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All-In · · 99 min

Fixing the American Dream with Andrew Schulz

Chamath PalihapitiyaJason CalacanisDavid SacksDavid FriedbergAndrew Schulz

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TL;DR

  • Friedberg sees cell reprogramming turning fertility treatment from invasive egg harvesting into a scalable service within “the next couple of years.” His chain: take a skin cell, use Yamanaka factors to return it to a stem-cell state, then turn that stem cell into an egg, theoretically enabling IVF “at any age” without depending on a woman’s remaining viable eggs. The investable signal is a shift from scarce biological inputs toward repeatable lab production, though several technical breakthroughs remain.

  • The panel’s biggest ownership proposal was to invest Social Security in the S&P 500 instead of keeping its trust fund entirely in Treasuries. Friedberg contrasted Treasury returns averaging about 4.8% with roughly 11% for the S&P, calculating that an equity allocation beginning in 1971 might have produced $15 trillion rather than today’s $2.7 trillion. Under his stated 10.5% future-return assumption, a $500 billion contribution could avert the projected 2032 shortfall, create “the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund,” and make Americans owners of more of their enterprise.

  • Chamath’s macro call is that a Trump-led reset will remove trillions from asset holders and could “whack” home prices by 30%-40%, reopening ownership to 50 million-60 million people. His proposed mechanisms include changes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac support and lower government borrowing costs that could reduce mortgage rates. The pushback is formidable—Schulz cited a need for 7 million additional homes—but Chamath’s central claim is that excluded households need attainable entry prices, not perpetual protection of incumbent wealth.

  • Tariffs were framed as both a bid to replace domestic taxation and a negotiating tactic that may already be “exploitable.” Schulz likened Trump’s opening demand to offering $80,000 for a $100,000 car while secretly expecting to settle at $90,000; Friedberg countered that once every opponent knows the maneuver, China can force the tariffs either to fail or to stick painfully. Chamath cited Howard Lutnick’s claim that federal income tax could fall to zero below $150,000, but the panel warned that unstable rules disrupt five- and 10-year investments, threaten critical imports, and invite politically allocated exemptions.

  • The political through-line was that voters rejected Democratic condescension more than they embraced every element of Trumpism. Schulz called the last election a “rejectionist vote,” arguing that Trump’s strongest skill is listening while Democrats project “we know what’s better for you”; Friedberg praised Gavin Newsom’s podcast for treating policy disagreements as 55/45 questions instead of binary ones and zeros. Newsom’s active listening, economic arguments, and willingness to engage opponents were read by Chamath as an opening move for 2028.

  • The American-dream problem was defined as exclusion from productive assets, with crypto filling the emotional gap left by housing and equities. Schulz argued that people buy crypto because “the train is running away” and it looks like their only route aboard; the hosts preferred broad equity ownership, attainable housing, and a child-investment proposal associated with Brad Gerstner’s Invest America concept. Yet they split on education: Jason thinks trading, gambling apps, and real losses teach risk, while Chamath says even sophisticated professionals fail because patience and simplicity are psychological traits, not automatic products of time in the market.

  • Schulz’s creator-economy case study shows how owning distribution can establish price, preserve artistic control, and improve platform leverage. He built demand through weekly YouTube clips and a self-released special, discovered that an early release could sell out a 300-seat club the next weekend, then created enough negotiating power to buy an Amazon special back rather than remove two jokes. Netflix subsequently funded his completed work with “not a single note,” giving him access to the second-biggest streaming platform in his framing without surrendering the independence that made him valuable.

  • Schulz diagnosed America as suffering from “all-time-low confidence” in institutions and information, making economic pain combustible with conspiracy, prejudice, and geopolitical suspicion. His remedy was “brutal transparency”: explain concretely what alliances, spending, and reforms deliver instead of instructing citizens to trust credentialed insiders. That applies to DOGE too—he said no American is pro-waste and believes eliminating it should be bipartisan, but Elon Musk’s online “knife twisting” turns potential common ground into tribal conflict; among Trump’s lieutenants, Schulz said J.D. Vance is the figure to watch.

Digest · the substance, structured for research

1. Manufactured eggs could remove fertility’s scarcest input

  • Friedberg’s science call began with Yamanaka factors: a laboratory can take an ordinary cell, return it to a stem-cell state, and ultimately turn that stem cell into an egg. The implication is not merely more efficient IVF but fertility “at any age,” because the process would no longer depend on the finite eggs present when a woman is born.

  • He kept the timeline hedged—“in the next couple of years” if several remaining technical breakthroughs arrive—and described a fundamental operating-model change. Clinics could take a skin sample, create egg cells, and reduce a process Schulz called “pretty brutal” for women: invasive harvesting in the hope of retrieving enough viable eggs.

2. Newsom’s podcast turns listening into a 2028 campaign asset

  • Schulz’s surprising defense of Gavin Newsom: despite seeing him as “a plastic bag in the wind,” he rewarded the courage of sitting opposite professional antagonists such as Charlie Kirk and addressing liabilities including the French Laundry episode. “We want more conversation,” especially when politicians face people who disagree with them rather than recycling culture-war scripts.

  • The most useful Newsom example was economic, not performative. Schulz recalled Newsom arguing that although wealthy Californians pay more, a middle-class household’s effective burden could be higher in Florida after other taxes—exactly the kind of information an ordinary listener misses while hearing rich podcasters celebrate saving 133% by moving to Texas.

  • Chamath read the format as the start of Newsom’s 2028 campaign: disavow gender and “woke ideology,” concede Democratic mistakes, and drive a narrow wedge on economics. His surprise was that Newsom’s popularity rose after California’s fires, corporate departures, and San Francisco’s disorder, suggesting the podcast coincided with a rise in political support.

3. Active listening breaks politics out of binary party positions

  • Friedberg said Newsom achieved something rare in modern politics: “active listening to the other side.” That posture lowers the audience’s defenses because the exchange feels like a joint attempt to reach a conclusion, rather than two people performing opposition for their respective camps.

  • His deeper framing rejected the one-or-zero logic of party affiliation. Most policies are “80/20 or 60/40 or 55/45,” and Democrats did not need to be completely wrong to lose—they could be 45/55 on taxes and social issues, “off just enough that they lost the election.”

  • Schulz likewise called Trump’s victory a “rejectionist vote,” not proof that voters would follow him anywhere. That interpretation is harder for Democrats because it requires admitting, “We’re off, we’re not listening to the people,” rather than explaining defeat through voters’ alleged moral or intellectual failure.

4. Trump listens to grievances, but responsiveness can still produce bad policy

  • Schulz contrasted Trump’s responsiveness with what he sees as Democratic “Ivy League pretentiousness”: “We know what’s better for you,” even when people explicitly report different needs. If people say food is harming them and Trump appoints the person saying “the food is bad” to oversee it, the intuitive response is that someone finally listened.

  • His counterexample was Manhattan congestion pricing. Trump initially echoed public anger and opposed it, but within two weeks drivers Schulz knew were calling it “the greatest thing the city has” because traffic moved. Listening captures the immediate signal; it does not guarantee that the first public reaction identifies the best outcome.

  • Effective politics therefore needs emotionally legible commitments. Republicans have “build the wall,” “we want Greenland,” and no tax on tips; Schulz said Democrats need equivalents such as “eggs are a dollar” or a concrete promise to seize public land and build 10,000 homes—not abstract assurances that experts are helping.

5. Tariff negotiation loses leverage when the entire auction is public

  • Schulz’s layman’s model was a car negotiation: offer $80,000 for a $100,000 vehicle while expecting to settle at $90,000. Trump cannot announce that a threatened 200% tariff is merely an opening bid without destroying his leverage, yet the whole country watches and criticizes the offer before any settlement emerges.

  • The costs are already tangible even if the tariff is provisional. Schulz cited a friend building a Joshua Tree hotel who did not know whether needed materials could enter from Canada—a live business decision frozen while national bargaining plays out.

  • Friedberg’s poker pushback: once everyone identifies the maneuver as a negotiating tactic, “this kind of action is exploitable.” China’s unusually confrontational response—“You want war, we’ll give you war,” whether hot or cold—suggested to him that its leadership had systematically assessed how far Trump would go and chosen resistance as the strongest reply.

6. A tariff-funded state needs stable rules more than dramatic announcements

  • Chamath said the United States operated without income tax for most of its history: from 1776 to 1861—85 years—then resumed tariffs in 1872 and continued until around World War I. His strategic question was whether 330 million Americans should fund the state directly, or charge foreign companies seeking access to their purchasing power.

  • He allowed for “very specific and narrow” waivers and linked the idea to Howard Lutnick’s statement that Trump’s plan could reduce federal income tax to zero for people earning $150,000 or less. The arithmetic still requires expenditure cuts; otherwise tariffs simply move the visible collection point while consumers ultimately absorb costs.

  • Chamath’s first vulnerability was time. Countries and companies borrow billions for data centers and tanks on five- or 10-year assumptions; they cannot start, stop, and restart whenever a tariff appears or disappears within 24 hours. A stable tariff can be modeled, but recurring reversals paralyze investment.

  • His second vulnerability was irreplaceable supply. Chamath claimed that 95% of all energy generated in America comes from renewables and argued that this depends on a sophisticated worldwide financing market. Destabilize that market, he said, and half of that energy could disappear just as AI requires more electricity. Rare-disease medicines are even starker—if an overseas producer cannot afford to make a drug and no domestic substitute exists, it can simply withdraw the product.

7. Poor communication and discretionary waivers turn tariffs into cronyism

  • Jason gave the administration a “D” for communication. Tariffs have variously been presented as responses to fentanyl, tools for replacing income tax, and mechanisms for supply-chain resilience; without one intelligible objective, businesses cannot infer the rules or distinguish bargaining theater from permanent industrial policy.

  • He also rejected the comforting assumption that Trump never means his most disruptive claims, pointing to overturning Roe v. Wade, closing the border and sending people home, and imposing a Muslim ban. For every declaration dismissed as “cap,” Trump has supplied evidence that he may implement at least part of it; investors therefore cannot treat tariffs as costless rhetoric.

  • The darker concern was centralized exception-granting. Car and solar companies can seek waivers directly from Trump, encouraging executives to visit Mar-a-Lago, donate, and “kiss the ring.” Jason argued that shifting from generally applicable rules to presidential discretion creates the appearance—and potentially the reality—of buying preferred treatment.

8. Economic exclusion is erasing empathy for asset owners

  • Schulz’s communication test was brutally short-term: most people are thinking about next week. Tell them they will no longer pay income tax and the emotional benefit lands immediately; explain tariff history or a complex macro model and the argument may never reach them.

  • America, in his framing, runs on every poor person believing they might become a millionaire. “The second they stop thinking they will be—or they can be—it falls apart.” Celebration after a health-care executive’s killing was his ugliest indicator that some people feel so excluded from advancement that they no longer empathize with those above them.

