I'm with Nick Gillespie, everybody. Welcome back to Walk-Ins Welcome. Oh, it's been too long. It has been too long. Congratulations on getting married. Thank you. Yeah, I got married last September and I'm very happy. Yeah? Yeah. And you guys were how long were you together before you got married? Probably about seven years, something like that. So it had been a while and, you know, we were on and off and.
on and off and whatnot. And now we're married. And were you guys kind of not anti-marriage? Was that? No, it was never that. Now, you know, I've been married once before and I have two adult kids. Sarah Siskin, my wife, is the product of a marriage. Her parents were married. So, no, it was an anti-marriage. Oh, okay. Okay. I wasn't sure if I was like, we're into the poly life because we're libertarians. Yeah, no. You know, it's funny. I know fewer and fewer libertarians who are.
poly type stuff. And it's more... It strikes me it's a lot of weird conservatives who are kind of on the down low about poly or liberal slash progressives. I'm not saying there aren't, but. You know, one of the things about libertarians is that, like, you know, I think we tend to believe anything is fine as long as it's between consenting adults or among consenting adults.
But it's about being able to make choices. And a lot of the choices that individual people make are pretty, I would say, not conservative, but traditional. we're kind of mainstream and it's more just a question of being able to pick among different choices What is your take on the state of libertarianism right now? Yeah, that's a good question.
There's a lot of different things to factor into it. Like there's the Libertarian Party, which really did something great by bringing Trump to their convention last year and getting him. to promise to release Ross Ulbricht, the guy who founded the Silk Road. And that was the... the deep web drug site. That was the test case, really the use case for Bitcoin. Like it showed that Bitcoin could be used, et cetera.
Obviously, you know, it was also a reminder that Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. And, you know, so. It got traced back to him, but he's out. That was good. But overall, the Libertarian Party has done very poorly. Like they had so many internal squabbles. that they're much smaller than they had been 10 years ago or like when Gary Johnson was running for president.
They're in a rebuilding phase now, so that might be good. But then there's a lot of dissension among libertarians, which is not surprising since. You know, we all are insane in our own ways. But I think the libertarian movement, broadly speaking, is going to move into a really powerful period because. One of our things is, you know, before Trump versus Hillary, you know, and before Obama, you know, versus McCain and what's his face.
Mitt Romney, and certainly with George Bush and Al Gore. And I've been working at Reason Magazine, which was founded in 1968. I've been working there since 93. I became editor-in-chief in 2000. And, you know, when Al Gore and and George W. Bush were running, they looked like their platforms are actually very close to one another. It was like, OK, do you want. tan or beige. You know, that was like the choice. And we were like, you know what? This is not good. There's a better way out there.
And we're back to that place now, I think, where people... Start to understand, you know, when you look, OK, Trump and Harris, these aren't great choices, but we're going to make a choice. And then you realize, like, Trump isn't what you wanted. And I think that's becoming clear. Harris was definitely not what you wanted. Like people are going to be looking for an alternative. And I think reason certainly, you know, the magazine of free minds and free markets of.
letting people have the maximum degree possibility in how to choose to live your life, what drugs you take, where you live, what kind of business you run, how you dress. Just let it flow. This is the message that people need right now because we've gone from an insane period of
you know, kind of progressive left leaning bullshit where everything, you know, the only thing that, you know, didn't happen in the past five years is that men weren't like required to sit when they pee. I mean, but it was like everywhere. Every choice you made was being dictated or run through some kind of weird political lens. And then Trump takes over and now.
It's the same thing. It's just a bunch of different restrictions. So I think people are going to be looking towards libertarianism more. What are some of the restrictions under Trump that you feel are? like the most egregious since he's taken office. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, first off, well, two things. First, terror. And the idea, one of the big things about, I think, libertarian thinking is that economic freedom is a form of freedom. It is a civil liberty, just like free speech.
And, you know, being in control of your body, whether you want an abortion, whether you want to marry somebody of the same sex or whatever, you know, and the tariff stuff and the way that he is talking about trade where it's like. Okay, you know what? You don't get to pick. what you you purchase because i'm going to decide in these whole countries
Like, no, you don't get that. You don't get goods from there or you do, but you're going to pay 20% more or 50% more or whatever. And like, depending on, you know, when the Diet Coke is kicking in. You know, it's it's 100 percent or it's 10 percent or it's like, no, we're friends with them. Right. I think also then immigration is something similar like this. Like everybody knows that the border needed to be secured better than it was the southern border under Biden.
you know, fucked that up royally. In his last year, he actually started, you know, securing it. And if you look back from January 2023, or rather January 24 to January 25, there were massive cuts. And the number of people coming across who weren't vetted and things like that, that's good. But then Trump's alternative is to say, OK, well, we're going to cut all immigration ultimately and we're going to start rounding people up.
And we're going to start saying, you know, you're a gay hairdresser from Venezuela and you have a snake tattoo. So we're going to deport you and send you back to Venezuela because you're part of a gang, you know, and we're going to park you in an El Salvador in prison like this kind of.
Quick roundup without any semblance of due process or rationality is bad news. And then on top of that, you know, you're a Lebanese doctor, you know, who teaches at Columbia or Brown University or something. And it's like. You go visit somebody, you come back, and it's like, you know what, you're not coming back in, even though you're a green card holder, that type of stuff. And is that pretty commonly happening? I've not been paying attention to the news enough.
I mean, and this was part of, you know, this is he promised that he was going to crack down on illegal immigration and he was going to start with criminals. But the problem is, is that Criminals, if they're here, they know how to stay hidden. And so if you want the numbers, you've got to start going after people who are kind of in public view and things like that. But like Elon's very pro H-1B visa, right? Yeah. That was like a weird... And we can get to him in a second, too.
But we're not, you know, he's not in, he's not in control. There's factions right within the Trump world and the, the, the hardcore MAGA people, you know, the make America great again people. And this is JD Vance is an example of this. You know, they are not pro-immigration. And they'll say at first, well, I'm not pro-illegal immigration. I'm against illegal immigration.
And then it starts coming, well, I'm not pro-immigration for people who come from countries that, you know, have no democratic tradition, which somehow means something, a place like Mexico. Right. You know, and. And or Haiti, you know, like they want to get rid of temporary protective status on Haitians, et cetera. Those people are at war with Elon Musk with on the question of immigration because.
He and people who run companies, first off, like, you know, we need workers in the country, but then also high tech countries. They tend to be very much like we want skilled immigrants. We want people like that. It remains to be seen, you know, what happens because like in his first term, you know, Trump had, you know, people who were isolationists in foreign policy and super interventionist.
