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It speaks to the miracle of podcasting and the 📍 fact that you really never know who is listening.
Search this video
0:06
And if they like what you're doing, it's they're going to invite you to very unique experiences.
0:10
Money's a technology, right, and it does a lot of good things, but as my grandfather used to say, Right.
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If you pile it all up, he said it's a lot like manure.
0:18
If you pile it all up in one space, it stinks to high heaven.
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If you spread it out, it's a wonderful fertilizer.
0:25
The right information can literally like build a fortune.
0:27
Munger or Buffett saying that a $20 book could have a billion dollar ID in it, and you never know which one it is. So just keep reading. Yeah.
0:35
One of my hypotheses is we're moving from mass markets, to mass customization.
0:40
The way society is set up pushes people to specialize so much.
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I try to go way harder in the reverse direction and do exploration as a service.
0:49
I don't think you build a great company or a great life for that matter without having persistence. If you type www. relentless. com, you go to Amazon.
0:58
Find people you're interested in and read their biographies, I promise you, I really believe with every bone in my body that like will feed your mind. It'll nourish your soul. Well, hello everyone.
1:08
It's Jim O'Shaughnessy with another Infinite Loops. My cup runneth over.
1:16
Today I have two of my favorite people as guests and this came out of some feedback that Liberty received from someone talking about the three people he would love to see on a podcast, and it even came with pre selected questions from this listener.
1:37
So this is a listener generated podcast.
1:41
My guests are David Senra, the rockstar, apparently, of podcasting with his Founders podcast, which is part of my son Patrick's Colossus network, and one of my other favorite people who always shares amazing ideas with me, Liberty with the initials.
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RPF, like- Liberty RPF: Richard P. Feynman.
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Richard P. Feynman. So welcome guys.
2:06
Thank you for doing this with me.
2:08
The thing with you guys, man, is what I should do is just hit record before you even come on because we are 30 or plus minutes deep in what was an incredible conversation, and I'm thinking to myself, I should be recording this, so welcome. Liberty RPF: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
2:27
Yeah, maybe that was the best part.
2:28
Maybe it's all downhill from here.
2:30
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well, I've been on that ride, so I know how that goes. Let's see though.
2:37
I think we're going to keep it interesting because David told us both something that we want him to talk about because it's going to lead to another part of our conversation.
2:46
David, you had lunch with a mystery guest.
2:51
Tell us the story because it's incredible.
2:53
David Senra: So one of the things that all three of us share is that we love podcasts.
2:57
We describe podcasts as miracles, and that's really the way I think it is.
3:01
And one of the miracles about podcasts is like you never know who's listening, even meeting you where I go on Patrick's show, you like it, you listen to it twice, and then a few hours later you're like, "Patrick, put me in a group chat with him.
3:13
I need to talk to David."
3:14
And then now we've become friends and we had this super long lunch in Miami a few weeks ago or whatever. We talk all the time.
3:20
And then you invite me on your podcast again. So that's one example.
3:23
But the other example is sometimes you get these weird messages and you can't tell if they're actually true or not.
3:29
And so I did a podcast on Sam Zell's autobiography, and I get a message from a guy that's listening to my podcast for years and he's like, "Hey, I've known Sam for two decades.
3:40
He's been a mentor of mine.
3:42
He's been invaluable and steering me in my career.
3:45
He's always asking for information.
3:47
So I send him books and articles and he loves podcasts, so I send him a bunch of your episodes.
3:52
He listened to them and he loved them, and then when he heard the episode that you did on his autobiography, he asked if he could meet you."
3:59
And so I was like, shut up, dude. This is fucking fake.
4:02
Because I had never met this guy in person yet, right? I was like, like, yeah.
4:06
He's like, "Sam's in Miami all the time. I live here too.
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Would you be willing to have lunch or dinner with him?" I was like, "Yeah, okay.
4:14
If Sam Zell is going to come, of course I'll have a dinner with him."
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I thought it was bullshit.
4:18
A week or two passes by, he's like, "Okay, he's coming to give a speech at this conference on this day.
4:25
Are you available that day?"
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I'm like, if this is Sam Zell, there's nothing else in my fucking calendar. Yeah, yes.
4:30
What are you talking about?
4:31
The guy fucking sold a company for 40 billion. Yes.
4:34
Why the fuck would he even want to talk to me?
4:37
And so then a couple days later, he said, "Okay, meet at this restaurant at this time."
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I'm like, oh my God, and I didn't tell anybody about it.
4:47
And so I told my wife the day of, I'm like, "listen, I'm going to this lunch with Sam Zell.
4:52
Here's my location in case I get kidnapped, there's some crazy shit happening here."
4:56
So I show up early with the guy that's been listening to my podcast for a long time.
5:00
We talk for 45 minutes, maybe an hour before Sam gets there.
5:03
We got there on purpose early to get to know each other.
5:06
And then he's in the middle of telling his crazy story because he's got an interesting career too.
5:10
And then he's looking over his shoulder, he goes, "Oh, there's Sam."
5:12
And so I turn around his Sam's Zell.
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And I'm like, what the fuck is happening? What is my life?
5:19
And originally I thought, I was like, oh, maybe this is going to be a lunch with a bunch of people. Sam's hosting lunch.
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And he invited me and I won't actually get to talk to him.
5:27
It's like, no, it's me, this other guy and Sam, and Sam sits directly across to me.
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And for fucking two hours I have essentially a conversation looking deep in his eyes, hearing crazy fucking story after crazy story.
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If you've ever heard him speak, he's exactly like that.
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Talks shit, unfiltered, loves what he does, still doing deals.
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He's like, "I'm going to do this till I fucking die."
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Crazy fucking stories from six decades, six decades long career.
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And what was crazy is how many questions he asked me just when I met with Jim, I'm like, Jim, you're a legend.
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I just want to talk to you, dude.
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I want to hear the shit that happened, your fucking experience."
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And Sam's obsessed with the podcast.
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He's like, "Why did you start a podcast?
6:11
How do you start a podcast? What's the business?"
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All these fucking questions. I'm like, oh, this guy.
6:17
Exactly who he was in his book when he was 20, 19, 20 years old, trying to start a company, trying to get access to good information.
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He's been like that forever and he's going to be like that forever.
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And so really, I'm happy I got the opportunity. He was amazing.
6:29
But really, I do think it speaks not to me, it speaks to the miracle of podcasting and the fact that you really never know who is listening.
6:39
And if they like what you're doing, they're going to invite you to very unique experiences.
6:43
And it was just a remarkable day.
6:46
It's a day where Sam will probably not remember it, but I'll probably remember for the rest of my life.
6:51
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And he gave you a single line of advice that you don't need.
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But I would like you to repeat it for our listeners and viewers.
6:59
David Senra: He said it like five or six times.
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And I actually got to tell you a story because I heard the greatest compliment I ever heard that somebody I feel could give you.
7:08
I spent half a day with Jeremy [inaudible] and David Perell a couple days ago.
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They're huge fans of you.
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They were there when you held court at Capital Camp.
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They said, you fucking gave six hours of stories or some shit.
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We could talk about that later.
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So I'm talking to Sam about, you're super wealthy, unbelievably wealthy, but you're having fun. You're enjoying it.
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And he would repeat this over throughout the conversation.
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He said it five or six times.
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He's like, "Go for freedom, optimize for freedom."
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He's like, it's all freedom.
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Everything comes down to his freedom.
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He's like, "If you get the freedom, you can control what you do every day. You'll love it.
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And if you love it, you'll be very good at it.
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And then the money will come with it."
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But he's like, "I never chased the money.
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I chased freedom and the freedom got me the money."
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And then he talked about how he meets a lot of rich guys that aren't having fun. And he still has fun.
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He's riding his motorcycle, he's traveling all over the world.
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And I'm like, "Sam, why are you giving these speeches?
8:03
You don't have to fucking do this."
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He goes, "It's an obligation for me to share with other people what I learned."
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And so what made me think of you when he was talking yesterday was I talked to Jeremy and David Perell.
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I met them through the podcast and they were just singing your praises.
8:23
And Jeremy said something that was very interesting because for the last 10 years, he's still relatively young, but for the last 10 years he's been buying businesses, leading investments.
8:29
He was working at [inaudible], and he's met a bunch of rich people and essentially just meets billionaires and a hundred millionaires and all these people all the time.
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And he goes, "I fucking love Jim."
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He goes, because he goes, "Jim's a rich guy that's having fun and you could tell he is having fun."
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And I was like, I'm going to save that for the podcast because that's the best...
8:50
this is after we had our lunch.
8:52
And your whole thing was like, why is venture capital called venture capital?
8:54
It used to be called adventure capital. That's a better name.
8:57
I'm going to fucking do OSV as adventure capital.
8:59
And then your whole thing is, I'm not doing this shit this to add another zero to my net worth.
9:04
He's like, I'm doing this because it's fun and yes, I probably will make money, but I'm optimizing for fun, and that's exactly what Sam is saying.
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He's like, "I optimize for freedom and I only do shit that's fun."
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Jim O'Shaughnessy: Liberty, I'm going to bring you in because you're somebody who I admire greatly as you know, and you've optimized for freedom and I want to get your take on that.
9:26
But as far as the optimizing for something else, so I was telling you guys before we started recording, because I was in asset management for 35 years, A, I never went into asset management because I wanted to get rich.
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I was absolutely obsessed by why Wall Street worked the way it worked.
9:51
And I kept going down the rabbit hole and saying, but where is this? Where's the proof?
9:58
Where's the proof that you hear...
9:59
Because this is back in the dark ages, guys, right?
10:03
You golfed with your portfolio manager and that's how you picked him or her.
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And back in those days it was a him and you were golf buddies.
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And I was at a dinner and all of the older people were arguing about IBM and I'm listening, and it's like it was all about the CEO.
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And I'm kind of sitting there going, don't you even wonder how much you have to pay for every dollar of earnings or revenue or whatever?
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And that just obsessed me.
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And so the thing I want to share though is I've had the opportunity because of my career to meet a ton of rich people.
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And as I was telling you guys, I can count on and for our video viewers, you'll see that I'm only holding up eight fingers and thumbs here out of hundreds.
10:57
I can tell you that only about eight when I asked them, "So what was your passion?"
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Only eight said I wanted to get rich.
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All of the others of the hundreds of people that I spoke to, their eyes lit up and they talked about whatever passion made them rich.
11:18
It was not, "I want to be rich."
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I want, as you point out, go for freedom.
11:24
I want it to be able to...
11:24
my obsessive curiosity drove me into doing this.
11:32
And so that's such a great life lesson as far as I'm concerned.
11:39
People get it all mixed up.
11:40
In my opinion, money's a technology and it does a lot of good things.
11:44
But as my grandfather used to say, right, if you pile it all up, he said, it's a lot like manure.
11:49
If you pile all up in one space, it stinks to high heaven.
11:52
If you spread it out, it's a wonderful fertilizer.
11:56
So I mean, that's something we'll jump and explore a little bit more because I know you have some great ideas on it, David, but so do you Liberty and you've optimized for freedom and for doing your own thing.
12:08
Talk a bit about how you decided what I really need to optimize for freedom as opposed to, and the infinite other things that you can optimize for.
12:19
Liberty RPF: Yeah, I try.
12:22
It's never something that you can get perfect at, but it's a kind of direction that you point to.
12:27
And I think Sam's advice about freedom is, it could sound cliche to some people, but it's not about knowing about it, it's about doing it.
12:34
And so few people actually do it.
12:36
And I didn't pick the name Liberty randomly, right?
12:40
Been a long time that I've figured out the old adage of know thy self.
12:44
Once you figure out who you are, what makes you happy, I've realized that it's all about freedom and control of my time and the things that Cal Newport writes about, what makes a great job?
12:56
Well, it has autonomy, creativity, and impact.
12:59
If you can figure out something as those things, you have a much better chance of being happy, being one those people with the eyes lighting up when they talk about what they do, rather than if you try to optimize for money, the overnight success takes so long.
13:14
It takes so long to get to the point where you do have money that money in itself is not a good enough motivator to get you there.
13:21
And so most people who have these kind of goals after probably not even years, they give up way before then.
13:29
While if you have something else that really motivates you, I think that's the only way to get there.
13:34
And David, the story's so great, and I have to ask you, right, you've read much about Sam Zell, did you going in, did you feel like you already knew him or did you have a massive update to the model?
13:44
Because the book can only convey so much information about a person.
13:47
So I'm curious, and I wish you could meet many more of the people whose book you've read about so you could, I don't know, figure out who's kind of, how they're being portrayed at and who's totally different because some of them are probably not how they appear in books.
14:04
David Senra: I had read the book and then before I met him, I was watching a bunch of his speeches and there's a bunch of stuff on YouTube about Sam.
14:17
And so I had, especially with an autobiography, his autobiography is written in his voice.
14:23
I didn't ask him if he had help or some people who have other people help write or ghost writer or whatever, but the way he comes across in the book is exactly how he was in person.
14:34
And so when I got home yesterday, and I told my wife, I was like, I want that.
14:38
I want to be 81 still doing what? Loving what I'm doing.
14:41
Just still curious about the world, still asking questions.
14:44
If you think about anybody that could only be focused on themselves, could be somebody, Sam Zell, just got more money than he can ever spend, he's got his own private jet, do whatever he wants, but he's curious about other people and other things going on.
14:57
And so where we've first connected, when he first sat down, I was like, all right, listen, I don't know how much time I got at this guys, but his time's very valuable.
15:05
So I'm going to come out swinging.
15:07
And so I go, "Listen, Sam, what I noticed about your book is you start telling this story about your father escaping Poland when the Nazis are coming in."
