Secrets, Scandals, and Space Invaders: What Trump, Epstein & an Alien Comet Have in Common | The Tom Bilyeu Show

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu
Episode Title: Secrets, Scandals, and Space Invaders: What Trump, Epstein & an Alien Comet Have in Common
Date: July 10, 2025
Theme:
Tom Bilyeu hosts an incisive, fast-paced discussion threading together headline-dominating scandals, geopolitical shakeups, economic crises, pop culture controversies, and eyebrow-raising science news. With guests Chamath Palihapitiya and Drew, the conversation probes the deeper societal and psychological themes underlying stories like Trump’s latest moves, the elusive Epstein files, government power, gender/cultural rifts, and speculation about alien life. The episode aims to challenge the audience’s assumptions and encourage clear-eyed thinking amid an era of meme-driven, distraction-heavy news cycles.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Epstein Files, Political Power, and (Non)Accountability

• The Persistent Obsession with Epstein Scandal
  • Ongoing public and media fixation despite political attempts to move on.
  • Missing security footage, "lost" minute at prison, and mishandled PR drive conspiracy theories.
• Quote:
  • "People are obsessed with this. This is about child sex trafficking. This is about the wealthiest, most powerful people in the world." — Chamath (03:37)
• Cynicism about Political Calculus
  • Suggestion that both parties may be protecting their own, hence neither pursues full disclosure.
  • The “lie as signal”—not to convince the public, but to reassure insiders:
    • "The lie is a signal to everybody else involved in the scheme that... the United States government will go to protect all of us." — (Tucker Carlson via Drew, 04:50)
• Impact on Public Trust
  • The notion that brazen, unsolved scandals become “memory holed” as attention moves on.
  • "If you tell a lie big enough, like, eventually people just go along with it. This one feels brazen." — Chamath (08:24)
• Timestamps:
  • Main Epstein/Trump/cover-up discussion: [01:00–08:51]

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2. Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize Nomination & Geopolitics

• Netanyahu Nominates Trump for the Nobel
  • Recognition for Abraham/Imran Accords and brokering peace, though Chamath is cautious about premature celebration.
  • "I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize Committee. It's nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well deserved." — Netanyahu, paraphrased by Chamath (09:42)
• Skepticism about Lasting Impact
  • Region remains volatile—lasting peace with Iran, Israel/Palestine, Russia/Ukraine is unproven.
  • "If all the proxies chill, if we actually get cease to the ... absolute bloodbath between Israel and Hamas, then, yeah, I'll be like, okay, this is really incredible... Otherwise, this is all for naught." — Chamath (11:16)
• Day-One Promises, Current Progress
  • Promise overload; "day one" reforms on Epstein, Ukraine war, etc., remain out of reach.
• Timestamps:
  • Nobel Peace Prize/foreign policy: [09:17–14:10]

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3. Federal Workforce Cuts and The Specter of National Bankruptcy

• Supreme Court Ruling: Trump Can Slash Federal Jobs
  • Allows POTUS to cut workforce at will without Congress—impact: 107,000 employees.
  • Chamath’s business-focused rationale:
    • "You cannot build a company if you can't fire people... we have to find a way to reduce costs." (17:49)
• Moral Hazard and Policy Tension
  • Drew notes how layoffs are an “easy answer” that may mask bigger management and spending issues:
    • "Employees are just low hanging fruit... but then on the flip side, let's raise a debt ceiling 5 trillion over here." (21:48)
• America’s Fiscal Crisis, Buffett/Dalio Wisdom
  • Long-term deficit a mathematical certainty, risking catastrophe without “brutal belt-tightening.”
  • Chamath’s favorite Buffett solution:
    • "Anytime there’s a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection. God, that's so good, Drew. That’s so good. And we’ll never do it." (28:22)
• Timestamps:
  • Federal layoffs and fiscal crisis: [17:11–29:50]

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4. Surveillance, Authoritarian Tech, and Trading Freedom for Safety

• China’s Robot Cop & The March Toward Authoritarianism
  • Discussion on the psychological impact and normalization of police tech.
    • "We have slowly, over time, accepted a level of authoritarian rule that the founders... would just have an absolute stroke over." — Chamath (30:23)
  • The classic warning:
    • “Anyone who trades freedom for safety will get neither and deserves none.” — paraphrased at (31:53)
• Social Dynamics of Dystopia
  • Ayn Rand and the power of resentment:
    • "It isn't that they love the poor, it's that they hate the rich. It's a very different vibe." — Chamath (32:50)
• Timestamps:
  • Authoritarian tech/China section: [29:50–34:42]

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5. Pop Culture: Superman, Morality, and Ideological Debate

• New Superman Movie as Immigration Allegory
  • James Gunn’s interpretation stirs controversy over politics in art.
  • The Babylon Bee’s satirical jab:
    • “James Gunn releases film about the importance of accepting morally upstanding white immigrants who speak perfect English.” — Read at (43:07)
• Role of Theme in Film
  • Chamath, as a screenwriting veteran, defends movies exploring ideas if they aren't ham-fisted:
    • "The best movies, in my opinion, approach the theme as both a question and an answer... you have to earn the payoff." (40:03)
• Timestamps:
  • Superman/pop culture: [38:43–44:23]

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6. Gender, Relationships, Aging, and Social Narratives

• Charlize Theron Clip: “Single woman” Narratives & Age-Gap Dating
  • Viral quote on not needing a man, sexual autonomy, and a bold description of dating a 26-year-old.
  • "I love that I don't have to run every thing by a guy. I'm having the kind of sex I never had in my 20s or 30s." — Charlize Theron (44:41)
• Chamath’s Nuanced Evolutionary Take
  • Contrasts “antagonism” between sexes with the value of partnership; emphasizes evolutionary and hormonal dynamics in attraction, bonding, and age gaps.
  • "If you don't have that, am I really going to judge then that for you, the far bigger draw is sexual? No." (51:33)
  • Commentary on perimenopause, hormonal shifts as root of "irreconcilable differences" in middle age relationships.
• Timestamps:
  • Theron, gender, age-gaps: [44:23–59:28]

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7. Alien Comet: Science, Conspiracy, and Simulation Theory

• A Mystery Object Enters the Solar System
  • Is it a comet, a probe, or an "Epstein distraction"? (tongue-in-cheek)
  • Chamath’s theory: Societies collapse inwards into technology/simulations rather than go interstellar.
• Simulation Hypothesis, Fermi Paradox Discussion
  • "This is a simulation and it's everything else is just running for us and they're just watching us..." (62:01)
• Dark Forest Principle and Risk of Contact
• Timestamps:
  • Alien comet/speculation: [59:31–64:43]

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8. Meme of the Week & The Peter Thiel “Transhumanist” Skit

• Peter Thiel’s (Satirical) Interview:
  • Thiel is asked: “Would you prefer the human race to endure?” He hesitates before answering yes, which Chamath finds comedically bizarre.
    • "When you're asked that question, there is only one answer. It's like, baby, do you love me?" — Chamath (66:01)
• Transhumanism Explained, and Parodied
• Timestamps:
  • Meme/skit/peter thiel: [65:08–67:27]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On the Epstein Scandal:
  • "You've gotta be nonchalant, bro. Like, if you're really going to try to get people to believe that I don't have anything to do with this... you can't come across defensive while you guys are burying stuff. This is wild." — Chamath (03:37)
• On Cultural Amnesia:
  • "I have a feeling that this is somehow going to get memory holed, as it seems like everything does." — Chamath (08:02)
• On Fiscal Policy:
  • "We are in a $2 trillion a year deficit right now. You can't do that. Within 10 years, the country will be bankrupt." — Chamath (26:58)
• On Surveillance & Authoritarianism:
  • "Anybody who trades freedom for safety will get neither and deserves none." — Paraphrased by Chamath (31:53)
• On Relationships and Human Nature:
  • "Anytime a relationship is successful, you're already in exception territory." — Chamath (50:17)
  • "There are two neurochemicals that play a role in bonding. Vasopressin and oxytocin... when you have that, you're more likely to be faithful." — Chamath (51:33)
• On Sci-Fi and Fermi Paradox:
  • "I'm convinced that as we become technologically advanced that we collapse into simulations. We don't try to explore space. It's so hard." — Chamath (60:33)