And it takes a while to see which faction is going to win. Yeah, that was something interesting that came out of the whole group chat thing that got leaked yesterday. Well, not even leaked. Well, it was reported. Reported. Yeah. And I thought it was funny because I was like, truly at its root, every group chat is just people talking shit. And in this case, they were just talking shit about Europe. Which is so weird. They're like weird European hate.
MAGA like far the far right new right MAGA there seems to be this kind of romanticism about like European yeah this being of european descent obviously but also just a european like this is what they took from us this whole mentality yeah so it's weird to see somebody in the maga faction being so anti
uh europe well a lot of them are kind of pro russia at this point or or hungary which you know victor orban the leader there is kind of a strong man who makes a lot of gestures towards traditional culture, traditional Christian culture, whatever that means. You know, so there's some of that. But then they really, you know, they really hate Zelensky in Ukraine. And personally, I don't you know, I don't think the United States should be.
heavily involved in european wars and things like that but i also know that like as an american and as a libertarian like anybody who has kind words for putin Is like off the deep end. Like that's just wrong. And. Is that because we're older. And we were born into like. I mean, Putin's bad, obviously. I don't think that...
Well, I mean, maybe it does need saying now, but I clearly think he's a dictator. I'd be pushed off a balcony long ago. I thought the weird Tucker making those McDonald's videos, that was very strange to me.
um that that whole turn but i was saying maybe this is because i'm gen x and they were our enemy growing up yeah yeah they were just it was in every movie every pop culture reference everything was like Every, you know, and I was a very late baby boomer, like right on the cusp of Gen X. So I grew up watching reruns of things like Gilligan's Island and I Dream of Jeannie and like every fucking episode.
there's like a cosmonaut who has landed. I mean, like the Cold War was shot through everything. And it's worth deprogramming, right? Like, because that was, You know, America is not was not perfect during the Cold War. Capitalism or free enterprise is better than socialism or communism. But like, you know, there was a lot of bullshit going on there. But. Yeah, I don't think it's that because Tucker is like Gen X or a baby boomer. He's like in his late 50s, early 60s.
He knows better. There's just something cuckoo going on there. Yeah. More broadly about Europe versus America, this is something. That is worth thinking about when people talk about, you know, well, Europe has, you know, the people there have a sense of place and cultural identity and, you know, national identity. It's like that's where everybody in America left.
because they were on the shit end of that sick. I mean, my grandparents were on my father's side, they're Irish, on my mother's side, they're Italian. They all came over in the 19-teens. Europe was based on like an ethnic solidarity and tradition where there were no jobs. And like, if you weren't born into the right family or the right bloodlines, you were just kind of fucked. I mean, like for a thousand years, my relatives in Europe were served.
and peasants and worse and they came over here and like they were able to be lower middle class which was like living like a fucking king right and you know i mean my italian grandparents never spoke english And they birthed two sons, one who fought in World War II, one who fought in Korea.
And two girls who were like were all hard workers. And by the time they died, they were all like totally perfectly American. You know, and I don't speak any Italian. Right. My Irish grandmother actually grew up speaking Irish.
as well as english but like none of that like we assimilated new immigrants are assimilating but the whole point of america is that like you you come over here with whatever shitty hand fate dealt you and you play it into something better and it's very anti-european so it always just bugs me anybody whether they're right wing or left wing and there's like a lot of lefties like Bernie Sanders who's like
oh, you know, Scandinavia is so perfect. Yeah. And it's like he doesn't even understand, you know, Sweden is like a super capitalist country. And, you know, that they have their own problems. Yeah. Yeah, that's been an interesting thing to, like, watch play out. My cousin – I have a German cousin. So – We, I have, it's a long story, but an uncle really loved communism at one point in our big family and left America chasing it. Is this cousin or uncle Lee Harvey Oswald? No. Oh, okay.
And he ended up living there, staying there, marrying a German woman. So we have a German cousin. She's a couple years younger than me. But did he go to East German or West German? Well, what year was it? It was 82 when I think he went there. And then now he gives tours. Oh, wow. And my cousin is, I will never forget visiting her in Berlin. And it was during the, what's the European Cup?
And she was like, oh, I hate the Euro Cup. It's just an excuse for nationalism. She was like, it's just a European excuse to be. And she was like, and we know where that gets us. Like historically, she's very left. She's, you know, it was just an interesting perspective from somebody. I mean, Germany is especially touchy about that. Yeah, exactly. As they should be. Exactly. She was like, oh, I hate this. This is an excuse for it.
all of these countries to be like you know very racist you know what's an amazing statistic by the way and and i'll tie this back to kind of trump As well as like Biden or Democrats, too. But virtually every state in America, like Mississippi, you know, which is like the Haiti of America or something. Yes.
Their GDP, like their standard of living, their per capita money and purchasing power is higher than virtually every European country, with the exception of like Luxembourg and Switzerland. And Ireland actually has an insanely high. And, you know, you forget that. And like when people are, you know, lionize Europe, it's like, you know, like it's a great place to visit. I was in Italy.
for part of my honeymoon and it's like it's a great place to visit but it's a sucky place to you know ultimately to live and work and thrive and like compared to 40 years ago or 30 years ago if you take the countries that comprise the eu Their GDP, like their economic activity, used to be the same as the U.S. And now it's like less than 50% because they went super idiotic on regulation and on clamping down on new business formation and the ability of people to live their lives.
That's worth thinking about. And that's why, you know, when people on the right look towards Europe for anything, they're always like, oh, I like that ethno solidarity stuff. And it's like, you're fucking insane. And then the left is like, oh, you know, but they have such good. Cheese and whatever. Yeah. And it's like, no, they really don't. And like we can have that here. All you have to do is like let people sell unpasteurized dairy product.
You know, and let a free market actually work in health care. Yeah, that there's. Honey, there was this video that went viral that I loved. And it was a guy just ranting about Europe and how basically it's like Disneyland for America now. And he was like, listen, Europe, you're done. Like you haven't made anything nice in years. You make some cool cheeses and some wine.
But now you're basically just Disneyland for middle class Americans because it's so cheap to go there and they're everywhere. And he was just knocking on their castles. And I do think it's great to visit. Yeah. I mean, well, and the whole Instagram culture has really blown up Europe as this kind of. influencer haven. Yeah.
