. Huh.

[A]

Just shout out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

49 bucks. Legit.

[B]

And LeBlanc dropped a bag too. But we coming to you next. You got a couple. Mr. B. Shaw said you have inspired me to write a book on the new sovereign we mortgage personal deleveraging system. And I would love to send you a link to the prologue Primer and chapter zero.

[A]

Mr. B. Shaw, that is one. I'm super honored that I've played some ridiculously small role in getting you to create something that is wonderful. The odds that I will take the time to read that given my schedule is effectively zero. So forgive me. Love you. Thank you. But yeah, that I get people sending me books all the time. I just don't have the time.

[B]

Thank you for the super chat. Really appreciate it. All right, LeBlanc number one of four, the first one. The whole securing western hemisphere is all good and all, but kind of feels like tilling the soil before empire expansion while soft collapsing global economy. Looks like repeat of Pre World War I in Iraq, but cartel instead of Taliban.

[A]

It's interesting. I doubt that that's how this is going to play out, especially not under Trump. I think that Trump wants allies and he would much rather people run their own country but do it in a way that we like. But keep in mind he's. He's doing things. This is not me saying, oh my God, this is the right way, but it is very interesting. If what he's doing with Maduro is I'm going to put so much pressure on you that and I'm going to do it in full visibility of the public and I'm gonna put a bounty on your head. I want your own people to turn against you and take you down instead of like all the super secrets CIA stuff. And I don't know if he would do that if he could get away with it. And he just realizes in this day and age he's not going to be able to pull it off. But it feels like he's like waving signs and making it as known as humanly possible. Got beef with this guy for these reasons and he needs to get the out. So he's still doing regime change, but it's a new flavor of regime change. So we'll see. I think regime change is always super dangerous, so we'll see. But I am told that Maduro rigged one of his own elections, that there is a sort of actual president that was elected and that if they can get Maduro out, that guy would presumably take power. If that's true, then this might be a less worry someone. But regime change when brought about by external pressure does not have a good history. So we'll see what happens.

[B]

Understood. All right. LeBlanc 204. He said not all. Never rally voters. World war never.

[A]

Riley.

[B]

Never. Not all. Never rallies voters.

[A]

Where are we at here? Move your cursor so I see where you are.

[B]

Right here. Not all. Okay.

[A]

Never rallies.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

No idea what that means.

[B]

I made it bigger. Okay. Not all. Never rally voters. World War I. Two posters didn't say not all Germans. Oh. Oh. Got it. Got it. Not all.

[A]

Not all. Never rallies voters. Got it.

[B]

Unity needs one clear villain. That's why us red versus blue is exploding. No external enemy. So we become each other's monsters. Pendulum swinging back.

[A]

That's interesting. Yes. I think he's right that having one clear enemy is a way better marketing message. But the bad news is that I do think in America this is going to calcify pretty quickly into Muslims bad. And so that's my concern.

[B]

And then they went on to say it said, but you can't convince people that everything is going to get better if no perceived enemy to fight against. Ever have a family member lash out about bills. Kind of like that. No outlet equals aggression.

[A]

It's interesting. Well, the bad news is it's very easy to go. China's the enemy. Very easy to go. Islam is the enemy. So it won't be hard if we want to pick a sequential list of enemies to go after. So yeah, if. If we need to rally people, if politicians need to rally people, they will have no shortage of people to bang the drum about. So. Or it could like Nick Fuentes. This thing seems to be white nationalist and you really. History says you can rally people around that, much to my dismay.

[B]

But to your point that you always say though is that this is caused by economic problem first. So is it more important to have the enemy so that way you're distracted from the economics or is it we just you give you an enemy now so you can do this while we try to fix the economics in the background.