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• The episode weaves together major news stories, policy shifts, tech innovations, and cultural debates with a mix of sharp analysis, skepticism, and moments of humor.
• Hosts urge listeners to “see through the noise”—to question both partisan arguments and facile narratives, whether regarding political accountability, government overreach, cultural division, or the endless pursuit of novelty and distraction.
• The tone is energetic, irreverent, and honest, with an undercurrent that these societal “big questions” have both timeless and urgent resonance in today’s world.

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For Further Listening

• Epstein Files and Government Transparency: [01:00–08:51]
• Global Affairs, Nobel Nomination: [09:17–14:10]
• Economics, Deficit, Workforce Cuts: [17:11–29:50]
• Tech, Surveillance, & Privacy: [29:50–34:42]
• Movies and Culture Wars: [38:43–44:23]
• Gender and Relationships: [44:23–59:28]
• Science & Alien Speculation: [59:31–64:43]
• Pop Culture Skits & Memes: [65:08–67:27]

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Host & Contributors

• Host: Tom Bilyeu
• Main Guests: Chamath Palihapitiya, Drew

(Note: All ads, intros/outros, and non-content segments omitted. Episode summary maintains original language, tone, and mood.)

Transcript

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[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Trump does not want people asking about the Epstein files anymore. Netanyahu nominates Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, the Supreme Court ends the workforce reduction injunction. James Gunn says Superman is about immigration and politics and many don't love that. Charlize Theron has a very hot take about single motherhood and a mysterious interstellar object has entered solar system.

[Drew]

Drew, we could talk about Trump, we could talk about Putin, we could talk about Israel. But are we still talking about Epstein? Let's hear it. The reporter asked Pam Bondi clarification about the minute that's been missing. We all have seen this footage by now leaking of the prison and the time jump between 11:58 and 12:00am and when asked during the Cabinet meeting, this was the response.

[Grainger Announcer]

Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking. We have Texas, we have this, we

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

have all of the things.

[Grainger Announcer]

And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? That is unbelievable.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

This is the most absurd ever seen in my life. This. He knows that multiple people were like campaigning for their nomination based on you get me in there. I'm Cash Patel, baby. You get me in there, I've got you. Day one. I'm going to have that finally put out the FBI director. I guarantee he's got the black book personally in his hands. You just got to get me in.

[Drew]

He had people on the White House long with the Epstein binders. Everybody was smiling, taking selfies with it.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

This is so weird. I don't know if these guys are just that tone deaf, but even if there's not, there's Actually, nothing to see. Like, let's imagine that that's true. They have to know that is the worst possible news because people are so expectant. And let's be honest, there's no way that there's. I mean, somebody was talking about the phone that they confiscated next to his bed. Had a bunch of people on speed dial. Who's on speed dial, bro? Yeah, like the. The 97 page little back book that Ghislaine Maxwell has, who, by the way, got sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking. Where's that?

[Drew]

So even though it was just her and Epstein by themselves, over and over

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

and over and over. Well done for the. Let's not forget Prince Andrew. So the only way that I can make it make sense is if they're hiding something, man. That's the only way that I can wrap my head around it. I want to be careful not to defame anybody here. But it seems to me that these guys understand politics. They understand PR extraordinarily well. So to be mishandling this this badly, they have to be backed into some kind of corner. I just cannot fathom that this was the strategy that they put together. I mean, did they really think that people were just to like, let this one blow over? People are obsessed with this. This is about child sex trafficking. This is about the wealthiest, most powerful people in the world. And now we're supposed to just be like memory flash from Men in Black. Like, these are not the droids you're looking for. Like, I am really shocked that they thought that this wasn't going to be something that people keep asking about. And then for Trump to act defensively, it's like, you've gotta be nonchalant, bro. Like, if you're really going to try to get people to believe that I don't have anything to do with this. What are you talking about? You can't come across defensive while you guys are burying stuff. This is wild. I don't know what they're thinking.

[Drew]

Tucker Carlson had journalists Segar Njedi who dropped a truth bomb that might explain his take on what's really going on. The lie at this point is not even part of trying to convince any of this is true. Yes, the lie is a signal to everybody else involved in the scheme that to the, to the ultimate ends, the United States government will go to protect all of us.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Here's the thing, man, like really peel the layers back. If, if this is real, if this is even half of what people would have us believe. This is extremely wealthy, extremely powerful people that get together over essentially rape of underage women. That is. How is that possible? How is that like the thing that really bonds people?

[Drew]

And it's not a partisan issue. There's people on the left who are implicated, people on the right who are implicated, charges repressed. Like you said, J. Maxwell is in prison already. Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan had to make a settlement with the island.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Hundreds of millions of dollars, some to the island and then some to victims.

[Drew]

So for this to be, there is no list, there is no files. This is a nothing burger. There's millions of dollars in settlements.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

People, hundreds of millions.

[Drew]

People are sitting in jail right now because of this. For then become nothing. I don't know. And again, people are trying to say, well, Diddy's getting off and now Epstein's getting off. And we're trying to now bring other people in it to make it a big deal. There's something here. It's not just a he killed himself. Wipe your hands with it.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think you and I have talked about this before, but the one thing that really freaked me out was when they did the show To Catch a Predator and they would set up and they'd be like, today we're in kalamazoo and like 150 people would show up to like the most remote, weird, ramshackle. I'm like, what can you set up anywhere? And people will just come out of the woodwork. That was, that was how I felt watching that show. It's the same thing that I get looking at this. Like, how is it possible that that's the. The flag you can plant or the beacon, the symbol that you can throw up into the sky. And just like you get all of these people circling around such that you get this stalemate where nobody wants this information out there. His take is really interesting. And in that this is them just blatantly saying, don't worry, we got you. Like, this isn't going anywhere. There is nobody in power that wants this thing getting out. Yeah, it I. In some way, I need this to not be true because it reveals something so freakish about not just power, but the human mind. I don't know, man. This. This one is unnerving.

[Drew]

Somebody put the timeline together that like, he was arrested while Trump was in office the first time he committed suicide. And then now the COVID up is happening. And in each of those times, it's like Trump kind of started the process and now he kind of wrapping everything up. Like, nothing to see here. Let's go.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But why didn't Biden like, put this stuff out. That's the crazy thing. Like, if this is really. This is why I think there's no universe, even if Trump really is implicated. And again, I have no evidence that nobody else has, but even if he is implicated, that would have been the card to play if you're the Biden administration, but they didn't play it. And so that tells me either there really is nothing there or everyone is there.

[Drew]

Yeah. Collateral damages, too.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

You just, you can't. Like, it's going to wipe out everybody's donors every too far. Too many people in each party. It's. Yeah, man, this is. This will be interesting to see if we really get somebody who's dogged, that pursues this, that, like, really tries to find out what's going on and starts putting all the pieces together. People are certainly going ham right now. I have a feeling that this is somehow going to get memory hold, as it seems like everything does. Country's going bankrupt. People aren't even going to pay attention to that. But, yeah, I mean, this one just. This feels like if you tell a lie big enough, like, eventually people just go along with it. Like this. This one feels brazen.