15:18
His family literally escapes in the last train out.
15:21
Most of Sam's family did not listen to his father's advice.
15:25
His father was like a grain trader or something like that, so he was getting intel all over Europe outside of Poland.
15:30
So this is really important I'll tie this all together.
15:33
And so his father was actually hearing what the Nazis were actually doing, not what they were saying, but hearing, "Oh, shit, they're going on killing Jews," well before, this is in the thirties.
15:44
And so he gets us information, he's telling the rest of the family, he said, "We got to get the fuck out of here, we have to leave."
15:50
And other members of his family did not have access to that information and so therefore did not believe him.
15:56
And so even though, I think he was 34 years old at the time, his father was 34 years old, married with a two-year-old daughter, because Sam was born like 90 days after they arrive in America, so pregnant with Sam and he takes off, he leaves, he's like, "Please come with me."
16:13
His family doesn't come with him, and then so he winds up escaping.
16:15
It's very difficult endeavor as you can imagine, gets to the country and builds a site and then tells Sam the whole time he's grown up, he's like, "I can't believe how lucky you are as you were born in America. You have no idea."
16:27
And they talked about, he was watching videos when he was six years old of Jewish bodies in fucking dump trucks, dead bodies that the Nazis killed in dump trucks. He saw that at six.
16:37
And so I go, "Sam, here's the weird thing.
16:40
Your dad was voracious for information, that saved his life.
16:42
And yet when you tell the story of you being a teenager, a young man," because he started his company, he was like 19-20 years old veracious for information.
16:50
I go, "Is that the same thing?" The same concept.
16:54
It's like, oh, I know how valuable information is.
16:56
It can literally save your life.
16:57
In an entrepreneur and investor's case, the right information can literally build a fortune.
17:01
And he's like, "It's the exact same thing."
17:03
Liberty RPF: It's the right idea at the right time.
17:06
I think it was Munger or Buffet saying that a $20 book could have a billion dollar idea in it, and you never know which one it is, so just keep reading.
17:13
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, I remember that as a Tom Peters quote, but a slightly variant where he says, "If I pay $25 for a book that I get, one great idea from, the return on investment that I'm getting is stratospheric," right?
17:33
But I want to continue going down the path of...
17:40
David, Liberty, you guys both are wonderful at seeing similarities, differences, et cetera, in not only people but companies, et cetera, but one of the things that, as I think about this, right, desire for freedom, check, passionate and insatiable curiosity, those two together just seem to me to be almost kind of like if you guys really want to have a great life, at least have these two, what would you guys add to that list?
18:20
Liberty RPF: I think it's a great fuel, it's a great starting point.
18:24
I feel like most people specialize way too much, right?
18:29
We've talked about that before.
18:31
I feel like one way to get out of that trap is to start creating stuff, and as soon as you start being creative, you don't have a choice to explore more to because ideas are all kind of connected, and finding a great idea, well, it won't come to you at first.
18:46
You have to try a bunch, you have to iterate.
18:48
So as soon as you start making something, and it could be anything, right?
18:51
It could be something in your backyard chair, it could be a blog, it could be music, something with your kids, but as soon as you start really getting into something, going deep into it, you kind of don't have a choice but to explore and to start expanding your horizons.
19:06
And the more you learn, the more you realize what you don't know. Right?
19:11
Every door you open leads to three new doors.
19:12
And in the same way that David has talked about every book he reads, leads the three other books or whatever, because something is mentioned somewhere or in the biography or something else, by the same author, everything is connected.
19:24
Well, as long as you stick to the same little silo, the same little thing every day, you really have the same day over and over again, I don't know, that that feels so limiting.
19:33
I feel like for everyone out there, your very favorite thing in life is out there and you haven't found it yet.
19:43
It's so sad for those that don't explore enough, that don't stumble upon it, right?
19:50
It's a way to make your life so much better.
19:53
And I feel like the way society is set up pushes people to specialize so much that, I don't know, I try to go way harder in the reverse direction and do exploration as a service.
20:07
This is my new expression now, I try to provide exploration as a service.
20:11
And maybe you don't have time to spend all day looking through stuff, but whatever I find interesting, I'll give it to you.
20:18
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And I love that concept, as you know, you and I talked offline about that a lot.
20:23
And I personally believe that the ability to curate all of this crazy information is going to be like, it's going to be a great occupation going forward because we're all way over our Shannon limits. It's so much.
20:42
But to be a curator, you've got to have pretty good taste.
20:46
And so that gets right back to the individual.
20:49
I think one of my hypotheses is we're moving from mass markets to mass customization.
20:57
And so there's going to be all of these non-obvious career paths that people wouldn't even think about just a few years ago that are going to become available to people who understand the power of these tools.
21:11
David, I want you to add to the list though, because as both of you know, I can't help it, I build algorithms in my head as I'm listening and I'm just like, ooh, I might be able to come up with a heuristic as to finding the next great founder.
21:31
What else would you add, David?
21:32
David Senra: So in addition to freedom and then the obsessive curiosity or working yourself into a position where you're working in a field where you have an intense interest, is the way I think about it, it's persistence by far.
21:44
That's the next most important thing.
21:45
I just did this podcast on Ralph Lauren that is becoming really popular, people seem to enjoy, and one of the things that's about him with so remarkable, first of all, he found, as Liberty was just talking about how sad it could be if people never find what their life's work should be, or in many cases they don't even trying to even find it, right? Ralph was very unusual.
22:05
He found his life's work when he was like 20 and he's 83 and he's still doing it.
22:10
So what's fascinating is that the book that I read though is very old. It's like 35 years old.
22:15
The company's only 20 years old at the time, still massively successful.
22:18
He's one of the richest self-made Americans at the time.
22:21
I think his company's doing $2 billion a year in revenue in 1980. So it's very, very good.
22:27
But this obsession and persistence where everybody around him was like, "Ralph, why are you so obsessed?"
22:33
He was a tie salesman, and yet he'd go and talk to Taylor's and people selling men's wear suits and stuff, and he'd talk to them for hours about belt loops and the placement of a pocket.
22:44
And they're like, what the hell is wrong with this guy?
22:46
He was such an eclectic person that four years before he started his own company, there's this trade journal called Daily Men's Wear.
22:53
I can't remember the name, but he had dressed so unique and had his own style, even if it was in the early his twenties, they did a full writeup.
23:00
And so it's pictures of Ralph, what do he thinks about clothing, way before he is Ralph Lauren, right?
23:06
He comes to work and all the tie salesmen, they're like two generations older than him.
23:10
They're like, first of all, who gives a shit what Ralph Lauren thinks about clothes?
23:14
And they didn't realize passion is infectious.
23:17
And so he's talking about stuff that he's really into.
23:19
But as he builds his career, everybody's telling him no, he's, he starts out with ties.
23:27
He's like, this market's already fulfilled, so I have to make my ties different.
23:30
So he makes them in different colors, he makes them wider, he makes them in different fabrics.
23:33
And everybody's like, "No, you can't do that." And he just persists.
23:36
And then he winds up succeeding and they're like, again, "Why are you trying to make clothes?
23:42
You're already having success with ties. Just stay in ties."
23:44
He's like, "Because I want to."
23:45
And then they tell them no.
23:46
And then he finds his way in, and then he finds a way to grow the company.
23:50
Then he winds up selling to Bloomingdale's, right?
23:53
And he's like, "Hey, I don't have any money for advertising.
23:56
I'm selling a lifestyle and an idea."
23:59
At this time he's producing ties and shirts and suits.
24:01
And he's like, "So I want you to give me my own boutique in Bloomingdale's."
24:06
And they're like, "Who the fuck does this kid think he is?"
24:09
And what's crazy to me is we walk into a department store now, and all companies have their own boutiques in it. Ralph was the first one. He invented that.
24:20
He was the first men's wear designer to get his own boutique in any blooming in any department store.
24:25
Just happens to be Bloomingdale's in Manhattan, which is one of the most valuable department sources in the world.
24:29
And so the guy at Bloomingdale's talked about, they described, and this is all tied back to persistence, they talked to about Ralph, a young Ralph Lauren.
24:37
I thought that idea was stupid.
24:39
And Ralph just, he didn't yell.
24:41
It was constant calm pressure.
24:44
You tell him, no, he'll come back and then he has another argument, another this is why we shoot that and just relentless.
24:50
And then he finally says, he's like, "I'm going to do this.
24:53
I want to do it with you, but if I don't do it with you, I'm taking my collection out of Bloomingdale's and I'll go to Macy's or Saks or whoever's going to give me this."
25:02
And he was so relentless, they're like, "Okay, I tap. That's fine. I give up.
25:07
You have your fucking boutique." And he had his boutique.
25:09
And that constant persistence is everywhere.
25:12
I don't think you build a great company or a great life for that matter without having persistence.
25:17
So that's the third attribute that I'd add.
25:18
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Totally agree.
25:19
And as you were talking about Ralph, who lives here in Greenwich, by the way, I see him and his wife on Greenwich Avenue quite frequently.
25:27
So they're out and about.
25:29
They're in a super sexy little sports car.
25:34
But you know, see that artist, right?
25:36
And he always looks fantastic, right?
25:40
He's always dressed to the nines in his own stuff.
25:43
But as I was listening, I was also thinking about Bezos, right? Relentless. If you type www.
25:51
relentless, you go to Amazon, right?
25:54
And when my daughter got married, who just had my fourth grandchild, a boy, Charlie, I'm delighted about, but when she got married, I mentioned this Bezos quotes that was just in my mind because I was like, yeah, that's it.
26:12
And he was talking about, people were asking him for how do you succeed how?
26:17
And Bezos said something along the lines of, "You have to be distinctive."
26:24
And then he went on to say, "Society does not want you to be distinctive.
26:30
It wants you to fit in, it wants to squash you down."
26:35
And then I kind of put it in, I've been thinking a lot about digital assets.
26:39
Digital assets want to be free.
26:42
And because if you are a widget maker, the cost, even if you have a monopoly on widgets, if it's a physical widget, the cost of the millionth and first widget is something, right?
26:56
There's a cost as attached to that.
26:59
If you are making digital widgets, the cost is basically the first widget, and then you can make a billion and your marginal cost is zero.
27:10
And so one of the things, as I always try to say, well, where's the ultimate end here?
27:16
And the ultimate end in my opinion is digital is going to be free.
27:22
And so what does that leave humans, right?
27:25
I think a huge amount of things, we were talking about good taste and curation, about reputation, about are you like Ralph Lauren?
27:37
And just don't take no, Babe Ruth had a great quote, "You just can't beat the guy who never gives up."
27:46
And so I love that combination.
27:48
But I'm also thinking about it in terms of looking forward, looking over the next 20 years, the things that are going to lead to success in the next 20 years are...
28:01
The only things that we're going to have in common with the people who are big successes in the more physical world are the things we're talking about right now, right?
28:11
Reputation, persistence, quality, all of those things continue to matter because you can't fake them and you can't digitize them.
28:24
These are things, these are aspects of personality which kind of leads me into, our listeners probably been listening to the first hour and he is like, "But he's not asking them anything that I asked him to ask them."
28:39
One of the feedbacks that he gave to Liberty was he was fascinated by our discussion about cognitive diversity.
28:49
I make a point of always going out of my way to say I don't really care what color you are, what religion you are, I just don't care.
28:58
What I do care about is do you think about things the same as everyone else or do you think about things very differently?
29:06
If you can add to a network people who are cognitively different, magic happens, right?
29:14
Because you can't come up with somebody ...
29:14
it's a quote that I'm stealing, but you can't ask a guy to make a list of all the things that would never occur to him.
29:29
The listener also said, "I'd love to hear both of their opinions, David, you and Liberty, on not only cognitive diversity, but another thing we were talking about custom learning."
29:39
Liberty, I'm going to ask you to start because this was something you and I talked about extensively.
29:50
Liberty RPF: Yeah and before I do, when I was listening to you and David about persistence and Ralph Lauren and all that, I thought of a metaphor.
29:56
I don't know if it's a good one, but I love to try to compress ideas into a short image or phrase.
30:01
So these people to me, they sound like if you're thinking about ships out at sea, some people are just ice breakers and so they're going to go out in front and it's going to be much, much harder for them and they're going to go through all kinds of obstacle, but if they do, they open up the path for all these others that will follow.
30:17
If, for example, Ralph Lauren was the first with one of these mini stores inside of the big store, once he proves that it works, it's much easier for all the other fast followers.
30:26
But by the time these people figure that out, he's probably thinking about the next thing.
30:31
So being a fast follower is a great benefit in some ways.
30:36
Microsoft has made a great business of that, but as long as you really are at the cutting edge and you're always thinking of the next thing, that can also be your advantage.
30:44
The icebreaker image came to me, I don't know if it's a good image, but- Jim O'Shaughnessy: I actually think that's a great image and it also ties in David to what you and I talked about when we did our podcast about the idea of that I'm a burn the ships kind of guy.
31:01
By the way, I had fun going down that rabbit hole because it turns out if you're an American or a Canadian or in North America, the story you most often hear is about the conquistadors and they burn the ships because they didn't want the troops to be able to have an exit strategy. But guess what?
31:22
The burn the ships story is across cultures.
31:27
I was reading a Chinese myth and same story.
31:34
Exact same story, different location, different players. But this idea of ...
31:38
and by the way, and David has a great quote, which is you're either on the fucking boat or you're not on the boat. I love that story.
31:46
I have stolen that line from him so often because it's just true.
31:51
It's like yes or no in the boat.
31:54
By way, once the boat gets there, I'm going to fucking burn it to the ground. You still in? David.
32:01
Liberty RPF: Who said it?
