This is why these things aren't black and white. At the end of the day, we're human beings. Bob Pitman is famous for saying people don't fall in love with robots, they fall in love with humans. That's why they had VJs on MTV.
And MTV would not be MTV without VJs. There's always a humanness. We as humans will always be drawn to that.
I think it's a question of what exactly is the role of this animal on planet Earth 100 years from now. I think we underestimate how different that is going to be. Even 25 years from now, we're close to AGI, we're close to quantum computing. Look at what's happening in robotics. 25 years from now, the world is unrecognizable. And that will be the world that our kids fight and exist in, just like we've fought and existed in this one.
And the other one I do is crisscross Jump. Oh, that's a good one. That was the first. But that's also an impressive one because you got to do some of them try to rhyme but they can't rhyme like this. Yo yo. Some of them try to rhyme but they can't rhyme like this. Some of them try to rhyme but they can't. First vinyl I ever bought. Wow. Seven-inch vinyl. That's an, you know, crisscross are underrated. It's a real Germaine Depri production. It's Germaine Depri realizing like I'm not going to be a star. So I'm going to find these kids. I'm going to make them a novelty. I'm going to make them stars. And he did it. Miggity Mac Daddy. I can't remember. Yeah. I think one of them died. By the way, the second crisscross record is totally underrated. I've never even listened to it. Yeah. So, check it out. It's like a real, it's like post chronic, you know what I mean? So, like the music tried to kind of change to post chronic.
We were going to talk about technology. We could end up talking about music for about an hour. Do you know what the funny thing is? The algorithms are destroying music. Is this No Country for Old Men? You know the end of No Country for Old Men? You must have seen the film No Country for Old Men. No. Do you watch films? No. Okay. The film No Country for Old Men, it's an amazing film and it's basically a guy finds a bunch of money in the desert, steals it, and then he gets chased by the criminals who won. It's brutal, savage film. Okay. I think it's, can't remember who the director was, but at the end there's like two old policemen talking about it, talking about the world and then saying it's not really for them anymore because it's like no country for old men. And so my kids love some bollocks music like drill. I think drill's bollocks. And I think the algorithms have destroyed music, destroyed albums for most of us. And not doing drugs, you know. I think that the challenge is, so we can definitely, this does really fit into my worldview because it's impossible to extract culture from technology. Yes. In other words, we'll never have another Beatles because we'll never have another Beatles on Ed Sullivan. We'll never have another Dead Kennedys because if you were 19 years old in 1979 and you had some ideas you wanted to share with your peers, how are you going to do it? No one's going to let you on the radio. No one's going to let you on television. They're not going to put you in the newspaper. You're going to make a zine like a fan zine with a photocopier and try to distribute it to your friends or you're going to make a seven inch. You know, that's how I started making zines. I started a zine called The Plug. I did not know that. What was it like? I managed four issues. I interviewed K Panta Slayer. What year was this? God, I was 15. You interviewed Pantera when you were 15? Yeah, that was a phone call. Them and Slayer were phone calls. Wow. K was in person. It was their first UK show, A Story 2. I was the first person to interview them. Wow. Biohazard. I interviewed Dog Eat Dog. All the hardcore and punk at the time. Okay. Yeah. Anyway, so you know what I always say, and I wrote this in my chapter in the Beastie Boys book. Yeah. Anyone who ever made a zine with a photocopier and a Sharpie understood the internet the moment they saw it. Yes. Instantly. Because you're like, here's a way I can get to people without the gatekeepers. Dude, listen. So, this is so funny. It's so funny you should say it. So, my friend Tom is the one who I made it with, right? And we used to go to his dad's estate agency, property sales company, and we'd sit there with a photocopy, page after page after page all day long, staple it, and then go and sell to concerts. It would take all day to make like 300 copies. Exactly. And that's why we stopped in the end because it was too much. The internet starts and I'm like huh. So that summer I was living in High Wycombe, started to learn to code HTML 4 because I was going to bring back the zine online, and then in the end I just got paid so much for making websites I stayed there.