[Drew]

Yeah. And we're just moving along. There's going to be another news article, another news headline next week, and we're going to forget about it.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah. And to be honest, like, if we were to talk about this again, people are going to get bored.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

That's the crazy part. Like, no matter how wild, no matter how insane, as long as we have the veneer that we can put up. Because if this is to be believed, you've got predators as far as the eye can see. And hey, as long as you give me that thin veneer of society, I'm good, and we'll just move on. I don't know what to do with that.

[Drew]

It's a tough pill to swallow. Speaking of swallowing, after Trump's Cabinet meeting, where is this going? After Trump's Cabinet meeting, he hosted a dinner with Prime Minister Israel and his Cabinet.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Andrew, that's one of the roughest transitions you've ever done.

[Drew]

Speaking of swallowing Israel Prime Minister, that's

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

got to be in the hall of fame somewhere.

[Drew]

He had some very kind words that I'm not sure we'll agree about for President Trump. Let's hear it.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

But the president has already realized great opportunities. He forged the Imran Accords. He's forging peace as we speak, in one country, in one region after the other. So I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize Committee. It's nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well deserved.

[Drew]

This is the second Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Trump got one from Pakistan and now from Benjamin Netanyahu himself. Trump definitely had some major wins in the first six months. You know, two and a half conflicts kind of settled. Do you think it's deserve for him to be acknowledged in this way?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

This feels really way too fast. Like, I want to see if this actually holds, if these things actually hold. Maybe for what he did with the Abraham Accords, like, maybe that's already enough. I wasn't paying attention to politics back then, so I, I don't know enough details, so maybe for that it would make sense. But for what he's done in term two, I think he's done some incredible things. If they play out well, if they don't play out well, if the war between Israel and Hamas continues to rage, if he's not able to do anything between Russia and Ukraine, if Iran just immediately builds back and starts launching rockets again, then I'll be like, okay, this is all for naught, but if Iran really does come to the table, if they try to step into the 21st century and start building diplomatic relationships with people, if we can broker, I don't know, some sort of trade deal with them, if there really is lasting peace between Israel and Iran, if all the proxies chill, if we actually get cease to the just absolute bloodbath between Israel and Hamas, then, yeah, I'll be like, okay, this is really incredible. He's using trade to bring people to the table. He isn't just stick, he's got carrot. If, if he's able to broker a trade deal with Iran, that would be extraordinary. Now that feels like I'm just sort of pie in the sky. I, I will be beside myself with shock. If the regime stays in place and they're interested in doing trade with the Western world. That would be very surprising. But we'll see. But if he can pull that off, that would be very extraordinary.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.

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[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.

[Drew]

I think it's interesting because, yes, he stopped a lot of new conflicts that were going on, but there's the conflicts that he inherited that still are in the same place. Israel and Hamas have been talking about a ceasefire, have been talking about trade deals, but it's not necessarily getting anywhere. In Ukraine, Russia, we're in the same position we were.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

That's going nowhere. Putin has made it abundantly clear, Nope, I'm not interested. Trump is going to have to escalate. He's obviously sending Ukraine weapons now. So this is one of those, like, is this a good look? No, he said, I'm going to have that done and dusted. On day one, Cash was going to give us the Epstein files. Trump was going to end the war in Ukraine.

[Drew]

A lot of day one promises getting

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

broken this week and it's, you know, six plus months in and I think everybody feels bamboozled about the Epstein files. And, and he's, as far as I can tell, made literally no progress whatsoever in Russia, Ukraine.

[Drew]

It's interesting, he said something about Putin during the Cabinet meeting and that kind of changed my perspective on his opinion on it.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And it should end. And I don't know, we get, we

[Grainger Announcer]

get, we get a lot of bullshit

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

thrown at us by Putin for. You want to know the truth? He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

[Drew]

He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless. And it reminds me of all those tweets about, yeah, I just got off a call with Putin. It went great. We're going to try to wrap this thing up. And it seems that Putin has just been playing Trump the whole time.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, I mean, listen, Putin is a former KGB officer. This is not somebody who is blind to propaganda, manipulation, asset control. Like, he is for sure going to try to position everybody exactly where he wants them. When you rise to power, In a country as cutthroat as post Soviet Russia, like, dude, imagine the country was in complete disarray. Who's in charge? And for him to be able to climb up, reunify the country is. It certainly speaks to his ability to get people to do what he wants. He. When Wagner, like, did that weird run on Moscow and then stopped and turned around, I was like, yo, he's dead. And the fact that he then just cold as ice, plane falls out of the sky, Dunzo. Like, he. He is. He's not the guy that you play around with. And when you see him in interviews, he seems completely rational and normal. And when you look at him through the lens of Realpolitik, though, it's like, yeah, he's gonna do what's in his best interest, plain and simple. End of the story. He's gonna do what he can get away with. He's looking at Ukraine, he's looking at Europe, and he's like, nope, I can keep pushing. You guys are not gonna come any closer. I'm going to treat threat and I'm going to make sure that as you guys try to encroach and bring the west up into these sort of padded territories post the collapse of the Soviet Union, he had Georgia, Ukraine, and there was a couple others that were former USSR member states. But then after the fall, you could feel them going towards the west. And he had made it very clear, if you guys keep coming, I'm going to treat that as a red line. And he did. And so unless he feels like he has reached the point where he can no longer make progress, he's going to keep pushing. And so we did the whole deep dive on this topic. Like, once you understand Realpolitik, that a country will do exactly what they can get away with, and the only thing that hems them in is internal cultural pressure. Other than that, it is just take, take, take, take, take, take, take.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And so you need look no further than America's history. You need look no further than what Russia's doing now. You need look no further than what Israel's doing. Like, people will take, take, take until they hit an opposing force.

[Drew]