Yeah, I agree with that. And now they're pushing back against that. You know, like in Spain, they're trying to get rid of all the tourists. But I mean, you know, it's wrong to say this, but like, you know, the EU or Europe is kind of done. Right. Not not all of the places like Sweden. is a country that has like 10 or 12 million people and punches above its weight.
you know created a bunch of international brands and as a high standard living all of that kind of stuff and uh you know there are parts of it that are doing well but it's like no it's like You know, it's it's not the future. It's the past. I mean, you can get a house in Italy for like five. Euros. Okay, yeah. I mean, surely they're like begging people to come to these remote villages and it's one of those things that – But who wants – I mean –
It's kind of like people don't want to live there. I mean, you know, and you can talk about this in the U.S. too. I mean, you know, it's great. And, you know, I know I talked with you on the Reason Interview podcast. what maybe two years ago or whenever you left LA to move to Texas.
You see, you know, there's parts of this also apply to the United States. Like I live in New York City. It took me literally 30 years to be able to move back there. I love New York City. But it's, you know, you pay an enormous tax. to live there, which I like. And it's got a lot of energy and stuff like that. But, you know, the four most populous states in the U.S. are California, Texas, Florida, and New York. Two of them are red, you know, mostly red. Two of them are blue.
And people are leaving places like California and New York for places like Texas. And we should draw a lot of lessons from that. And the lessons mostly are that if you tax and regulate people less. and you allow them to pursue happiness however they see fit. you know, good things happen and a lot of people want to move there. Texas has a shitty climate, you know, and but, you know, you know, people in California are like, oh, you know, nobody nobody would ever choose to live anywhere else.
Yeah, that's wrong. I mean, it's objectively wrong. New York was the most popular state. up until like 62 when California took over. My parents who lived there, they were like, everybody was saying, nobody, why would anyone go to California? Everybody wants to live in the New York metro area. And then you look up a decade later and it's like, everybody who can has left. You know, because of taxes, regulation, you know, just, you know, nuisance stuff. Yep.
It's weird. I saw this clip go viral yesterday or two days ago, and it was Rob Lowe talking with the, what's the guy's name? name and severance the lead actor they were on parks and rec together adam whatever yeah So they were talking and Rob Lowe was saying it's criminal, basically, that it's cheaper. They were like, if we were doing Parks and Rec, we would be in Budapest. And then they were saying...
It's cheaper to fly an entire crew to Ireland. And then Rob Carolla got in on it. And he was like, the fact that they can see this about their own industry, but not every industry in California. This applies to everybody. It applied to me, a small business owner who makes... online content right it applies to i mean how did you lose hollywood and silicon valley yeah yeah that's crazy yeah and it's gonna somebody was saying this to me today like
And it's going to take decades for Hollywood and for California to recover if it even can. Yeah, I agree. And, you know, I think a lot about this because I was born in Brooklyn and I grew up in New Jersey. And I think a lot about New York State. And upstate New York, which used to be, you know, like an industrial hub and it used, you know, and farming and all of that, like it's like East Germany. Yeah, it's weird. It's a wasteland and it still hasn't come back. I mean, it's been 60 years.
you know, of depopulation. And it's like, it might as well be Chernobyl. I went to grad school in Buffalo, which. You know, in around 1900s or about 1920 or so, Buffalo was one of the wealthiest cities in the country and the world because all freight that went east or west like came on the Great Lakes and then got put on trains. in Buffalo or near Buffalo or going west that would be on trains until then and then get on ship. and go west and it's like buffalo has never
Come back. So, you know, when you go into decline, it doesn't mean like, OK, after a century. People will rediscover you if like if the same kind of overlay of, you know, stupid taxes, stupid regulation. You know, just hostility to change and innovation persists like then you just stay poor forever. Ireland was I mean, part of it was because of British occupation, but Ireland was a dump for like a thousand years. Yeah, I was like and, you know, and then.
My people. Yeah. No, that's why I'm touching on it. Yeah. Mine as well. Every time I see Michael Malice, he hands me a potato. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're grateful for it. Yeah, I am. I'm like, you mock me, but.
This kept me alive. From what I understand, Ireland is like the only country in Europe that has fewer people now than it had in like about 1850, before the potato famine had really kind of... both killed people but people fled you know the the irish diaspora is one of the biggest in the world and it took really a long time until they even had net in-migration. It took until like the late 1990s.
And then, of course, the first thing they do now and they're doing this now is like they're bitching about all these immigrants coming in. And it's like you fucking idiots like you've been waiting 500 years. to finally like have more people show up and like all you can do is complain. But it is like a little bit, there are problems, right? Yeah. I mean, sometimes with immigration, sometimes with growth.
And again, you know, when you take it outside of kind of like explicit ethnic tensions and things like that and just think of like a place like Austin or a state like Texas. You know, with growth, you know, comes growing pains. You know, there's always you know, there's always mismatches between housing supply and housing demand. Schools are a big thing. There's always weirdness like in Texas.
After the Vietnam War and actually the collapse of Vietnam, but starting in the late 70s through the 80s, a lot of Vietnamese started showing up here because the Gulf Coast. offers a kind of similar lifestyle to parts of Vietnam, as well as there were a lot of Catholics here. Vietnamese refugees were often resettled through Catholic churches. And, you know, that was like real tension because it's like, who the fuck are these people? They're not Mexico. You know, the Mexicans were here.
before the uh you know the american anglos right um so that's like you know and there's tension always but like okay we kind of got that but then like these people come from another planet and there's tension and then like you know it it takes a little while and you know, within, within a generation or two, like everybody is, everybody's Texas now. Right. Right. Yeah. I live in definitely like an H1B visa neighbor. Like we live out. Yeah.
That was an interesting thing that popped up because we're firmly middle class, I think, just by definition. Well, the median, it's always worth it. Nailing that, the median household income in America, which means half or below, half or above. It's like about $108,000. Yeah, that would be us. I'm not like making people. I think people think when you're. I assumed you were like a YouTube billionaire. No. That you were like you give Mr. Beast.
money like interest-free loans i i wish no um i think when you're around people with money people assume you have a lot of money and it's just not we're very firmly middle i mean i also have like uh i i I have one employee, basically. But yeah, I'm not making seven figures by any means at all. We're not in the low end of... Six and that split in half, basically. And so, yeah, we're right around there in a middle class neighborhood. And everybody around us is.