  • The same mechanism shaped reactions to the Palisades fires. Once people heard that wealthy homeowners were affected, Schulz saw responses equivalent to: “You went to your vacation house.” People without a first home felt no sympathy for someone temporarily displaced to a ski house; Jason suggested that this may help explain why reconstruction and disruption receive less attention as a “rich-person problem.”

  • Chamath agreed that asset owners have benefited “more than we’ve deserved” since the Great Financial Crisis, when people able to borrow and invest in appreciating markets were rewarded while others fell behind. He welcomed Trump removing wealth from asset holders—“I think it’s fantastic”—because neither the stock market nor its decline commands sympathy from people who own none of it.

9. A housing correction is pitched as a reset of the American dream

  • Schulz supplied the central objection to forcing prices lower: the country still needs roughly 7 million additional homes to satisfy present demand. A financial reset cannot repeal physical scarcity, so lower valuations ultimately need more construction alongside changes to mortgage support.

  • Chamath said the government would figure out how to get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac out of conservatorship. He argued that their mortgage guarantees have “unwittingly” propped up the U.S. housing market with taxpayer support, artificially inflating prices and locking many people out of their first home.

  • His conditional path to a 30%-40% housing decline combines lower home prices with lower mortgage rates. Chamath said that if the rate the U.S. government pays to borrow falls, mortgage rates fall as well; changes to mortgage support could also reduce artificial price support. Together, he thinks these changes could give 50 million-60 million people a shot at entering the housing market and feeling included in the economic dream.

  • Jason’s supply-side moonshot was five new cities containing 3 million homes each, restricted to buyers below a defined income. He paired housing with health care and retirement as solvable basics: the most innovative economy should be capable of a “Manhattan Project for housing,” not resign itself to permanent scarcity.

10. Ownership converts capitalism from an adversary into a shared project

  • Schulz’s principle was that as many Americans as possible should be “invested in American success and excellence.” The wider the distance to a first home or first stock, the more people conclude that America itself is failing them; ownership of an apartment or even some Tesla shares reverses the emotional relationship.

  • Crypto’s popularity fits that gap. Schulz called much of it a “giant scam,” yet understood the appeal: it looks like the only affordable piece of a runaway American dream, much as comedy requires only a microphone. He would rather that energy flow into a Vanguard account owning the entire market.

  • Brad Gerstner’s Invest America concept would put $1,000 into an account for every American born and let it compound. By age 22, Schulz said, that money could help pay college loans, fund trade school, or make a down payment. He cared as much about the emotional connection as the balance: green market days would mean “we” are succeeding, not that remote CEOs are extracting more.

11. Social Security could become America’s sovereign equity fund

  • Friedberg said the OASDI trust fund invests in one asset: U.S. Treasuries, which have returned about 4.8% annually since the program began, versus roughly 11% for the S&P 500. That architecture gave private-account holders the equity upside while citizens dependent on the public system received the lower-yielding asset.

  • His counterfactual began in 1971, when the United States left the gold standard. Had Social Security bought the S&P from then onward, he calculated that it would now hold about $15 trillion—roughly one-third of the index—jointly owned by Americans, rather than the current $2.7 trillion trust-fund balance.

  • With present inflows and outflows, Friedberg said the fund goes bankrupt in 2032 unless benefits change or money is printed. His proposed repair: contribute about $500 billion now and invest in equities; assuming the S&P continues averaging 10.5%, the balance should continue growing and become “the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.”

  • The obvious pushback was a one- or two-year equity drawdown precisely when benefits must be paid. Friedberg’s answer was that the government will already print money to make up the Social Security hole, so it can backstop temporary equity losses while retaining the higher long-run return and broad ownership.

12. Housing policy has trapped middle-class wealth in one inflated asset

  • Friedberg estimated that 60% of middle-class household net worth sits in the home, while only 10% is held through the S&P 500, index funds, or retirement accounts. Federal mortgage support made housing the American dream, but also shifted savings away from businesses that create productive value.

  • Once household stability depends on house prices rising, policy must keep inflating them. That makes new housing more expensive and makes the next buyer’s entry harder—the system reassures current owners by worsening the affordability problem it claims to solve.

  • Warren Buffett’s failed California intervention carried the argument. Advising Arnold Schwarzenegger, Buffett proposed repealing the rule allowing heirs to pass on a home’s original cost basis for property-tax purposes; the idea threatened incumbent owners so directly that he was gone within two days. Jason’s investor benchmark was closer to 20% of net worth in real estate, not 60%.

13. Early stock ownership changed careers, not merely portfolios

  • Jason bought his first stock at 18 in 1989—the parent of his employer. That early participation made ownership concrete rather than theoretical, beginning a path from paid work toward technology, startups, and investing.

  • David Sacks bought $300 of stock in an E-Trade account in college after watching the investment-banking show Bull. As an astrophysics major, he read The Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily to understand technology and markets; the experience led him toward investment banking and the tech industry.

  • Friedberg said buying his first equity shifted his path, while Jason separately said that his own early interest in the stock market changed his trajectory from science toward business and technology.

  • Chamath encountered equities at 14 or 15 through a Canadian program placing a minority welfare recipient in a job. A controller at the fast-growing startup drove him to work and explained how a company operates, why its founder became a billionaire, and why a stake could matter more than salary. Later, Chamath traded stocks for his boss, who gave him money to pay off his student loans.

  • Schulz said he was probably 19 when he first actively bought stock, while noting that he may have owned stock without realizing it. His parents built wealth through dance lessons and daily work, not investing, so no market knowledge transferred with their success. A financially accomplished relative—an early NVIDIA holder—finally told him, “What do you mean you don’t own anything?” and walked him into an account.

14. Market access without emotional preparation can become another casino

  • Jason saw upside in PrizePicks, gambling, poker, Robinhood, Coinbase, and related services because real stakes create feedback. His progression was optimistic: young users may move from meme coins to Bitcoin, then NVIDIA or businesses with real revenue as marriage, children, and housing make risk more consequential.

  • Schulz’s pushback was that easier entry may teach the public that investing is gambling rather than patient ownership. Chamath went further, rejecting the idea that experience automatically produces competence: he has watched “thousands and thousands” of sophisticated professionals wash out because they could neither simplify nor remain patient.

  • Chamath’s own warning carried the highest stakes. After a period when a tweet could move markets upward, he spent two and a half years giving it all back “and then some”; discussing being hit for $4 billion forced him to confront an identity measured by his bank balance rather than his wife, children, or friends.

  • Hence his rule: green days teach little; “how you carry yourself, how you act, how you treat other people on the red days are the only things that matter.” The proposed first lesson was compound interest, including the rule of 72: at 7.2% annual growth, money takes roughly 10 years to double.

15. Schulz built leverage by creating a market outside television

  • Schulz spent almost 18 years building his comedy career, initially living with his parents, managing restaurants, and surviving on a $5-$10 daily budget. He rented out the room where he slept, slept in a closet, and watched his savings fall to about $700 before touring and television finally produced enough income.

  • MTV gave him an initial break, but when that route faded, his podcast with Charlamagne kept him afloat while television gatekeepers found his stand-up too risky. Schulz empathized with producers protecting jobs and private-school tuition; he simply refused to reshape the comedy, asking instead, “Where can I put it out?”

  • His answer was one new YouTube clip every week for a year, followed by a special. The first release sold out the next weekend’s club; he later described those venues as roughly 300-seat clubs. The response revealed “huge white space” between sanitized television comedy and the edgier work audiences wanted, allowing him to tour for years instead of treating a network special as the only payday.

16. Artistic control became an asset with a measurable price

  • Schulz’s previous special was intended for Amazon, which objected to two jokes during a culturally volatile period. Rather than edit them, he bought the special back and sold it himself—accepting the financial risk so the finished work could remain “exactly how I wanted to put it out.”

  • The choice was also reputational consistency. “I can’t scream about censorship” and then abandon the disputed jokes when a large check appears. Self-distribution made Schulz one of the few comedians who believes he knows exactly what his work is worth because he could observe the audience’s payment directly.

  • Netflix offered a complementary market: YouTube was the largest platform in his framing, Netflix the second-largest streaming service, so the deal exposed him to viewers outside his existing footprint. Crucially, Netflix funded the completed special with “not a single note” and handled money, marketing, algorithmic promotion, and distribution.

  • Cancellation attempts lose force when audiences possess 100 hours of context. Schulz said listeners who know the creator will not reduce him to an isolated statement; offense remains legitimate, but an offended person does not acquire a veto over jokes elsewhere. Deep cultural specificity can make audiences feel “seen,” not bullied.

17. Economic pain turns mistrust into conspiracy and geopolitical suspicion

  • Schulz’s cultural diagnosis was “all-time-low confidence in institutions” and information. Conspiracy offers “the easiest way for dumb people to feel smart,” but it also flourishes when authorities are opaque; restoring confidence requires “brutal transparency” about what government knows, spends, and expects citizens to endure.

  • He hedged that he “could be off,” then described how economic distress can activate antisemitism among Americans who have never knowingly met a Jewish person. When eggs and rent become unaffordable, stereotypes about success or group cohesion can curdle into “Why do they have all that?” and online extremists supply conspiratorial explanations.

  • The same cost-benefit reassessment reaches alliances. Americans quickly became uninterested in Ukraine and receptive when a minerals deal sounded like repayment; they now ask what the Israel relationship delivers. Schulz’s point was not that intelligence benefits are absent, but that unexplained benefits leave a vacuum filled by people arguing Jews “control the government.”

  • Jason contrasted Biden’s weak explanation of Ukraine’s lend-lease arrangement with Trump’s claim that $180 billion supplied would bring $500 billion back—a stated 42% compounded return. Whether or not citizens master the geopolitics, “they’re going to pay us back” is a concrete proposition they can evaluate.

18. DOGE could unite voters, but Elon’s style keeps making it partisan

  • Schulz withheld a final grade on Trump, giving the administration a longer “landing strip” because he hopes short-term disruption produces long-term benefits. That optimism was conditional: “Is everything going to work out? No,” and he said power still needs scrutiny.

  • DOGE particularly frustrated him because he did not think any American was pro-waste, inefficiency, or bloat; a better DMV should be easy bipartisan ground. Elon Musk’s habit of “twisting the knife” on Twitter turns reform into humiliation, while ominous comments to Joe Rogan about corruption and possible assassination left Schulz asking what was going on.

  • Schulz saw Musk as constrained politically: he is not an American citizen and cannot become president, so he may already occupy the most powerful position available to him in the United States. His sharper warning was “keep an eye on J.D.”—a 40-year-old who moved from a broken home in Appalachia to Yale, from Never Trump to vice president, and displayed exceptional skill at managing upward.