The Trump administration did get a major win earlier today. The Supreme Court votes 8 to 1 to allow the president's cuts to the federal workforce in any department he chooses. The big dissent was the Supreme Court. Initially, the lower courts initially blocked it, saying the POTUS is not allowed to reorganize federal agencies without congressional approval. But the Supreme Court just came back and said firing people is not reorganization. So he's allowed to do that. The cuts will take place across a number of agencies from HHS, Department of the Interior, Department of State, IRS looking to impact 107,000 employees. How do you feel about this reduction in forced reduction of the federal government from Trump?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, so this is where I don't expect people to be on my team, but you've got to think of the president as the CEO of America, Inc. And you cannot build a company if you can't fire people. So I am always just. I have such an allergic reaction when people are like, take the Department of Education, like, teachers not being fired that aren't doing a good job. Like, they keep them on pay, they might take them out of the classroom, but they don't cut them. That is ludicrous to me. If you've got the President of the United States going, we don't need these people in that department. I want to. And I mean, I am so eager for America to avoid bankruptcy that, yeah, between. I want to get people in here that I think can do the job and meet a KPI. And hey, if we need to do a reduction in force in order to save money, because labor is always your highest cost, then he's got to be able to fire people. So that one just always struck me as absolutely absurd. And I can feel myself as I'm staring at, like, I'm actually, I'm no longer in the mode of, oh, I'm in the commentariat. And I'm talking about this theoretical bankruptcy that America go through now. It is just a mathematical certainty. I feel so different inside when I think about this now. And both parties have policies that are going to lead to bankruptcy. Bankruptcy will lead to bloodshed in America. It will be a catastrophic, brutal economic and physical fallout. And people are not taking this seriously at all. And so when I look at something like this and I see, like, all the political infighting and all of that, it's literally absurd. Everybody has got to get on board with. We have to find a way to reduce costs. And one of those ways is going to be firing people for sure. And my vision for what America is going to have to do, I think is going to rub a lot of people the wrong way. Because now this is about really getting back to where we were, like, 250 years ago, buckling down, being a group of people that are disciplined, focused, interested in liberty, freedom, getting the government small, small, small, small, small. We are going to have to reduce entitlements. The only other option is just to say, I don't want to upset anybody. I don't want to cut anybody off of their benefits. And so I'm going to take down the whole country. And I feel about this the way I feel. There was a story that Lisa was watching recently about a husband who was having an affair. And so he ends up killing his wife and two daughters. And it's like, that is the dumbest possible reaction to this situation. But you just can't confront the hard thing being like, I'm not in love with you anymore. I would rather go play than be a father and raise these kids. And, you know, it makes you look like a scumbag. So instead you kill the kids. Like, the solution is orders of magnitude worse than the problem. We have a problem. People's entitlements are going to have to be cut. Wealthy people are going to have to be taxed. There is going to have to be some wealth redistribution. There is going to have to be some money printing. It's Ray Dalio's beautiful deleveraging. I hate that he puts flowery words around it because it hides the real truth, which is we have to do brutal belt tightening. There's going to have to be austerity. If we don't do this, everyone loses everything. The dollar will be inflated to nothing. And people just don't understand what that means. And so we're going along with something that is the equivalent of, well, I don't want to cut anybody's entitlement, so I'm just going to kill Everybody. Dude,

[Drew]

I'm 5050 on the fence about this move because a lot of times when companies have layoffs, when it actually comes down to my stock, this is costing me too much. The profits are being impacted. If I just remove this, I'll be in a better situation for the long term. Then yes, I could get it. It's more reasonable when mom and pop shops have an extra employee, but it's a slow season. I might have to let somebody go get a college kid for a little bit cheaper. I understand that it's a bit more easier to digest oftentimes and when we have these large organizations with a lot of bloat, they cut a lot of people as the first line item. But then they still have over extravagant spending in other areas. I have a very good example of back in the day I used to work at Honeywell and I remember they implemented one time we had a bad quarter, they implemented mandatory furloughs for all employees. So me being young, I was like, oh yeah, Cool. I get a week off, I get to chill at the house. Like, I'm not mad at it, you know, whatever. And then they did it again the next quarter. And then they were talking about doing it a third time. And then I was talking to my boss. I was like, this is kind of crazy. Like the first time it was fun, but like, after a while those checks kind of started to stack up. Like, what's going on? And he was frustrated because he said every time they do it, they save like 2 to 3 million dollars. But on the flip side, we were down 30 million. We overspent on other extenders. Our R and D didn't pan out. So it's like, a lot of times you'll bleed money in one department, but the easy thing is just to cut people. So I get that in the long term thing, like the long term of everything, we're going to have to reduce spending, we're going to have to tighten costs. But I feel like employees are just low hanging fruit of like, all right, let's just cut this. But then on the flip side, let's raise a debt ceiling 5 trillion over here. Let's. So I just wish that we were

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

bigger than you are. Right? And there's two things there. The first thing is that being the CEO is very difficult. And you never know what's going to work, what's not going to work. We're all limited by our intellect, our abilities and all of that. So, yeah, you've got somebody in power, you've got the guy at Honeywell's making the decisions, whatever. But it's like, is he going to make all the right decisions? Clearly not. But you've got to have somebody making decisions, doing their best. The second thing is when you're looking at the P and L and you see the labor costs are just orders of magnitude bigger than anything else, you start going, oh, God, like that one. I understand it. It's easy. I've got a solution. Give everybody a week off. It's mixed. Some people will be excited, some will be a little bit annoyed. But like, nobody loses their job. It's like equal across everybody cool. I save my money. That doesn't excuse poor management in other areas. And it is entirely possible that you saw things that he didn't. It's entirely possible that if you had his job, you'd be better at it. It's also entirely possible that from the outside it's very easy to be like that thing, but you don't understand, like, how it's all connected. I've had employee conversations throughout my career where I'm just like, this person has such a narrow band of visibility into what the company's doing, and they're up in arms about this thing that they're on a hobby horse about, and in isolation, it's hard to justify that thing. But when you look at it in totality, there are other reasons that you might be doing it. Again, that doesn't mean that my decision making is always perfect. It's clearly not. But it does mean that it is. There's usually only one person that has a 100% view of what the company has to accomplish, how all the different decisions connect. And when people that have 70%, 20%, 7% of the whole picture, it can seem like that person's out of their mind. But in reality, it's like, well, I've gotten us this far. So it is. It's tough, man. And so I. I literally do not want to be the president. That seems like the world's worst job to me. It's like all of the stress of running a company, and it's partisan. And so people are trying to take you down at every turn to some extent. And I won't say all the way, because you do want people to say what they think so that as a country, we can navigate to who we want in the office next. But to some extent, you got to say, all right, this is who we've got in the office. I want them to win. Like, I. I don't want to find myself when somebody gets elected that I don't like, that I want them to fail. It's like, you got to want them to win. Like, they're steering America Inc. Yeah.

[Drew]

And you're still in the country.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yes.

[Drew]

Do you consider this a win even though Elon is gone and Doge is kind of winding down, that these kind of are. Doge is policies that he initially put on the table? So are we excited at least, that some of the things kind of left? Even though Trump and Elon, Like, I

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

really think this is a cultural problem. And I. When I was writing the Deep dive that'll be coming out on Monday, I thought, oh, like, I'm. I'm out of step with where culture is at right now. And so it becomes a question of, okay, am I trying to nudge culture, or am I trying to lead where people are already going? And so I was like, well, I'm going to try to nudge it, because I think the consequences are so dire if we don't. And the Reality is, as a culture, we must get ourselves to a place where we're balancing a budget. It's just, that's a must. And so that's going to be deregulation. That's going to be being wise with your tax policy. So you do need to tax tax cuts, but only if they yield growth. If they're not yielding growth, then you're going to have to raise taxes, man. So it's like this is going to be a really difficult dance. You have four levers at your disposal. You've got wealth redistribution, you've got tax, you've got money printing, and you've got austerity. Like, those are your four levers. And so we're going to have to find a way to pull them in just the right order that we can get the economy growing, that we can reduce costs. We are in a $2 trillion a year deficit right now. You can't do that. Within 10 years, the country will be bankrupt. Like, this was the day where I'm now reallocating things. I'm getting out of government debt. So I'm just like, I don't know how long government debt's going to be viable. And certainly the dollar is still weakening. We're going to have to print to keep up with this. We just added $5 trillion. It's it. It is action worthy. I don't want to get in my feels. I don't want to be negative. I certainly don't want to accept defeat. But it's like we need to take evasive action. And if we can't take evasive action as a country, we've got to do it as individuals.

[Drew]

So, yeah, always good to go to this oldie but goodie with Warren Buffett. I can end the deficit in five minutes. New these problems are problems that have built up over decades.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And there hasn't been a Congress that's

[Drew]

been mature enough or a president that's

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

been mature enough to take this head off. I could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there's a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for reelection. God, that's so good, Drew. That's so good. And we'll never do it. But here's why we'll never do it. The politicians don't like it. But the far more terrifying thing, people don't know what GDP is. They don't know why 3% matters. So it's like, man, listen, I think that Chamath Palihapitiya is brilliant and his results speak for himself. But I remember I tweeted at him one time because he was like, oh, our being at north of 130% debt to GDP, no big deal, nothing burger. And I was like, nothing burger? It's not a nothing burger. It. It is. It's not like, oh, you hit 130 and you fall off a cliff immediately. But basically not. Basically, 98% of all countries that pass that for any meaningful period of time end up in civil war or revolution. But that's dramatic. Taking a short break, but there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.