32:02
Plan B is to make plan A work, right?
32:04
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly.
32:05
David Senra: That's a Bezos quote. He makes the point.
32:07
He's like, "If people have something to fall back on, they usually fall back on it."
32:11
He's like, "So you have plan B? Fine. Make plan A work.
32:14
There's your fucking plan B."
32:14
I love that idea, Jim O'Shaughnessy: But it's also ... there's another ...
32:16
I'm going to have an algorithm and wait until you see what O'Shaughnessy adventures invest in.
32:28
Only people with the following characteristics.
32:31
Another thing that our listener talked about, which, Liberty, you and I have talked about a lot, but I would love David's thoughts here too.
32:39
I'm a huge believer that most of our educational programs are broken.
32:44
They're broken, they're antiquated, they were designed for a completely different environment.
32:50
Essentially, basically, guys, it was the industrialist of the era saying they better know how to read, they better be able to do simple arithmetic, but most importantly, they better be fucking fine with sitting in the same room for eight hours and doing the same thing.
33:06
The environment we're going into is the not exact opposite, but pretty close.
33:11
In other words, we want our children and then also we'll get into adult education, but we want our children to learn how to think, not what to think.
33:22
So problem solving, all of these things are very different.
33:27
We at O'Shaughnessy Ventures just made an investment in Synthesis Schools, which we're very happy about and we think that they've got a great program, but I'm just going to throw it to both of you.
33:40
Let's talk about this idea of ...
33:40
and I'm going to tie it to Liberty's icebreaker thing.
33:46
If we're going to icebreaker this, what advice would we give that young person of today who wants to be an icebreaker along these lines of bringing in learning?
33:59
David Senra: I think about this concept of your personal curriculum and so for people our age and older, it's obviously your obligation.
34:11
Entrepreneurs and investors are continuous learners.
34:13
They're going to learn till they die.
34:14
But when me and you had lunch a few weeks ago, what was remarkable to me is how I was like, "I'm just so jealous of the fact that podcasts," for example, great way to learn, "They didn't even fucking exist." When I was in college. They didn't even exist.
34:28
I use example, Liberty, with Jim.
34:31
Imagine you're a 16-year-old kid and you want to learn about investing.
34:35
Think about what they could do for free.
34:37
They could listen to 300 episodes of Invest like the Best and the education they're going to get from that one single podcast, listening to the episode, reading the transcripts, listening to them again, falling down the rabbit holes, reading the books that are recommended, watching the videos is better than any university education. That's just a fact.
34:55
It doesn't have the fucking credential.
34:56
It doesn't have the brand name yet that a Harvard does.
35:00
But the actual education, not like the people you meet at the school, I'm not discounting that.
35:05
The actual education, it's far superior.
35:06
It's far superior and it's available for free to 16-year-old kids, 17-year-old kids.
35:10
I get the craziest messages where people have 16, 17-year-olds listening to the podcast.
35:14
They want to be an entrepreneur.
35:15
Well, if you want to be an entrepreneur, there's probably a few better people that you could learn from than a Jeff Bezos who I've done a bunch of episodes.
35:25
Steve Jobs, I've done 10 episodes than him.
35:27
Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and they could just sit there and listen to 400 hours over and over again in high school.
35:37
I'm obviously going to be biased because this is what connected me and Patrick, one of the first times we talked was he really gave me this framework.
35:46
He's like, "You're building educational content from the most successful people in the world because the most successful people in the world happen to be investors and entrepreneurs," and so you have people that are super successful already listening, but you also have the people that want to be that one day also listening and they can benefit as well.
36:01
I think podcast is going to be key to that because a lot of the people ...
36:01
it turns all the time where your eyes are busy into a form of education.
36:09
I told you after we get off this podcast, I'm taking my three-year old son, almost three-year-old son, to Disney for the first time.
36:16
That's going to be a four-hour drive by the time we get there and what am I going to be doing?
36:20
I'm going to be listening to a podcast.
36:21
So instead of just looking out the window at the boring flat Florida land, it's educating, this continuous education because my eyes are busy.
36:29
If you do that constantly, it's going to compound over your life.
36:33
That's an unfair advantage to people that don't take advantage of that technology.
36:36
That's the way I think about ...
36:36
my personal curriculum is essentially two things.
36:39
It's books and podcasts and I think a combination those, it's very hard to beat those two things.
36:45
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Liberty, yours is a bit broader. Tell us about it. David Senra: For sure.
36:49
Liberty RPF: I want to say five things at the same time so I'm going to try.
36:53
First, David, so right about podcasts.
36:55
I listen to mine on Overcast.
36:57
It's an app that there's a sub menu where it keeps track of how much time you've saved by using some of their features. You can listen at 1.
37:04
5X, 2X and then you have a feature that shortens silences between words so you save a little bit of time there.
37:13
In my Overcast, I've saved a thousand hours just with the shortening silence between words over time.
37:20
I'm trying to think over 10 or 15 years how many thousands of hours of stuff have been inputs into my brain that I would not even have access to 15 years ago, 20 years ago.
37:33
That's a huge difference.
37:35
There's someone in, I don't know, Pakistan or somewhere that's watching all of the MIT classes online and that's listening to all the same podcasts that we are and that's getting access to incredible information that is going to change their lives.
37:48
I totally subscribe to that podcast are magic.
37:51
It's one of the things that are ...
37:51
having someone's voice in your ears for so long creates a very different kind of relationship from text.
38:01
About education, last time we spoke, Jim, I spoke about how important it would be for our kids.
38:07
If I could teach my kid math and languages and all that inside of a Minecraft type game or something, two days later, we would've learned a year's worth of materials because he would be interested because it would challenge him and the progression could go at his space.
38:21
I'm going to go in a different direction today.
38:22
I think the other thing that the industrial age has all screwed up is they had all these machines, all these factories, and the machine has to work between this time and this time with this many workers working these parts of it so everybody had to be there at the same time or it didn't work.
38:39
It turned everybody to be like clockwork, right?
38:42
People had to be like machines rather than make machines people.
38:44
So everybody from nine to five or much longer back then.
38:48
I think the way humans are built is totally different.
38:53
I think everything goes through cycles.
38:54
There's a season for everything.
38:56
There's days where the best thing I can do is take a walk in the woods and just think about random stuff. I don't know.
39:02
I play Doom for a while and it recharges my batteries and then I discover something new that's super interesting and I have this print and in two weeks I learned more than in the past six months.
39:11
I think people are built like that to be like a lion.
39:14
You lay around for a while and that part is creative too.
39:19
That part is essential to the process.
39:22
If you're always trying to go at the same pace, do the same things every day, I don't think you can get to your full potential.
39:27
I feel like there's a great analogy by I think [inaudible] who said that there are some people who have maybe, I don't know, they're 80 years old, but they have maybe 15 years of lived life because all of their days are the same.
39:41
They just repeat the same days over and over again.
39:44
So the amount of experiences that they've had is very, very limited.
39:50
While there's someone out there who's kind of like a vampire 80 years old, but they have 800 years of lived experience because they're exploring all the time, they're learning all the time, they're meeting new people all the time.
40:01
This type of life to me feels so much more worthwhile and society should push people in that direction, which is the exact opposite of what it's doing right now.
40:10
It's pushing people in the direction of every single one of your days should be the same.
40:14
You should basically be a machine.
40:18
Ironically, maybe it'll be the machines that we're building right now that are going to unlock this, right?
40:24
Because automation and all that kind of stuff, so many jobs, sometimes I'm out and about and I'm in a store and something and someone is doing a job that could easily be done by a machine.
40:34
While it could suck for that person to lose their jobs, hopefully we create much better jobs than someone just, I don't know, packing boxes at the post office all day or something like that.
40:45
This education thing I wish we would have is respecting people's cycles, respecting people's paces, and I don't know, just connect that with the more interesting, more game-like learning and I think we'd get so much more out of people.
41:04
So much more not just as productivity for the economy because I think that would be much better, but they'd be much more satisfied with their lives.
41:12
David Senra: You know what jumps out when Liberty says some people live 15 years in an 80 year life and some people are like vampires?
41:19
The book that you and I were talking about, the one that you just posted about, ‘River of Doubt’, I gave Jim a copy when I saw him and, Liberty, when you say stuff like that, I'm like, "Oh, Teddy Roosevelt technically lived in short life."
41:33
I think 60 years, maybe 62, right?
41:36
But he lived double the amount.
41:38
He just- Jim O'Shaughnessy: 300.
41:40
Liberty RPF: That's one of the best examples.
41:42
David Senra: Yeah, that's what popped to my mind.
41:44
I was like, "Oh, that's exactly ..."
41:44
I mean, how old was he in that book?
41:46
He's like in his mid-50s, right? Jim O'Shaughnessy: 52. He's 52 years old.
41:49
David Senra: So if anybody's listening that wants to know the book- Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's 10 years younger than I am right now, for example. David Senra: Yeah.
41:59
The book is called ‘The River of Doubt’.
42:00
If anybody's looking for a good read, it's one of the books I give the most as a gift.
42:04
The author's Candace Millard, she's an incredible writer.
42:07
I just got a new biography by her, which covers Churchill when he was in the Boer War.
42:12
I don't know how to pronounce that, but he's like a young man, a really young man.
42:16
I have another biography.
42:17
That's the first 40 years of Churchill's life.
42:18
I think this is the first 25 or something like that.
42:21
But she's an excellent writer, fantastic storyteller.
42:23
I can't recommend that book more.
42:26
She's absolutely amazing.
42:28
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I posted it because A, to thank you, but also to amplify it.
42:33
I hadn't read that book and I've read ...
42:33
Teddy's one of my favorite people, and I actually have in my notes here, "Where are the Teddys of today?"
42:43
Liberty RPF: Not in politics. Jim O'Shaughnessy: No. God no. Right? Liberty RPF: No. They're entrepreneurs. They're scientists. They're engineers.
42:53
There's a different filter now.
42:54
David Senra: But he had how many different careers?
42:56
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly.
42:57
David Senra: This is what I liked about the- Jim O'Shaughnessy: The president to explorer, rough rider.
43:02
David Senra: The Roosevelts, the Benjamin Franklins, the Da Vincis.
43:06
I know me and Liberty had talked about this before.
43:09
It's like I'm guilty of this because I'm overs specializing.
43:12
I'm only doing a podcast, but I tend to admire the people like the Franklins.
43:17
Like, okay, I'll build the first vertically integrated media company and then I'll make contributions to science and I'll help develop this new field of electricity.
43:24
Then I'll go found a country.
43:25
It's just like you read their biographies or even their Wikipedia page, you're like, "How did one person do all this?" That's a great question. Who are the Teddys now?
43:34
One of the things that's crazy about Teddy is even when you think about the presidents we have, at least the presence in my lifetime, Teddy would go ...
43:37
the only way to campaign across the country at the time, he would go on these three week train trips to campaign and you know what he'd bring with him?
43:48
He's like, "Oh, I need to bring my ..."
43:48
his version of personal curriculum.
43:51
He'd bring 40 books for three weeks.
43:54
It's like how many of our presents read 40 books in a year?
43:58
Liberty RPF: And he wrote books.
44:00
He wrote books about birds and novel history.
44:03
He wrote them and he read them crazy.
44:05
David Senra: I don't have an answer to that question.
44:07
I have no idea who is the Teddy of today.
44:09
Jim O'Shaughnessy: That's why I wanted to talk about it with you guys, because as I was finishing the book, I was just like, "Goddamn it, this guy's life." I've always admired him.
44:22
The enter the arena speech, everything he did was action. It was a lot of thought. The 40 books, right?
44:31
But I'm a huge believer of think the thoughts, but you got to act.
44:36
Acting is thinking in many respects, right?
44:39
Because you got to see if you have these great thoughts but you don't act, it's a daydream and it doesn't matter.
44:48
But then I just started obsessing.
44:50
I started going through Wikipedia and I'm like, "Where are the Teddys?"
44:57
Certainly they're not in fucking politics anywhere.
45:02
I think Liberty's probably right.
45:04
I think they're founders.
45:05
I think they're scientists.
45:07
I think they're all of these things.
45:09
But it also gets back to what we were discussing earlier.
45:12
Maybe this over specialization has made it harder, not impossible, because the way I look at the world, the way the world is unfolding, I call it the great reshuffle.
45:25
We have never in human history had the ability to, as you point out, David, you can get the best education in life for free on the internet.
45:39
All you got to do is show a little bit of initiative. The tools, podcasting.
45:47
We couldn't even be having this conversation 10, 15 years ago, or did it have to be in person?
45:55
So I'm flummoxed by this.
45:57
I'm flummoxed by this idea that we have this what I call the framework for a human colossus because everyone can connect now.
46:08
One of our things at OSV with the fellowships, find and fund.
46:14
10 years ago, am I going to find somebody in Ethiopia who's got a brand new idea about how to study animal consciousness and then bring it over to AI? Absolutely not.
46:27
But now you should see these applications.
46:33
From my perspective is there is so much talent in our world, and it really fucking bums me out when I see these surveys that young people think they're downcast, they feel the future's worse than the past, they feel like they're never going to be able to achieve their parents' standard of living.
46:54
It just drives me crazy because holy shit, the number of tools that they have available to them, how do we change that story?
47:05
Because at the end of the day, by the way, podcasting works, and Patrick's big on this, and I agree with him, stories, talking, that's in our base code Y.
47:17
If you want to know how to get to a human, tell them a story but tell them a story.
47:23
I differ with Patrick a little bit because I'm more of a multimedia guy, but it's still kind of a story.
47:31
But how do we turn this around?
47:34
Liberty RPF: We are not limited by talent. We're limited by vision.