It was interesting to see the H-1B visa debate blow up over the holidays, which was weird. I was like, guys, you get a life, guys. What are you doing online arguing over Christmas? Whatever you can do not to talk to your family. Yeah, I guess that's how I looked at it. I'm like, wow, you all have horrible families or something. A lot of the very anti-H1B visa people were like,
They're replacing the middle class in America with H-1B visas. I was like whistling, you know, like do to do. I can see why you'd make that argument. But this, you know, these things are, you know, and it's. One of the things to recognize is the 21st century has been one of massive ongoing upheaval and disruption, right? From even Bush versus Gore. The fact that that election was a dead heat and it kind of like was a tembler, right?
like what was to come of like oh yeah you know what like actually The country is kind of not sure of, you know, which path to take. And it's going to be within, you know, a distant, you know, within the margin of error. And people are going to get pissed off about that. Then you have 9-11. You know, then you have, you know, the Iraq war in particular. Like, you know, what I would say was a war of choice.
That extended a lot and it empowered a lot of bad government actions as well as like a lot of domestic spending to kind of shut people up. Then you had the financial crisis. Then you had Trump, not Trump being bad, but just like nobody expected Trump to win. And like you have this moment where things are just very different. Well, some people did. Yeah. I wouldn't say nobody. Well, I mean, he did. Let's put it this way. Yeah. By every account, he didn't even bother.
figuring out who his cabinet was going to be and stuff. Then you have COVID. And then you layer on top of that, like, you know, disruptive changes in media, which I think overall are good, but they're, you know, it takes a while to get used to in social media. And now we have AI. Yeah. And, you know, and it's like, wow, this is going fast. Yeah. You know, so. So there's a lot of anxiety about stuff, but...
One of the things that I think people fundamentally misunderstand is that um you know the middle class is not shrinking like people are actually doing really well and when you look at things like home ownership When you look at things like people going to college, people being able to live how they want. Things are actually, you know, they're good. Like, they're not great. They could always be better. But both.
you know, both large kind of ideological forces, liberals and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans. You never hear one of them say, you know what, things are pretty good and here's how we make them better. It's always like, this is the worst thing we will ever have. I mean, Elon Musk. you know, if if Kamala Harris wins, there won't be another election, which is exactly what.
People on the left were saying, like, if Donald Trump gets reelected, that's it. There's no more democracy. And it's like you people are living in like cloud cuckoo. It's histrionic personality disorder. And like the whole industrial stuff. This is another thing that I dislike about. Trump – and again, I didn't vote for him. I dutifully voted for the Libertarian Party candidate because I have never voted for a successful –
candidate for any office at any level, including high school student council. I just can never pick them. But I wanted him to win, and I think it's better that he won. Trump. Yeah, Trump than Harris. But it has unleashed this. you know, negativity vibe, even in winning. Like where it's like we are barely hanging on as a country, you know, like we're on the cliff and our fingernails are digging into solid rock and we're sliding down. And it's kind of like.
That's a vast misunderstanding of what's actually going on in the country. And then people are like, and that's why we have to get rid of all immigrants, especially high skilled ones, but also low skilled ones. And, you know, and it doesn't matter if like there are more job openings listed now that are unfilled like than ever in human history.
The important thing is to block out everybody else so that, you know, our children can go back to working in factories or something like it's like, you know, this it's just it's it's it's. A very emotion driven, ahistorical understanding of where we're at. It's funny, too. I follow Banchi and he's on Twitter and I. I love his takes often because he's like, what is this?
When you talk to how many people want their kids working in factories for the rest of their life, like this isn't something that. you are aspiring to by the way well it's only because ai is going to come take most of those jobs i was going to say they only want us to work in factories because their coal mines really have shut down
You know, because that's really what parents want. The best thing would be to work in a coal mine because that's the purest thing. I'm joking. I'm just saying it's like, yeah. And, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that like America's industrial power, like. The proportion of people who worked in factories peaked in the late 40s. And it's been going down ever since.
in a kind of straight slope. And it won't reach zero, but it's going to approach zero. And most of that is not because China makes everything. We make more stuff than we've ever made. As a country, we just do it more effectively. because of automation. Automation is the reason there aren't those great factory jobs, which literally, like my parents were like,
We, my father didn't even graduate high school and he was like, you're going to go to college so that you don't work in a factory. Right, right. And it's like, oh, I get that. Yeah, you know. Yeah, it was just like. And that's not to say, you know, people who work in factories, that's great, but service jobs. are more plentiful and they pay as well as factory jobs. So it's like.
Can we start talking about how do we make economies more like Texas's economy and less like California or New York's rather than like the world is ending? I'll also point out, you know, that Texas and Florida are, you know, as long as we're talking about immigration, which is very important to me, is, you know, like.
The states where immigrants go inevitably are the states that are flourishing. Right. Immigrants don't. I lived in Ohio for a long time. And Ohio is, you know, is at the center of the Rust Belt. I lived outside of Cincinnati in a small town. There was like no people were moving there from foreign countries or from the U.S. And that was when it hit me that like.
When you are in a place where immigrants are choosing to go through rather than stay, you know you're in a fucked situation. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's been really wild to... watch even we just hit 200 dumpster fires and We shot yesterday just reminiscing like I was I was looking at myself even like, yes, I was six years younger, but I'm like, I was so easy breezy. I was married. I didn't have a kid. So there's that. Just life changed. And then I was in California. Now I'm in Texas.
It's wild, even when you put in perspective just the last kind of six years of America, let alone like 10 years. I think even the last six months, to be honest. hard to think back okay what was like december 2024 like you know or or say november before the election and it is you know we we need to kind of take account for how fucked up everyday life is on a certain level because like you know trump trump is an improbable figure right like nobody nobody would have guessed Okay, that like a TV...
You know, a TV billionaire is going to become president. And if it was, it's going to be him. Mike Judge might have guessed that. That's true. Yeah, that's right. But then, like, you have all of that. But then last year, too, like, nobody would have guessed that the president of the United States would effectively be brain dead. and reveal it willingly in a debate because you know and then the response to that would be like okay we're gonna we're gonna throw in kamala harris who nobody liked
And nobody had any faith in. And we're going to pretend. I mean, it was like. It's a dumpster fire. Yeah, it really, really is. And Trump comes roaring back, you know, et cetera. And it's like. It's, you know, these are strange times. And then on top of you mentioned AI, right? Like, you know, it is like, okay, all of this stuff. Is good. I'm very techno optimistic. I think like the technologies that stick around tend to benefit people much more than they discomfort them.
And we're in an early adoption phase of this stuff. So it's going to be disruptive in the way that the internet was very disruptive in the 90s and early 2000s. But if it helps people. it tends to work and stick around. But it's like, yeah, we're in kind of a we're in a weird space. What I'm happy about mostly is that, you know, broadly speaking, economically, you know, markets do really well at squeezing out all of the bullshit that government.
and entrenched interests like big corporations throw at them. So we're having, you know, decent economic growth. It could be a lot better. But I feel like we're at the, you know, we're we clear where we've left an era. That is bad. And we now have the potential to go to something good if we don't turn in on ourselves or be like, oh, well, we got to stop foreign goods. We can't compete with Canadian stuff.