[Drew]

Speaking of drama, I'm getting better. China's robot cop, Hamster ball, Police machine. I don't even know what to call this thing.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

China Spherical Robot. What did it say? This is the security ball of much an infinite death as far as I'm concerned.

[Drew]

A lot of people are saying they're going to start using this for like protesters. And it's allowed, obviously, police riots and things like that. But yeah, this is. Every time I see a police robot, I automatically get like 1984 vibes or like I hear the wolves howling in the distance. This just rubs me the wrong way. But I get technology.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I like this one. I don't know why, but this one I can get behind. Yes, you are absolutely right to fear the authority of the government. That is the thing that terrifies me is that we have slowly, over time, accepted a level of authoritarian rule that the founders of the country would just have an absolute stroke over. Like, this is crazy compared to where we were back when we were, like, we're. We are not even going to let you tax us unless we have representation. And like, we've lost all of that energy. And I think people assume that, oh, as long as America has existed that we've had a social safety net. We have not. That didn't come along until 1935. So we used to be like a bunch of hardcore farmers, industrialists. Like, we understood the need to have manufacturing. Like, we really had people that came from all over the world to build on top of the idea of liberty. And boy, oh boy, have we given that up. And I forget who it was that said the. I'll paraphrase it, but anybody who trades freedom for safety will get neither and deserves none. I forget the exact quote, but basically, like, as soon as you trade safety for security, you end up with robots that are marching in the streets telling you what to do, watching your every move, 1984, cameras everywhere thought police. And you did it because you wanted to be safer. But in the end you just traded it for fear of the state. And this was a friction between Lisa and I where I have beef with the idea of coercive control. I don't think that it should be enshrined in law. I think there are two ways that it's real. The state against an individual and an adult against a child. Beyond that, everybody's got to take responsibility for themselves. But the state versus the individual is like the ultimate coercive control where they can, with literal threat of taking your life legally, they can get you to do whatever they want. And so, yeah, arming them with robots is pretty freaky.

[Drew]

Yeah. Do you think that this is going to come to America? Like this is going to be. Obviously, yeah. In China they kind of started drone soft launch. And then as we seen the war and everything, drones.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Are you here for Covid in America? Like, have you seen the way people reacted? Yeah, it was crazy. People wanted to tattletale on their neighbors. Ayn Rand was the only one of the futurists that understood that you didn't need a totalitarian state, you didn't need a drug induced utopia. All it took to have a dystopian future was like this aggressive resentment, bitter envy. It's something envy. And I was like, oh, man, that is very distressing and almost certainly true because once you get people that are like that, where they just drew. It isn't that they love the poor, it's that they hate the rich. It's a very different vibe.

[Drew]

And sometimes you'll just gather allies to take out the thing that you hate versus actually caring about the things that you're aligning with. It's very interesting. I don't think I've heard that perspective.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So, yeah, I worry that that's. That we already have that. Especially because it's a moment of such tremendous inequality and that that does lay dormant inside the human mind. And people don't stop themselves. They don't. They don't go, ooh, this is icky. Yeah, it just feels so good. I remember there are times, because my wife really has righteous indignation. She doesn't have the envy thing, thank God, but she has, like, when she feels like somebody has crossed a moral line or the way things ought to be for her, like, she really gets upset and it gives her like this focus and energy and aggression. And I'm like, I wish I had that. But I. It's very Few things that make me react with righteous indignation.

[Drew]

What is the things that make you react with righteous indignation?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

If you come after my family, if you think that my money is yours, like, banks trigger me in a way. It's so funny because I didn't see it coming. So I went into a bank. I mean, this had to be 15 years ago now. I went into a bank and was like, I don't know, can I withdraw $2,000? And they were like, what's it for? And I was like, what? Like, what's it for? I was like, what? I'm like, I'm not going to tell you what it's for. I'm like, it's for whatever I want. And I found myself. I saw red. I was a sociopath. I was like, who I am legitimately triggered right now. I'm like, this is my money. I was like, dude, I really felt some type of way. And this was not like I was starting to do okay for the first time. But if anybody thinks I grew up wealthy, I most certainly did not. So this is not like rich kid syndrome. This was, I've saved my money. I've worked myself to death. I have entrusted you with my money. You're earning profit on me putting my money in your bank. And now you are acting like you're doing me a favor. I'm doing you a favor. This is my okay. See, I'm getting wound up now. So, yeah, I've got a real thing with that.

[Drew]

That's funny. Other future tech News, Bitcoin, former CEO of Twitter and BlueSky, founder of Blue Sky. I think somebody else runs the company now. He just started bitchat, a Bluetooth mesh network in relay. Some of the features are offline communication. It works without Internet, but you can message to other people, end to end encryption, extended range. You can mention people. And the last thing that wasn't quite mentioned on the initial release is that this can also be used to send bitcoin payments. Because I know Jack is a proponent of the Bitcoin has to be a means of exchange and not just a

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

store of wealth as you would expect from Satoshi Nakamoto himself.

[Drew]

You still going with that?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Jack Dorsey? It's literally mapped in my brain that he is Satoshi. I don't even question it anymore. Now I have almost no information that would lead me to believe that, but I have totally mapped, like, oh, yeah,

[Drew]

Tim, it's definitely him. I love this because I just think we got so used to Internet based things and I just forgot that, oh, yeah, you can. You should be able to communicate people and not have an Internet or not. Interesting.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Not only I didn't forget that. I had no idea. It never crossed my mind that you didn't need the Internet. So this is interesting. I don't know that this. Listen, this is like post the government goes broke, it's Escape from New York stilo. Then, like, I get where we're going with this, but for today, this feels like we're going pretty ham for reasons. And I mean, look, maybe he knows more about it than I do and maybe I really should be this kind of paranoid. I'm not this kind of paranoid. So I like the aesthetic of it. It feels very like sort of old school Matrixy.

[Drew]

But the biggest thing, again, no privacy, no tracking, no servers, no accounts or data collection. And again, I think we just assume no accounts.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

That's interesting.

[Drew]

We just assume that, like, okay, we have this thing, they have to take our data. So to your point of, we trade freedom for safety and these other things. A lot of times for convenience, for tech, we trade our privacy. And so it's interesting that he's coming from the other side. No Internet, full privacy and full transparency. It's yours. Open source. He released it for iOS, somebody ported it for Android, and he was like, wow, this moves fast. Like, so it's already. The community's, like, rallying around it.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So, well, let's see what happens. I would imagine the biggest thing here is it feels future techy. So for people that are into that kind of stuff, this feels. Feels cool. It's the digital equivalent of being off the grid. And then it's crypto native. I don't know if that's the right word, but it certainly feels like that it's interesting. We'll definitely keep an eye on it.

[Drew]

All right, let's talk about culture. We got Impact Theory Zone. Brandon, who was in the trailer for the new. He was in the new Superman movie, excited for that to come out.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So. All right, I have to confess my biases here. So I want this movie to be good so bad, I cannot even begin to tell you. I can't believe the following statement is true. But two Impact Theory alumni, one's currently here, one's an alumni, are in this movie. Yes. How that's so weird. I can't believe it. But it's true. So I really, really want this movie to win for that reason. But it's right now got some negative hype coming into it, which James Gunn

[Drew]

shot him in the foot. But let's hear from Kellyanne Conway.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We don't go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us. I wonder if it'll be successful. You know what it says on his cape? Ms. 13, that can't be true. I trust they're kidding.