Jason Calacanis

All right, everybody. Welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, the All-In Podcast. You can subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, yada yada, you know the drill. We're going to go to Miami for an epic F1 weekend—All-In Podcast live on stage Saturday, May 3rd. A couple of special guests. Go to allin.com/events to buy a ticket. And we're really excited today because, for the first time in All-In history, we have a comedian—somebody entertaining on the program. A real comedian, someone who knows how to make good jokes.

Andrew Schulz is here. How are we doing, boys?

Andrew Schulz

Thank you for having me, Schulz. Pleasure.

Jason Calacanis

You're on a heater right now, and you took time to come on the All-In pod. Thank you for doing that.

Andrew Schulz

Of course.

Jason Calacanis

Your Netflix special, Life, is crushing it. It's in the top 10 around the world. It's about your low sperm count. Tell us about it.

Andrew Schulz

I'm the face of sperm, which is kind of crazy because you've got a mustache like a '70s porn star.

Jason Calacanis

I think I'm overcompensating. I've got to trick people with the mustache, but in reality, the balls are firing blanks.

Andrew Schulz

It's bad.

Jason Calacanis

This special is so good. Thank you for watching it.

Andrew Schulz

I appreciate it.

Jason Calacanis

We all watched it. It's hilarious. You've got three old guys here who have also had to deal with some of these issues. You've all had IVF. Chamath, do you want to be honest here, or were you natural? Did you hit the three from half court?

Chamath Palihapitiya

My first 4 kids were natural. My fifth was IVF.

Jason Calacanis

I don't think we're surprised. There are, like, 2 billion of you guys. It's easy to get the job done, bro.

Chamath Palihapitiya

There was a period after the Facebook IPO when I swear to God, I would look at chicks on Instagram and get them pregnant. It was brutal.

Jason Calacanis

Are they coming to collect?

Chamath Palihapitiya

I hope not.

Jason Calacanis

How many settlements have you got? How many NDAs?

We're off to a hot start here. Friedberg, you look like you have a low sperm count, but you have a fourth kid on the way. What's the story? Are you natural?

This is the first time ever—nobody knew this.

David Friedberg

100%.

Andrew Schulz

A vegan who's shooting with a sniper rifle. I love it. I don't believe it.

David Friedberg

I'll find you guys a great study about veganism and libido.

Andrew Schulz

Is that right? What does it do, reduce the woman's libido?

David Friedberg

Exactly.

Andrew Schulz

Oh, my God.

David Friedberg

I know a place with the best roast cauliflower. Let your winners ride, Rain Man.

Jason Calacanis

By the way, can I just tell you how much I hate cauliflower? Everywhere I go, that is the dish. I had it for dinner last night. It was the main course.

David Friedberg

In L.A., it's the main course.

Jason Calacanis

Except it's disgusting. There are 2 things they offer you: portobello mushrooms and roasted cauliflower. That's what Sean does every time you show up at the house.

Are you an Impossible Meat guy?

Andrew Schulz

No, I don't like that stuff. It's gross. Not for me.

David Friedberg

Do you want to hear a quick science corner?

Jason Calacanis

You know how we talked about Yamanaka factors?

Andrew Schulz

There's a resounding yes.

David Friedberg

He's like, “Yeah, I don't care, Andy.”

Andrew Schulz

Anyway, sure. Hit me.

David Friedberg

Let me hit this real quick, because I know we're never going to get to it. You know how you can use Yamanaka factors—we talked about these—to basically turn a cell into a stem cell?

Andrew Schulz

Of course. Andrew, you're familiar with the Yamanaka factors. I've been all over it for a while. I've seen Squid Game.

David Friedberg

Absolutely.

Andrew Schulz

You think I don't know about the Yamanaka factor?

David Friedberg

Come on, we're not going to get into it.

Andrew Schulz

I went to the Yamanaka factory when I was in Kyoto. I swear to God, a guy showed up 15 minutes late and stabbed himself in the stomach right there. He killed himself right there.

David Friedberg

Yeah, it's called seppuku.

Andrew Schulz

Exactly.

David Friedberg

Okay, we'll come back to the cell biology. The interesting work going on right now is that you can take any cell from a person's body, turn it into a stem cell, and then ultimately turn that stem cell into an egg cell. You no longer need to harvest eggs from a woman. You can make eggs from skin cells, for example.

In the next couple of years, there are a few technical breakthroughs that will enable this. Fertility clinics may end up taking a little bit of your skin, creating stem cells, creating egg cells, and that's how we're going to do IVF in the future. You could make eggs at any age and ultimately produce offspring at any age. You don't need to have active, healthy eggs.

Andrew Schulz

You like that one?

Jason Calacanis

Fantastic. This is a workaround for the people who are trying to ban IVF because of the abortion protocol. Their belief is that life begins at conception. You could take 1 egg cell and 1 sperm and make a fertilized egg.

Andrew Schulz

Those people don't understand what you do with IVF. You try to harvest as many as you possibly can because not all of them are viable, and it's a pretty brutal process for the woman to go through. But if you could just grab something from the skin, you'd have almost unlimited eggs.

David Friedberg

When a woman is born, she has all her eggs in her body. As she ages, those eggs get depleted, and eventually she doesn't have very many viable eggs left. This gets around that problem. We can be very selective about the eggs.

There's a future here in the next couple of years where fertility becomes a simpler, hopefully easier, and more widely available service than it is today. Right now, it's technically challenging, invasive, and you have to hope that there are enough healthy eggs. This could change all of that.

Jason Calacanis

This is awesome. Schulz, did they sit you down and give you the embryos that were viable, with the grades and the gender, and you picked one?

Andrew Schulz

We just picked the best.

Jason Calacanis

That's a lot of pressure on that first one. All the other kids afterward don't have as much pressure.

Andrew Schulz

Come out of the gate strong. Have a good first quarter, and then whatever.

Jason Calacanis

You didn't say whether you had IVF.

Andrew Schulz

I was about to put it out there.

Jason Calacanis

I didn't have IVF. The first time we had a kid, my wife said, “Hey, we're ovulating.” I said, “Put me in the game.” Boom. First shot, half-court logo shot—pregnant.

Then she said she wanted to wait before having the next one. It's a little traumatic to have a kid, so she waited 6 years. We tried for a year and nothing happened. Now I'm thinking, “Man, we waited too long.” It's a lot of pressure.

You talk about this in the special. For women, this is anxiety-producing. She said, “You have to go get checked out.” That was when the most humiliating day of my life occurred.

Andrew, what was it like when you went? Can they identify grifters through the microscope?

Andrew Schulz

No.

Jason Calacanis

I walk in, and there are 3 women at the reception desk. They're like, “Hey, Jason Calacanis, you're here to give a sample?” I'm like, “Yeah, I am.” Then they walk you to a room.

Andrew Schulz

That's the spookiest thing.

Jason Calacanis

They walk you to a room, open the door, and it's a nightmare scenario. There's a Motel 6 room, a couch that's about 3 feet wide, and a towel on it.

Andrew Schulz

That sofa isn't cloth for a reason.

Jason Calacanis

It needs to be cleanable.

Andrew Schulz

It looks very much like the hotel you're in, Schulz. I don't know what's going on with the Netflix budget. Maybe they could put you in the Four Seasons or the Peninsula.

Jason Calacanis

It's brutal.

Andrew Schulz

You did this, right? You had to go?

Jason Calacanis

The grainy television with the porn.

Andrew Schulz

You're lucky you got a TV.

Jason Calacanis

I had to go to the phone. I had nothing. I didn't even have service in there, which was another annoying thing.

Andrew Schulz

So what did you do? You rolled the Rolodex?

Jason Calacanis

No spank bank. You have to go through all the memories. Think about the memories, man.

Andrew Schulz

All the great moments with your wife.

Jason Calacanis

Only my wife. Nobody else.

Andrew Schulz

All those great moments with your wife. Maybe there was accidentally 1 or 2 that got left in from when you were on the road.

Jason Calacanis

It's possible. Some images might have jumped into the dreams I had with my wife. I would never want them to be there, but obviously, now it's the director's cut. There's nothing I can do.

Andrew Schulz

It is funny how we dramatize the experience. We got the easiest thing to do in the whole process. We just have to go into a room and masturbate, as if that's hard for us. But we're like, “The room is destitute and brutalist, and the furniture was uncomfortable.”

Jason Calacanis

Speaking of jerk-offs, Gavin Newsom has got a podcast.

Andrew Schulz

I think this is a great idea, despite what you think about his politics. Is he a plastic bag in the wind? Yes. But it is a great demonstration of how Americans admire bravery or courage. We don't like weakness, and I think that's what the Democrats displayed in the last election.

I don't want to get too political about this.

Jason Calacanis

No, give us your opinion.

Andrew Schulz

It's just my opinion. I respond culturally. I don't care about the tribalism and politics, but I'll be honest with you: Having Charlie Kirk right there, who's a professional arguer—he's that guy who is autistic for arguing—to sit across from him and even address the French Laundry, I thought, “Okay, this is actually the right thing to do.”

As easy as it is for us to say, “This guy just wants to be president. This is dumb,” it's actually what the Democrats should be doing. We need to reward this behavior. We want more conversation, especially with people we may disagree with.

The second podcast he put out was the most impactful. There was 1 piece that was incredibly impactful. He was talking to some guy who grew up in San Francisco about taxes. The guy was paying all this money in taxes in California and asking what he got from it. Newsom said that rich people were going to pay more, but the actual functional tax rate for somebody middle class could be higher in Florida because of the other things you get taxed on.

This is the type of information you guys might be privy to, but the average person isn't. They get on the internet and hear somebody addressing real issues instead of just culture-war issues. He's putting out valuable information that defends positions he may have taken in government, and the average person doesn't really know about those positions.

The average person like me just goes, “I'm in New York. I'm getting clipped at 50%, plus the 5% city tax. I'm getting crushed. If I lived in Florida or Texas, I'd save 133%.” But there might be someone making $50,000 a year who moves from California to Texas and loses money. They don't know that because they're just listening to rich guys on podcasts talk about how much money they save when they move to Texas.

Jason Calacanis

You don't have to take a shot at us.

Andrew Schulz

Okay, a little personal.

Jason Calacanis

I moved to Texas this year.

Andrew Schulz

It's more of a shot at me and Friedberg.

Jason Calacanis

Chamath, what are your thoughts on Gavin Newsom's new podcast? You were famously involved in a little dip of the toe where somebody made a landing page saying you were going to run for governor. We had a little fun with that. What do you think of Gavin and his podcast?

Chamath Palihapitiya

I think he's an excellent politician. It's clear he's starting the 2028 campaign. He's done a really good job so far.

I think Schulz is right. He's unwinding all the landmines that the Democrats have stepped on. He's learned what Kamala did wrong, and now he's taking this very narrow path: He's going to disavow the things people don't care about. I don't think you're going to hear him talk much about gender or woke ideology. He'll try to drive a narrow wedge on economic issues.