47:39
We're limited by mindset.
47:43
Everything that humanity is doing today, all science, all technology is something that someone came up with that someone built.
47:49
There was nothing that said that it had to happen in 2023.
47:53
A more productive civilization could be right here in 1500 or something. Remove the dark ages.
48:01
There's nothing stopping us in the future from doing better from accelerating.
48:05
Sometimes I miss the old optimistic days of the '50s and '60s sci-fi where everything was about taking up all these utopias and crazy cool technologies.
48:16
A lot of that stuff we kind of built over time.
48:20
I don't know if it's post Cold War or post people losing faith in the elite or something, but all of that vision of the future became very dystopic, very negative.
48:31
I feel that's kind of self-fulling sometimes.
48:33
I feel like if people don't dream it first, you need a dream generator, you need to put the dream in the people and then they'll act.
48:42
If everybody's mind is filled with, "It's all going to hell, we're all going to die from X, Y, Z", you'll never run out of problems to be worried about.
48:54
For example, take Elon Musk, whatever stuff I disagree with, he's making stuff happen.
49:00
EVs and reusable rockets were going to happen with or without him, but the timeline is very different because of him.
49:07
We need that kind of shortening of timelines for other kinds of stuffs.
49:11
There's all these mega projects that would be great for humanity that we could be working on and the limit is not the engineers, the scientists, the machines, the computing power.
49:22
It's just the vision of doing it.
49:24
You need a program kind of like JFK deciding to go to the moon.
49:28
If you don't decide to do it, you don't do it.
49:31
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I was seeing the video of him in that speech. Liberty RPF: Exactly.
49:36
Do the same kind of project for the disease of human aging or something like that.
49:41
That's the kind of stuff I want to see that I think all of humanity could get behind if it's sold properly, if it's explained properly, if you just put the idea that it's something that's possible to do.
49:51
But as long as you think it's not possible, it'll never happen in a thousand years, as long as you can find reasons not to do it today, well, it'll take longer.
50:01
David Senra: My answer to that question is that the world has enough critics and what we need more is evangelists.
50:09
Anything I try to share on the podcast or share publicly on social media, it's like you're never going to hear me talk things I don't like.
50:17
There's enough people talking about ...
50:17
that's most of the internet, talking about things that they don't like.
50:21
I just talk about things that I like. That book was fantastic. This podcast was great. This excerpt was good.
50:25
We need more evangelists.
50:26
What was interesting to me was when I was talking to Sam Zell, he's like, "People would tell me to write a book forever.
50:33
I fought it, I fought it. It was so hard to do."
50:35
He's like, "You know what one my favorite day now of the week is," he's like, "It's Monday."
50:40
He goes, "Because every Monday, me and my team go over all the messages, the inbound messages we get from people that read the book, and it impacted their life.
50:48
It inspired them to start a company.
50:49
It inspired them to go to college.
50:51
It inspired them to do something with their life."
50:53
So in his own way, sharing his life story in a form of a book and then promoting the hell out of it, that dude was on every single podcast.
51:00
He was really trying to get that word out there.
51:03
As a result of that, it's like this guy, you think, "Oh, well he loves his plane and his houses and being famous and being rich," and he's like, "I like the messages.
51:12
I like hearing from individual people that I fucking changed their life." Then I told him that.
51:17
I was like, "I've heard from people that heard the podcast I did on your book."
51:20
People who live in fucking Africa, Pakistan, Japan, all kinds of crazy stories being influenced by that.
51:27
I don't think it's going to come from the top down.
51:30
I just think you're like, "Hey, the world has enough critics, evangelize the stuff that you're interested in, evangelize the stuff that you're passionate about."
51:37
In every way, each one of us might only affect a thousand people, 2000 people, 10,000 people in our lives, but then those 10,000 people push that on.
51:45
That's the way I think it gets done and I do agree with Patrick and I agree with what you just said.
51:50
It's learning storytelling.
51:52
Steve Jobs says has a great quote and he used that to build Apple.
51:55
He's like, "The storyteller is the most powerful person in the world."
51:58
That is the way we communicate ideas that will be remembered. It's through stories.
52:03
It's not through rote memorization.
52:05
I've read a bunch of books on filmmakers.
52:08
They're my favorite biographies to read actually, and now I have two more.
52:13
I just got Quentin's new book, and then I got a biography of Christopher Nolan.
52:15
It's just like I want to know how the hell they learn storytelling, how they literally have an idea on their mind, put it on paper, then bring it to life through film that millions and millions of people enjoy.
52:25
Then you could do that for whatever they're interested in telling this particular story.
52:27
Maybe it's ‘Pulp Fiction’, maybe it's the idea in ‘Tenet’ whatever it is.
52:29
It's just like, "What's the story that you want to tell the world?"
52:29
and then just push it and promote the hell out of it.
52:37
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I obviously agree.
52:40
I always say that I want to root for things as opposed to against them.
52:47
I love your take on that, though.
52:49
I prefer it actually, I'm going to steal it from you.
52:52
The world is filled with critics and go on social media, it's people ...
52:52
all they're doing is criticizing, all they're doing is negative thinking and I am obsessed with the power that thoughts have over our actions.
53:09
If you fill your mind with, "It can't be done.
53:13
There's no way I can do that," you know what?
53:16
You're going to be right.
53:17
Eleanor Roosevelt, we had a version of that.
53:22
It just seems to me to be one of the most obvious things in the world and yet we did a vertical for films because I love movies too, David, and I got really fucking tired of just watching these dystopia after dystopia after dystopia.
53:45
Now listen, why are they doing that? Well, I get it.
53:49
We're domesticated primates and what are we driven by?
53:52
We are driven by emotions.
53:56
In the ‘Lord of the Rings’, what is the one emotion that rules them all?
54:00
It's fear and especially novel fears.
54:04
If you're going to tell a story and it doesn't have a lot of fear in it, you're not going to attract people's attention.
54:13
The way our brain works is I'm glancing around the room here and my brain stops taking it in because there's nothing new.
54:22
If there was something new or there was a mouse running at me over here, I would react.
54:28
The brain, though, is a cognitive miser and the way we set it up, it's like, see the pattern, scan for is there anything different? No, shuts down. Right?
54:45
To me, I just would love to find a way ...
54:45
that's what we're trying to do with OSV.
54:52
They're not making the movies that I think should be made?
54:54
I'm going to fucking make them.
54:59
When was the last Rudy made, the story about the kid going to Notre Dame? Inspirational as hell.
55:09
So we're making a movie about my friend David Rhoiney, who I discovered through ...
55:09
Again, would've never discovered David in the old world because I'm a big believer, and if you want to try to understand something ...
55:22
David Bohm said, "If you want to understand something, write a book about it."
55:28
Which I agree with, I've written four.
55:30
But the fact is, I also believe if you want to figure out how something works, do it.
55:38
I wanted to figure out NFTs.
55:41
My natural reaction was “eurghh”, and I thought, "But you know what? Let's make one. Let's see what happens."
55:48
So we made one, the auction of it brought in a ridiculous amount of money, like in Ethereum, the equivalent of $40,000, and the guy who bought it was a very successful immigrant who had started a very successful software company.
56:07
One of the things that I'd learned about NFTs is you got to let them unlock something because that is very helpful and it's good for use cases.
56:16
Bands will be using them because they can unlock all sorts of different levels from just general admission to getting your picture taken with your favorite singer behind stage based on what you paid for the NFT.
56:28
I think there are actual use cases.
56:31
But anyway, our use case was you can come co-host on Infinite Loop so you can be the guest.
56:37
The guy who bought it was like, "Can I suggest somebody?" and I'm like, "Sure."
56:42
So he suggests David because he has this thing of paying it forward and the way he put it was, "I hate when I see people who are under the radar who should be way above the radar."
56:54
So I had David on, and I was still chairman of OSAM, so nobody really knew what was happening in terms of O'Shaughnessy Ventures and everything.
57:04
After I record the podcast with David, we turn it off and I look at him and I go, "Will you let me make a movie about you?"
57:11
He's like, "What the fuck, man?
57:13
I thought you were an asset manager," and I said, "Things are coming down the pipe."
57:18
But see this wonderful set of disparate outcomes, like feeding this new movie, which I think is ...
57:26
David, is one of the most inspirational men I've ever met and he's talking about an active learner, a constant learner.
57:36
This guy is a first principal's thinker, and oh, he's also a savant in cryptology.
57:40
Oh, and by the way, naval officer.
57:44
Oh, by the way, wanted to become a doctor, now is a robotic surgeon. He's like young. Maybe he's our Teddy. Maybe he's our Teddy.
57:53
Liberty RPF: There's still time. There's still time.
57:55
David Senra: Do you know how old he is?
57:57
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I think he's 40.
57:59
I'd have to look it up, though. David Senra: Okay.
58:03
We got to figure out what Teddy was doing.
58:04
I do that when I read biographies, I'm like, "Okay, how old is he in the story," or, " How old is she in the story?"
58:09
Then I try to figure out, "Okay, what were they doing when they my age?" It's very fascinating.
58:13
It's a lot of the success comes ...
58:13
what Liberty was saying before we started, it's like the myth of the overnight success.
58:18
It's like they were laying the foundation when they were maybe 25 or 35 or 45, but a lot of it came later in life.
58:24
Their big wins came later. You might be right.
58:27
What is David doing at 50, 55, 70?
58:31
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I expect that he will be doing a lot of the foundational things he's doing right now, which are continual learning, continual questioning, not being afraid to say, "Hey, I have no idea what you're talking about.
58:45
Will you explain this to me like I'm a five-year-old?"
58:50
He's got this incredibly sharp, incisive mind.
58:54
I put him on my advisory council because I've often gone to him with questions.
59:01
His knowledge base is ridiculous and it spans so much, which gets me to what I want to talk about next, because listener, I don't know who you were, but I'm doing a horrible job of covering the subjects, but if you put me in a room with these guys, that's always going to happen.
59:18
One of the things that he mentioned in his thing that you shared with me, Liberty, was he was talking about AI and he was talking about generative art.
59:33
He was like, "You said something."
59:36
I think it was you or me, I can't remember who said it, but it really ...
59:36
again, now David, talking to your getting into a listener's ear, right?
59:45
One of you said appreciators of art have a different perspective on art.
59:52
Shouldn't we also consider the people who are looking at art?
59:57
Then I see a Degas quote, which is, "Art is not what you see, but what you make others see."
1:00:05
I know, Liberty, that you've become this amazing artist using generative art.
1:00:11
David Senra: He sent me a few in DM, they're credible. They're incredible.
1:00:15
Jim O'Shaughnessy: They really are.
1:00:16
David Senra: They're incredible.
1:00:17
Jim O'Shaughnessy: They are unbelievable.
1:00:19
Liberty RPF: Talk about going from stick figures to nice digital paintings overnight. Tools are powerful.
1:00:28
Jim O'Shaughnessy: But let me interject.
1:00:31
That story in and of itself is fantastic, because I can't draw anything, we're shit.
1:00:41
And now that I have this tool, I have a lot of ideas and I look at this as a tool to be able to generate what's in my mind.
1:00:52
And look, I understand where actual artists who are painters or sculptors or whatever, I understand the reticence.
1:01:01
Some of them are quite angry.
1:01:02
My view is you need to hear them out.
1:01:05
You need to have a conversation with them.
1:01:07
You need to be able to engage.
1:01:11
Because just telling them they're wrong, that's dumb to me.
1:01:14
It's like, have you ever thought about it this way, that this is a tool?
1:01:19
And then I found some artists who are evangelists, David, for what they're doing with AI.
1:01:28
And what they're doing is iterating on their own work.
1:01:31
And I had a great conversation with a guy who's like, "It's magic."
1:01:38
He goes, "I trained up the..."
1:01:40
And I'm not going to say which system he was using.
1:01:42
He trained up the system on his own artwork and then he started iterating back and forth.
1:01:49
And he basically said to me, "I view this as my work.
1:01:54
But would I have ever had this insight without this ability to have this companion iterate along with me, iterate with myself?"
1:02:06
And then the last thing I'll say is another O'Shaughnessy advisory council member, Rory Sutherland, had a great quote and it ties to the appreciators of art.
1:02:20
And his quote is, "Value resides not in the thing itself, but in the minds of those who value it." What do you guys think?
1:02:31
Liberty RPF: Oh, I've probably written 30 times about generative AI art in the past six months.
1:02:37
It's one of my big rabbit holes.
1:02:39
And so, there's so much I want to say about this.
1:02:42
One thing I'm going to say is creating art is a mix of different things.
1:02:50
And I think we've unbundled these things a little bit. There's the execution.
1:02:55
I know how to hold a pen or a brush and I know how to mix the paints and do it, but that's only the execution.
1:03:02
That part we've unbundled into the other part, which is the taste of the person making it, all of the decisions.
1:03:09
Anyone can download Stable Diffusion and have it around 24/ 7, generating thousands of images all the time.
1:03:17
And it doesn't mean that any of them will be good.
1:03:20
The person using the tool still has a lot of input into it and I feel like I'm flexing some of the same muscles I'm flexing when I'm playing with it as when I'm making photos.
1:03:31
When I'm walking out in the woods and I see a cool tree or a cool shadow pattern or some moss on somewhere, or any kind of that stuff is about the curation of what I want to show or what I see.
1:03:45
And different people could walk by the same place with the same camera and someone could take terrible photos.
1:03:51
And say your wife could walk by and take great photos.
1:03:54
That part may have been unbundled from the execution.
1:03:58
I also believe that artists were stuck with the execution because it could take, I don't know, 15 years to become great at one type of execution, say.