[Drew]

But this is now becoming like Superman isn't about this, this and that. And we see a lot of it like the Ironheart, the Marvel movie, Marvel TV show that came out a lot of times, Snow White. Disney usually gets this. So for DC now to get it, it's just interesting. Do you think that?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, so here's the thing about movies. If you are a writer, the first thing you do, and this is not me making this up, I forget what writer said this, but they were very successful. And for anybody that doesn't know, my background is actually screen writing filmmaking, so this is something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. But the first thing that you do is you put a sticky on your computer. That is your theme. And every beat in your story, every scene in your story needs to explore, validate or invalidate that theme. And so when people say, like, I don't go to the theater to be preached to, you never want it to feel like you're being preached to, but you absolutely want a film to explore a set of values, beliefs, a moral idea, truism about the human condition, whatever. The best movies, in my opinion, approach the theme as both a question and an answer. So through the whole movie, you want to be asking a question. Not that Superman should be about this, but if you were going to approach it from the immigrant standpoint, it would be like, are immigrants a benefit or a detraction from society? And then throughout the movie, you don't want the answer to be obvious. And it's only in the very end that it all comes together and it's finally like, oh, they had to learn a thing. Immigrants are good, immigrants are bad, whatever. And then that unlocks the thing they need to learn to bring the story to a close, to finally conquer the demon, the whatever. And then that's when a movie really feels satisfying. And so I don't mind at all when a film has a moral core. In fact, I want a story to, at a minimum, have an idea and a perspective on that idea. And where I think people go wrong is for so many years now, it's been like they're preaching it right from the jump. You know their answer right from the jump. They don't show all sides of the issue, make you debate back and forth. Is this good? Is this bad? Oh, God. We're like, where are we gonna go? And then finally it's like, oh, wow, you really earned that payoff. We don't do that anymore. It's just like you're smashing people in the face with it from the jump. And then also because we're in such a polarized moment, it's these like, really ham handed. Like, if you agree with it, I guess you can get behind it. Cause it's like any piece of content that tells you what you already believe. And if you don't believe it, then it's like just fingernails on a chalkboard from the beginning. So I'll be interested to see this because I think James Gunn is an extraordinarily talented director, very gifted writer. Now, if he does it ham handed, then, well, game over. But the fact that it deals with Superman as an immigrant on some level does not automatically make me go, oh, this movie is going to be trash. It just depends on how he handles it.

[Drew]

The Babylon Bee nails it with their tweet. James Gunn releases film about the importance of accepting morally upstanding white immigrants who speak perfect English. That's what it really is about.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

What's funny is, okay, that the humor is not lost on me, but what's funny about Superman is he was always about, like being a boy scout. Essentially it was American values, like from top to bottom. In the comic book, he, at one point, I think he's fighting Nazis. So it's like Superman is already about a value set. So Superman, in some ways, from a comic perspective, I imagine, was not preachy, but like, it really laid out, like, what it was trying to convey about America and American values and being pro American. And so is it that people are bothered that it has a moral takeaway or are they bothered that it's not their moral takeaway? So I will be interested to see what it is in practice because, like, if. I don't know if you saw Peacemaker, which was James Gunn.

[Drew]

Yeah. The John Cena. Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

It's fun and great. Are there like little wokey bits here and there? Sure. But, like, he's good. He's like. He does it pretty well. So I'll be interested to see.

[Drew]

Yeah, Comes out this weekend. We'll check it out.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Let's go.

[Drew]

All right. Charlize Theron set the Internet on fire with her. This was just a trailer to the interview. We didn't get to the interview yet. But yeah, a lot of people felt a type of way, let's hear it.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So wait, the interview itself hasn't come out yet?

[Drew]

The interview has come out, but just the trailer.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Oh yeah, the trailer.

[Charlize Theron]

I was like, with women it's always like, something must be wrong with her. She can't keep a man. She must be a real bitch. What a cunt. I love that I don't have to run every thing by a guy. I'm having the kind of sex I never had in my 20s or in my 30s. We should be the ones that are like you. Like, I'm going to have an orgasm. But I did just recently. A 26 year old and it was really amazing. There's a casting for this movie and you have to go on Saturday night. And they gave me the address and it was this director's house. The little voice inside me definitely said, this isn't right. I remember like being furious with myself because I couldn't believe how I had let myself down. Like, I was like, what the fuck? Who the fuck are you?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Where the fuck.

[Charlize Theron]

Why the fuck would you allow that until you are in this fucking environment? Don't tell me how you're going to behave,

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

man. People that swear so much, Drew, I don't know these days, okay?

[Drew]

So

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I. The thing that makes me really sad is there is this antagonism between men and women that has been building and building and building for a very long time now. And that I. That really makes me sad. I think that ultimately life is so much better one if you just have a partner that you love. But taking a sort of fastball down the middle approach of man and woman together, the way that they contrast and complement each other, it's very clear to me that I would not have become the person that I become if it wasn't for the influence of my wife. And I like to think she would say the same thing about her. And so seeing this idea of like, who hurt you? Like, what happened? You know what I mean? Like, how did you end up with like, you know, you feel her coming into the relationship with a man with her dukes up. And it's like, I'm sure she has been through things where it's like, okay, I get it, like, you've had your heart broken and that does not look like an easy thing to build back from. But where we've gotten in culture where it's celebrated to be like, women are trash or I don't need a man, like, that's where this gets sad for me in terms of. From an evolutionary standpoint, we were obviously meant to come together. We were obviously meant to influence each other. And seeing people be standoffish or antagonistic towards each other, I just don't think you're going to get as much out of yourself if you could. You're certainly not going to get as much emotional fulfillment out of life if you're not sharing it with somebody. I think one of the truest quotes I've ever heard is a pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled. You don't have to share it with your romantic partner, but it's a pretty cool person to share it with.

[Drew]

No, that's real. This is interesting because my first reaction of this is, you know, there's a bunch of men who are 49 who sleep on 26 year olds and they get their level of criticism and pressure and I think when women do it sometimes it's often celebrated. But I'm not even looking at like it's a men versus women thing. I just think it's an Archaea type thing. And there are people who are older, who are more successful, who want younger, hotter, simpler relationships. And I think that that's fine. And I think that there are loser men and there are loser women. And I think that sometimes you just got to call people like we should be okay to call women losers. Like we should be able to call men losers.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And to me now, are you saying she's a loser for going after a younger guy?

[Drew]

I'm just thinking that if me in my age and I am nowhere near 49, I feel like I have nothing in common with a 26 year old or I have nothing in common with a 22 year old. And to me that doesn't fulfill me. Now if she just wanted a quick nut on a Friday night, God bless her, I hope it was good, you know what I mean? But there are certain people that are like yo, you 50 and you hanging around with a 26 year old, like that's weird. Like you're. You know what I mean? That's not ideal.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Why is it loser though? I don't track that. Because they, they're different generations and they can't intellectually engage each other.