[A]

Oh, so. Oh, God. Fix the economics, okay. To fix the economics, we would have to do things that we're not doing. Everybody right now, Trump included, the only strategy they're running is make more money. So if Trump had any impulse to balance the budget, I would be very enthusiastic. He does not. He certainly understands the political reality that if I promise free things, that I'm more likely to get reelected. So he promises free things and he money prints till the cows come home. And he's going to try to put some of that money in people's pockets rather than pay down the debt, which is probably politically brilliant, but it is economically stupid. So I. I don't think that we're in the zone yet where people are actually going to fix the debt. This is going to be. I'm so curious to see what you guys think about the interview with Arthur Laffer. When's it coming out?

[B]

Next Tuesday.

[A]

Okay, so not this coming Tuesday, the one after that. Yeah, I'll be very interested for you guys to watch it. So Arthur Laff is the guy that the Laffer curve is named after. The Laffer Curve is that there is a breaking point where it'll be very obvious. If you charge people 100% taxes, then they just stop working. Back it off. 99, 98, 97. At some point you get to the point where people start producing again. If you go all the way down to zero, you collect no taxes, obviously. So somewhere, 1, 2, 3%, you start making money for the government. And so where is that breaking point? Okay, that's what made this guy famous. And talking to him, I was shocked at how he and I are looking at the same thing. In. In fact, one thing you will hear a lot. It'd be very ego gratifying to do a super cut of all the times guests have said, well, you're right about that. But. So no one is arguing that I'm looking at the economy in the right way. What they argue are the conclusions that I draw. And so that's where I'm like, time is going to tell. But Arthur and I went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth about, what does this all mean? Now he looks at me and says, you're just being pessimistic. I look at him and I'm like, you're so high on hopium that I'm just like, what is happening right now? Like, he can't even ground, like, tell me the thing that's going to happen, what is it? We're going to grow it. Where like, what's the thing? What's the actual thing, given the debt? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, Tom, the debt is definitely a problem. But don't worry, even though every other empire has fallen on the timeline that you're on, it's not going to happen this time for magical reason. So anyway, I love my time with him and I do not want to in any way, shape or form indicate

[B]

that I want to talk about it, but I want you guys to see the interview.

[A]

It's a good one, very smart. It was. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. But anyway, it I. No one is trying to make a meaningful attempt to fix the economy. And because of that, we are going to continue to suffer from these problems.

[B]

And then. Last one for Lebanon. Nobody ever talks about post AI. The AI that can make humans farms, entertaining, feed and take care of livestock, but constantly simulating in new ways to generate new data to perceive reality, which is food for the AI. Nobody ever talks about post AI. The AI could make human farms entertaining, feed and take care of livestock, but constantly stimulating in new ways to generate new data to perceive reality, which is food for the AI.

[A]

I think what he's saying is basically the AI could manipulate us in ways that would be entertaining for them. It feels like the same idea that people have that humans are these is the universe trying to understand itself. So the that concept of consciousness goes like this. Consciousness is ubiquitous. It is one thing. However, to understand that thing, it must take a finite limited perspective and essentially look back at itself. I do not find that argument compelling in the slightest. But whatever, that's the argument. This feels something like that, which is the AI only understand the world by absorbing human behaviors, which is admittedly true for now, but they will very rapidly go beyond that and get into physics. Once the robots understand basic physics, I don't think they're really going to care about humans. I mean, maybe, but that strikes me as less likely. But I think what he's saying is that humans will could become a entertainment, feed a source of data for the AIs to be like, oh, if we manipulate them like this, they'll kick off new data. What does that look like? What does it look like to make every human try to kill every other human? Things like that. He didn't say that part, but that would be one scenario where it'd be like, oh, cool, that's what it looks like. Now we understand how they react in that circumstance.

[B]

That's interesting. Okay, all right, I want to jump over to this OU student essay fiasco. So I'M not sure how much of the. Of the background you have on this.

[A]

Oh, I have it all, Drew.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

What background does the chat have?