I think it's going to create a really dynamic 2028 campaign if he gets momentum. His popularity has gone up, which is insane. After the fires, all of the ineptitude in California, the corporations that have run away, the people who have left, and the chaos in San Francisco, he started a podcast and his popularity went up. It's incredible.

Jason Calacanis

Coming around the horn: Friedberg, what do you think of Gavin Newsom?

David Friedberg

I think the podcast was brilliant. When I watched it, I was hooked because there were 2 things that were critical in how he runs it.

First, he is showing what I think is the first time I've ever seen a Democrat—or a Republican in modern politics—actively listen to the other side. It seems crazy that this is some sort of special event, but that active listening moment breaks down the walls where you immediately feel on guard or on offense against the person.

If someone's actively listening to you, you feel like you're on the same side somehow and that you're trying to reach a conclusion together. It invites the person on the other side—in this case, the audience—to be part of that coming together.

The second thing he did that's brilliant is that modern political bipolarism means you're in 1 camp or the other, so everything is a 1 or a 0. Andrew talked about this. None of us would consider ourselves political-party affiliates. We're people who like to think for ourselves on a topic or issue, and we don't care what party it's associated with.

But the way modern politics has evolved, you don't debate the topics. You debate the 1 or the 0 because of what the party says. My party says this is the position, therefore I'm a 1 and you're a 0. The other side says, “I'm the 1 and you're the 0.” Everything has to be binary: I'm completely right and you're completely wrong.

I think what Gavin has done is shown that these are not 1s and 0s. They're 80/20, 60/40, or 55/45. He's willing to acknowledge that we might be only 45% right. On so many topics, the Democratic Party has ended up slightly wrong. They're 45/55. They're not a 0 or a 1. They're slightly off on taxes, slightly off on social issues, and they're off just enough that they lost the election.

Jason Calacanis

Andrew, in 2028, Trump is running for a third term against Gavin Newsom. Who do you vote for?

Andrew Schulz

We've got to run it back for a third term for Trump, of course.

Jason Calacanis

No, obviously. Gavin versus Trump—who would you choose?

Andrew Schulz

I have to see what his policies are, and I have to see where America is. The big misunderstanding with this last election is that the Democrats who are still trying to vilify figures on the right don't understand that this was a rejectionist vote.

They think it was a populist election where people fell in love with Trump and would do whatever he said. What's harder for them to grapple with is the self-reflection of a rejectionist vote. People rejected the Democratic proposal, and they went with the other alternative, which was Trump.

That's a much tougher pill to swallow. You have to look back at everything you've done and say, “Wow, we're off. We're not listening to the people.” Trump listens to the people.

It seems like I'm flattering Trump, but I would say his greatest skill is listening to what people say. There's an Ivy League pretentiousness in the Democratic Party where it's, “We know what's better for you. I know you say you want these things, but you don't really want that. We've studied it and talked about it in our little thought experiments in class, so we know what you need.”

It's condescending.

Jason Calacanis

Exactly.

Andrew Schulz

When people say, “The food is giving me cancer,” and Trump appoints the guy who says the food is bad to run the agency responsible for food, the American people say, “That seems like a good thing. I like that.”

It's an acute understanding of what people are saying. Sometimes it's to his disadvantage. He came out against congestion pricing in Manhattan. Initially, people rejected it. Then, 2 weeks after congestion pricing went into effect, everybody I knew with a car was saying, “This is the greatest thing the city has.”

Jason Calacanis

You can actually move. You can take a taxi, and it's faster.

Andrew Schulz

Government overreach is good. Bureaucracy is nice.

Jason Calacanis

You want a car, stay in the boroughs.

Andrew Schulz

Exactly.

Jason Calacanis

You don't get a car in Manhattan.

Andrew Schulz

Explain this to people. It's a little egregious.

Jason Calacanis

You and I do, J. Our lives should be different.

Andrew Schulz

Absolutely.

Jason Calacanis

What's the point of having nice cars if we can't drive them whenever we want?

Andrew Schulz

Exactly.

Jason Calacanis

We grew up at a time on the Lower East Side when you could go to Tribeca, go to Club Limelight, park outside the Limelight at night, go to Palladium, or park on 14th Street.

Andrew Schulz

I used to park right on 14th Street.

Jason Calacanis

It used to be a church, right?

Andrew Schulz

And then you sniff poppers, take ecstasy, do a little whatever.

Jason Calacanis

You goofballs, between your stupid mustache and your turkey neck, go do something useful.

Andrew Schulz

Are we going to let Chamath sit there in MacGyver's funeral outfit?

Jason Calacanis

This guy's wearing a vest with a collar. He looks like he's going to a Punjabi wake. I can't believe he would even talk about the way you're dressed.

Chamath Palihapitiya

This is custom Loro Piana.

Jason Calacanis

Really? What does it look like? You got it at Zara?

Andrew Schulz

All right, listen.

Jason Calacanis

More importantly, let's stay on track.

Andrew Schulz

Can I tell you guys something about tariffs from a layman's perspective?

Jason Calacanis

Yes, please.

Andrew Schulz

You guys are acutely aware of how these things affect markets, but most people don't have a clue. I look at this and think, “It kind of sucks that you have to negotiate your bid for a car publicly.”

Let's say I go to buy a car, and the car is $100,000. I offer the guy $80,000. I don't want everybody around me yelling, “How can you insult him by offering $80,000? That's an insult.” I can't then tell them, “I'm actually trying to settle at $90,000. I'm just saying $80,000 so he comes down a little bit.”

The unfortunate thing about litigating these negotiations in front of the entire world is that, when Trump announces a 200% tariff, he can't say, “I'm just playing around with that number. I'm actually just trying to get them to come down 20% or 10%.” Getting them to come down at all is a win, but he can't say that because he loses all his leverage.

He's got to sit there and get criticized by half the country. I don't know who really cares about what these tariffs do. Obviously, there are repercussions in the market. I have a friend building a hotel in Joshua Tree, and he says he doesn't even know whether he can get materials brought into the country from Canada. It affects people in real time.

But it's impossible to negotiate with leverage if the people within your own country are questioning your ability to negotiate in real time. That's what a layman would think.

David Friedberg

I think you're right in the sense that, in the early days when Trump was talking about tariffs, everyone said, “He's going to use tariffs. He's unpredictable.” Then the narrative became that he was using them as a negotiating tactic.

The problem is, just like in poker, once everyone knows that action exists, it's exploitable. This is now an exploitable mode of negotiation. Everyone assumes he's just trying to negotiate, so no one takes him seriously. The question is whether his response is going to be that he's serious about it, or whether he's actually exploitable.

You saw China's response. I view China like AI: Stuff goes into China, the AI processes it, and it comes back out. Given the way China is structured, it has very little of the psychosocial bias you see in other democratic governments. It's systematic. Every piece of data is systematically processed, and every action is systematically processed.

When you look at how the Chinese ambassador responded to Trump on Twitter a few weeks ago—“You want war? We'll give you war. Hot war or cold war, whatever you want”—we've never seen that from an ambassador to a United States president before, let alone done on Twitter by the Chinese ambassador.

It says a lot about how the Chinese are processing the Trump negotiating tactic, or Trump's positioning statements on tariffs. They've made a real assessment of how far he is willing to take it. They believe this is the fastest way to win their negotiating position.

Everyone now understands or views this as an exploitable moment, which unfortunately means tariffs may not work—or they're actually going to have to stick, which could be painful.

Chamath Palihapitiya

I want to give you some historical context. For almost the majority of our years as a nation, we had no income tax. From 1776 to 1861—that's 85 years—we funded the programs we needed not from insiders, but from outsiders. That's where the tariff was born.

People domestically in America didn't pay taxes on the things they did. Instead, if you wanted to sell into the United States, you paid a reasonable tax. We paused that for a few years because of the Civil War, restarted it in 1872, and then it stopped around World War I, when this entire war machine broke out. We've never looked back.

One way to think about this is that we have an incredibly vibrant and rich country of 330 million people with a ton of purchasing power. What happens if we put the burden not on them to fund American infrastructure, social programs, and the safety net, but on all the companies and the other 7.7 billion people in the world, across the 185-plus countries that want access to those consumers?

Should there be exceptions? Probably. Should there be waivers in very specific and narrow cases? Absolutely. But I think that's where these guys are going.

You heard this yesterday from Howard Lutnick. He said the Trump tax plan is going to cut federal income taxes to 0 for anybody making $150,000 or less.

Andrew Schulz

What would the strategic vulnerability be in putting the burden of all these expenses on other countries?

Chamath Palihapitiya

There are 2 vulnerabilities. The first is that we keep the expenses. That's the key. If we charge them an extra 25% to come into the market, but we cut the budget, it can be net neutral. That's part of what they've said.

The other problem with tariffs is that, if today you announce a tariff and tomorrow you say, “We've found an agreement and we're taking it off the table,” one piece of logic says, “Great, we're able to change our mind on a dime.” The problem for countries and companies is that they can't think in 24-hour blocks of time. They're making decisions in 5- and 10-year blocks of time.

They're saying, “I'm going to borrow $1 billion and build a data center. I'm going to borrow $10 billion and build tanks.” Once you start that, you can't just stop it and restart it.

One strategic problem is that, if you're not careful, some markets that are really crucial can be disrupted. Right now, 95% of all the energy we generate in America is from renewables, whether you like it or not. The reason that's possible is that America has a sophisticated market where people come from all corners of the world—insurance companies, life insurance companies, banks—and fund all of it.

The incentives exist because they can take a tax credit, lower their effective tax rate, and get a higher rate of return. If you play around with that market, half of that energy could go away. Electricity prices would rise, inflation would go up, and then, if we have to compete against China for AI and other things, where is the energy going to come from? Are you going to brown out people and turn their energy off so you can fund a data center and make the TikTok algorithm better? That's literally what we'd have to decide.

The second problem is that if you're providing a critical service or good to American people for which there is no alternative, that becomes really problematic. The producer can pull the product and say, “I can't afford to make it.” The obvious example is pharmaceuticals for rare diseases.

Those are all multidecade decisions. You'd love to make them and unmake them every 24 hours, but that's not possible. You make these decisions and you're stuck with them for a long time. That's where tariffs become problematic if you change them often enough.

If you implement them and say, “This is what it's going to be,” the world can adapt and people can figure it out.

Jason Calacanis

The other problem is that the communication has been terrible. We were on the program last week or 2 weeks ago, and Joe Lonsdale said, “This is about fentanyl.” So is it about fentanyl? Is it about getting rid of income tax at the federal level? Is it about supply-chain resiliency?

These guys get a D in my grade book for communication. It's terrible. You can't take Trump too seriously about his claims. He said he was going to overturn Roe v. Wade, and he did it. He said he was going to close the border and send people home, and he did that. He said he was going to do a Muslim ban, and he did that.