You know, so like we're going to put massive tariffs on Canada or something like that. Like, this is stupid. I don't understand the Canadian tariffs. Yeah. It does feel like they just really – I don't understand really any of it. Well, and to make it even worse is – Everything that governs trade between the U.S. and Canada was negotiated by Trump in his first term when he rewrote NAFTA. So it's like, what the, you know, like.
At least acknowledge it like you are. You're saying, oh, that that deal that I struck. And I wouldn't shut the fuck up about. This is the art of the deal. Yeah. Like, you know, that was a bad deal. Now I'm going to get us a good deal. you know but yeah no one can remember anything though no that's true i mean this is the kind of eternal this is what ai might help us with right really
Did you ever use, I think it's still around. I turned it off because it was depressing, which might answer the question. But there was an app you could use called TimeHop. that would sift through all of your computers and your internet accounts or your social media accounts.
serve up every day like oh here's something from two years ago from five years ago 10 years ago and i was like oh my god like this you know it's like uh you know memento the movie or something where it's like You're seeing pictures and you're like, oh, my God, like this is a trail of crimes that I had repressed thoroughly. But AI can help remind us maybe of... why we chose this rather than that the first time instead of constantly.
making the same dumb decision i don't know because ai really is trained right now to like i have friends who are using ai to kind of self-diagnose and analyze so flattering and i tend to not trust anything that is that flattering i guess because it is trained to tell you what it what you want to hear right like it it learns very but this is just so they can eventually take us over like it's gonna it's gonna ease us into a false sense of security i'm kind of happy i mean i i
I appreciate the joke of that. I don't think it will be like that. And part of it is that it's going to automate a lot of junk work. Oh, definitely. You know, when I think about I've been a journal, a professional journalist, I guess, you know, my entire like since I graduated college, I wrote for a living one way or the other. But I started out working for these really shitty business-to-business magazines where they would give you
Here's a bunch of press releases of new products. Yeah. And just rewrite them. Copywriting is the worst. And I was like, you know, I worked for one of the magazines worked. was for machines that were used within banks. So, and this was like, you know, the early 80s or mid 80s. So it was like. You know, ATMs were still kind of new and stuff. And it'd be like, you know, and so I would rewrite like a three-line description.
of this new ATM type machine or something like that. Like that will all be automated in the way that weather, you know, weather reports are automated and stuff like it. AI will, you know, and then maybe that means like you hire fewer interns or something, but it also means like the work that humans have to do will become more valued, I think. How do you, I mean, this is my question. Are they trying to fix?
What do you mean? Like money's broken. There's this idea, especially in the Bitcoin community, that money's broken fundamentally. How do we fix it? Yeah.
And if we don't fix it, we'll have the same problems that they have in other countries. I did a whole... series um when the bitcoin conference was here and i know nothing very little about it so i was like talk to me like i'm a five-year-old explain it to me and these guys are so immersed in it they hadn't had to do it in a while so they were like this is actually good for us to
And one of the things that struck me about it the most was, A, just their understanding and ability to explain how money is broken. The people that I talked to from other countries, they were very clear about the fact that in America. it is an investment and other countries is seen as a buffer against their currency that is not stable. Right. It's like a store of value. You know, Bitcoin was originally. sold in the white paper that Satoshi Nakamoto put out as a micropayment.
plan, like as a payment system, it really has kind of, it seems like it may eventually get there, but it's mostly kind of a store of value. And at Reason, we've done a lot with talking about how Bitcoin is used particularly in authoritarian regimes where you have to use the government, the state currency, which is shit. You can't use dollars or anything else like Bitcoin gives people a way of getting out of that system and holding on to value or.
sending it abroad in a way. So it's very useful. For me, the most important thing about Bitcoin really is as a kind of human rights. enabler. It gives people more flexibility. I think in the U.S. and in the developed world, it will act as a kind of supplement to state-based currencies and kind of hold them honest.
The United States, you know, by far the most important currency on the planet. And, you know, we have the largest economy, particularly in terms of efficiency. China is, you know, is getting there, but it's. It takes so many more people to come close to us. It's not quite the same thing. But the, you know, global currencies compete against one another and that helps keep them more honest.
And then Bitcoin really injects honesty into this. So, you know, I wouldn't quite say that money is broken. The United States is running a really dangerous bet. that it will not win, that it can just keep piling up debt. without having to worry about persistent massive inflation or reduced economic growth, etc. Bitcoin is going to help with that. I don't know exactly how AI will help with this, but...
I think, you know, we will this is where we need to have a government that spends less and does less. So how do you feel about Doge? I like the concept of Doge very much. The execution so far has been bad. I mean, it's like it's a lot of flash and it's not really cutting.
actual spending you know most of its big announcements end up being kind of revised way way downward you know when nobody's looking and there are certain things where you know, say at places like the FDA or at the FAA and stuff like that, where If you if you simply cut regulators because you want to cut, you know, you can find people and their salaries and you cut that.
But the rules are still in place where stuff has to go through these. Then you just make things even worse. Right. Because it takes longer for stuff to happen. But having said that, and this is why I still like Donald Trump. winning over Kamala Harris is that we're having a discussion that would not be taking place if Harris had won and if the Democrats had remained in power.
And I think this is why Trump, I, you know, I see him less as the beginning of something new and more as he's the end of an era. And it's this. Sometimes I call it the long 20th century, where after World War II, We started having, or actually even before World War II, the progressive era and whatnot. We started to believe that government should be run by experts who could make more and more decisions for us because.
You know, we're fucking idiots. Right. And we don't really the world is too complex. And what do I know about how my kids should be educated or how what my building should look like and how it should function or, you know, whatever. And there was this broad shift around the globe. Well, it started towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century with the progressive movement, but also in business, like things like.
uh henry ford and you know taylor the great efficiency expert of like scientific management. Like in the 19th century, we learned a lot and we became smarter at how systems work. And then there's always people who emerge who say, well, you know what?