[Drew]

Yeah, I don't see that there's a. Do you like you. You have employees here that are young, that are old and you can see that there are certain employees that, okay, I could talk about these things with these employees, this employee I could talk about other things with. I think the person that is closer to your generation. You have a larger things to talk about. You have larger things to hang out about. Like there's more Common ground.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah, I hear you and you're definitely not wrong about that. But there is something about the human psyche. The human psyche is incredibly complex. So take my mother in law's. So shout out to these ladies married to each other. So Lisa's mom is married to an incredible woman. They are two of my favorite people on planet Earth, but they also have a big age gap. And my mom and her husband essentially have a big age gap. And so my mom's dating a younger guy and my mother in law's or my mom's married to a younger guy and my mother in law is married to a younger woman. And so it's like, yeah, they, for whatever reason, and I mean, look, none of them are young. The youngest among them is whatever, 52, but it wasn't always the case. They've been together for, you know, whatever 25 years. So at one point, like it was pretty, like, ooh, like hey, people's eyebrows go up on that one. But it is their equals partners clearly, like they intellectually engage each other. In the beginning, it would have been interesting to have known that side of their relationship better to see like, like where the connection was. But I mean, they've always been great together. And so do you think that's the

[Drew]

exception and do you think that's the rule?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I think that it is. Anytime a relationship is successful, you're already in exception territory. So take that for what it's worth. I am like you, where I would feel super weird having sex with somebody that much younger than me. Like that would, I don't know, I'm older than you, so maybe it's even weirder for me, but that would be weird. I far, I much prefer having an intellectual connection first. I'm not saying it's bad if there isn't one. I'm just saying it's better if there is one. But I'm well aware of the graph that shows that women tend to find a man attractive that's like I think two years younger to two years older. So they've got this four year window that travels with them based on their age. So it's pretty exceptional for a woman to be like, oh, I'm sleeping with somebody that much younger than me. Not that it doesn't happen. It's just typical that a woman has somebody pretty close to them. Whereas guys, no matter how old they are, they find a 22 year old attractive. So that's, from where I'm sitting, that's just evolution. So I don't find it weird that People want to have sex with somebody that is in their early 20s. Like, that's, again, just from an evolutionary standpoint. So I don't know when that became like, oh, he's a creep. That's gross. It's like, take your beef up with God. Like, that's just how this played out. So on that front, like, I get that. But I often wonder, am I just a hyper responder? Because there are two neurochemicals that play a role in bonding. Vasopressin and oxytocin. And Dr. Amen, who does brain scans is like, you can scan somebody's brain and see how many vasopressin receptors they have. And he was like, I won't let my daughter date somebody that doesn't have a high amount of vasopressin receptors, because when you have that, you're more likely to be faithful. And I was like, any money, I have, like, all the vasopressin receptors in the world. So, like, I'm. I really get a reward out of bonding with my wife. And so it's like, if you don't have that, am I really going to judge then that for you, the far bigger draw is sexual? No. And as a woman, if that's not your thing, am I really going to have a beef that your far bigger draw is resources? No. And this is why it's so common to see older, established, financially successful men with younger women. And there is a. I'll call it an equal exchange. He's getting your youth and beauty, and you're getting his wealth and maturity. And it's, like, cool. If you guys are interested in making that exchange, I've got no beef with that whatsoever. I take a really sort of evolutionary approach to all of this, so I don't find that stuff weird. I don't think they're wired like me. For me, it's always been about sharing my life with my wife. And I love that we found each other when we were young. I love that we've grown up together. Like, that's been truly the greatest joy of my life. So. But it's like, if people aren't wired like me, then I don't expect them to get the same, like, physiological

[Drew]

push

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

in that direction that I get.

[Drew]

So if they don't have as many vasopressin receptors like you said.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yeah. Then for them, like, they're not feeling what I'm feeling. Like, to this day, I've been with my wife for 25 years. To this day, if we work together, we live together, and if I Walk into a room that I'm not expecting her to be in. I get, like, a burst of dopamine, and I'm like, that is surreal that all these years later. And admittedly, I've gone out of my way to train that into myself, to reinforce that in myself, to remind myself how happy I am to see her, to embody the enthusiasm every time so that. That becomes the easy sensation to have just because I've hardwired it. But nonetheless, I was building on top of a response that was already there. And if you don't have that. And I mean, look, shout out to my grandpa, My grandfather, who I never met because he died when my dad was 6 months old because he was 44 years older than my grandmother. This is not something that is like, oh, I just can't imagine, like, how that could ever be. My grandma, I think, was friends with my grandfather's daughters, and that's how she ended up meeting him. So it's, like, super scandalous because this was back in the. What would this have been? My dad was born in 47, so this would have been in the 40s.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So, like, super scandalous. So I'm. I'm in way too. Glass of a house. Drew.

[Drew]

No, I'm not gonna be throwing a lot of rocks. I completely get that. And my parents have a huge age gap, and I guess that's why I realized that as they gotten older, they have kind of split in certain directions where my dad is kind of older, man. And my mom is kind of getting into her second win post menopause, ready to kind of bounce around type thing. So I'm seeing.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Still together.

[Drew]

Yes. But, yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Ish.

[Drew]

Yeah, they're together. They're still married. They're still in the same house, but they're not like, a loving couple. Like, they're not, like, example. There's not, like, a Hallmark card. So I kind of see that, like, okay, it might have worked at this range, but then at this age of the spectrum, it kind of falls, and it could get a little rocky.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, I mean, now we're opening up Pandora's box. So it's something like 71 to 73%. I forget the exact figure, but it's one of those 2 of women who get divorced post. I forget what age cite perimenopause is the reason that I wanted to get. I wanted to divorce my husband.

[Drew]

Wow.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

And so, literally, I went to Lisa and was like, hey, I keep seeing this stat over and over and speak up early and often, because hormones. You can't play with it.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Like, I know if I wanted to. When I was in my 20s, dude, like, sex twice a day was, like, minimum, like, just mandatory standard. If we were on vacation. My poor wife. And now, hell no. Like, that's way too much. But I know all I have to do is take testosterone and get it back just like that. It's just hormones. And so when your hormones change, there's. There's no, like, muscling through. It's just you're. You're fundamentally different. This is why I don't understand people that say they have free will or whatever. I'm just. What? You're a chemical processing plant. And if you're not processing the right chemicals, you are going to feel different, act different, think different, all of it. And so humans being able to stay together for those extraordinary long periods of time. And honestly, Drew, if I'm looking at evolution, for the most part, man was dead by the time the woman went through perimenopause. That's why she went through perimenopause. It was like she was going to go into grandma phase. The guy was dead. He got killed. War hunting, whatever. And she thinks he was 45. Yeah, I mean, 35. She was going to go do her thing. The whole grandmother hypothesis. So this is why men stay fertile till they die and women don't, because women are the accumulators of wisdom. Because men were just so likely to die, and we don't have that now. And so women might live maybe a handful of years more than a guy, but it's not like. And admittedly, I don't have the data to back up that it would be that big of a difference. But putting sort of two and two together, that feels like a pretty legitimate read on the situation. So I think to navigate that change well, regardless of how old your dad is, was probably going to be tough. Like, Lisa and I have to talk about this a lot. We've got to manage her hormones. Like, we've got to think about that a lot. And so if we didn't have the bedrock of, like, communication also, honestly, going through her gut issues prepped us for hormonal dysregulation, doing hard things together as it relates to health, both paying attention to what's going on, me getting engaged. So anyway, if you're not prepared for that stuff, I get why the woman just feels different. So I don't want to deal with this anymore. And then the guys on his own, you know, his own space, and they just go in separate Directions.