1:04:10
Say I'm become a great painter at this type of oil painting and I make a certain type of painting.
1:04:17
Will I spend 15 more years learning a totally different type of art, a sculpture or a different type of painting or digital painting or whatever?
1:04:25
Some of the skills are transferrable, but many of them aren't.
1:04:28
I feel like with these tools now, you used to be not stuck, but you used to be restrained to a certain style that you built for yourself.
1:04:39
And now stylistic fluidity is going to become a new thing.
1:04:43
The same curator, the same taste is going to be able to produce art in many more types of styles.
1:04:49
And that's one of the things that I like with playing with these tools and some of my images.
1:04:54
I did a series of lighthouses on cliffs with the waves crashing. David Senra: It's great. They were awesome.
1:05:00
Liberty RPF: And I have some cabins in the woods.
1:05:02
I have some huge AI robots and museums based on one of my piece.
1:05:07
All these things are very different in some ways.
1:05:09
But in another way, you could probably show them all to someone mixed randomly with image generated by the same program but generated by other people.
1:05:19
And I think you may be able to tell which one came all from the same person.
1:05:23
You may not be able to say, "Oh, that's Liberty exactly."
1:05:26
But they have, I don't know, some of the same vibe or some of the taste filtered through them.
1:05:35
That's one of the thing I always try to do with my writing is I wish that my readers could be shown a text I wrote without any bylines, without any graphics, without any markings.
1:05:44
Just reading the text and they could say, "Oh, that sounds like Liberty.
1:05:46
That sounds like his voice."
1:05:47
That's what I'm trying to do with the writing.
1:05:48
And I feel with other types of art, that's basically what every artist is trying to do.
1:05:52
You're trying to express something that's uniquely theirs.
1:05:55
And these tools still allow that.
1:05:57
You can still make crap with it, but you can make crap with real paint and real brushes.
1:06:02
And people blaming the tools for a lack of taste or a lack of curation, that that's going about it the wrong way.
1:06:10
And I feel like the other thing that people don't appreciate is that inside of the model.
1:06:15
Because the model is trained on a lot of existing images from all kinds of places.
1:06:20
But what the model does is it finds the patterns in that stuff and it compresses those into a model that is doing the new images.
1:06:28
Well, the model doing the new images doesn't contain what it was trained on. It couldn't fit.
1:06:33
It would be terabytes and terabytes and terabytes.
1:06:36
And so, it's very similar to what a human artist does.
1:06:39
A guitarist will listen to music and will play cover songs all the time.
1:06:44
And then when they create something new, it doesn't come from nowhere.
1:06:47
It comes from all these patterns that they've learned.
1:06:49
I like the vibe, I don't know, of Jimi Hendrix on this.
1:06:52
I'm going to add a little bit of Pink Floyd vibe and a little jazz in there.
1:06:57
And they take pieces from all the stuff that they like and they make it uniquely theirs over time. They develop a voice.
1:07:05
I feel like these tools have learned a human cover band there with other people's work.
1:07:11
But what comes out on the other hand, it's very hard to say that, "Oh, they're using our work."
1:07:16
Well, humans are also using copyrighted work all the time.
1:07:20
I feel like the filter should be at the end of the process.
1:07:23
It should be, if it looks like something that's copyrighted, if I generate a bunch of Mickey Mouse images with a generative AI, well, maybe copyright law could stop me from commercializing them.
1:07:33
But I don't think anyone should be stopped from learning from Mickey Mouse pictures.
1:07:35
Because if we go down that route, it's a slippery slope where band can't learn from other bands, painters can't learn from other painters.
1:07:42
And every living artist is going to describe art by the style of others. I just said it.
1:07:49
It sounds a bit like Pink Floyd mixed with Metallica with some Bob Dylan.
1:07:51
You know exactly what I mean.
1:07:52
If I couldn't use references to existing copyrighted work, how would you describe stuff?
1:07:58
That's the human vocabulary.
1:07:59
That's how we think about stuff.
1:08:00
We compare it to other things.
1:08:01
We are just mixing it all up.
1:08:06
Someone born in the jungle that's never listened or seen or anything.
1:08:09
They may make super original art, but they may lack input also, that we just need it to feed the artist. All right.
1:08:18
That was my long thing on generative AI.
1:08:21
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Totally agree with you, as you know.
1:08:26
And I thought, as you were talking, I'm just thinking about way pre-AI, Andy Warhol. Look at what he did.
1:08:37
I mean he took an existing...
1:08:41
He's very famous for the Campbell soup cans that trade in the tens of millions of dollars.
1:08:49
And you're thinking, "Why Duchamp with the urinal?
1:08:53
Who the fuck is going to buy that?" The idea is...
1:08:58
Liberty RPF: The concept and stuff. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yes. It's all the concept.
1:09:02
And we now have these tools that give people who didn't have access to be able to even their own creativity that we have these tools where they can extend it, where they can mix it up, where they can blend it.
1:09:17
And I just think that's one of the coolest things in the world.
1:09:21
And basically, when you look at new technologies or even new styles of art, the one predictable thing, the one predictable thing is that there is a sizable minority of human beings who hate it and want to do everything to stop it.
1:09:42
And you think, I'm thinking of ads.
1:09:44
It might have even been, you might have surfaced it for me, Liberty. Liberty RPF: Yeah. Well, the canned music.
1:09:49
When the silent movies had soundtracks.
1:09:51
And there used to be a bunch of piano players in the theaters playing piano to the movies.
1:09:56
And they took basically ads in the papers saying, "This canned music is going to ruin everything."
1:10:01
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly. "This is awful.
1:10:03
This is going to ruin everything."
1:10:04
And the same about TV, the same about radio.
1:10:08
In radio, if you go to the way, way back machine or there's a bunch of resources online that you can find to find these old articles.
1:10:17
I went back and looked at as radio was getting big, this has multi-dimensions.
1:10:23
Because I'm interested from a point of view of an investor.
1:10:26
Little known fact, but RCA never achieved the high it received in whatever, 19 whatever, because people were so excited about this new technology of radio that they priced RCA to price to magic, price to perfection ratios.
1:10:45
And it never got there again.
1:10:48
It interests me in terms of both the enthusiasts but also the detractors.
1:10:52
But one of the things about radio, you keep going into these time machines.
1:10:57
You see the same picture.
1:10:58
It's almost like, "Wait a minute, this seems like it's odd that I see these same dead birds."
1:11:05
And it's always dead birds with a radio tower in the back. Liberty RPF: Yeah. How convenient?
1:11:10
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And then underneath it, "Are we being killed by radio waves?"
1:11:15
Which brings us back to fear and novel fears and all of those things.
1:11:21
But I also find that humans are remarkably adaptable creatures.
1:11:29
And I talk about iPhones a lot.
1:11:31
And that's why I like this book, ‘The WEIRDest People in the World’ because they make a really good case for the fact, "Well, we built this.
1:11:40
We built this iPhone because of cumulative cultural knowledge."
1:11:46
It's when the printing press got invented.
1:11:49
By the way, there were people against that too. Liberty RPF: Oh, yeah.
1:11:52
Jim O'Shaughnessy: "Going to spread heresy.
1:11:55
People interpreting the Bible on their own?
1:11:58
This is going to lead to dogs and cats sleeping together."
1:12:01
I mean the fucking things that people will go on and on about that are always negative, but it's always a new tech.
1:12:07
But then this thing, talking about Kennedy and his inspiring speech. "Let's go to the moon."
1:12:17
Now, this is 1,000 times as powerful as all the computer power.
1:12:21
We got there by cumulative cultural knowledge and evolution.
1:12:26
Which after Gutenberg invented the printing press, allowed us finally to mass time-bind our thoughts.
1:12:37
And by time-binding, I'm stealing that from Robert Anton Wilson.
1:12:41
Who I read last night, actually stole it from somebody else.
1:12:44
And I can't remember who he stole it from.
1:12:46
But this is in itself an example.
1:12:49
I'm making a point based on all of these other people who have added to my learning base.
1:12:56
Liberty RPF: And what is new right?
1:12:59
There's another point I want to make.
1:13:01
Put the idea out there, and I think a podcast is a great place. I never hear this. What is new?
1:13:07
Say you're a painter and someone could go into Stable Diffusion or any of the others.
1:13:12
And write your name and produce something in your style.
1:13:15
And your style is a very vague thing.
1:13:17
And maybe the thing is not really your style, but it looks like it.
1:13:20
Say someone else writes something, something, that name, plus Picasso, plus Rembrandt.
1:13:29
That person doesn't exist.
1:13:31
There's no painter out there that mixes those three. That's a new thing.
1:13:33
That's a brand-new thing.
1:13:35
Almost nobody will use these tools to exactly replicate what someone is already doing.
1:13:40
That person's already doing it.
1:13:42
They're doing new things.
1:13:43
Either the topic is new, the angle is new, the color schemes are new, they're mixing different styles together in a new way.
1:13:50
It doesn't take that much to make something new.
1:13:53
When you say that the iPhone is the end result of a cumulative, all kinds of industries that add to build up to the point of being able to do touchscreens and systems on the chip that use milliwatts and all these things together.
1:14:08
Well, the iPhone is new, but you could always argue, "Well, no, it's not new because touchscreens already existed. This already..."
1:14:14
Well, sometimes the execution is new.
1:14:17
You have to do something that's good enough and then it's considered new.
1:14:21
Someone else maybe had all the parts, but if they did, didn't do anything with it.
1:14:25
It's like the Xerox part thing.
1:14:27
Everybody's like, "Oh, Steve Jobs went over there and he copied everything.
1:14:30
They had a Window system, they had a mouse."
1:14:32
Yeah, but it all sucked and it all didn't go anywhere.
1:14:35
And they never executed and they never packaged it up into something people could use.
1:14:39
Ideas are great, but they're not enough.
1:14:41
You have to execute and you have to mix and match.
1:14:43
And that's the creation process.
1:14:45
If you only consider something new when it's new from the Big Bang, there's no other steps in between, nothing is new.
1:14:53
Find me something that's entirely new. I challenge anyone. Even big leaps forward.
1:14:58
Einstein was decades ahead of everybody else.
1:15:01
We still talk about it today because it was so far ahead of everybody.
1:15:04
And so was not based on much else, in the sense that so many discoveries, if this person wasn't finding it, someone else was finding it two years later.
1:15:13
Well, even Einstein was based on a bunch of not new stuff.
1:15:16
You could claim that he is not original and where does it stop, when you start going down that route?
1:15:21
Jim O'Shaughnessy: David, I want to bring you in because I think I might have another heuristic for what to look for in a founder that you want to back.
1:15:29
When you and I talked about AI, the only thing you said to me was you fastened on, "Oh, wait a minute."
1:15:40
And you started listing all of the ways that AI would make, say for example, your podcast better.
1:15:47
You thought about all the new... To Liberty's point.
1:15:51
You weren't asking questions about, "Well, this, can I?"
1:15:56
No, you were like, "Oh, I can make... Wait a minute.
1:16:02
Do you have an AI that could train up my podcasts on short videos?" We got one coming.
1:16:12
But talk about that because I think that's another key aspect.
1:16:15
David Senra: You two know way more about generative AI than I do, but when I'm sitting here listening to your conversation, then I heard what you said that one artist say it's like, "Oh, I'm actually using this."
1:16:26
And I was like, what he's doing is smart.
1:16:29
And what I think what Liberty's perspective is, you shouldn't see this as a threat.
1:16:31
You should see it as a tool.
1:16:34
And I think that principle is, like you just said.
1:16:37
I study beginning of industries for a living is one way you can think about Founders podcast.
1:16:43
And humans just say the same shit over and over again.
1:16:45
They're terrified of any kind of new change.
1:16:46
And people throw the word technology around.
1:16:48
And the way people think about technology now is they think software, computers, AI.
1:16:52
But in ‘Zero to One’, Peter Thiel has this great line and I've heard it from other ways.
1:16:58
It's like, "Properly understood technology is just a better way to do something."
1:17:01
And so when you guys are talking about this, I'm like this human nature that repeats, where it's like you see new things as a threat, you're just going to be...
1:17:11
Life is going to happen to you.
1:17:12
But there's usually founders, entrepreneurial scientists, people trying to create something new.
1:17:17
It's like they see it as a tool.
1:17:18
I think of it like Andrew Carnegie's case, I just read his autobiography again.
1:17:22
And the crazy thing is he went over to England.
1:17:24
He's living in America at this time, but he went over to England and they invented a new way to produce steel.
1:17:28
It's like the Bessemer process.
1:17:30
And what he realized is like, "Oh my God, I'm going to dedicate my entire...
1:17:33
Put all my eggs in this basket because it took a process that used to take two weeks to make steel and took it down to 15 minutes."
1:17:40
And so it's just like you're still making the same thing.
1:17:42
Now you're doing it 1,300 times faster. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Wow.
1:17:46
David Senra: And the reason he knew that was so important is because his father was a weaver and he used a loom.
1:17:55
And then you had his dad resisted the new change of technology, which was a steam powered loom.
1:18:01
Which is again, properly understood technology is a better way to do something.
1:18:04
What used to take him maybe all day could be accomplished by machine power now.
1:18:08
His dad's like, "No, no, no, it's a threat," instead of seeing it as a tool.
1:18:12
That decision to see it as a threat instead of a tool sent his entire family into poverty.
1:18:16
Because once technology...
1:18:17
The genie out of the box with generative AI.
1:18:20
It's not going back in the fucking box.
1:18:21
If you keep seeing it as a threat, you're going to get run over. Then you fast forward.
1:18:26
They had to flee to America because of his dad's resistance to technology.
1:18:29
They're like, "We can't make any money anymore."