For every time he says something and you think, “That's cap. There's no way he's going to do that,” I think people are starting to realize that he's going to do something with these tariffs. They're not just a negotiating position.

The other problem is that this centralizes his power. Anybody can go to Trump now and say, “I'm a car company. I want an exception. I'm a solar company. I need an exemption.” Now you've got everybody going to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring, give him a donation, and bow down.

We don't want to live in a world where you're bribing Trump to get your tariff. That's how people feel. That's how the business community feels. You need a clear strategy for what the rules of the game are, and he's changing the rules so that you have to go to him. He loves that. It's a clever hack.

Andrew Schulz

Perception is reality, so you have to react to people's perception. We can throw data points, research, and all this other stuff at people, but if they're not meeting you there, you're not communicating effectively.

You guys have information that the average American probably doesn't. We can complain that people don't read or aren't looking up what happened in 1913 to change the course of American history and how we started taxation, or we can say, “We need to find a way to disseminate this information so people can make these decisions and feel comfortable with the results.”

Jason Calacanis

Do you think America would be okay with taxing outsiders and relying on that, rather than collecting income tax from its own citizens?

Andrew Schulz

The second half is all that would matter. I think the majority of people are thinking about the next week. If you tell them, “You don't have to pay taxes,” that's what they care about.

This is what Republicans are doing far better than Democrats right now. Democrats don't have “Build the wall.” They don't have slogans. They don't have things that immediately tap into a core emotional feeling, regardless of whether they're going to do it.

“We want Greenland.” That's cool. Democrats need eggs for a dollar. They need things that echo their sentiment about how they want to take care of people and provide for the disenfranchised, but it has to be done in a digestible way.

If you want to make housing more affordable, say, “We're seizing public land and building 10,000 units.” You have to tap into what Americans need, which is a feeling of comfort. Every American thinks they're going to be a millionaire. That's what this country thrives on.

Jason Calacanis

That hope.

Andrew Schulz

Exactly. The second they stop thinking they can be a millionaire, it falls apart. When they no longer feel that hope, they become completely disenfranchised.

Jason Calacanis

That's why they celebrated when the health-care CEO was shot.

Andrew Schulz

Exactly. They feel so disenfranchised.

Jason Calacanis

I've been saying this for months: Nobody cares about the stock market.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Nor should we. People who own these assets have benefited more than we've deserved for the last 15 years, ever since the Great Financial Crisis.

Anybody like us who could get leveraged and go into the stock market was richly rewarded. We left everybody else behind. I think the great thing about Trump is that he's going to reset that. He's going to take a lot of wealth away from asset holders. You're seeing it every day—$500 billion, $500 billion. There is no sympathy. I think it's fantastic.

Andrew Schulz

It's great to hear you say that, because a lot of people in your position don't understand that disconnect. It's important to understand it.

Look at what happened in the Palisades in Los Angeles. The second people heard it was rich people's houses, there was no empathy. They didn't care.

“They burned down a million-dollar house? You don't have a house. You can't find a house. They burned down their house and moved into their vacation house. They're living at their ski house. That's a tragedy?”

Jason Calacanis

You're right. It probably explains why we don't hear much in the news anymore about reconstruction or any of the disruptions. It's a rich-person problem.

Trump is a master at connecting with people and listening to them. One of the greatest things he did in the last election was say, “No tax on tips.” He was going right for Nevada, right for that swing state, to get people who live off tips.

But he was also saying, “I know that some of you get cash tips and put them in your pocket. It's the gray market. I get it. I have caddies who get a hefty tip when they take somebody out on the golf course. We're going to make it official. You don't pay tax on tips because we know you're at the bottom third of the country in terms of economic power.”

Those kinds of statements connect with people. Trump has mastered that.

This is the Democratic Party we grew up with. It's kind of crazy. The Democrats became this elitist group that seemed to be in the pocket of business interests. I don't know what Bizarro World we're living in.

Andrew Schulz

I think you tapped into it. The Democrats could easily win the next election if they made it a class war, but they don't because it feels like they're in the pockets of billion-dollar corporations.

Bernie did it effectively. This random Jewish guy from Vermont said, “We need to get some money from these rich people and give it back to the poor,” and suddenly all of America turned him into our surrogate grandfather.

Then Hillary and the machine shivved him. They said his supporters, the Bernie Bros, had a sexism and bigotry problem. They made him radioactive.

They did the same thing with us during the election. They said the podcast bros had a sexism and bigotry problem. They try to make people radioactive, but that card has been played so many times that people are desensitized.

Chamath Palihapitiya

I think there's one big shoe left to drop. We've started the process of taking a lot of heat out of the asset markets, especially equities. We've taken trillions and trillions of dollars of wealth away, and I think we're going to take trillions more.

But the next big market—and this is where we reestablish some hope for a lot of people—is housing. We're going to whack the housing market. It's going to happen.

Andrew Schulz

How is that going to happen, given that there are 7 million homes we still need to build just to service current demand?

Chamath Palihapitiya

There are a bunch of mechanisms that have to be cleaned up. One is that a whole host of mortgages are being propped up by a program that got out of control under the Biden administration.

We're going to figure out how to get the 2 government-related agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, out of conservatorship. They're responsible for wrapping guarantees around mortgages so the mortgage market can function.

The details don't matter as much as the point: We're unwittingly propping up the U.S. housing market with American taxpayer dollars. Why is that bad? It's locking an inordinate number of people out of the first critical step that makes them feel like they're winning and achieving their dreams: buying a home.

We have artificially inflated prices around the country as a result. I think this next wave is deeply beneficial to the middle class. When I see an article saying, “This house just sold for $65 million on 4 acres in some random place in Miami,” it makes no sense.

When you rationalize equity values and the cost of a home, you allow more people to find a reasonable way to enter the housing market. That's a major step in allowing them to feel like they're part of the dream.

You lower asset prices. Maybe you own some stocks, or maybe your employer offers a 401(k) for the first time and it makes financial sense to put a small amount in it. If you've never been able to own a home, suddenly home prices are down 30% or 40% and you're able to do it.

If the rate the U.S. government pays to borrow goes down, your mortgage rate goes down. All of a sudden, you can enter the market because home prices are lower and you can actually get a mortgage.

These things may seem random, but they can come together to give 50 or 60 million people a shot—something they've been screaming for since the Great Financial Crisis.

Andrew Schulz

This is huge because, on a core emotional level, you want as many Americans as possible invested in American success and excellence. The greater the distance between them and their first home or first investment in a stock, the more disillusioned they become with America.

When they feel left behind—like you guys did when you could take out loans for nothing and see incredible gains—they feel like they're not part of it. The second they feel like they're in on it, they own an apartment or some shares of Tesla.

That's why crypto is so popular. It feels like the only access they have. It's like comedy in some ways. All I need is a microphone, and there's a path for me. Crypto is obviously a giant scam, but people feel like they can get a piece of the American dream.

I would rather they were invested in a Vanguard account or the entire market. There's an idea that every American born gets $1,000 put into an account. Our friend Brad Gerstner has this concept called Invest America.

Regardless of whether the concept is good, the emotional connection to the success of American industry is important. When you're 22 and know that something has been compounding for 22 years, you can pay off college loans, put a down payment on a house, or pay for trade school.

You have a different energy toward America and its success. You have fewer kids saying, “America is a horrible place and capitalism is bad.”

David Friedberg

Capitalism is bad when you're left behind. When you're invested in capitalism, it's the best thing in the world.

Let me give you some statistics. The U.S. Social Security program is meant to be a retirement program for people who don't have access to private retirement accounts. It was set up in the 1930s, after the Great Depression.

There's a trust fund, OASDI, where the money from our Social Security taxes goes. Do you know what it gets invested in? One thing: U.S. Treasuries, which have averaged about a 4.8% return since the beginning of the program.

Meanwhile, the S&P 500 has averaged 11%. Here's the math: If, in 1971—the year the United States went off the gold standard—we had invested the Social Security trust fund in the S&P 500, its balance today would be $15 trillion.

That would be roughly one-third of the value of the total S&P 500, jointly owned by all Americans who put their capital into it. Here's what's messed up: Middle-class people who had access to private retirement accounts benefited by buying the S&P 500, and wealthy people were able to access it.

All the equity value that accrued from American enterprise and the prosperity of the American system accrued to the people who had access to private accounts. The people who only had access to public accounts got stuck owning Treasuries.

Today, the Social Security trust fund has a balance of $2.7 trillion. Based on the outflows and inflows, it's going to go bankrupt in 2032. Social Security will either get cut or the Fed will print a ton of money to keep it going.

Chamath Palihapitiya

The retirement age could go up. There are a lot of levers.

David Friedberg

Exactly. I did the math. If you assume the S&P 500 continues to grow at 10.5% per year on average, there are ups and downs and drawdowns, but here's the important point: We could put about $500 billion into the trust fund today and it would not go bankrupt again. It would continue to grow every year.

Then all Americans would participate in American enterprise. Importantly, this would become the world's largest sovereign wealth fund. We don't need a separate sovereign wealth fund. We already have one. It's called the Social Security trust fund.

We've totally mismanaged it. I went back to understand why we've only ever bought Treasuries. Early on, the United States needed someone to loan it money, so it forced citizens to loan the government money in the form of Treasuries.

Today, the Social Security trust fund owns less than 10%—about 8%—of the total Treasury bonds outstanding. The rest are owned by the Fed, foreign investors, private investors, and others who want to own them.

Why are we forcing American citizens to own something that produces a lower return for no reason? We've created deep inequity through the Social Security system. If we had allowed it to invest in the S&P 500, buy American enterprises, and fund American businesses, every American would be wealthier.

The middle class that participated in the market through private retirement accounts would not have had that advantage over people who were forced to own Treasury bonds. We can fix it right now.

People will argue, “What if there's a down year, or 2 down years in a row?” We're already going to print money to make up the hole in Social Security. We're not going to let Social Security go bankrupt. We're not going to let it dry out.

We can create a backstop for Social Security. We're going to have to do it either way, so we might as well take on the growth.

Jason Calacanis

No, no, no. Chamath, you were going to say something.

Chamath Palihapitiya

The reason we didn't do it goes back to what you said. We had a bunch of very well-educated, Ivy League-trained people running these institutions.

The feedback was probably, “There's too much risk. We've sensitized the model. It doesn't make sense. This is the safest thing to do.”

It goes back to the need for more practical thinking. Why does the S&P 500 exist? Of the thousands and thousands of companies in the world, more than 20,000 make over $1 billion a year. The S&P 500 is simply the 500 best—the best of the best of the best.

It didn't take a Ph.D. from Harvard to figure out that owning an index of the 500 best companies would have gone up. Since when are Americans risk-intolerant? There's something baked into the DNA of people who decide to leave their families and move here. We're an immigrant country.