By the way, you know, my version of this is in the early 90s, mid-90s we had a magazine called Grand Royal, right? The Beastie Boys had a magazine called Grand Royal and then in the year 2000 we made GrandRoyal.com, as you know, this online magazine and kind of record label merch company. I mean Grand Royal existed as a record label before me. And we reinvented it in kind of 1999 because of the internet. And I've even thought that I've had that thought, every almost every year I have, I still own GrandRoyal.com and every year I have the thought and I talk to Mike D about it like, is this the year? Should we bring it back? I mean, it's a great way to get, but the thing is, if Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys was 19 today, he wouldn't start a band. He would start a podcast or a YouTube channel or a TikTok. And that's why you can't extract. So I don't think it's just that algorithms have killed music, right? I think it's just that times have changed. You know what's a great listen is the history of rock music in 500 songs. Okay. And because what's interesting about it is it's a podcast. It's epic. It's still ongoing. I think he's around 200 right now. Okay. Let me ask you how many of the songs in it were from the last decade? Well, he'll get there. Oh, he's doing it just purely over time. Yeah, because this is the question. He starts with Benny Goodman. And I think he's up to like Kashmir. You remember my producer Danny? Oh, absolutely. Right. Do you know the argument I have with him about music? I'm like, if you do the greatest hundred rock songs of all time, how many are in there from the last decade? You know, here's the thing. This is also, this might be old country, you know, new what is it? Old um, new country for old men. Uh, no country for old men. No country for old men. It might be case in point. Don't edit that. Senior moments. Case in point. Here's what I say. This is a great exercise. Whenever somebody tells you music was better before, it was. Yeah. Here's what you have to ask them. Here's my question for you then. Yeah. We can do this. I don't have my phone. But what year do you think it was great? There was that year I think where Siamese Dream, 90, sound is about then. Yeah. 90. That was about. The thing is though, if you go look at the Billboard Hot 100 from that year, sucked. Sucks. And so here's the problem. In that year we were looking at the underground. Yeah. And then today we're judging music based on the Billboard Hot 100. And that's where we're old. Well, so I guess that's fair because I'll even give you an example. I said this Dead Kennedys thing out loud lately that like, oh, punk rock can't exist. Somebody sent me a pile of contemporary punk rock records and I just started going down them and every single one of them were incredible and I'd never heard of any of them. So there's an album I've just discovered from a band which is the first time I think in maybe 10, 15 years where an album's blown my mind. There's a band called Novaro. They're like a hardcore metalcore band, but if you heard it, it's really experimental. But my point to Danny was it's not that. It's like the top hundred albums of all time. How many are from the last decade? I said to him, and I stand by this thesis, the last great record ever made was Back to Black. Yeah. And to me that even is post some of my favorite records. You know what I mean? But I hear you. I think there is a technology thing with this though, right? Because you know the record itself, if you think about it, the album was a pretty short period of time. The great thing about the history of rock music in 500 songs is that that podcast could also be called the history of technology and music. It could also be called the history of racism in America in the 20th century, right? It could be called a history of exploitation of artists in the 20th century. But also, you realize that there was no such thing as the album before, you know, Blonde on Blonde really, right? The kids don't care anymore. Yeah. And they didn't care before, by the way. Right. And you realize great other great things like the only reason we really have music radio is because of television. But did you ever queue up for an album? Did you ever go before? Hell yeah. 1992, Check Your Head, Beastie Boys, I stood in line. So I did it for Wu-Tang Forever. Ah, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Which would probably been kind of disappointing once you got that one on, because that was no 36 Chambers, but it opens well. No offense, Bobby. It opens well. Yeah, it opens really well. But yeah, no, it was disappointing. I mean, they did a few songs after that. Yeah. Yeah. But that's the point on the technology. And then I go back because I was thinking to saying to you like how do we start this interview? I think the combination of technology and culture is a real, it's a fun topic but it's also very real because I think also if you think about this, you know what Balaji talks about, right? The move from God to state to network. Yeah. It's all there. We are living in a world now where we value the opinions of our network neighbors more than our physical neighbors. Sure. But that's what you and I did and it's why we made zines, right? It's why I read Thrasher magazine and I wasn't on the football team. You know what I mean? Because I valued, I lived in this, my network didn't exist in this small town in Goshen, Indiana where I lived. It lived in Thrasher magazine. It lived in Maximum Rock and Roll. And then that's also why the internet was not like, oh my god, what