[Drew]

Yeah, I think you gave me the stat. Like, that happens even for younger people. Like, when women get off the pill. They're changing, men change. Or something like that, too. Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

When a woman's on the pill, she prefers a softer, featured man who's slightly edging towards feminine. And when she's off the pill, so she's actually ovulating. Then she prefers more rugged jaw. I don't want to say aggressive, because that's me sort of painting it with a broader brush than it really is. But they start going towards more traditionally masculine men. It is absolutely fascinating. What it says is, when I want to get pregnant, I'm going after the toughest, most alpha guy that I can find. But once I am pregnant, then I need somebody who's going to be a caretaker, who's going to help me with this kid. That is fascinating. And, I mean, you know how I feel about the clitoris being on the outside. Like, this is a very complex game, Drew. I don't think it is a. I've got a man, we mate, we have a baby, we raise it together. I have a feeling it's a little more complicated than that.

[Drew]

Yeah, there's a lot more into it. All right, let's go into outer space for a little bit.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Let's do it.

[Drew]

Okay. There's a mysterious object. This is the third discovered interstellar. Interstellar object ever in history. There was one in 2017, one in 2019, and now this one in 2025. Scientists are arguing right now. This Twitter page says it's an alien ship. NASA has named it a comet. But all we know is that it is coming really, really fast. It will enter into our solar system. It'll pass Earth. It's about a million miles away, so we might not see it, or it won't actually touch us, but it's on its way, and it's coming. Give me your, like, most tinfoil theory.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Like, a thousand percent. This was launched by somebody in the Epstein list to make sure that it came right when we're to supposed. Supposed to see the files. Drew, I'm telling you right now, this is. You want tinfoil hat, baby?

[Drew]

The lizard people took Epstein to a different universe. And then they found out about the Lizard. Hold on. We gotta go back. We're going back.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

We gotta go get it real quick. They've gotta see us. Like, we. We need a distraction. We need a distraction. Honestly, I have no idea. This isn't gonna be cool. I want it to be cool, desperately.

[Drew]

I really want to be cool, too,

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

but it's going to be a big rock or a comet or something really boring. And listen, that's better than something colliding with us. So I don't want to complain too much, but like, man, do I want there to be something, just undeniable proof that there are aliens. I am, admittedly, I'm convinced that there are aliens, but I'm convinced that as we become technologically advanced that we collapse into simulations. We don't try to explore space. It just. It's so hard. So, I mean, I don't know. Elon is really pushing to prove me wrong on that one, but by going to Mars or. Yeah, yeah. But my instinct is that it's so much less risky to go inside of a simulation and you can do so much cooler stuff. So unless, I mean, this ship does not seem to prove that you bend space and time because they're just traveling.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

So in fact, that's another reason this isn't going to be cool. For that reason alone, like, they would just show up. Like, if you can travel interstellar distances, then you would just. Yeah, because you have warp space time. I'm here. Hi. And then you would peace out. If you're in a ship traveling, I mean, how many millions of years have they been traveling? Crazy.

[Drew]

Crazy. So you think that somewhere in the universe there is another society like us, more advanced than us. They have people, they have technology, and instead of building super rockets and things like that, they're like, let's put on a headset.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Goo erranteed. There's no way that you either. This is a simulation and it's everything else is just running for us and they're just watching us and everything else is just for like, the physical world just replicates because it's a set of rules. Like, again, going back to being a game designer, you realize very quickly, oh, you just create a set of rules and then amazing complexity is born of a very simple set of rules. It's insane. So I could see if this is a simulation that they simulate the entire universe. They only render what we look at. And it's really just to like, give the context for life to grow. And once you set those physical rules, then the universe can't help but come into existence. But you don't necessarily, like, if life is a switch that you flip in the simulation to say, okay, and now this thing happens. Because as far as I know, we still don't know. Like, even if you've got all the nucleotides and all that, like, how do they come Together and start forming DNA and replicating and all that. Like, I. It is my understanding that remains a mystery. So that's entirely possible. But if this really is just. No, no, like we came into existence, I have to imagine as we map more and more planets, because at first it was like, maybe there are no other planets. Oh, wait, there's a gazillion planets. Okay, but maybe none of them are in the habitable zone.

[Drew]

Okay.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Actually there's trillions in the habitable zone. Okay. But maybe none of the ones in the habitable zone actually have water. Okay, no, wait, there's billions, Hundreds of billions. And so you're like, okay, hold on a second. So all of a sudden you're like. And that's just the visible universe. We have no reason to believe that the visible universe is the whole universe. And so, yeah, I just cannot fathom a world in which this is not like there's life. It's just we're so far apart, we don't use the same forms of communication. We are at different times in our development. They collapse inward. And so. Or just like the dark forest principle of, like, you don't tell anybody that you're there because P.S. if you're a Native American, I bet you wish you could have hit America. So it's like, you don't want people being like, oh, word, yeah, you're a blue planet, we'd like to come see how things are going. Or, hey, just like, we wiped out virtually all Native Americans, all Mexicans with smallpox. It's like, imagine an alien rolling up with diseases we've never seen before and just whole planet gone. And so it's entirely possible that people can do interstellar travel and don't for that reason. Or they become so technologically advanced, they interstellar travel. But they're like, it's just, everybody knows it's a hands off policy. You never enter the atmosphere or whatever.

[Drew]

Yeah. And to your point, it's like a lottery ticket. One in a million chance. We have 3 billion galaxies or whatever like that. So, yeah, there's definitely 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Somewhere. Somewhere for sure. Okay. Last week we had the meme of the week. It was the aura farming Indonesian writer, the kid with the black sunglasses. I'm a play that. This week we have this Peter Thiel skit.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Okay? So if you're just listening, this is, as Drew said, this is a Peter Thiel skit. It's his assistant supposedly watching him in a New York Times interview. And with that, take it away. All right, Peter, you've been doing great so far. Just some layup questions ahead and let's bring this home.

[Drew]

I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

No way.

[Drew]

You're hesitating.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Well, I.

[Drew]

Yes.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

I don't know. I would.

[Drew]

Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Yes. The. The answer is yes.

[Drew]

This is a long hesitation.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

There's so many questions.

[Drew]

And should the human race survive?

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Do. Positive for a sec. This. This is bananas. Now, I know he's transhuman. He's going to explain it in a minute. But like, when you're asked that question, there is only one answer. It's like, baby, do you love me? Do you think I'm beautiful?

[Drew]

Do I look fat in this? Yeah.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Do you want humanity to endure? Like, these are the easy questions. Like 1000%. I consider myself transhumanist. Do I want the human species to endure? Yes. Like, yes. So if some people choose to go the path that he's going to talk about in a second, being able to grow your own organs, make yourself resistant to solar radiation so that you could travel the cosmos, whatever, great. But do you want the human species to endure? Yes.

[Drew]

Yes.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

Wood. Yes, Please. This is hilarious. Yes. The only answer is yes. Yes. Great. But I also would like us to radically solve these problems. And so, you know, what is he talking about? Yeah, transhumanism. Human natural body gets transformed into an immortal body. And there's a critique of, let's say the trans people in a sexual context. Or I don't know, transvestite is someone who changes their clothes and cross. He sounds like a loon. I love Peter Thiel. He's amazing. But he sounds like a lunatic. Organs. We want you to be able to change your heart and change your mind, your whole body, and then that's great, whoever that guy is. That's funny.

[Drew]

He was a transvestite. That's why I kept watching. Like, wait, what? What? What was the question? How do we get here? Yeah, this is hilarious. All right, that's all I got.

[Chamath Palihapitiya]

All right, everybody, if you're not already, make sure you're joining us for the Lives Wednesday and Friday at 6am Pacific. If you haven't already, make sure that you give us a five star review wherever you get your podcasts. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.