David Friedberg

Imagine logging in. We've all had a 401(k) account, and I remember how exciting it was to log in, see the account, see the businesses I owned, understand it, and watch the value go up.

Jason, you talk about people like us. My first job was making $4.25 an hour cleaning toilets in a pool hall in upstate New York.

Chamath Palihapitiya

I had a similar story.

Jason Calacanis

I made $4.25 an hour working at Burger King in Canada.

David Friedberg

The worst part about my job in the pool hall was that the manager made me go play poker at his house, and he took all the money back.

I stole chicken fingers at night and brought them home. My mom would heat them up. But it was so exciting in my career and my life to go from that moment to having a 401(k), logging in, seeing the businesses I owned, and participating in their value.

Imagine if every American, when they get their Social Security statement, saw not just a dollar amount and how much they would get in the future, but all the businesses they owned a piece of and could participate in. We can fix this.

Every dollar going into sovereign wealth fund ideas, or into a crypto fund, should go into the Social Security trust fund. That trust fund should benefit all Americans. It should be equities, ownership, and participation in American enterprise.

It's not about a $1,000 payment when you're born. It's about ongoing participation—putting money in and having it allocated in the way smart and wealthy Americans allocate it: owning businesses.

Jason Calacanis

I think this is a really important framing. We see comments on YouTube saying, “You guys don't understand.” I remember being in debt when I graduated college, finding a job, working my ass off, putting in 20-hour days, and never sleeping. It wasn't easy.

I feel emotional about this because none of us inherited anything. We came to America, and to see the joy and what we benefited from is overwhelming.

It wasn't given to us. None of us inherited it. We worked for it. To see people talk about being successful and getting there as if it's a crime—as if being successful makes you a bad person—is painful. It's a dream. It's a dream.

Andrew Schulz

My mom is also an immigrant. She came here from Scotland and had no education. I think she stopped going to school at 14. She came to America and became massively successful relative to where she came from and where she got to.

She bought a home in the East Village of New York City and a beach house, all through grind and hard work. What she saw here, and what I think a lot of immigrants see when they come here, is opportunity.

She had ambition and opportunity. A lot of immigrants come from places where they feel like there is absolutely no opportunity. The second they feel there's a little bit of it, they work those 20 hours a day.

I saw my parents grind. My work ethic comes from watching them kill it every day. What you guys are speaking to is really important, and it's important that people know your stories because it becomes more accessible when they see what you came from.

They know you were working at Burger King and now you're worth billions of dollars. It's important that Americans know that's possible for them. Maybe they won't become billionaires, but maybe they'll become millionaires, or make $300,000, or buy a $100,000 house they're proud to own outright.

What you just said is hope and abundance. We put the money there, everybody is invested in the success of the American economy, and when we see the stock-market ticker turn green, we get excited. We start rooting for it.

Jason Calacanis

Chamath gets excited when the market is green, too.

Chamath Palihapitiya

He's going to start crying.

Jason Calacanis

It's been red for a week.

Andrew Schulz

Think about CEOs. They've become villainized because we're not attached to the success of their companies.

Jason Calacanis

If your biggest holding is Tesla, you're not upset.

Andrew Schulz

Exactly. People think their success works against their best interests. They think the system is rigged, that they can't be part of it, and that they're being ground down.

This is a really good proposal, Friedberg.

Jason Calacanis

If I ran for president, do you know what my position would be?

Andrew Schulz

What's that?

Jason Calacanis

I'd build 5 cities with 3 million homes in each. You could only buy them if you made under a certain amount per year.

Andrew Schulz

It wouldn't be like the projects or subsidized housing in New York.

Jason Calacanis

It would be nice houses.

Andrew Schulz

That's pretty good if you can get it.

Jason Calacanis

Stuyvesant Town isn't bad, but I'm not talking about the projects. I'm talking about proper homes.

We're the most innovative country and society ever created. The Greeks were pretty great, too, but we could build 5 new cities. Why can't we build 5 new cities with 3 million homes each? Let's do a Manhattan Project for housing.

And health care—how do we not have good health care for everybody in this country? We're the richest country in the world, with the greatest economy. We should be able to solve these problems.

Andrew Schulz

For young people, I think they would forgive health care if they were invested in the market. Being invested in the market is daunting, but the feeling that everybody else is getting rich while you're not is the reason I bought crypto without knowing anything about it.

It's the reason everybody else bought it. They feel like the train is running away and they're not going to be part of it. How do we get them to feel part of that success?

David Friedberg

Today, 60% of the net worth of middle-class households is in their home. Only 10% is in the S&P 500, index funds, or retirement accounts.

By creating the American dream around housing and allowing the federal government to provide loans for housing, we've increased the cost of housing. We've created a destructive housing bubble because we've reduced people's exposure to productive value creation through owning businesses.

Instead, we've stored net worth in the house. To keep the economy and social structure stable, we've created policies that allow home values to continue growing. People feel like their net worth is increasing, so we keep inflating the value of homes.

Unfortunately, that's making new housing more expensive, which makes the problem worse.

Jason Calacanis

Have you heard of Warren Buffett's most public failure?

Andrew Schulz

No.

Jason Calacanis

Warren Buffett's most public failure was when he was brought on as an adviser to Arnold Schwarzenegger when Schwarzenegger was running for governor.

Buffett looked at the laws in California and found one saying that when you own a home, you can pass it on to your kids and keep the original cost basis for purposes of calculating property taxes. That has had an enormously negative effect on the turnover of homes, and it's a major reason why homes are so expensive in California.

Buffett looked at this, and there was a lot of fanfare. Schwarzenegger said, “Here's my economic genius.” The first thing Buffett said was, “I think we should repeal this law.”

He was gone 2 days later.

Andrew Schulz

He's not popular.

Jason Calacanis

There are a lot of policies like this. If you do a true macroanalysis as an investor, you should probably have about 20% of your net worth in U.S. real estate, not 60%.

We need to give people the ability to own other assets, and we need to think about the follow-on effects of policies that incentivize almost all of your net worth to go into a single asset—your home.

That means we have to keep pumping up the value of the home. We need a system that makes people feel like they're getting ahead, so we keep inflating. Eventually, people can't afford homes, and that's where we are today.

Andrew Schulz

When did you guys first start your education in the markets? At what age did you seek it out?

Jason Calacanis

I bought my first stock in the company I was working for—or, more accurately, its parent company—in 1989, when I was 18 years old.

David Sacks

I bought $300 in stock. I signed up for an E-Trade account in college because I saw that TV show Bull. Do you remember that show? It was about investment banking during the dot-com bubble.

Nobody knows that show.

I was an astrophysics major, and I didn't know what I was going to do after college. I might have gone to graduate school. Then I got caught up in the dot-com bubble and started reading The Wall Street Journal every day.

I would take it down to the plaza and read it at school during lunch. I tried to learn about technology, business, and markets because I'd always been a tech guy. I saw all these startups and wanted to understand how the markets worked.

I put some money into an E-Trade account, bought some stocks, and read Investor's Business Daily to figure out what stocks to buy. They had a rating, so I bought those stocks and they went up. I thought, “This is awesome. I love owning stocks.”

That kicked me off. I got an investment-banking job after college, and it totally changed my career trajectory. I wanted to work in the tech industry and in business.

Jason Calacanis

What about you?

David Friedberg

It shifted for me when I bought my first equity.

Jason Calacanis

By the way, what you asked is a really important question, Andrew. My interest in the stock market at that time changed my career trajectory. It reset what I was going to do with my life. I went from planning to work in science as a researcher to wanting to get involved in business and work in the tech industry.

Andrew Schulz

What about you, Chamath?

Chamath Palihapitiya

I was 14 or 15 years old. Rodney King had been beaten and nearly killed, and there were all these race riots in Los Angeles. Nothing had changed in America, but where I was growing up in Canada, the provincial government created a program saying that if you were a minority and on welfare, they would pay for you to get a job.

I was a minority on welfare, so I got a job at a startup that was going parabolic. Its stock was going nuclear. I lived in a terrible part of town and saw the controller of that company drive past me every day while I waited for the bus.

One day he stopped. His name was Sam Legg. He drove me around that whole summer and taught me: What does the company do? Why is the founder a billionaire? What does any of this mean?

I saw firsthand what it meant to work not just for a salary, but to get a stake in the thing you were working for. I bought a couple of shares, they went up, and it was great.

Then I fell in love with the idea that I could understand something and own a piece of it. It accelerated after I graduated from college because I was in debt and asking, “How the hell do I get out of debt?”

I traded stocks on behalf of my boss, Mike Ferre, whom I thank to this day. I made a lot of money right before the dot-com crash, and he gave me the money to pay off my student loans.

Andrew Schulz

Wow.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Ever since then, I was hooked. I thought, “Okay, I can learn this and deal with the vicissitudes of the market.”

The markets are brutal. There are moments when you wake up and everything looks like it's working. Then there are moments—and everybody needs to understand this—when it looks like the bottom is falling out.

I cannot describe the pressure you feel on behalf of yourself and your family when it looks like your net worth is down 30%, 40%, or 50%. It inflicts a level of psychological damage that I can't describe.

There was a period when I could tweet something and the markets would go up. People were asking what I was going to say next. Then it all stopped, and there was a 2½-year period when I gave it all back and then some.

Andrew Schulz

That's frustrating.

Chamath Palihapitiya

The magic touch goes away. It's beyond frustrating. It shakes you to your core.

If we do these programs, I think Friedberg's idea is beautiful. But we have to teach people how to deal with drawdowns. If you don't teach them how to deal with the volatility of losing money, it's great when everything is green, but those red days matter.

How you carry yourself, how you act, and how you treat other people on the red days are the only things that matter.

Jason Calacanis

It's a growth experience.

Chamath Palihapitiya

What about you, Schulz? When did you buy your first equity?

Andrew Schulz

I was probably 19. My parents may have owned stock without me realizing it. Maybe a business manager set up a retirement fund or something, but I wasn't actively choosing a stock and buying it.

My wife's father is a very successful businessman. I don't want to say he predicted the markets, but he was in NVIDIA incredibly early, along with a bunch of other companies.

We were sitting somewhere in Aspen, and he said, “What do you mean you don't own anything? Can you take $10,000 or $100,000 and put it into these different stocks?” I said, “Okay.”

I opened an E-Trade account—or whatever it was—and did it. But what's interesting is that you guys were so young: 18, 22, 24.

Jason Calacanis

How old are you?

Andrew Schulz

I'm 41.

Jason Calacanis

It might have been a little later for you.

Andrew Schulz

I may have owned stock without realizing it, but my parents did well financially and were financially illiterate. There was no passing on knowledge of investing—when to invest or what it meant to invest.

They made their money by working every day. They taught dance lessons. A dance lesson cost a certain amount, and if 40 people showed up, more people were paying. Then other teachers could teach as well.

Investing was intimidating to them, and it was intimidating to me.