is this? It was like, oh my god, I can actually meet people who like the same music as me. And venues. It existed in venues. Yeah. So my network was who I skateboarded with on a Friday night, a venue called Esquires in Bedford, but it was also the Water Rats in London. It was also this story of two because you go to shows, you see the same people and then you go back to school and you think everyone here is a dumbass. But let me just say this because I was thinking on the way over. I was thinking how do I start this today? And I think I've got a way to start, but it starts, it's a hard way of starting things. Okay. Okay. When you're 10 years old, 12 years old, you know you've got to do middle school, senior school, and then I might go to college and then I'll get a job. Right? But if you've got, I mean my daughter now's 15. She's gonna finish school in three years. If she goes to university, it's six years. And the pace of change that we're seeing now is how do you even prepare them for that? Yeah. And if we're sending kids to school at the moment to memorize facts while they've got a supercomputer with AI, what are we actually doing? How do you prepare? How the fuck do you prepare a kid now? Yeah. Well, so I guess I should tell my personal experience here. You know, I had a kid when I was 17. And she's 35 now. I also have a 19-year-old, an 11-year-old, and I have a granddaughter as well. So, you know, your granddad. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think about this question a lot, and especially because schools here in France are from 20 years ago in America, right? So I've had very different education experiences where I homeschooled my older daughter for a number of years. And she went on to go to MIT for undergrad and she has a PhD from Stanford. My middle daughter went to a progressive private school in the US, which I would actually posit is the best model we have because to answer your question, they don't try to teach you facts and memorization. They try to make a good person who can think for themselves. Okay? And I think that's the best shot we have. Make people that are good individuals who can solve problems when confronted with one, know how to use the tools that are at their disposal because those tools are going to evolve a lot over the next few years, and that can really think about their place in society and the future. That's the best we have. And then I see what they do in French schools which is memorization of facts and French history and I say why in the world would you do this? What are you doing? You know what are you doing? Because you are basically creating people for industrialization. Hold on. You're basically training an LLM. Yeah. No, that's what it is. A very basic shitty LLM. It's a real disservice. So, I would like to think that that is, but I also think that culturally in the US, if there's a progressive American school, they're going to, if there's new research tomorrow, they're going to try to integrate that research into the school today. That's just the mentality of a progressive school in the US. Whereas if you ask them at a French school why do they still do it this way? Their answer will be because that's how we've always done it. Right? And I think it does change. Our daughter has changed schools over time and the school is actually quite good I would say on a relative basis, but if you compare it to that progressive LA education, I've been in France now for 10 years and I simply haven't encountered anything like that here. But I think like many things here, 20 years from now that will exist here. But I think that they're just a little, tradition is so valued here that they're very slow to change.
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You've met my son, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so he school wasn't for him, right? If he was here, he'll tell you he didn't like it. He was a creative. He liked painting, but he went to university, did art. Eight months in, I got a letter from the university. Actually, it was for him. And I just opened it. And it was like, your attendance rate is 38%. You need to come and see us. So I went up to, no, he came home for Easter and I was like, what's going on? And he'd been having a good time. He was failing. He didn't like it. And I said, you got two choices. I think I said to him, you can go back, retake the year on a course you don't want to do on something you're not enjoying, or you can come and work for me, but if you work for me, I'm going to ride you fucking hard on this. So he said, I'll come and work for you. So he's been a producer on the podcast now for nearly two years, right? He had to learn firstly just to edit clips and put those out. I didn't help him. He went and learned it. He's then sat in two to three interviews a week with people like yourself, Liz Truss, various politicians, economists, and watched a deep interview, like two-hour interview. And then he sat in a car with me when we discussed it on the way home. Yeah. And he's now employed. He's got a good salary. He's got savings. He's got Bitcoin. He's got no debt. He's kind of figured the world out. And then he's got all his friends who've come back from university. They can't get a fucking job. Ian, they can't get a job. People cannot get all those graduate jobs are now being handled by mid-tier people who use AI instead of grads. And so he's just by luck has been positioned ready for where the world's going. He's ahead of the curve for his age. But there are tens of thousands of kids who are starting university