1:18:31
I think they're in Scotland, goes to America.
1:18:35
Andrew Carnegie starts working in factories at 13 years old.
1:18:38
And his entire career, whether he was learning telegraph, learning how to do iron, to build railroads, to build steel, it's hey, invest in technology.
1:18:49
And he was a younger guy in the steel business.
1:18:50
And so, the old timers, "Why do you keep buying all these new machines? You don't need this.
1:18:54
We've been doing it this way forever."
1:18:56
And his whole point is like invest in technology, the savings compound.
1:18:59
And sometimes it can be the difference between a profit and a loss.
1:19:03
And so, the same guys a few years later that said, "Hey, you don't need that new machine," realized that he can now produce steel cheaper.
1:19:09
Then they were rendered obsolete and extinct from his business.
1:19:13
And Andrew Carnegie's competitive advantages kept compounding to where he built the most valuable steel company in the world.
1:19:20
And again, it's because he saw the new technology as a tool, not a threat.
1:19:23
And so, that's the main principle behind the discussion.
1:19:26
When you guys are talking, what's the principle behind here that can be applicable to not just artists or not just steelmakers, applicable whatever.
1:19:31
It's like see it as a tool, not a threat.
1:19:34
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly. I love that.
1:19:36
And that is another quote of yours I will be stealing.
1:19:40
I usually attribute but sometimes I forget because I have the... David Senra: It's okay.
1:19:45
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Privilege of talking to so many smart people.
1:19:48
And by the way, there are a million examples of if you look at it as a tool, you're going to be Carnegie.
1:19:56
But what's interesting is your idea of compression.
1:19:59
That's something that I think about a lot.
1:20:03
As listeners know, I'm the chairman of the board of Stability AI, which is an open AI company.
1:20:09
And one of the things that the founders and the people who work there are so proud of is their ability to compress all of this data so that we can fit it on an iPhone or on an Android.
1:20:23
But it also bleeds over, as I listen to you, David, to this idea of...
1:20:29
And bringing in, Liberty, what you said.
1:20:32
I always think of Basquiat, the famous artist who started life as basically a graffiti artist.
1:20:41
And I never knew this until I was reading this thing and I was fascinated by it.
1:20:46
It turns out Basquiat had a partner, who their art was so similar that even they couldn't tell the difference if they went back to something that they'd done.
1:21:01
Even they didn't know which of them had done it. Liberty RPF: Wow.
1:21:05
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And so, I'm reading about this and then I read, so Basquiat gets into the network with Andy Warhol.
1:21:14
Again, one of my other fascinations is this idea of loose networks and the power that they have.
1:21:20
And so, his partner says, "That's bullshit.
1:21:26
You're going to go corporate, you're going to do all these things.
1:21:29
You're losing your soul, man."
1:21:32
And so, Basquiat, "Whatever, dude."
1:21:35
And so Basquiat, he died tragically of a drug overdose, but he goes on for his brief time, talk about packing years into a brief light, David.
1:21:47
He creates almost this new artistic movement.
1:21:52
And then the story I was reading goes back to the partner.
1:21:55
Nobody knows who he is, nobody knows where he is.
1:21:58
And it's that binding, it's not enough to just do.
1:22:03
It's enough that, you've got to add to that.
1:22:06
You got to say, "Okay, how can I share this with the world?" And if your mentality...
1:22:14
Because this is another thing I've been obsessed with.
1:22:16
We start as on the planes, the world's very inhospitable place.
1:22:21
We start out basically learning negative sum games.
1:22:26
Lions one, gazelle's minus one.
1:22:29
It's not enough for me to succeed.
1:22:31
You've got to die because you're my dinner.
1:22:34
And so, we start on negative sum games, which are horrible and lead to stasis and lead to horrible conditions.
1:22:41
Then we finally figure out humans can work together.
1:22:44
Whoa, this is interesting.
1:22:45
We can tribe up and by doing that, we're going to become the apex predator on this planet? Awesome.
1:22:52
But that only moved us up to zero sum games because we saw resources as limited naturally.
1:22:59
Why do you think gold is the first... I can't remember.
1:23:04
I think it was Keynes called it a “barbarous relic”, but we wanted something that we thought was rare to set up a currency system.
1:23:12
And so, I understand the thinking behind it.
1:23:14
But zero sum games, which is where I think we spent most of our lives. And not our lives.
1:23:22
Our grandfather, great, great, great, great, great all the way back.
1:23:25
What stories were people hearing around?
1:23:27
Well, we were still tribes. What were they hearing?
1:23:30
They were probably hearing zero sum stories. Resources are limited.
1:23:38
If you don't get to that resource before Grog, you're going to lose and Grog is going to win.
1:23:45
And so that drove all sorts of things.
1:23:48
But it drove coordinated markets and it drove a lot of the thinking that led us to where I think we are today.
1:23:57
Which is we have the potential, I don't know that it will happen, but we have the potential to start playing only positive sum games.
1:24:09
And it's like the entire philosophy of O'Shaughnessy Ventures.
1:24:13
We will not invest in something that we do not deem a positive sum game.
1:24:18
Because I passionately believe...
1:24:22
You're talking about Carnegie.
1:24:24
And this is great because where does that better process come out of?
1:24:30
The minds of men and women.
1:24:32
We didn't leave the Stone Age because we ran out of rocks.
1:24:36
We got better ideas and we built and we built and we built.
1:24:42
I see this as this extension of humanity and we're at a really cool...
1:24:47
I cannot tell you how happy I am that I'm alive during this particular period.
1:24:52
Because we have the ability, again, through nothing magical.
1:24:59
David's point, these are tools.
1:25:02
We just have better tools.
1:25:04
And so, I think the big, big question here, and God, I would love advice because how do we get people to understand this?
1:25:19
Because I'm a well-known anti-authoritarian.
1:25:24
I view my purpose in life is to be useful. And how am I useful?
1:25:30
I'm useful by highlighting interesting things.
1:25:32
Like you, David, like you, Liberty.
1:25:35
We all have the same purpose, which is there's things that we are absolutely passionate about.
1:25:42
We get good at it, we've put the time in and then we share it.
1:25:46
And your point about your launch with Sam Zell is well taken.
1:25:49
The nicest things that were ever said to me about people who had invested with us was people who would come up to me and say, "Hey, I just wanted to thank you.
1:26:00
You bought our summer cottage."
1:26:02
And I'm like, "No, I didn't.
1:26:04
You bought your summer cottage because you made that decision."
1:26:09
And so, it made me feel good, but it also made me think about this idea that you cannot...
1:26:17
Again, the Dao says it's so much better than I do.
1:26:20
The worst ruler is he or she who rules through fear and intimidation.
1:26:25
And then it goes all the way up to the best ruler is one that when something is accomplished that people go, "We did it all on our own."
1:26:33
It was like an assignment.
1:26:35
David, I'm going to start with you and then we're going to go to Liberty.
1:26:41
Is there a way to get people to engage without telling them the old school way? "You must do this." David.
1:26:52
David Senra: I actually believe that humans just do what they want to do.
1:26:57
That you can obviously influence them, you can evangelize, you can spread the things that you're into, but you can't make anybody do anything.
1:27:03
I just read this fantastic book, it's by Peter Bevelin.
1:27:08
I think the title's ‘Tell Me Where I'm Going to Die and So I Won't Go There’.
1:27:11
And it's this collection of all these quotes and statements by Munger and Buffet, but in this almost fictional conversational flow.
1:27:21
The book is actually really fascinating, by the way.
1:27:23
But what I'm struck by is- Jim O'Shaughnessy: What's the title? Sorry, what's the title?
1:27:26
David Senra: It's called ‘Tell Me Where I'm Going to Die and So I Won't Go There’ by Peter Bevelin. Jim O'Shaughnessy: Cool.
1:27:33
David Senra: It's really hard to find, actually.
1:27:36
But I actually discovered it from my friend, Eric Jorgenson, is the one that recommended it, which was he's got an amazing book called ‘The Almanack of Naval Ravikant’, but he's very well read.
1:27:48
When he recommends a book, I just automatically buy it.
1:27:50
But what struck is how many times in that book and how many...
1:27:54
And in the book you could see the quote.
1:27:56
And then if you go back to the notes, it'll say was this said in a shareholder letter?
1:28:00
Was this said at the meeting? What year was this said?
1:28:02
And they were remarkably consistent over and over again that they said, "In our 60 years of experience, we were always unsuccessful while trying to change somebody's mind."
1:28:12
You can't force it on people.
1:28:14
There's a reason that you're attracted to what you're attracted to, why your eyes light up about certain technologies. Same thing with Liberty.
1:28:21
The reason that I recommend Liberty's newsletter and the reason I pay for it is because he does a fantastic job curating things that he's interested in.
1:28:29
It's like, but there's no telling him, "Hey, Liberty, you should write about this in the newsletter."
1:28:34
He just something's speaking to him.
1:28:36
And I don't actually understand this phenomenon.
1:28:38
The best quote I've ever heard on is Jeff Bezos saying that, "We don't choose our passions, they choose us."
1:28:44
And I don't know how to infect other people with your passion than other just sharing it and explaining on...
1:28:50
Like how I try to do it with the books on the podcast.
1:28:53
It's like this idea's amazing.
1:28:54
I find this story of a young Ralph Lauren, going back to that, is really inspiring.
1:29:00
The fact that the reason I looked for a biography on Ralph Lauren, let me give you an example, Jim, is I watched this documentary on HBO on Ralph Lauren.
1:29:06
It's called ‘Very Ralph’. It came out 2019.
1:29:09
And I had known the brand, didn't know his story.
1:29:11
But in the very beginning it talks about, first of all, I didn't know he grew up with no money.
1:29:15
He grew up sharing one bedroom with two older brothers.
1:29:19
It's like not only do you not have your own room, there's three of you in there.
1:29:23
Then he goes on his own, gets married real young.
1:29:25
His wife is 19, I think he's 24.
1:29:27
She's like, "We slept on a...
1:29:28
We had a mattress on a floor in a shitty apartment in York.
1:29:32
The L train ran above our head."
1:29:34
And that's where they're living when Ralph jumps and takes this huge risk saying, "I don't want to work for other people.
1:29:41
I'm going to build my brand."
1:29:43
And he starts out doing these ties, which I mentioned earlier.
1:29:45
But the reason that he's so appealing for me and the reason I wanted to read a biography him was because just what he did next.
1:29:50
He finally gets a meeting with Bloomingdale's.
1:29:52
Bloomingdale's like, "We love your ties.
1:29:54
We're going to place a big order."
1:29:55
Remember, he's got no money at this time. They're like, "Okay."
1:29:57
And Ralph's like, "This is fucking fantastic."
1:30:00
"But you have to take your brand name off and put our name."
1:30:03
And he immediately packs up his ties and says, "No thank you.
1:30:06
I'm building my brand," and leaves.
1:30:09
And I say on the podcast I just released.
1:30:10
It's like it's one thing to turn on an opportunity when you're already rich.
1:30:13
It's completely fucking different when you have a young wife, you're living in a shitty apartment, you have no money, and you don't even have a business.
1:30:19
You have a fledgling business.
1:30:22
And for him to still say, "No, no, no, this is my passion.
1:30:26
It chose me when I was a young boy and I'm going to see this passion through."
1:30:30
I don't necessarily think there is an answer to the question, other than what we're already doing, which is through your podcast, through your Twitter feed, through your constantly evangelizing through Liberty's newsletter, through my podcast.
1:30:41
It's just like, "Hey, this is a cool idea.
1:30:43
Look what this person did.
1:30:44
What if you took that idea and applied it to your life?
1:30:46
What's your version of..."
1:30:47
I don't want to be a fashion designer.
1:30:49
Just like I don't want to build a steel company, but I take principles through Carnegie and Ralph, and it's like, but I'll apply those ideas to my business, which is podcasting.
1:30:59
Which is why when we had lunch, I was like, "Oh, shit.
1:31:02
I didn't know anything about Stability Diffusion or Stable Diffusion Stability AI."
1:31:07
And I immediately said, I was like, "Oh, that's a tool.
1:31:08
How can I take the 400 hours of audio that don't have video content on it and have an AI automatically animate it?
1:31:14
And maybe cut it up into 30 second or 60 second clips to spread it all over the internet.
1:31:19
To then point back to the source material where it's like, 'Hey, if you listen to this podcast, it might make your life and career better.'"
1:31:23
I can only say my answers to those question is through my actions.
1:31:27
And those are my actions.
1:31:29
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I agree. Liberty, how about you?
1:31:31
Liberty RPF: I agree with David that on the individual level, it's very, very hard to make anyone do anything.
1:31:40
But if I look at it from a different angle, I think this Great Reshuffle, the internet, these loose network.
1:31:48
Well, the networks are everywhere now.
1:31:50
And I feel like if we go back, almost all of humanity, it was rocky ground.
1:31:56
If you were creative, you were trying to plant some seeds and nothing grows there.
1:32:01
There's gatekeepers, you don't have access to people, data, knowledge, inspiration, it's very, very hard.
1:32:08
And I feel like what's making it less zero sum and what's going to convince people today is that the ground is much more fertile.
1:32:15
Not to mix metaphors but these icebreakers we talked about, some people could go through anything and still succeed.
1:32:22
And so back then in the '50s and in the 1800s, whatever, some people could still figure out a way to come out on top.
1:32:28
Teddy was going to go through buffalos and cavalry charges and anything.
1:32:33
He was going to go down the river that nobody...
1:32:35
At [inaudible], he was going to figure it out.
1:32:38
But most people are not like that.
1:32:40
They still have great ideas, they could still do great things, but there are too many obstacles.