We're very smart and we understand from a bird's eye view how everything fits together. We don't expect you to because, you know, you've got a lot on your plate and you're not that smart, et cetera. And in government and in business and in international affairs. We started trusting more and more and bigger and bigger groups that would make decisions for us. And that.
peaked probably in the middle to the late 20th century and you know it didn't work like you know all of these giant corporations uh you know ibm or you know general motors and you know companies that don't even exist anymore they were all like these they were giant you know, bureaucracies that did things scientifically and, you know, systematically, and they were like big government.
which didn't work either. And since at least the 90s, we've been walking away from that. And in a lot of ways, I see Trump as the final. thing that kicks out the prop from that whole way of thinking about the world that like big overwhelming institutions that are run by wise and smart people and use science for everything like it's over. Yeah. Trump but I you know having said that like
There isn't a lot positive in Trump's vision. It's like, you know, you either get with my program and do what I say. Otherwise, I'm going to deport you or I'm going to I'm going to unleash my, you know, attorneys general against you and things like that. that's not the way to build the next future, the next America. It's the end of an era. I don't think it's the beginning. But I do feel like there are enough people around who...
I don't know. It just depends on who's the loudest in the room, I guess. But the kind of techno-optimist who... all got on board with him. These people seem to have a... more optimistic vision of America. They definitely do. American. Yeah, ingenuity, innovation. And I agree. And, you know, when you think about people like Marc Andreessen. David Sachs. Yeah. I mean. Jeff Bezos, even Tim Apple, as Trump used to refer to Tim Cook because he didn't, you know, he...
really is that guy, right? You know, where he- He is the funniest president in the history of the world. He's like the Seinfeld version of George Steinbrenner, you know, where he sees his grandkids and he's like, fatty, shorty, you know, red, you know. But that's good. I mean, one thing that we need to also have caution about, and I say this as like, I'm a free market libertarian. You know, our reason slogan is free minds and free markets. I love the fact that Jeff Bezos at Amazon was like.
fuck it i'm turning the washington post opinion section he said we're going to focus on personal liberties and capitalism or free markets right and i'm like yes yes we need that but We should also recognize that billionaires' agendas and everybody else's don't always line up exactly well. I mean, they do much more than people think.
And I hate, you know, and this is going back maybe 10 years or whenever AOC had a policy advisor who once famously said, you know, every billionaire is a policy failure. Putin is a billionaire who got his money by stealing it from people. Muammar Gaddafi was a billionaire. But like Paul McCartney is a billionaire. Yeah. And Paul McCartney didn't steal money from me. It's like he gave me shit that I wanted. Jeff Bezos.
You know, there's faults around the edges. Sure. But like, you know, the way Jeff Bezos became a million, a billionaire is by, you know, during a pandemic when nobody could do anything like fucking guys would show up. sometimes the same day with whatever i needed you know like that's incredible about like all the people who are in that camp of like every billionaire is like yeah every billionaire is a failure they
screamed as their guillotine arrived via Amazon. I'm going out to protest after my flag comes. As soon as my mask show up right you know things like that but so there is that and i mean this is you know but trump i don't trump ultimately he's he's not an optimist he has a huge amount of energy and he has like an intensely negative energy about him i think but again i i don't really care about him what i'm saying what's good is that, like, by him winning...
I think he caps this long era. It's the end of that. gigantism era where like you know the government's going to tell you how to live and big companies will make all your decisions for you and all of that like we've been working away from that forever and it's like now it's on all individuals to kind of take more control over their lives and responsibility for their lives and to help people who can't help themselves.
I, you know, I used to write a lot about education policy and we're in an era now where school choice is burgeoning and it's good. Like, you know, it's crazy. We have like factory, you know, people. We're more outraged by like factory farm chicken than factory farmed kids, you know, where it's like all of us for a hundred years went to the same schools and kind of were treated as if we were the same and like.
And then, you know, we're widgets. And at the end of, you know, here's your diploma and I'll go whatever. Like, we're getting out of that. You know, like you, I don't drink anymore. Unlike you, I. do other kinds of drugs, but I would guarantee that you, even if you're sober, like you are much more intentional about every aspect of your diet and your mood, like whether you use caffeine or other supplements or whatever, like. We're in an age now, in an era where all of us have to say.
You know, I have like unparalleled opportunities to be who I want to be, to live how I want to live, to commune with people who are like minded and find them, you know, through the Internet and other places and move there and start. you know, both in the cloud as well as in reality, like, you know, the pods that I want to live in. And that takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of intensity. You're constantly. teaching yourself things that are new and where do you want to go.
And that's that's where we're at. And this is good. And it's coming. It would have come anyway. But I think by Trump winning, it comes, you know, five, 10 years earlier. Yeah, it's interesting because I think the mistake, though, there's what.
One is the internal debate in libertarianism. You see this in... every party so there's an internal war on the left there's an internal war on the right as well where there's the new right and the conservative right and the new right and the conservative right are there's not they can be a good coalition but yeah There's not much. And there's, you know, there's lefties now, particularly the, you know, sometimes they're called the abundance agenda or the YIMBYs who are like.
Oh, these are like Ezra Klein and them? Yeah, and Derek Thompson and other people who kind of... they are picking up on but like where it's like oh you know what in san francisco there was a large group of people it's like housing is really expensive and um you know a really obvious way to lower the price of housing is to build more housing so we got to get rid of a bunch of
environmental rules and zoning rules that don't really do anything other than make housing really expensive to build. So let's do that. And so, yeah, this is... On every point in the political spectrum, there is discussion, which is, again, the sign that we're at the end of something. And now the question is,
How do we build what's next? And this is where I think the right maybe doesn't understand. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. I don't think that America will be all that excited into moving into some. conservative vision of This was, this is a joke I always make on stage where I'm like, you know, right when Kamala got, when she got nominated, they were like, oh, you like.
she's a slut she slept her way to the top and i'm like and you're not gonna win over the suburban moms with that because a lot of us slept our way to the bottom you know like there's There's just a lot of reformed sluts in the suburbs, and that's where we kind of all end up, and it's awesome. I prefer to think that they're future sluts. No, but I agree with you completely. Across every aspect, I think a lot about this.
Because I don't have that good a grasp of things. But I think a lot about either my grandparents or my parents' life and then my kids. And like, you know, one of the most basic things is that, you know, when I was growing up and it was better than it used to be. But like, you know, there were maybe five types of guys you could be and three types of girls.
And now it's like, no, there's like a million different identities that are possible. You don't even have to be a guy if you're a guy. Yeah, yeah. And again, like, you know, not to get sidetracked into discussions about whether or not, you know. transitioning for in vitro embryos is good or bad. But it's like, you know, we should celebrate the fact that more people have more choices. I always used to talk about this in terms of Pop-Tarts.