[B]

Yeah, we'll dive into it. So with this, for those that don't know, a student was given a gender studies assignment, and that gender studies assignment was about. I'm trying to get the exact framing of it. Traditional gender roles about how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender. How people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender. In her essay, Ms. Samantha has argued that traditional gender roles should not be considered stereotypes. She cited the Bible to support her stance that eliminating gender in society would be detrimental because that would put people further from God's original plan for humans. She received zero points out of the 25 for the essay. Her transgender professor, Mel Curtis, said Mrs. Fulnicki failed to use empirical evidence and called parts of her essay offensive. Quote, to call an entire group of people demonic is highly offensive, especially a minoritized population. The instructor wrote. An online grading platform now Turning Point OU is rallying to her her side and saying that, you know, she's being unjustly vilified. I do have to think that if my teacher was transgender, I probably shouldn't use the terminology at least demonic in the essay that I submit to her, but I'm like, okay, I might be too woke for this. So I wanted your opinion just before we get to the OU response, because they ended up having the teacher on leave now and all this other stuff.

[A]

Stuff.

[B]

But, like, what do you. What do you. What's your initial?

[A]

Me? Is everybody being stupid? So my wife is a world class artist. I mean, absolutely, egregiously talented. And she would get in fights with her professors because they wanted her to draw in a certain way and she didn't want to draw like that. And so her mom pulled her aside and said, cool. Listen, you've got a choice. Either one is perfectly fine. But you just need to decide. Do you want to get a good grade in the class or do you just want to make the art the way that you want to make it? And she said, I want to get a good grade. And her mom said, cool. Getting good grades is a game. You have to understand what the teacher believes is worthy of a good grade and then do that thing and you will get the grade. Otherwise, perfectly acceptable if you do not care at all about your grade and make art however you want and tell the teacher to write off and create the thing you want to create. And so Lisa was like, cool, I'm going to Get a good grade. And so Lisa did art the way that her teachers wanted it. Absolutely hate it, and in some ways really ended up of breaking her a little bit. And she didn't touch art for a while because it was like, I don't want to do art like that. And still to this day, I am mortified that my wife doesn't do digital art. But from me, she feels that same pressure of, you're now being like, my teacher is trying to get me to do art the way you want me to do art. Fuck you. And so now I'm going to go in the exact opposite direction. So anyway, this is. This person is being obstinate. They know what it would take to get a good grade. They obviously are like, fuck this person. I'm going to say what I am here to say.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

You made a political statement, and you got the grade that reflects your political statement. The transgender teacher is being dumb. You know that you run the risk of creating a scene. You've now been put on leave. It's like you want to show that you can pull yourself out of the argument and really grade them on the merits. And the odds that the merits of something with complete sentences is a zero is basically zero.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So if you gave them, like, a seven, and you're like, listen, this is obviously a failing grade. You don't make empirical arguments. Citing the Bible is not an acceptable way. That's a philosophy at best. At worst, it's, you know, magical thinking. And so in my class, as I've explained before, these are not acceptable sources. And so I've docu this many points for those sources. Plus, in leaning on theology or going into a value system argument, you're not. Right. Whatever. You're dancing around. So that way you're, like, actually telling me why you graded this down, but you did tell me why you graded it down, and it's because you found it offensive. And so the empirical part. Fair enough. Like, that, it's just. Does that really swing us all the way to zero? No. So now both sides are, like, being obstinate, and they didn't need to be. And they could completely, like, step back from their, like, emotional, like, I'm gonna get you stance. Neither of them did. And so now it is what it is. And you've got tons of people on the Internet, and I don't know if they could be trusted. I have not read the article myself that are all saying, yeah, this was worthy of a terrible grade. Fine. Fair enough. Was it worthy of a zero? That's the part where I'm like, they just made their own life difficult by