courses now for things to learn things that are going to be wiped out by AI. And there's people leaving who can't get jobs because of AI. And I'm like, what do we do about that? Well, look, I think a few observations there. First of all, what is college for? College is not for learning facts, right? College is that period of time when you're too old to live at home and you're too young to be in the real world and you go out there. So when he was out there having a good time, to me, that's what you're supposed to be doing in college. You know, when I look at my college experience, I got super lucky. I did things with digital music outside of my computer science coursework, which is what became my life, you know. So I had a good basis. I studied computer science at Indiana University. It was a good education. But really everything I learned, I learned fucking around with computers outside of my classes, you know what I mean? Everything that I used, I came with that. And I think that's the case for, I don't think that's new, you know? And I think it's also just a fact that the things that make us different that make us successful. I don't think that's any different, you know. I mean, I look at kids that I was in. I dropped out of grad school. I did a year of a PhD program and then dropped out to go on tour with the Beastie Boys. I have a friend who I blinked and he had two PhDs, you know, and I was like, wow, I could have had that could have been me. I could be Dr. Rogers at the same time, you know, he's had a great career, of course. He has a degree in computer science and a degree in cognitive science, but we worked together at Apple, but I was the GM of music and he was an engineer elsewhere in the company. So I think in some ways my career has been more interesting at least for me, right? Because of the weirdness that I injected into it, you know, the off path things. Hold on. Didn't you both just find the right path for? Yeah, we found that. No, I agree. It's not a criticism at all. My point is that I think that life is a story and your CV is a story and your job is to imagine a story and then live it. You've done that. I've done that. Lots of our friends have done that. I think what too many people do is they live someone else's story or they think maybe the state owes them a story. You know what I mean? Like the crass. Do they owe us a living? Of course they do. Of course they do. I think that if you, the point I was going to make too is I hear what you're saying, but I grew up in Goshen, Indiana. In so many ways my life is this story of America, right? My parents grew up at this amazing time to be an American, post-war America, where you could have a factory job and buy a house and feed your family. It's a very short period of time. And I went to college and I was the first person in my family to go to college. I studied computer science. I moved to a blue state because of politics. No, because it's where the jobs were for what I did. What would be the life for me if I had stayed in Indiana? You know, like it's not, we're talking now about the knowledge jobs that have been removed. Those blue collar jobs were removed 25 years ago. You know what I mean? Like it's a continual hollowing out. So it's not the start of something. It's the continuation of something. And so you're always trying to move up market away from that. But is it a hockey stick at the moment? I don't know. I think that we, I don't know. I think every generation thinks that their parents don't get it and their kids don't appreciate it. But we can't all be right, you know. Yeah. But you and I are weirdos. Let's be honest. Sure. Yeah. Like we're weirdos, but I don't. Is there another path? This is my thing. Is there a mainstream, right? Has there ever been? Maybe. Yeah. I think, you know, I have a friend who's a Brit and a lover of history, and he's the one that said to me, post-war America is the greatest time to have been born anywhere ever in the history of humanity, right? Because you had all the chips at that moment. And I think that what part of what we're realizing now and a lot of what gets covered on your show is the concept of the fourth turning, right? And I think it makes a lot of sense because you have that long period of peace post-World War II that can't go on forever. And then the question is what do we all do with it? And my philosophy is that criticism is only allowed when it comes with an alternate proposal. Okay. Um, right. And so, you know, if we're going to criticize the state we're in, we need to propose something else. I'm gonna firstly I'm going to steal that. Yeah. Every time I hear, I had to realize that once I moved here to France because I was starting working at LVMH and what I realized is that there's this cultural thing where they like to shit on your idea and then what they do is over time they kind of, if it turns out you were right, they just stay quiet and people forget that they were negative back then. And then if it turns out you were wrong, they say I told you so. And so I had to actually say, listen, I put an idea on the table. I want to hear a better one or shut the fuck up. And I think that's the way I want to live generally. I'm conscious. You're a Yank and I'm a Brit. We're in a room full of French people. They don't mind. They're not going to come up with the pitchforks. Yeah. Yeah. No, look, so again, I go through the lens of my children. My son's good. We've sorted him out. I've proven the model. I've proven the model that memorizing facts was a waste of time for him. He just needed to be doing