Literally, when I was a kid, there were four types of Pop-Tarts that were all unfrosted. Now there's like 35, 36 types of Pop-Tarts that look different and are constantly changing. That's the world everybody wants to be able to choose for themselves and say, I want to take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and this, and I'm going to make it into my own personal Pop-Tart or whatever lifestyle. And I think conservatives make a big mistake when they think because people are like.
Kamala Harris, I don't want that. I don't want what the Democratic Party was offering during COVID and where they were insane, thought policing and policing, policing and doing all kinds of crazy shit. People rejected that. It didn't mean like, OK, now I want to live in some AI generated fantasy of a 1950s household where my wife has gigantic tits and a crinoline dress.
And, you know, I make $6 a month, but, you know, I can feed a family of 20 on that. That's my favorite Iowa hawk, like going after all these people with their AI generated. slop and he's like, this is not the world that we lived in in the 1950s, by the way. Yeah, he had a great string just the day that we're recording this.
Whereas, you know, he was like, here's what a 1950s house looked like. Here's what it cost, etc. And like you look at it and you're like, oh, my God, like, are they are they in Schindler's List or something? It's like, you know, it's a 800 square foot house. you know, that has five people in it or more. And it's like, this is not, you know, this isn't the path. This isn't what people want. People want choice. And because I suspect, I mean, if you disagree, I mean, challenge me on it, but like.
What I wanted when I was 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 like has changed. And it's not like I'm not flipping about it or anything, but like. You change and you grow and you want to be able to kind of evolve, you know, on your own pace as well as react to society. And like, you know, I went from loving living in a small town to wanting to be in a big city and then splitting, et cetera, you know, and it's like. What people want more than anything is choice. And I think I think.
The political party, certainly, but also the kind of broader based ideology or cultural climate that gives people more choice and then helps them correct course when they make bad choices. This, you know, this is what the future could be. Yeah, I think it would be, you know, it would be fantastic. Yeah, I think that it's my sister and I were just talking about this actually on the way here.
we were laughing because she has three kids and they're older. She started very young. So her kids are like, 20s and and late teens and so she's seen it's like you guys are like war veterans you're like she's like I love it when people with children who are eight are giving parenting advice you're like shut up you're like you're gonna get your ass handed to you in like five years yeah but she was saying we were laughing about the like no phones in schools debate because i'm like this feels
ridiculous to me because more importantly how the fuck are you going to teach these children right with ai yeah like how are you going to ensure that these kids are learning how do you use ai none of these teachers are even contemplating that it's so much easier to be like We need to get schools out. We need to get phones out of the school. And we need more money and we need new HVAC stuff, you know, et cetera. Like, I mean.
The big thing is I'm sure your daughter is three. Almost. Almost three. Like by the time she's in high school, I hope that school will look radically different. Like it would be. unrecognizable to you as a 15 year old. I hope so too because I hated school. It felt like jailed me. Yeah.
It is jail. I hated it. It's a minimum security jail. And I left all the time. I skipped a third of my junior year of high school. I hated it. And then I was going to college. I'm like, why am I paying for this now? which is a huge part of the reason that I dropped out. I'm like, I'm going to go into debt for more jail, basically. And I was I had already partied in high school, so I wasn't like, yeah, I'm free to party now. I just didn't see the point of it. But high school to me felt.
And I was like, how have we not reformed the school system? By the way, a degree is not going to mean anything. And everyone older than me was like, that's not true. A degree is going to get you a job. And it's like, it doesn't assure it. That was part of, you know, that thing of like, okay, as we get systematic and we have bright people and, you know, we, you know.
A college diploma was like, you know, the ticket to. For one generation. Yeah. Yeah, probably. Basically one generation. Yeah. And then now it's now every. And now all the kids want to be influencers. And frankly, I don't blame them. Yeah. Although. Boy, that I can't imagine that's a that's a good life. You know, I mean, anyone this is the thing I say. I'm like you.
I mean, I could do an entire hour long stand up special just about feeding the algorithm. And like, I'm like, we all sound psychotic, by the way, when we talk about the algorithm, because we. sound like primitive people talking about the ancient gods or something where it's like oh we must if we give it if we don't feed the algorithm every day it will like ignore us it will rain upon us if we give it the blessings It's ridiculous. But I used to wonder why these old kind of like.
back in the day they seem they seem so quaint now like youtube athletic influencers they all had breakdowns i watched one woman after another and i'm like Come on, how hard could this be? You're just making content. And now that I do it, I'm like, I get it. I understand. But have you might have a breakdown? Have you found I mean, because this is also there's always like, you know, there's a learning curves, right? Both individual and then kind of society wide. Do you feel like you have
gotten to a place now where you have a more stable audience. They're stable, yeah. You know, and like you develop a reputation so that it's less, you know, you always want to have like a breakout hit of something that brings new people in. I think so many things have changed. I think the algorithms changed.
I don't think you get bumps from going on big podcasts in the way that you do. Maybe you'll get a little bit, but I don't think you get those. Like it used to be even eight years ago, you could get met. I don't think it's rewarded that way. I think now. It's more like virality, which is what the internet thrives on and really wants. But I don't – I'm not really interested in going viral because –
It's never good. It's good in some ways, but it's not really that good. As much as I hate to say it, I would rather grow in the way that we've grown, which is very organic. very slow and it's like a cult following that of people who know us and have been seen us through things and and it's a it's a i don't know i just find it to be I also didn't, I'm grateful I didn't create my brand around like my family or domesticity or anything like all those brands weird me out and I'm like that is
And people are, I think there's a normie revolt against all the influencers right now. Because you also know that it's fake. Yeah, I mean, like, it's either... Totally fake or it's effectively fake. But yeah, I mean... Who is going to be the, you know, and this might be a good betting pool is like, which family based influencer is going to become like the next Manson family or the Menendez. Well, all the influencer kids are growing up and suing their parents. Yeah.
This is like a real thing. So we're having the first generation of kids that was raised as influencer kids without their choice, by the way. They're now growing up and saying I was essentially like a slave. It was like slave wage. That's correct. And that they wouldn't let me get out of it. I was forced to do it. This is good for the total fertility. Right. We're going to need to import more immigrants.
to keep the population up because these kids aren't going to be having kids even though that's another interesting thing because even when you look at like all of the immigration you know everywhere the birth rates collapsing yeah yeah well that's Because, I mean, my belief in that is that it's modernity. And modernity means one that.
You have more options in your life, particularly women. And there's like a very widely observed correlation between the more years of schooling women have, the fewer kids they have. It's a proxy for a more advanced economy where. You know, you don't need to have as many kids. People are moving from, you know, kind of physical labor to mental labor or, you know. Influencing. Influencer labor. Yeah. But you.