[B]

going, that's a really good point. If you would just gave her a 4. This is not a story. Correct. But the fact that you gave her zero. And you did that because you had that. You wanted to puff your chest out. Yes. This is the University of Oklahoma statement. The University of Oklahoma takes seriously concerns involving first amendment rights, certainly including religious freedoms. Upon receiving notice from the student on the grading of an assignment, the university immediately began a full review of the situation. Is acted swiftly to address the matter. First, the college acted immediately to address the academic issue raised by the student. College leaders contracted her on the day her letter was received and have maintained regular communication throughout the process. As previously stated, a formal grade appeals process was conducted. The process results in steps to ensure no academic harm to the student from the graded assignments. Second, the student reported filing a claim of illegal discrimination based on religious beliefs to the appropriate university office. OU has a clear process for viewing such claims and it has been activated. The graduate student instructor has been placed on administrative leave pending the finalization of this process to ensure fanish in the process a full time professor serving as the course instructor for the remainder of the the semester. OU remains firmly committed to fairness, respect and protecting every student's rights to express sincerely held religious beliefs.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. All of this stuff is amusing to me. College is wonderful. It's great experience. If you can do without debt, I'm here for it. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And all that matters in life is are you good at something that will make money for somebody? If you're good at something that will make money for somebody, you will always be in a good negotiating position. You were paid in direct proportion to the difficulty of the problems you solve. If you can solve real problems, I don't care if you ate every crayon that you've ever encountered. I don't care if you wrote things like this. If you're all of your teachers failed you, it doesn't matter. There are businesses out there that are absolutely desperate for people that can solve problems and make them money. And if you can solve problems and make them money, you're going to do just fine in life as a psa. To all the kids out there, there, that's all that matters. Get good at something. Now, if you're a fuckwit that is not good at anything, then I get why you want to have a good grade so you can bamboozle people in an interview. But that should not Be the way that people go through life, get good at something that matters. And then part of what you have to get good at is being able to rapidly articulate and prove, I'm actually good at this thing. So, man, if you can do that, the world is your oyster. But people spend so much time learning how to posture, learning how to interview, instead of. Of actually getting good at the thing. Yeah, that. That is the grand crisis of the human experience.

[B]

Do you have any, like, teacher stories, professor stories, anything like that?

[A]

I have one really good one.

[B]

We got time.

[A]

Really good. Okay.

[B]

Yeah. Come on.

[A]

Give it to give me. This is crazy. And I think about this a lot. So I had a friend, smartest kid that I knew back in school, really bright and ne literally never in trouble. This kid was so quiet, definitely on the spectrum, and ended up being my best friend through high school. So this is not some random kid that I met like this. I really knew this kid. And we had this French teacher, brand new, so we're all juniors, maybe seniors. I can't remember. Juniors to seniors. And we get this brand new French teacher. Never seen her before. New to the school district, whole nine. And they end up, like, really be, like, disliking each other. And we all thought she was weird. And she ends up expelling him. So he's very tall, and she was doing something to really piss him off. And he was like, the nicest guy. So everyone's like. Of all the people to, like, have a beef with this kid, the smartest kid, the nice kid, the quiet kid. What? And so anyway, she says something to him that really pisses him off, and she tells him to go back and sit down at his desk. Now, admittedly he's like 6 4, and she was like, 5 2. And she was standing in a way where he would have to, like, scooch past her. And so he, like, scooches past her, but looks down at her as he goes. He was trying to be a dick, there's no doubt. He doesn't say anything. He doesn't, like, flinch out of nothing. She suspends him. He then gets rejected from Columbia University because he'd been suspended. Okay? Like, this is how big of an impact that ends up having on his life. Life. We're not going to find that out for a long time. She suspends him. So this is now, like, wait, this kid who's never done anything, never been in any kind of trouble, ever gets suspended. Everyone was like, what the. Okay, that's in the air. She. Then one day, we all hate her, now she's a psycho. For real. Like, for real. This woman is a problem. And one day she's talking to the guy next to me, and I'm. I'm sitting at a desk, and the desk at the top has like a. Like a slight divot for you to set pencils. So I have a pencil sitting in there, and I'm twisting, twirling another pencil or pen, whatever, and it flies out of my hand, hits the pencil that's sitting in that little nested area, and falls on the floor behind her. Now she's leaning over, so her ass is sticking out. We all hate this woman, think she's crazy. I'm like, the absolute last thing in the universe I'm going to do is lean down behind her ass to pick this up. She's going to have some kind of problem with it. So I just leave it there. She finishes talking to my friend. She turns around, bends down, picks up the pencil, holds it right in front of me, snaps it in half and sets it down in my tray. And I was like, what the fuck just happened? I was like, I have no idea what universe I'm living in right now.