things, learning skills and pushed hard. But yeah, he just needed to be out there learning skills and being given real knowledge. So I look at my daughter and I go, right now my theory on my daughter is every single day she spends in school now is pretty much a waste of time. I feel the same way. But I'm cool with it. She can finish this year. But does she go and do A levels? Does she do senior school? In my view, it is a waste of time. Personally, I would rather take her out and say, I'll homeschool you or you pick something you want to do or you come and work for me or Bel. So when I went to see Balaji recently, I went out to his network state to see it. It was such a fascinating moment with him. So I'm walking around with him and Connor and he's talking about like university being mainly a waste of money and time at the moment. And so I explained the Connor story and he was like, yeah, this is just the modern version of your son coming to work on the farm. Mhm. He's half your DNA. He thinks half like you. He's now working on the farm, preparing to take over the farm. It makes total sense. Like that's what we need to go back to really in a modern world. I was like, huh? So then I was like, my daughter needs to come and work on the farm. But that's what I think for her. But then I think wider because we're in this world where we did the panel yesterday where it's got the convergence of Bitcoin, AI, and quantum. It was a great panel by the way. Thank you for doing that. Thank you. Well, smart people on it. We've got these converging technologies where we head towards this potential singularity where we've got infinite compute, infinite knowledge, potentially infinite energy. And does that take us to this incredible world or does it take us to this fucking horrific dystopian world? I don't actually know. No. And I think it depends on who you are and where you sit in that new world, right? Just like everything else in the past, you know. I again, as somebody who grew up in Indiana and had a kid at 17, I probably narrowly escaped living in a trailer park and working at Walmart and eating mayonnaise sandwiches. You know what I mean? Like there's definitely another outcome to the story that could have been had it not been for circumstances that I kind of lucked into or made my own luck or whatever. So I think that my point is that we always have that, a couple things. First of all, there's a great book called The Case Against Education, written by the same guy who wrote the graphic novel Open Borders. I recommend reading both of them. The way he puts it though is about the way that we've built the educational system. It's sort of like if you're at a concert and you can't see, standing up is a great strategy unless everyone stands up. And that's kind of what we're doing with education is we just kind of are pushing people through this system. And what we're really doing is creating a stratification and a hierarchy, right? And I see it in action. Again, my oldest daughter has a PhD from Stanford. Like she, you know, we all have our own challenges in life no matter where we are in that hierarchy, but can I get a job is probably not one of them, you know. And so it's a system and I think that's a way to acknowledge it and then of course that system will change. And I think there are some interesting ways to change it if you look at what Xavier is doing here in Paris with 42. 42 being the meaning of life from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He has a free school where the only thing you do from the moment you start to the moment you end is code, right? And people talk about AI taking away coding. I really don't think that's true. I think we're all computer operators right now, you know, every one of us our job effectively is a computer operator. We manage information and now we're going to be AI operators on some level. For now. You know, well, and look, I do think that it's always the case that there are givens here. You can look at the past and know some things about where we are right now. Every technological revolution is a bubble. Carlota Perez, technological revolutions and financial capital, it's always a bubble. The bubble bursts and then you get 30 years of sustained growth. You should expect the same thing with respect to AI. It's a big conversation right now, of course it is. But secondly, we always overestimate the impact in the short term and we underestimate it in the long term. So I think we overestimate how many jobs it's going to remove in the near term. I think we underestimate the fact that it is going to materially change the relationship between labor and capital. Right. And if you read the new book that's called The Last Economy. Oh, I'm going to take this one. Yeah, you'll like this one. And you should read his Wikipedia page, too, so you know who it is you're dealing with. I mean, it's a controversial character. Did you already recommend this to me? I think I might have. Yeah. Did you send this by Carl Scandon? Oh, no. This is The Last Economy. Yeah. But his point, he's pointing to a world where human labor actually has a negative value and that there's your change in the relationship between labor and capital. But I don't know that we can imagine what that world is or what our place within it is. What's your thesis? Like what would you think? You know, to be honest, I really don't know. But I think if you look, another book I love from a number of years ago is Factfulness, which points to all of the facts that we live in a better time to be alive today than ever in human history. Yes. Right. And