Jason Calacanis

This is the upside of crypto in some ways, and also the upside of PrizePicks, gambling, poker, Robinhood, Coinbase, and all these services being available.

These young kids love to gamble.

Andrew Schulz

They're learning.

Jason Calacanis

They're learning how to take the downdrafts.

Andrew Schulz

I think they are learning. The barrier to entry is lower, but my concern is that they're treating it more like gambling than investing. We've almost tricked the American public into thinking investing is gambling.

The way you guys are describing it—investing in the S&P and leaving it there through the downturns—isn't gambling.

Jason Calacanis

You have to learn these lessons at the poker table. You can't play poker without real money, or you're not going to feel the burn and stay up at night. That's what these kids are doing.

Chamath Palihapitiya

How do we educate them?

Jason Calacanis

Education comes from doing. If you let these kids trade, they'll figure it out over time. Then they get married, have a baby, and want to buy a house. They say, “I'm going to stop buying meme coins and start buying Bitcoin. I'm going to stop buying Bitcoin and buy NVIDIA and companies with real revenue.”

It happens all the time.

Chamath Palihapitiya

I agree with Schulz that you're being reductive. It's not as if they'll suddenly understand David Swensen's Yale endowment asset-allocation model.

I've seen thousands of people deeply steeped in this business wash out. The more sophisticated they get, the more they fall into the same pressures: They don't know how to simplify and they don't know how to be patient.

Those are things every human being needs to learn. I don't think time in the market solves those traits. They're psychological traits you have to figure out in a different way. You have to look inside yourself and work them out.

Jason Calacanis

Fair enough. But between the choice of growing up blue-collar with no access to the markets and having no way to trade or learn, and the system we have today, I think the system we have today is better.

Can people jump the fence and lose all their money? Of course. But they could go to Vegas and do that. They could work with a bookie or do football sheets. I think they're learning.

When you use modern apps and look at strategies and see people on Reddit working on stock theses, I think it's trending in the right direction. There can always be more education.

America doesn't even know what compound interest is.

Chamath Palihapitiya

I agree. I'll tell you a great story. One of the best things that happened when I invested in the Golden State Warriors was that I bought 10% of the team in 2011 and got to meet all of them, including many of my heroes.

I remember sitting with one player and he asked me an incredible question: “Can you explain compound interest?” I still have the spreadsheet. I showed him a compound-interest table, and he had no idea how much bigger 10% versus 8% becomes over 20 or 50 years.

Jason Calacanis

Exactly.

Chamath Palihapitiya

To your point, unless you jump into it and live it, you don't get it. Stan Druckenmiller says the same thing: invest, then investigate. There's nothing like putting risk on. There's nothing like playing a hand of poker or taking a shot with a different strategy in blackjack. Win or lose, you get feedback.

But my point is that most people don't get better. That's what you have to solve. How do you make it interesting and fun? How do you talk about the losses?

I had immense trouble with this, and I still do. How do you talk about getting hit for $4 billion? I can do it now, but it was brutal.

Jason Calacanis

It stung for a while. It was hard for you.

Chamath Palihapitiya

It was hard. Imagine your entire identity is built around being successful in the markets, and you measure it the wrong way. You point to the number in the bank account, not the way your wife treats you, the way your kids treat you, or the way your friends treat you.

Then you say, “I'm 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, or 80% poorer, so I'm that much less of a human being.”

Andrew Schulz

That's a good reality check—to lean into your family and the things that matter.

Chamath Palihapitiya

My point is that if we can get people more involved in the market, it's an incredible thing. But you have to wrap it in guardrails that have nothing to do with the market and everything to do with who you are as a person.

The first step is showing the simplest version of the market's benefit. I think that's compound interest.

Remove the stock market. Don't even talk about it. Just ask, “What happens if I leave money in a savings account earning 4% and don't touch it?”

Jason Calacanis

The rule of 72 was what opened my brain. Whatever percentage you grow per year, divide it into 72. If you're growing 7.2% in the market per year, divide 72 by 7.2, and it takes 10 years to double your money.

If you're growing 7% a month on your investments—say you own a great business that's growing like Facebook—that means you double the number of users or revenue every 10.3 months.

Once you understand that, you can do it quickly. In poker, you know the number of outs. Each card represents roughly a 2% chance because there are 50 of them. They each count for about 2%. You can start doing this in the back of your head.

I had the idea of doing a kids' investment club. I bought the domain Kids Investment Club. I need to prioritize this and find a CEO for it, or do it as a nonprofit.

Kids need to learn this early. Robinhood or someone should make an app where they can invest with a shadow account and their parents approve the trades. We should be learning all of this in high school. What could be more important?

Remove the fear. The reason it's important is what we were saying earlier: Get the American people invested in American success, and you'll find so much more patriotism. We won't nitpick about all the little things that don't affect us.

Andrew Schulz

I can't begin to explain how quickly people would forget about the bathrooms when the S&P is up 15% and they're looking at their portfolio saying, “I don't care where you take a shit.”

Jason Calacanis

Absolutely.

Jason Calacanis

Look at this, Friedberg. Here's your time machine. There's your favorite show.

I don't want to get more emotional, but there he is—your guy Stanley Tucci from Bull.

I think it only made it 1 season.

David Friedberg

One season. Tucci gang in full effect.

I was such a tech nerd growing up, but I never thought about the business of technology. Then the startup boom happened, and you had this show on TV. I thought, “This is so much more exciting than sitting in a lab doing mathematical modeling and pulling my hair out.” I wanted to get after it.

Jason Calacanis

The rest is history.

Andrew Schulz

Have you guys watched Stanley Tucci on HBO, where he tours Italy and cooks?

Jason Calacanis

It's so great.

Andrew Schulz

I've seen him cook on TikTok. He's like, “Today we're going to make frico. We're doing it in the carpaccio base, and we're going to put—” I just want this guy to do ASMR or put me to bed at night.

Jason Calacanis

I have a man crush on Tucci. Tucci's the best. I would like to roll with Tucci. Can you imagine if we went to Italy and just rolled through Italy with Tucci?

Andrew Schulz

I love that guy.

Jason Calacanis

Any dream is possible, J. You could pull it off.

Chamath Palihapitiya

We're all dreaming here.

Jason Calacanis

We're still dreamers, by the way. Everyone should know that.

Andrew Schulz

The thing a lot of people assume about humans is that there's an end to the rainbow. There isn't. You ride the rainbow until you die.

That's it. There's always hope, always dreams, and always more. It doesn't stop. That's what makes it fun.

Jason Calacanis

Are you taking ketamine in Austin? What happened? You just got very philosophical.

Andrew Schulz

I'm a little hungover today. I started drinking at 10 a.m.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Yesterday we went to the Mothership, and we hung out with a couple of your boys, I think—Tony. Tony Hinchcliffe was very nice. We met Shane Gillis; Shane Gillis was there, but he was big-time. There was a mob around him, and we didn't get to meet him.

The guy Bert—I didn't recognize him.

Andrew Schulz

Yeah, he had a shirt on, so I didn't recognize him.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Of course. I was like, “Who is this guy?” Then I saw the body shape and thought, “Yeah, that's probably him.”

When did you start in comedy?

Andrew Schulz

I think it's been almost 18 years.

Chamath Palihapitiya

So you started in your early 20s in New York, going to the Funny Bone or what? Actually, I have a question: How did you get into it, and how did you pay for your life before you made it? Did you have a normal day job?

Andrew Schulz

I lived with my parents for a very long time. My parents lived in the East Village, so I was within walking distance of multiple comedy clubs. It was incredibly convenient.

I worked with my parents for a little bit, then I managed restaurants. I started in Santa Barbara when I was in college. That's where I did my first comedy gig. Then I managed a restaurant out in Brooklyn called Biscuit Barbecue in Park Slope.

After that, I started to make a little money in stand-up. It was enough to buy a Mamoun's Falafel. I had a $5-to-$10-a-day budget. I could eat cereal for breakfast, and I saved some money because I was in school and working at that restaurant.

I had a little pipe dream of opening a bar with a friend of mine in New York. Then I thought, “You know what? I'm just going to spend this money trying to be a comedian. I hope by the time I get rid of the money, I'm making money in comedy.”

It came down to about $700 in my bank account. I was renting out the room where I slept, so I would sleep in a closet in my apartment. It just worked out. I started making a little money, doing a couple of gigs, started touring, and got on a TV show. Then it kind of worked out.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Was there a moment when you broke through? When cancel culture was alive and well, that's when I first encountered you. It was initially on TikTok, and you were on fire because you were saying stuff nobody else was saying. I thought, “How does he even dare to pull this shit off?”

Andrew Schulz

You kind of break and then you go away. I broke on some MTV shows. I was doing all these things on MTV, had my own shows, and all that kind of stuff. Then the MTV thing dried up, and I kind of went away.

Luckily, I was doing a podcast with Charlamagne, and the podcast was very popular. That was providing for me. I was also doing some shows on the road, and people would come out from the podcast.

I really couldn't get any traction in the stand-up world. When I was doing comedy stuff with MTV, it wasn't really in the stand-up world, because my stand-up maybe wasn't of the ilk of what was popular at the time.

I have a lot of empathy for the people who are just working at a network and producing these shows. Their kids are in private school, and they want to tell a crazy joke about women or gay people or whatever it is, but they're thinking, “I'm not trying to get fired. I'm just trying to get my kids into private school. We just got them into Dalton. I don't want to rock the boat.”

I understand the reason. I don't think that they're self-preservationists, exactly, but I didn't want to change my comedy. I thought, “Okay, where can I put it out?”

Luckily, we were putting the podcast out on YouTube, and it was successful. I started putting things out on YouTube, and I started doing these shows. The shows started selling out. It was really weird. The first thing I put out sold out the next weekend.

Chamath Palihapitiya

How many seats were these?

Andrew Schulz

They were 300-seat clubs. You'd do maybe 4 or 5 shows a weekend, and you'd get $50 a seat or $20 a seat?

No. You didn't even get that. You got a flat rate. You'd get $2,000 to do the weekend or something like that. A lot of the time, the comedy clubs would just call people and say, “Hey, do you want to see this guy?” They'd give away the tickets for free.

The old model was basically like a bar: You just get people in, and they sell drinks. The weekend would sell out, then another one would sell out, and I thought, “Holy shit, maybe there's a conversion rate that I didn't see.”

I kept putting stuff out on YouTube. I did a new clip every week for a year on YouTube. Then I put a special on YouTube instead. I learned very quickly that there was this huge white space in the market.

The comedy on TV was corny, and people didn't really like it. Nobody was putting out the “real comedy.” There are different versions of comedy, but I'm being very simplistic. The more edgy stuff I put on YouTube just exploded.

My career really took off from there. Then COVID came around, and I was able to be a little bit more honest because I wasn't tied to a network and worried about maybe losing my job at the network.