1:32:43
Like, I'm not part of the Ivy League network and I don't have capital. I can't buy machine.
1:32:48
Too many things stop them, so they didn't flourish and create this.
1:32:53
Now there was some kind of society.
1:32:57
That's why all the gatekeepers had to appeal to only the center of the bell curve, right?
1:33:02
Because when there's only three channels, the way to maximize viewers and money, well you appeal to the very center of the bell curve distribution and everybody who's outside of it, well they don't feel spoken to.
1:33:13
And probably even the people in the center.
1:33:15
But in this world of the internet, how many millions of people are uploading videos to YouTube or making podcasts or writing newsletter or even just sharing their thoughts on Facebook with their family or on Twitter or where...
1:33:27
All this kind of stuff, it doesn't mean it's all great, but it exists and it didn't used to.
1:33:32
And the cream can rise to the top, right?
1:33:33
Because the internet is very good at one thing. It's finding good stuff.
1:33:36
It doesn't happen overnight.
1:33:38
But when I discovered David's podcast in, I don't know, 2018 or something like that, I started sharing it with everybody.
1:33:45
And for years it's like, "Why isn't anybody talking about him?"
1:33:47
David Senra: Why does no-one know who he is?
1:33:51
Liberty RPF: But the internet figured it out. They found you.
1:33:54
And I feel like that's the chance that people have now that they didn't used to have.
1:33:58
Because if you had been recording like cassette tapes in the '60s and dropping them on street corners, well that's a great old project, but there wasn't the fertile ground where those seeds could grow into oak trees or whatever analogy you want to make here.
1:34:12
So, I feel like you can't change the people, but out of everybody, some of those people wanted to do it before and they couldn't because of the structure.
1:34:22
And now the structure is much, much more permissive for all these people.
1:34:28
So you may not be able to change someone who doesn't want to do it, but at least now the person who wants to do it can find ways to do it.
1:34:34
Even if they're in some small village in India or somewhere, we're all connected. And we can all find...
1:34:38
There are great stuff in the...
1:34:39
They can help push it out without a gatekeeper.
1:34:42
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And that that's how I developed O'Shaughnessy Ventures.
1:34:47
It's how I developed Infinite Loops.
1:34:49
I was convinced my thesis was time, space, clap... It just all collapsed.
1:34:56
And what's left is what Matt Clifford calls the greatest variance amplifier in history, the internet.
1:35:03
And then I was watching the David Bowie interview.
1:35:05
Side note, Jeremy Paxton, the guy who's interviewing him for the BBC, I gave a speech there in, I can't remember, '99 or 2001.
1:35:15
Anyway, I didn't know anything about this guy, and he's famous in the UK for asking brutal questions.
1:35:24
And so I'm sitting at the dinner beforehand and a guy comes up to me, the guy who sponsored me giving the speech, and he is a Brit.
1:35:32
He's like, "So you've done your homework on Jeremy, I hope?" And I'm like, "Uh, no."
1:35:40
But the point I want to bring back is, it turned out great.
1:35:44
And he asked really great questions.
1:35:46
He was interviewing David Bowie in 1999.
1:35:49
And I know that this is a classic that a lot of people refer to, but I hadn't rewatched it for a while and I rewatched it.
1:35:57
And this guy was an alien, man.
1:35:59
He was so far ahead of his time that...
1:36:03
I mean, I recommend all of our listeners and viewers go type that into YouTube, BBC, David Bowie 1999 interview on internet.
1:36:14
You'll see the long version, you'll see the short version.
1:36:17
But one of his great pull quotes is, "The potential of the internet, both good and bad, is unimaginable."
1:36:26
And Paxton just isn't getting it.
1:36:28
And Bowie goes on to say, "We are on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying at the same time."
1:36:37
But the point was, he totally got it, and he puts it into context about, "I'm a pop singer, so I love this, man, because I can get my message out, et cetera."
1:36:50
But then he talks about all the things you talk about, Liberty.
1:36:53
It's like sampling, putting different genres together.
1:36:58
And I'm watching this and I just have to keep reminding myself, this is from 1999.
1:37:07
I have this concept that isn't unique to me, I got it from Bucky Fuller.
1:37:11
People are either tuned in or not tuned in.
1:37:14
And you can't get mad at people for not being tuned in yet.
1:37:18
All you can do is try to give them as much information to get tuned in.
1:37:23
But it does seem to me as I'm listening to your guys' responses, we all agree, there's no way you're going to compel somebody to do something that they don't want to do.
1:37:35
I completely agree with that. Liberty?
1:37:38
Liberty RPF: You made me think, with David Bowie, another genius musician is Brian Eno.
1:37:45
And one of his concepts is the concept of a scenius.
1:37:47
So there's a genius who's a single individual, but there's usually a scenius around them, a scene, a bunch of people who are making this ground more fertile for the person to achieve what they're doing.
1:38:00
And to me, what the internet is, it's like a civilizational nervous system for the planet.
1:38:08
And it can bring information from one side of the other and create a distributed scenius or multiple one, because all of us...
1:38:17
Well, you two have met in person, but we haven't met, but we found each other through this nervous system.
1:38:22
And a bunch of my friends I've never met in person, but some are in California, some are from India and Europe, everywhere.
1:38:29
All this would not have been possible not very long ago.
1:38:33
Everything that I do all day right now, I've learned not in school, I studied something completely...
1:38:37
I've never studied anything from finance or tech.
1:38:39
All this stuff is totally brand new.
1:38:41
And the unimaginable part is exactly that.
1:38:43
We are just starting to baby step around this new thing, and there's a bunch of negative, but I think we're going to keep discovering some positive stuff.
1:38:50
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I agree.
1:38:52
David, anything to add to there?
1:38:54
Because I'm looking at the clock and you guys might become, ultimately when we do the next one, you guys are going to become my first like six-hour podcast. Fuck it, man.
1:39:05
I'm releasing- Liberty RPF: You're going to do a Lex Fridman?
1:39:07
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I'm going to release the whole thing, just because these conversations... I love your idea, David.
1:39:14
When we were talking about it at lunch, I just loved the way your eyes lit up and it was like, "How can I use this tool?"
1:39:19
And then you start giving all these use cases and I just love that, and so, repurposed.
1:39:27
I'm sure I was listening to...
1:39:30
Somebody had cut up a podcast that I...
1:39:32
The one I did with Patrick and they cut it up and- David Senra: I really enjoyed that one by the way.
1:39:37
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Oh, thank you.
1:39:38
Yeah, Patrick's an amazing host.
1:39:40
Well, no, I always joke that Patrick is the ideal host and I'm not.
1:39:47
I'm not a bad guest, though.
1:39:52
But anyway, yeah, Patrick is very skilled, but what they'd done is they'd chopped it up and they had released it in these 30-second pull quotes.
1:40:07
A friend sent it to me and I'm listening to it and they also sped my voice up.
1:40:11
And I'm listening to it and I'm like, "Wow, this is pretty cool."
1:40:16
And I would've never thought of doing that, right?
1:40:20
This guy thought it was cool, so he took the time to speed it up, release it in snippets, and I'm like, "That's really cool."
1:40:29
David Senra: And you didn't see it as a threat.
1:40:31
You're like, "Okay, maybe they only listen to the clips and they don't listen to the podcasts. Who gives a shit?"
1:40:37
A lot of people that hear the clips are going to think and go like, "Oh, that's good.
1:40:39
Let me hear the whole conversation."
1:40:41
And again, it's not a threat, it's a tool.
1:40:43
Jim O'Shaughnessy: It's Liberty's thought about the scenius.
1:40:46
David Senra: Well, that's funny you use that word Liberty, because this has come up in dinners that I've been having with other founders in the last two weeks over and over again, and they don't know each other.
1:40:54
And they've asked this question about, "What do you think of..."
1:40:57
I thought it was Kevin Kelly is its...
1:40:58
Who came up with the scenius term?
1:41:00
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Who was it? Brian Eno, right? David Senra: Okay.
1:41:04
I thought it was Kevin Kelly.
1:41:06
So I was talking to Kevin Kelly's idea, okay, actually, so I'm very skeptical when people say, "Oh, this time is different."
1:41:13
Because history doesn't repeat human nature does.
1:41:16
The only thing where I'm wondering that I might be wrong that this time might be different, is this idea of scenius is all throughout the beginning of industries.
1:41:24
It was very important that for the longest time, if you were interested in a specific industry, if you were a young man mechanically inclined, interested in automobiles and the year's 1900, you better get your ass to Detroit.
1:41:37
You need to get to Detroit. Oh, they're all there.
1:41:40
The Dodge Brothers, Henry Ford, Billy Durant, Alfred Sloan, Albert Champion, Henry Leland, they're all there and they all know each other, which is very fascinating.
1:41:49
You're interested in doing software or making hardware, your ass better be in California, computer hardware in the 1970s and '80s.
1:41:59
You need to be in Silicon Valley.
1:42:01
If you were interested...
1:42:02
I actually got this idea that that Enzo Ferrari is the one that crystallized how important this idea was, because it's the longest single book I've ever read for the podcast was actually...
1:42:10
It's over a thousand pages, it's a biography of Enzo Ferrari.
1:42:13
And he said that the little town, he's like, "Why are all the greatest race cars these luxury...
1:42:20
Now these are super luxury brands like Ferrari and Lamborghini, Bugatti, they're all coming from this tiny spot and well, how the hell is that possible?"
1:42:26
And he goes, "The reason for that is..."
1:42:28
The little town he was in, which is Modena or Modena, I don't know how to pronounce it, but he's like, he said out of line, he goes, "The people that live in this little village with me, they have a special psychosis for racing cars.
1:42:38
And because they have the special psychosis, they have a unique set of skills that there's not anywhere else.
1:42:42
So if you want to build the best race cars in the world, you have to be here."
1:42:46
Eventually Henry Ford II, Carroll Shelby, they overtook them using a budget that was 1,000 times bigger than a Ferrari had.
1:42:53
But that's why he goes, "There's these places, there's a certain time in the world and certain geographical locations that the only skillset or the greatest people that have the skillset is there."
1:43:05
And so I'm like, "Where do I need..."
1:43:07
Because I was like, "Should I be living in a different spot for what I'm interested in?"
1:43:10
I'm very interested in obviously podcasting and talking to founders. That's my main focus.
1:43:15
I'd like to be around other founders because only founders can understand founders.
1:43:18
So it's the weirdest job in the world.
1:43:21
But I'm like, "For the first time in history might be different.
1:43:25
Maybe the scenius is these online internet communities, and sometimes it's Twitter, sometimes it's a Discord, a private Telegram group, a private WhatsApp, all these different..."
1:43:36
The same people are thinking the same, they're trying to develop skillset in a similar direction, and yet they're not for the first time in history, maybe co-located in one geographical location.
1:43:46
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Bingo.
1:43:48
And thus my obsession with these loose networks.
1:43:52
Thus my obsession with...
1:43:55
By the way, you can extend that all the way back to the first stock market in London.
1:44:01
What was the scenius there? The coffee shops.
1:44:04
The coffee shops served as the area where anybody who wanted to have an interest in investing this new thing like, " How do you do this?
1:44:14
What are these companies doing?"
1:44:17
Where does the term carried interest come from?
1:44:19
It comes from, that's how they used to pay the captains of the ships that would go on these horrible journeys.
1:44:25
And if they made it and if they were alive, they got a percentage of the profits of the goods they carried.
1:44:34
So the idea of scenius is as old as we are, except the difference today is I'm in Greenwich, Connecticut, you're in Miami, you're in North America, I won't give away your location, but- David Senra: You're Ottawa. Liberty's secret.
1:44:50
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Yeah, it's his secret.
1:44:52
But the point is, we now have not only the ability to find each other, it's never been easier.
1:45:00
Just go to Google, "I am interested in..." Boom.
1:45:05
And you're just going to get lists of everything you mentioned, David.
1:45:09
It might be your podcast, it might be Liberty's newsletter, and then you're going to be driven by your interest, but you're going to find other people who are also driven by it and you're going to start the scenius and great ideas and transformations come out of this.
1:45:31
So it comes out of talking to each other.
1:45:33
Like, "Oh, I've never thought about that.
1:45:36
That's a really good idea." And this idea that I...
1:45:40
It drives me crazy when I see all these people wanting to stop, right?
1:45:47
No, no, you can't do that. It's too dangerous.
1:45:52
I used to love Nick Bostrom and then he wrote this paper in 2019 and I'm like, "Oh my God, he's one of the smartest people in the world.
1:46:00
And what's his conclusion?
1:46:02
We need a totalitarian global government that keeps people safe." That's bullshit, man.
1:46:09
And he's one of the smartest guys in the world.
1:46:11
And to read that really disappointed me.
1:46:15
And maybe I'm naive, maybe I just have too much faith in humanity and our ingenuity.
1:46:22
But why am I always banging on about David Deutsch, in ‘The Beginning of Infinity’?
1:46:27
Because he does such a great job explaining, "Listen..."
1:46:31
And you said it David, in a different context, but it means the same thing.
1:46:36
It's just a better explanation.
1:46:38
How do we push humanity forward?
1:46:41
Better explanations, right?
1:46:43
And if you are going to be like, "No, no.
1:46:47
Got to invoke the precautionary principle. Got to, you can't..."
1:46:52
You were talking about Carnegie's dad, right? No, that's bad. Listen, you do that.
1:46:59
What you're going to get is stasis.
1:47:01
Stasis leads to entropy, leads to death. Life is movement. That's what it is.
1:47:08
And movement is progress in terms of, "I never thought of that."