the stats point to that. Now, I think also if you read How to Change Your Mind, the Michael Pollan book about psychedelics, which I think is a great book, one of the things that really jumps out in that book for me is that we create this world and then our children grow up in it. They're actually better suited for that world than we are. In a way, this comes back to the music conversation. That comes to the politics conversation. They're better suited. Politics, I feel like, is maybe slightly different because structurally we live in two worlds at once. And this is where Balaji's network state comes in in my view because we live in this world. I always think about we live in two worlds at once. I don't know if you remember when somebody went to Walmart in Texas and was shooting Mexicans. I remember, and I always think like, and really the Charlie Kirk story is a version of this, right? Where a human being lives in this physical world and in the physical world, if they go to their neighbors' houses and they knock on their doors and they say, hey, I'm going to go to Walmart and shoot some people, they'll call the cops, right? But if they go into that forum, the network, with those like-minded people, in other words, if I try to find in my neighbors the hundred people who share my ideals, I might have a very hard time. But if I ask the Mark Zuckerberg machine, help me find some people who share my ideals, they go boom, here they are. And then I go, hey, I'm going to go to Walmart and shoot some people, and they go, do it, bro. Right? We live in both of those worlds at once. And then my question is, how do you have a two-party or even a multi-party democracy when that's true and you have two different personalities in those? Yeah, because I could be a dick online, but I would never be the way I am online. And it's just like people in cars, right? People that are behind the wheel and their windows are up and they're honking their horn and they're shouting, and then if they got out and stood face to face, they'd be like, hey, dude, I'm sorry. Yeah, man. Let's forget about it. Yeah. And I think it's very hard. I have another, I think I've told you this before, but I had a great experience a couple weeks ago. I got to meet my favorite contemporary author, guy named John Higgs, lives down in Brighton. Okay. And you know, don't meet your heroes, but this was not one of those cases. Like he was everything I had hoped for intellectually. Okay. And we had a really nice time and I hope I get to hang with him again. But he's written amazing books. A book about the KF that you would love. He wrote a book about Timothy Leary that was great. He's written a revisionist history of the 20th century that is amazing. He wrote two books about William Blake. He wrote a book about Doctor Who, which I don't know anything about, but I'll be curious what you think. And then he wrote an amazing book which is about, did you know that the first Beatles single and the first James Bond film came out on the same October day in 1962? No, but that's incredible. He uses that as a vehicle to talk about the last 70 years of British history. Wow. British culture. You probably love it. He's incredible. Maybe have him on the show actually. He's really fantastic. But he said something that has stuck in my brain, which is that in the old media world you kind of had this mainstream thing. As someone pointed out a long time ago, I think Pner wrote a piece in 2000 where he was pointing out that Fox News is really a product of the internet because in the old world if you have two newspapers they kind of drift toward the middle to get the widest audience, but when you have an unlimited spectrum you really have to have a point of view to gather audiences. And the point that John was making, which I think is correct, is that now we have these extreme viewpoints which actually get a lot of attention. And so it's almost like the opposite of the middle point of view really doesn't represent everyone, but these extreme points of view really don't represent everyone either. Yeah. It's so, he made a very specific point that I think is worth pointing out. He said he has a friend who's trans and when he talks to his friend, he's like, there's this incredible irony that the theme is that there's trans hate. He said, but me as a trans person, I feel more understood than I did 25 years ago. And I think we both know that. We both know that we are more, I mean I think about it when I was growing up what it meant even to be gay before the TV show Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. We're now, you know, in around the people that I know. I'm not going to make any judgments, but there's
No, there is no judgment.
Uh, a bit a bit. So, he talks about this trans woman called Daphne at his show and he talked about he said and she's like laughing through the entire show, cracking up, laughing every joke. He said he sat there and he's like, 'Yeah, I got some trans jokes coming.' Anyway, so he tells his trans jokes. Daphne is like crying with laughter through them and he's like anyway, he says he finishes the show and Daphne's at the bar, goes up and has a drink with Daphne and chats to her and he just explains. He said, 'I was a bit worried about the trans jokes and how you would react.' And Daphne was like, 'Because you're making jokes, you're normalizing who we are.' Like the gay jokes, you don't really tell as many gay jokes anymore. Yeah.
It's not that funny anymore. By doing this, you're making it part of culture and you're normalizing it. You're normalizing me.