[B]

She's a maniac.

[A]

And so she leaves. Now we are all, like, the top 10 in my graduating class. So the kid that gets suspended, I don't remember if he's one or two, but he's like, super high. I'm like, fourth place. So we're like the. The top 10 of the graduating class. So we all go to our parents and we say, listen, this chick is unhinged. She is not what you guys think. We. We've got to have a meeting. And so it wasn't exclusively the top 10, but most of the top 10 in our graduating class get together. Our parents come in, principal's there, French teachers there, and we all say, hey, listen, this one was crazy. And. And she's presenting herself incredibly well. And the whole time she's explaining very calmly the different things that we've done and why, like, you know, what this kid had done was a problem and how intimidated she felt. And he's very large, and I'm very small. And, you know, it's very difficult to be in front of these students. And I'm new and so to feel physically threatened. And I didn't want to overreact. But obviously I have to make sure that I'm maintaining decorum in the classroom room. And so we're all, like. Our hearts start racing because we're like, no, no, no, wait. This is like, an alien that's wearing human skin, and she's going to get away with this. And so we're there for, like, an hour and a half or something, and we're like, oh, my God. Like, we're. We are literally packing up to leave, man. Like, people closing their binders, Parents are standing up, and I'm like, hold on one second. Just one quick question. Why did you break my pencil that day? And she snaps, and she goes, Mr. Bilyeu, don't you think for one second, I don't know. You were trying to kill me? And all the parents were like, what? And she was like, I know you put that pencil behind me to try to get me to trip and break my neck. And we were like, we got you, bitch. And like, everyone was like, this is who she is. And so we never saw her again. They fired it.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Dude, it was the craziest. I remember thinking, she's going to get away with this. This is wild. And then it all comes back to that pencil. I was like, oh, it was. It was so fantastic how she just collapsed and the mask slipped, and, like, the venomous person that we were all seeing every day came out, and I

[B]

was like, oh, that's crazy as well.

[A]

Don't think I don't know you were trying to kill me.

[B]

That's wild. That's a good one. That's a good one. All right, we got two more slipped in. LeBlanc. Have a beautiful and wonderful day, guys. And good to see you back, drew. Oh, thanks, LeBlanc.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

And Martin Fort Knox said, real relationships suck now. Fewer friends, fewer romantic ones. Dense cities have the shallowest folks. Lonely men may kill us all. AI Takeover is second place. Everyone is. Is in their isolated silo of reality with loose bonds.

[A]