You know, it's not a bad thing. It's a thing and nothing is going to reverse it. Well, it's weird. I feel like I had this. this argument with people years ago because there was this really cool video about how the 12 billionth person would never be born right and it was done about
It was when everyone was freaking out about overpopulation, which was not that long ago. No, no, no. It was like a decade ago. And I was like, guys, calm down. Like everywhere you go all over the world, the more that people get lifted out of poverty, which is happening. Thank you, capitalism. the fewer kids they have.
And then now everyone's freaking out. No, and it's like we've got to do something. And this is where, you know, it's not Trump per se, although J.D. Vance has advanced ideas for legislation about this. And a lot of people on the conservative right of like, OK, what we need to do is to shovel tons of money at parents. You know, Stalin did this. Like every dictator and every other person has tried to do this to incentivize. It's always the right type of people to have more kids.
And it really doesn't work because, you know, and also it breeds resentment because, you know, again, I have two kids. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's the one thing it reliably breeds. But, you know, and. Yeah, it's just I always feel bad for people who are told like somehow you are lesser if you don't have kids, whether it's by choice or by circumstance. But, you know, we'll be able to deal with. fewer people on the planet, and we'll create
AI, bots, things that will do the work that needs to get done. And I think the rest of us will do pretty well. I want to do a routine about, yeah, I have a whole idea for a routine about the working robots and restaurants and stuff. Oh, God, yeah. It's going to be so weird. You know, last night I saw some of the delivery robots, the Uber Eats delivery robots here, who I had seen in Santa Monica during the pandemic when I was hanging out there. The little driving ones? Yeah.
the dot matrix printer version of what's to come. Totally. Those are like the fax machines of delivery. It's going to be great when they show up. And they cook the food for you. And they clean your house. And they have these home robots now. And they have the ads for them. Oh, God. It's kind of, you know, it's very exciting, especially if you.
Take it with a sense of optimism rather than dread. It could get weird. Oh, it will be weird. I mean, even when somebody was like, get that camera out of you. stalking my daughter when I was doing comedy. And this guy was like, get that camera out of your kid's daughter. She's too old for that. And I was like, no, I'm just preparing her for a lifetime of surveillance.
like that is the technocracy that she will be born into well this is what's interesting is um You know, thinking about that in surveillance versus the fancy counter word is surveillance, which is surveillance is like looking down from above and it's always associated with. you know power and like the government or a corporation or whatever you know we've seen a million movies like that surveillance is when individuals like look back at the you know and they're watching the watchers
And in stuff like 1984, it was always the telescreen was on. You didn't know what was behind it, but it was being beamed onto you and people were tracking you. A lot of the technology that we have now allows you to... kind of find out more information about, you know, the powers that be. And it's not perfect. And it's always a struggle. But that was. That's the revolution of the personal computer, going from a mainframe computer, which had those big banks, and the things that would spin.
Somebody in a one-piece suit with a bald head would take out a card and be like, oh, you've been selected to be killed. in the next war so just report to the death center now right And then like personal computers starting in the late 60s, but especially in the 70s were like. No, we're making the computer an extension of me as an individual, and I am going to be calling the shots. And then the internet, like we're going to have an inter...
related set of networks where end users are as important as whatever the center was or the center disappears. And I think you know, kind of keeping that in mind and pushing that forward. Like technology is good when it empowers individuals, not when it makes it easier for, you know, some overlord to dictate everything. Yeah. Well, we've got to go, but what's your biggest defect of character?
Biggest defect of character, I was going to say it was drinking, but that's not, I don't know that that's a real, not. There were times when I really just lacked empathy, I think. And that probably... fueled a lot of the worst elements of when I drank too much and acted poorly. And what's your biggest asset? I'm very curious, I think. And I read a lot and I listen to a lot of different types of people. And I like going out into the world, both physically, but also kind of mentally. Yeah.
I like that too. Well, where can we find you? I'm at Reason.com. All of my stuff ends up there on Twitter. I'm at Nick Gillespie. And that's probably and sadly the place where I reside the most. Same for me. Yeah. Shameful. Although I have been on Instagram more using reels like a normie and because they are very relatable for like just. suburban moms yeah and i did i watched a woman eating a piece of sourdough like a whole and i was like this is my fucking rock bottom like
I watched a whole minute and a half of this, and I was like, what am I doing with my life? I find Facebook's version of Reels, that's the lowest form of video. You know, the one thing that is great, and I don't think enough people talk about it in a way where it's not like bragging, but like. The experience of parenting is absolutely phenomenal because it makes you humble.
It also makes you interested and curious and you stay in touch with the world. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in a really powerful way. And it's kind of a model for everything where it is like. You're you know, you're anxious about everything all the time, but you're also kind of optimistic and you get. You take the plot seriously because this thing is constantly changing and unfolding and growing. Yeah.
Oh, it's crazy how fast they, it is like watching AI become sentient that first year. You're like, whoa, what the, you came online. Yeah, that's right. Even those first three months, you're like, holy mackerel. And now even just the first three years. Yeah, there's a great documentary that Lenore Skenazy told me about. And it's Becoming You. on apple plus it's like five or six part series and it follows a hundred kids all over the world
in the first five years of their life. And it is incredible. My daughter was obsessed with it for when she was like, before even one, it was all she ever wanted to, or no, one to two. She was just like, that was the thing she wanted to watch when we let her watch TV. That sounds great. So she loved it. You know, similar to that, I remember when my older son learned to read and my ex-wife and I.
We were nervous about him learning to read, and we're both like eggheads. So we actually bought Hooked on Phonics. Oh, yeah. Which fucking worked. It does. They got away from it and they're finding it's been a disaster. So he was learning how to read. And then I remember one time he was in the living room of the house we were in at the time. And he was reading something like without me coaching him or anything. And it was like, I think about it and I choke up because it's like.
You know, at that moment, that's like you become sentient because it's not just that you can read what you've been taught, but you are now. going out in the world and like you will read sentences and you'll form sentences that have never been spoken before or anything and you just realize like this is just accelerating outward and it's so empowering yeah yeah it's really wonderful oh but anxiety inducing oh yeah terrifying nothing more terrifying than being a parent
But thank you so much for coming through. Thank you for having me. The check-in with Bridget and Cousin Maggie can now be found at Phetasy.com. It's been titled Another Round with Bridget Phetasy, and it's now in video. This has been Walk-Ins Welcome with Bridget Phetasy. I'm Bridget Phetasy. That's the dumbest line.