I think the thing that's important for us as consumers is, you know, I would say that mainstream press never spoke for me, right? When I was first written about in mainstream press in 1995 and I never wanted to read mainstream press again because you're like, 'Wow, if this is the surface level that they cover things, why would I read anything else you write?' Right. But I would also say that these extreme press views don't speak for us either. And I think that's important because if it feels like we're becoming more polarized, as everyone says, I think that's just as fake as, you know, when are we going to have more centrist political dialogue, which was a conversation I heard at the JP Morgan conference back in 2021 by a bunch of old billionaires. And I was like, you guys are asking the question, when are we going to go back to having three channels on television? No. What they've really done, they've connected the two extremes to have a fight. Yes.
And we're like there with the popcorn.
Exactly. And we're and that's it. Like this is what I keep saying like whenever someone brings this up to me, I'm like, 'You're falling for it. This is exactly what they want you to do. They want you to be up in arms around this.' No, let's come back to Jello Biafra. Let's do our own research. DYOR. When I listened to the Dead Kennedys I've been listening to Dead Kennedys non-stop because my friend Glenn Friedman is writing a Dead Kennedys book and he's given me an opportunity to write something for it. So I wanted to do a good job and it's such an important part of my DNA that I'm like studying it and I'm realizing that one of the things I got from it was Doug Kennedy's had a song in 1979 that was kind of anti-left. California Uber Alice. I am Governor Jerry Brown. My aura smiles and never frowns. Your kids will meditate in school. Right. Then Reagan comes into power and he makes a new song. We've got a bigger problem now. Right. I am Emperor Ronald Reagan, born again with fascist cravings. Your kids are going to pray in school. Right? And I realize now that what Jello taught me was look out for both sides. Neither of them are speaking for you. They both are trying to control you. Do your own research. Comes back to Bitcoin, I think. By the way, I wore this for you today.
The Bitcoin misfits. Love that. So I think that we need to be another line that I keep giving to people right now comes back to our music conversation. You should pay attention to what mainstream media says as much as you listen to pop radio. And so in other words, if you are listening to pop music radio or if you are reading mainstream press, I doubt I have a lot to talk to you about.
It's very important that you don't lose this. Okay? This is your inheritance through Bitcoin. A. Let Bitcoin rip. Don't rip up your Bitcoin. Set up inheritance with Casa. So, okay, let me talk to you about two dilemmas then.
So, have a podcast. The primary delivery channel is YouTube. YouTube allows you when you post out a show to test the thumbnail and test the title. Shock and bait works. You know, and I don't go to the full end of the extreme, you know, such and such exposed blah blah blah, but like if you put the UK is in crisis, it's going to do better than let's talk about the UK. And so I have a choice right now in time. We've been doing the show for a year and when we get the first titles that come out, I'm always with Con. I'm like, I can't do that. But we do a little bit of bait and I'm like, should I be doing this? Like, it performs. You get more listeners. We're basically we've got the advert sending the juicy cheeseburger and then we've given you a really good steak, right? But like, should I be doing it or should I be the person who goes, 'My interview is with Ian Rogers and we talk about music, technology, and culture.' And then just [__] it. What will be will be. So, that's my first one. I'm going to channel one of my oldest friends, rapper the paranorm explained the universe to me one day when I was asking him a question like this about something and I don't even remember what it was but I just remember his answer which is he goes, 'Yo, hoes got to eat.'
Sure. Of course you are. But I mean, look, I mean, let's come back to Dead Kennedys for a second. Dead Kennedys, you know, I remember the guy in my high school who thought kill the poor was a funny song about killing people, which it's not. So the shock was the bait and the politics was on the other side, you know, like you know, when you if you came for the shock, what you found was like libertarianism in a way, you know, and so I don't know, Jello would probably hate me saying libertarianism, but you know what I mean? I got from it was free thinking and there was something much deeper like let's lynch the landlord isn't about killing someone it's about living in a slum you know and so and maybe also you know you could say something like NWA right in the 80s was shocking the word you know the name NWA the language they were using you know and but at the same time there was a social message behind it so I think it's okay to do that I was listening out of step by Minor Threat this week.