Yeah, I feel for people like this. So I am Captain Isolation, But. But I. Within the context of being married, that's always important for me to remind myself of. But I get that most people just do not thrive in isolation, and so I do worry about that, that we're making life so convenient. It's so easy to avoid all the frictions that if anybody's ever had a killer experience in a game where you and your friends, like. Like, you cooperated, everybody played their role, and you beat the other team. It feels so good. It is so fun. You know, if you're, like, the healer and you're like, you're there, your buddy's down, and you got him, it's like. And the tank is absorbing all the bullets they're supposed to and the guy with high dps, like in there doing the thing like that, that is euphoric. Now imagine people in the village are starting to get hungry, and the four of you go into the woods. You don't know if you're going to live or die. And you hunt mastodon or whatever, and everybody plays a role, and you do it. You come back. And because of you guys, the village actually eats and the birth rate goes up. I mean, it's like the level of that, like, that's what we're built for, is that kind of cooperation. And it's all a bit of a pain in the ass, and it's all very difficult. And so we've tried to, like, smooth the edges off that difficulty. We've created farming, we've created livestock, we've created grocery stores. Now it's like. Like, we've tried, like. Because all of those things are hard and they're very dangerous, and they put you in a very precarious situation, but they also give you all the things that the blind watchmaker has made extraordinarily pleasurable. And that sense of camaraderie and brotherhood. Forget the romantic relationships for a second, the brotherhood, the feeling of being a part of something to play your role and to contribute meaningfully. And to know that, like, these people are eating because I did the thing. Thing, like, is. It's just extraordinary. And so as we move farther and farther from that, we really do run a hyper risk that we become unaligned with the algorithms running in our brain. And that's when things really. People begin to feel a profound sense of disease. This is why I think it's so important to bring manufacturing back to the US There is a certain type of person for whom that is how they're going to contribute to their family if nobody else else. And when they don't have that ability to go do a hard thing, to provide meaningfully for their family, you've got a problem. There's a great show, Landman. If you're not watching it, you must watch it. A spoiler alert. So this. It's a mild spoiler, but nonetheless, this is a really key scene. I hate to do this to you. I know you're gonna have to hear it. Anybody else that's worried, you got to plug your ears there. There is a moment where a character. I'll be as vague as I can. Where a character has worked really hard and now he's making a lot of money. And he turns to his girlfriend, and she's actually a little bit Scared. And she turns to his girlfriend, and he turns to his girlfriend, and he says, I'm doing this all for you. And she is just completely confused. And I looked at my wife, and I was like, she knows this. But we've had the same. Like, Will and Jada had that big argument where he's like, I built this house for you. And she's like, you didn't build this house for me. You built it for you. And I was like, stop the fucking presses. That woman needs to understand right fucking now that he did, in fact, do that for her. Now, if that is a gift that she chooses to reject, don't be confused as to why you guys aren't in a relationship anymore. And so I was like, to Lisa, if you do not understand, if you want to view yourself as a proxy, fine. That would be a mistake. But I am doing. I have to do all of this for someone, and I am doing this for you. I get it.

[B]

It.

[A]

I can't stop myself. I am wired to work this hard. I am wired to want to climb the next mountain. I am wired to want to slay dragons. That's who I am. I told you at the beginning of our relationship, you can ask me to give up anything, but not my ambition. I don't. I don't want to know me without my ambition. But I'm going to do all of this for someone. Now, as my wife, I am slotting you into that. I would literally die for you. I'm out here working my ass off stuff for you. If you ever look at me sideways and say, like, I don't want you doing this. I don't want these things. You're not working this hard for me. We are gonna have a problem. We are going to implode. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of what men are, what you, as women, have wired us to do. Now, I can't be confused about what a woman is and what you need.

[B]

It.

[A]

I have to make sure that I'm there for you, that I can hold space for you to lament and to sit in negative pain and suffering and for me to not try to solve the problem. I get it. But if I can't give that to you, that is just as bad as you not being able to give this to me. And so in. They handle that so well. Of, like, that discrepancy where he is so befuddled by her being like, but this is not a gift that I want. He's like, wait, what? Like, I'm putting my life at risk for you. And you're reject. This is one of the ways that men and women are breaking down right now that I'm just like, oh, my God, like, you've got to map the other person. What is life like for them? Stop wanting men to be women and women to be men. Like, cherish the other person for the fact that they are different. If people could get their heads around that, oh, Drew, life would be so much better. So my wife, if she's wise, will both praise the life out of me for how hard I work, for all of the accomplishments that I've made, and then hold fast to. She needs some other things as well, and I'm going to need to provide those to her.

[B]

Man, it was so fact, though.

[A]

We gotta get you out of here with that. We gotta go. You guys are amazing. Thank you guys so much for joining us. Means the world. Love you all and we'll see you next week.