1:47:13
And if you understand that we are universal explainers and connectors and we are going to think up new and better explanations, the future becomes something you can hardly wait to get into.
1:47:26
David Senra: The one thing that is shocking to me is think about where all the innovation...
1:47:34
I'm heavily biased to America, I grew up here.
1:47:36
I'm going to live here forever.
1:47:38
All the innovation in the last two decades hasn't happened in the physical world.
1:47:42
It's all happening online.
1:47:44
And the reason I think about this is because of the absence of gatekeepers.
1:47:48
And so when you go back and you read the fucking crazy development, the economic development, post-civil war, you had that huge economic boom.
1:47:55
The largest economic boom in American history comes post-World War II.
1:48:00
And just the abilities that these people had, they could literally change the world around them.
1:48:05
They could build roads, bridges, skyscrapers, ships, planes, physical technology.
1:48:12
We couldn't even make fucking masks during the pandemic.
1:48:17
All we have, we've become a society of, if it's in the physical world, no, you cannot do.
1:48:24
That's the one thing, I don't know what the solution is, because the bureaucracy has just compounded over generations after generation to the point where it's like, nobody was telling these people no.
1:48:32
They're just like, "Oh wow, I could build a railroad.
1:48:33
I'm going to build a railroad."
1:48:34
They did it in collaboration with the government, because the government would give them land grants, because this was important.
1:48:41
"This is a network and if we do a transportation network, then we're going to build wealth."
1:48:46
Then same thing, they let them build the telegraph lines, which is the first nationwide communication network right next to the river lines, because why?
1:48:55
Now you can get it somewhere faster that's going to increase our economic building, but also you can communicate faster.
1:49:01
And then the internet has been this huge explosion, but where's the physical?
1:49:04
I feel like, you fly into Miami International Airport.
1:49:07
I'm like, "This is like a third-world airport.
1:49:12
You're not going to think you're in the richest country in the world. Why can we not build?"
1:49:16
We have this thing where they're trying to build a train from Miami to Orlando, they've been talking...
1:49:21
It looks like it's about to be completed, right? It's like 15, 20 years.
1:49:25
These things just don't happen anymore.
1:49:27
So you just talked about, I really think the biggest threat is we have this almost calcified foundation of gatekeepers and it's like, yeah, that's great.
1:49:37
We're making leaps and bounds in information technology and software and AI.
1:49:42
Until somebody's going to try to come in here and say, "No, you can't do this. No, you can't do this."
1:49:45
Just like they did in the real world.
1:49:47
But we are going to have to roll back some of these ideas where it's like, we're going to have unbelievable technology in bits and 18th century technology in atoms.
1:49:57
That's not a world I want to live in.
1:50:00
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Totally agree.
1:50:01
Liberty, I know you have thoughts- Liberty RPF: That's probably a two-hour tangent, so I'll be quick, but...
1:50:07
The ability to do large projects well is like a muscle and in the west, our muscles have atrophied so much that you want to do anything big and it's like, "Oh, okay, you want to build a train or a subway?
1:50:20
It's going to cost you 2 billion a mile and it's going to take 20 years."
1:50:24
It doesn't have to be this way.
1:50:26
And there too, we are limited by vision.
1:50:29
You want to solve climate change and you want energy security?
1:50:33
Well, you make a program like the French did and in 20 years you build 70 nuclear power plants all over the US and there it is.
1:50:41
You just need a vision and to execute.
1:50:43
And if you remove the roadblocks, and if you do a bunch of them once in a row, you go up the learning curve and maybe the first one is expensive and takes a while, but if you do the same thing over and over and again, cut and paste, that's how you get good at something and you make it cheap.
1:50:58
But we don't have the vision, we don't have the will.
1:51:00
It's much easier to just push the status quo and push it to the next guy who's going to be elected in four years and kick the can down the road.
1:51:07
Anyway, that's all I'll say about it.
1:51:10
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So this is the note I'm going to stop us on, because this leads to my next ask for both of you.
1:51:18
This is a topic that has obsessed me for a long time, and I used to walk around New York City with my wife and point out things and I would say, "This fucking country used to be the greatest fucking country in the world.
1:51:34
Look at that library, look at that skyscraper. And you know why?
1:51:38
Because they didn't ask anyone's permission."
1:51:41
Mount Rushmore, did he ask for permission? Hell no. He went out... It was nuts.
1:51:49
Coolidge, if you read one Bill Bryson's book, ‘One Summer: America 1927’, it's like, I didn't know this.
1:51:56
Coolidge was fishing nearby and they're like, "Hey, did you hear about that crazy guy who was doing the portraits of [inaudible]?" And he's like, "No."
1:52:04
David Senra: I got to read that.
1:52:05
Jim O'Shaughnessy: And so he goes and he's looking at it and the guy comes down, "Great to meet you Mr.
1:52:08
President, what do you think?"
1:52:12
And Coolidge's just like, "I think it looks great, carry on."
1:52:15
But this country used to be builders, dreamers, visionaries, they all came here.
1:52:23
That's a completely different topic, because that gets into hypomanic edge.
1:52:28
Maybe America's different because it's where all the risk-takers came.
1:52:31
You were talking about the Sam Zells.
1:52:36
Let's do a Larry David arc here and we're going to come right back to the beginning.
1:52:41
So Sam Zell's family came here because this was where everybody wanted to be.
1:52:51
But more importantly, why did his family make it and their relatives not?
1:52:57
Because of information, yes, but also because of the idea.
1:53:04
Holy shit, I'm at risk here? I don't care.
1:53:08
Your ancestors literally swimming to the United States... David Senra: From Cuba. Yeah.
1:53:17
Jim O'Shaughnessy: From Cuba. Are you kidding me?
1:53:19
You're talking- David Senra: That still happens now. All the time.
1:53:22
You'll turn on the news in Miami.
1:53:23
It's like, "They just landed in Key West, they landed in Key Biscayne." To this fucking day.
1:53:28
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Exactly.
1:53:29
And those are the people you want to welcome with open arms.
1:53:33
Because those are the people who are the risk-takers, those are the people who are going to make a dynamic country.
1:53:42
So it wasn't just that Zell's family got the better information.
1:53:48
Obviously really important, but they also had a way of thinking which was, "Fuck, we're hightailing it out here with nothing."
1:53:58
And same with Carnegie, same with a lot of people.
1:54:02
One of my first billionaire clients was a Chinese guy who came to this country after his family was on the wrong side of the Chinese Civil War.
1:54:11
And they literally had to high tail out of China and they had been quite wealthy, well educated, et cetera.
1:54:18
They got to this country with nothing, literally nothing.
1:54:23
They had the clothes on their back, they had a bag each, and that was it.
1:54:28
And yet in this opportunity America, he figured out a way to become a billionaire because he was obsessed by certain things.
1:54:37
So we've set up our next podcast...
1:54:40
What's the one like on ESPN where they have the people...
1:54:44
Patrick said Sports Center?
1:54:45
I know nothing about sports- David Senra: Yeah, Sports Center.
1:54:47
Liberty RPF: I don't know anything about sports.
1:54:48
Jim O'Shaughnessy: So this is going to be like idea center, and I just think that that alone is another two-hour podcast because I think we could have a great conversation about it.
1:54:59
I've asked you both the question before, but I want to see if you come up with new answers.
1:55:05
So we're figuring out, how do you get people?
1:55:08
And we all agreed you can't force anyone to do anything, but if we can incept them, one of my favorite movies, by giving a magic microphone and you get to speak two things in it and the next day all 8 billion humans on earth currently wake up and they think, "I just had this great idea and I'm going to do..." You got two.
1:55:34
Liberty, I'm starting with you.
1:55:36
Liberty RPF: I'm going to recycle something I mentioned.
1:55:38
But I think it's important enough to be mentioned twice.
1:55:41
It's the explore and create framework, I guess I'll call it.
1:55:46
And I think it's important to have both because they're self-reinforcing.
1:55:49
I think one makes the other better and vice versa.
1:55:52
And you get more velocity when you have both.
1:55:55
So if people could just wake up and feel like, "I've been kind of stagnant, I've been doing the same things, I need try new things.
1:56:02
I need to find new inputs, meet new people, try new fields."
1:56:07
Go read a book about cosmology or evolutionary biology or music.
1:56:12
Go read something about Bach or something, and then make something with that.
1:56:19
Share it with someone, write a book with your kid, write a Substack, make some podcasts about it with some friends.
1:56:26
Just even if nobody listens, there's the act of creation.
1:56:29
It's like the act of writing. Writing is thinking.
1:56:33
You think you have an idea until you try to write it down.
1:56:37
Then you realize how little you know, and how many steps you were skipping and how many...
1:56:43
When you know someone is going to read it, it's very different than when it's going in a drawer.
1:56:46
So when you know someone's going to read it, you think about it much more carefully and you try to think about the counterarguments and this...
1:56:51
So this creation and exploration, go for it, man.
1:56:54
And I'm not incepting someone, I'm incepting and I'm trying to incept the person listening to my words right now, right, in their AirPod or something. Go do it. I'm talking to you.
1:57:03
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Love it. David?
1:57:06
David Senra: My first request would be find people you're interested in and read their biographies.
1:57:11
I promise you, I really believe with every bone on my body that it'll feed your mind and it'll nourish your soul.
1:57:17
It doesn't have to be entrepreneurs, it can be anybody that you find interesting.
1:57:19
Because the reason my podcast is called Founders and not Companies, because we identify with humans.
1:57:27
And even if you don't know what it's like to be an Olympic athlete or an explorer or a business person or an inventor or a scientist, it doesn't matter.
1:57:33
You're going to empathize and identify with their lived experience and you're going to be...
1:57:38
It's remarkable how close their lived experience is going to be with you.
1:57:41
So that's the first request.
1:57:42
If you don't know where to start, start with the book that me and Jim both read and we both love, ‘River of Doubt’, it's a fantastic biography of Theodore Roosevelt. It is excellent.
1:57:52
You'll get to the end of the book and you'll be fired up for life. You'll have ideas.
1:57:56
And one good thing about the book is you see how much struggle he endured in his life. Didn't let it stop him. Kept going.
1:58:04
Almost died on that trip. Survived.
1:58:06
That inspires me, it fires me up.
1:58:08
The second ask would be, subscribe to Liberty's newsletter. I'm serious though.
1:58:14
I am extremely myopically focused on just...
1:58:17
I read books, I read biographies of founders, make podcasts, talk to founders. That's my work life.
1:58:22
Outside of that, obviously I'm spending time with my family, as soon as we get off this.
1:58:24
I told you before, we're going to take our kids to Disney, literally getting in the car and going now.
1:58:30
But what Liberty does for me, and would do it for anybody who reads his newsletter is like he's such a fucking curious person and it's not focused on just one thing.
1:58:39
He's got all these interesting ideas. He surfaces so much.
1:58:43
It's almost like, you know how popular newspapers were back in the day?
1:58:45
It's like Liberty is my personal newspaper.
1:58:48
'Cause I've read it for a long time. I trust his judgment.
1:58:50
I know he's not going to waste any of my time and he's going to surface all kinds of interesting shit.
1:58:55
Not only do I learn when I read it, but he saves me, I don't know, probably 100 a month because he's just like, "Here's the interesting stuff. I did the work for you. Just read this thing."
1:59:03
So that would be my second ask.
1:59:04
Jim O'Shaughnessy: I love it.
1:59:05
And I feel exactly the same way.
1:59:10
And that's why I'm so bullish on curation in the future.
1:59:14
It's going to be an amazing job to have.
1:59:18
For people like Liberty who are...
1:59:21
And I love the way you put it, David, I hadn't thought about it that way.
1:59:25
He saves me hundreds of hours a month, because he services it all.
1:59:30
And I'm like, "Oh man, I'd never thought about that."
1:59:33
So what a great one to do.
1:59:35
And now I'm going to add one, I can because this is my podcast.
1:59:39
Listen, my son Patrick made a deal with David.
1:59:44
You can now listen to Founders podcast for free.
1:59:49
You have no excuses not to listen to this podcast.
1:59:54
I never listen to podcasts twice.
1:59:57
And the one you did with Patrick, literally, I texted Patrick, "Who the fuck is this guy?"
2:00:03
And he is like, "Yeah, pretty cool, huh?"
2:00:05
And I started it again and I'm like obsessed. So there you go.
2:00:13
That's how I'm going to incept our viewers after this, and then we can come back after having time to think about that bigger question.
2:00:22
And maybe we'll just have our own little intellectual Sports Center.
2:00:25
David Senra: Whenever you guys want.
2:00:27
Liberty RPF: Our scenius.
2:00:28
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Our scenius! That's perfect.
2:00:30
David Senra: And Jim, thank you very much for inviting us.
2:00:35
Thank you for the platform and just thanks for being you.
2:00:37
You're just, I think what people are picking up, what I said earlier about what Jeremy and David said, that you're a positive sum guy and you don't give a shit if no one knows who these people are.
2:00:47
It's like, "This is cool.
2:00:48
You should know about it."
2:00:49
And you're constantly pushing and you do it for tons of people.
2:00:51
So I just know, because in private conversations, your reputation is fucking fantastic and people really do enjoy your approach to life.
2:00:59
Jim O'Shaughnessy: Well, thank you.
2:01:00
And flattery will get you everywhere with me.
2:01:04
Next time I'm in Miami, I'm buying you a really nice dinner and you get to pick the restaurant.
2:01:12
All right guys, thank you. I look forward to this.
2:01:14
My wife saw me this morning and she said, "You seem very chipper."
2:01:17
And I'm like, "I'm talking to two of my favorite people and it's probably going to go way over." So, cheers guys.
2:01:24
Thank you so much for all your time. I appreciate it.