And I was I was I actually was like, I would love to do an interview with Ian Mai on this because I have two questions for him I've never heard him answer. One, the music is just so good. The music is better than it needed to be. What how did it get there? The other though is he's just saying [__] a lot. And what I realized is that that kind of drew me in as a 15-year-old like, oh, he's saying something you're not supposed to say. At the same time, I found something else in it. I found straight edge. I found, you know, don't smoke, don't drink, don't [__] At least I can [__] think, you know, like, so maybe the f-word brought me in, but I heard the rest.
So I maybe you can hit that. Maybe you could maybe the shot could bring people in, but maybe, you know, they'll be like, 'Oh, and hold on. I got an idea from it, too.'
Well, that's what we're trying to do. But by the way, just complete tangent. Did you ever get to do a punk rock gig at CBGBs?
Imagine minor threat at CBGBs.
No. No, I didn't. But imagine you.
Oh, imagine. Yeah. Or bad brains.
Okay. So, then the second dilemma is a bigger one. Okay. I always felt like growing up I was kind of middle of the road. Like I was a bit left. I like freethinking. Didn't care. Like let's look after people. Let's be good people. Um but I was brought up a little bit conservative as I sent to a like private school. But when I get into the world of Bitcoin and then I look at the shape of the world that we're in, I look at the money. I look at the debt, like I look at the inflation, the jobs being lost. I cannot help but look at government with a very very critical eye. I basically hate hate the government. I struggle to see a world where you can get rid of them, but I kind of hate them. And then when I write about things like on Twitter or Facebook, it always tends to be kind of libertarian, conservative, um, economics, right? But there's a world of people who are my friends, my old friends who are from the left who basically think I'm now a fascist,
And I maybe sound like a bit of a fascist sometimes cuz I'm saying like what are the incentives? What are the economics of these decisions? These are the bad outcomes and I feel I'm like I'm being sucked into this world where I sound like a fascist at times. Look to them. I don't think I am. And like it's that choice. It's like it's very easy to be middle of the road. I love everyone. I like everyone. I'm gonna be everyone's friend. Yeah, that's terrible. That's terrible. Let's go and have a, you know, drink. Or be an opinion leader said, 'No, this is [__] [__] What the government doing there is bullshit.' If you have like unlimited welfare, if you have unlimited welfare, and you have a burdensome tax system. All your rich people are going to leave the country. You're going to have to raise taxes on the middle class. You're going to crush the middle class, but you're going to have to borrow money, which means you're going to print money. It means you're going to have inflation. So, you have to have like a sensible system. All my lefty friends think I'm insane. And I'm like, how do you navigate that, Ian? How do you navigate that world?
Well, here would be I have a comment and then I have direct advice. Um which you can take or leave it cuz I think you're good at doing it the way that you do it and I think actually navigating that in like letting people hear you navigate that is actually good cuz I've had my version of that, you know. Cuz I you know I left Silicon Valley for France and look when I was in the music business I was just in the music business and really truly like as you can tell from this conversation music is the only thing I'm actually qualified to talk about. Um and I came to the luxury business here in France.
here in here in France. And that was
that's untrue. We've been friends for how long now? Three, four, five years.
Yeah. Four years.
Completely untrue. That's the only thing. I appreciate that. But I really feel that way where like also I can talk like passionately about a 7 in for 30 minutes. I can't talk passionately about politics for 30 minutes. You know what I mean? Like I get exhausted and I'm like ah [__] it. I don't care. Um but the [snorts] what I found like you know coming from music to luxury is the greatest thing you could ever do because the music people love luxury and the luxury people love music. So everyone thinks you're great. It's like when I was and that was lovely. Now I hit the eject button and come to Ledger and do crypto and then FTX happens and there are a whole lot of people honestly that were just like let's not talk to Ian for a while. I talked about this on Rick Rubin's podcast a little bit. I have enough punk rock in me to really not give a [__] and to like no. Okay, well now I know who my real friends are. That's cool. And by the way, I'm also friends with as you know both Kid Rock and Kevin Spy. So, you know, a lot of people don't like me, I guess, for having actually looking at individuals in the eye as people and loving them as people, loving them as brothers. Do Kid Rock and I see eye to eye on every issue? No. But do I see eye to eye with my brother who rest in peace on every issue either? No. But he's still my brother and I would still do anything for him, right? So I think you know you sort of find out like those are just life lessons. I think though that the actual answer for me I just stay continually curious.