Chamath Palihapitiya

I think in America we reward bravery. You just signed a Netflix deal, right? You did this show?

Andrew Schulz

Yeah, we're actually doing the show in Austin tonight. We're going to talk with some folks about this general concept: You start out as an independent, say whatever you want, and you're totally free. It's your own platform and your own voice.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Yeah, and then you sign a deal with another platform. Are you now—did you find it hard to trade the money for whatever might come along with that? Are there restrictions?

Andrew Schulz

There are 2 ways to look at it. I don't want to give myself too much credit, but I think what we did was create another marketplace for comedy that the streaming networks had to compete with.

They were losing comics to YouTube because it was more advantageous to put your comedy up on YouTube, build a following, and then sell tickets on the road. Before, the only way you could really make a big chunk of money on your comedy was if you got one of these fancy specials.

Now people are saying, “I don't even want to do the special. If I put it on YouTube, I can tour for years and really build a fan base.”

The Netflix thing is interesting because Netflix is the second-biggest streaming service on the planet. It's YouTube, then Netflix. If I already have this huge imprint on YouTube, it would only be smart for me to tap into the second-biggest platform and see if there are people there who aren't consuming my content on YouTube.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Back to the guy whose kid is at Dalton: When you go and negotiate a deal with Netflix, are they basically silent, or do they give you notes?

Andrew Schulz

Not a single note. You do whatever you want, and it is what it is. Let it rip.

My last special was supposed to be with Amazon. It was with Amazon, and they had some notes. I bought it back from them and put it out myself.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Wow. Really? You don't really know what you're worth. Walk us through that. What did the notes say?

Andrew Schulz

It was 2 jokes. I get it—they make money selling toilet paper. Why are they going to have this huge—

Chamath Palihapitiya

Toilet paper. Big T. Very powerful lobby.

Andrew Schulz

What's funny is that culture has changed, and I feel like a lot of times the streamers are downstream from culture. I bet now I would be able to put it out on Amazon and be totally fine, but at that time it was maybe very edgy and a volatile time culturally.

I was able to put it out myself, and I sold it myself. It was one of the coolest things ever because I think I may be one of the only comics who actually knows what they're worth.

I’m not risk-averse at all. I actually enjoy risk. It kind of excites me. What excites me more is putting out the piece exactly how I wanted to put it out.

I can't scream about censorship and say comedians should do the jokes they want to do, and then, the second somebody gives me a big check, go, “Whoa, we don't have to do the jokes.” I have to be at least consistent on that.

Culture continued to change, and you have to give Netflix credit, too. They took a lot of hits for putting out comedy that some people thought was maybe a little too offensive. The Dave Chappelle stuff really put them in the crosshairs.

Chamath Palihapitiya

They stood strong.

Andrew Schulz

Absolutely. They stood strong, and seeing that gave me a lot of confidence. I thought, “Okay.” We literally just made the whole thing, and they gave us money. They were not involved at all in the creation.

They're involved in giving us money for it, and then they're involved in the marketing, obviously, their algorithm, and getting it out. That's all Ted Sarandos. He believes in comedy.

He's a huge comedy fan from back in the day. I think people don't realize that about him. You need somebody who actually loves the art and isn't just looking at it as something they can monetize.

There was a term this guy used: You have to find somebody spiritually aligned with you. That's not mumbo jumbo. They truly understand the intention of comedy, so things aren't hurtful or painful to them because they understand what you're intending to do.

Chamath Palihapitiya

They tried to cancel you. What was the joke?

Andrew Schulz

Who? The mobs?

Chamath Palihapitiya

They went after Tony Hinchcliffe twice.

Andrew Schulz

Oh, yeah, and each time he went 10 times bigger.

Chamath Palihapitiya

They came after Chamath on this program. That was the first level-up. We got 3 times the audience after they tried to cancel Chamath.

Andrew Schulz

The White House released a statement.

It doesn't really work when you have core fans who believe in you. I feel like you guys have probably built that. There are people who are very grateful for the information that you give them.

When they try to paint you in a certain light, you actually have 100 hours of time with those people. They know you to be more than that one statement you've said. They're not as concerned about the thing you said that maybe was taken out of context or offended people.

I think the biggest thing people miss about comedians is that you're allowed to be offended by the joke I say. You're allowed to react however the fuck you want to react to it. You had your life, you went through some crazy shit, maybe you were bullied as a kid, and you don't want other people to potentially have those feelings.

You see a joke that could elicit those feelings, and you're like, “I want to protect them from that.” That's kind of noble. I'm cool with that. If you tell me you don't like me teasing you, I'm not going to tease you personally ever again. I want you to feel good.

That doesn't mean I won't continue to make those jokes somewhere else. I think my shows have the most diverse audience in comedy history. You come out to one of my shows, and you can't tell me that people don't like these jokes.

I try very hard—if I'm curious about your culture, you'll know it through the jokes. It's not some little shit. I'll try to dive deep and even surprise you about something I might know.

In that way, people start to feel seen. They don't feel bullied; they actually feel represented. They're excited about it.

Chamath Palihapitiya

You said something at the beginning that I thought was really interesting: You're a great comedian, and great comedians are great observers of culture. Can you just observe the cultural moment for us? We talk about it a lot, but I want you to put a point on it. Where are we? Where's America? What the hell is going on?

Andrew Schulz

There's an all-time-low confidence in institutions and low confidence in information. There's an obsession with conspiracy because it's 2-fold.

One, it's the easiest way for dumb people to feel smart. When you know something no one else knows and get to share it with people, there's that dopamine hit: “I bet you didn't know this happened.”

Those things thrive in times when there isn't real transparency. I think everybody's looking for answers, and nothing is exactly how it seems. The only way to restore that confidence is brutal transparency. You have to be really honest with people and say, “This is what it is.”

We're Americans. We're proud people, so we can get through whatever you say, but you have to tell it to us as it is. I think we're assessing relationships right now.

When the economy is rough, you're seeing all the Jewish stuff right now. Obviously, with the crazy—

Most people have never met a Jewish person. Most Americans have no clue what a Jewish person is outside of Curb Your Enthusiasm or Seinfeld. They don't know what it is.

They think Jews are Upper East Side New Yorkers. They think it's either Seinfeld or Hasidic. They don't even know what a Sephardic Jew is. They don't know what an African Jew or a Moroccan Jew is. They have no clue what that is, and they shouldn't. They're like, “How many Jews are there?” There are more people from L.A. than there are Jews.

It's a very small population. I think there's a little bit of a disconnect. I could be off, but I think there's an ambient feeling toward Jews from people who don't know Jews, and the stereotypes probably aren't the best.

As long as the economy is good, everybody's cool. They're like, “They're successful, they stick together, they own businesses,” whatever. Then eggs get expensive, you're behind on your rent, you don't feel hope, and you start asking, “Why do they have all that? What are they about? Why are they separatists?”

I'm here praying and trying to get everybody to go to heaven, and they just have their own thing. It's very easy for them to become this other group.

Then you extrapolate that with what's happening with Palestine and Israel, and you get people assessing the relationship between America and another country. You saw America become very uninterested in Ukraine quickly.

The second the economy goes down, we start asking, “What do they do for us? Why are we giving them this?” They're starting to ask similar questions about Israel. There are a lot of antisemites jumping on it and muddying the whole thing, saying, “Do they control the government? Do they do this?”

Every conspiracy is tied together, by the way.

Chamath Palihapitiya

You're speaking a profound secret that many administrations and governments have known for a long time. I think this is where some of the mistrust comes from.

I talked about this a couple of months ago, but the most incredible stock market was actually under Biden. The most money printed was under Biden. The largest cumulative total budget deficits were under Biden. The most short-term refinancing of debt was under Biden.

Part of what you can explain is that if you keep the signals that everything is healthy or up, you're allowed to prop up all of these other things that would get very quickly repriced. When you take the gas out of the market and all these other markets, and suddenly the price of energy is up, the price of this is up, and the price of that is up, then you start to question, “Hold on a second. Why are all of these things as expensive as they are?”

That's the above-the-line, below-the-line conversation that we've tried to have several times on this pod, Jason.

Andrew Schulz

You have to meet people where they feel in order to communicate with them. When people are assessing America's relationship with Israel, they hear these sound bites like, “That's our closest ally,” and then they ask, “What does that mean?”

Explain to them what that means. Explain the importance of that relationship and how it's beneficial to Americans. If you don't explain it and just say, “Be quiet,” then they start looking at these lunatics on Twitter and asking, “Wait a minute, is that true?”

Then they're down the conspiracy hall. You have to explain these relationships. I don't know what the minerals deal was about with Ukraine, but I know that, for a second, some Americans heard, “We're going to get some minerals out of that.” They thought, “All right, minerals sound good. They're going to pay us back.”

It's that simplistic. That kind of communication is important, and it will help people understand these relationships, which I imagine are very important. I'm not privy to all the geopolitical decisions that are going on.

Who knows? Intelligence from Israel could have thwarted 20 more 9/11s. Maybe you can't say that because you would expose the intelligence operatives you have in the field, but I think it would be helpful for everyday Americans to understand the value of that relationship.

Then, when you see something crazy on Twitter, you can go, “Okay, you're just an antisemite looking for a justification for your hate.”

Chamath Palihapitiya

This is your point about Trump. Sometimes he has these takes—

We'll see you later, bro. Take care, David.

David Friedberg

Take care.

Chamath Palihapitiya

This is the point: There's going to be a conspiracy theory about that right now. We were talking about Israel, and he's like the one Jewish guy left. Way to go. This is how it starts, David. You drove them out.

Andrew Schulz

When you said Trump is a masterful communicator, Biden gave all these weapons to Ukraine under the auspices of what's called a Lend-Lease. They have to pay them back, but Biden never communicated that well.

Then Trump comes out and says, “You know what? We gave them $180 billion. They're going to give us $500 billion back. We're making a 42% compounded return.”

Chamath Palihapitiya

Sounds good to me. It's better than anything that's ever happened.

Chamath, as we wrap here, any final thoughts? What do you think about Trump, how he's doing, and what he's doing so far? And what do you think about Elon and DOGE?

Andrew Schulz

Trump and what he's doing, how he's doing so far—I don't know. I don't know if I can assess it right away. Maybe I'm giving him a little bit longer landing strip than other people because I have a little more hope or optimism.

If you don't like the guy, you're going to see how horrible this is immediately. I'm going to give him a little more leeway to see what happens. If it doesn't work out and it's really horrible, I'll be the first person to call it out.

He's in power, so we should definitely check the people in power. I'm hoping that these actions in the short term are beneficial in the long term. Is everything going to work out? No.

DOGE—I’m so depressed about it. Not depressed per se, but I'm bummed because I don't think there's any American who's pro-waste, inefficiency, and bloat. This should be a bipartisan issue.

All Americans should be coming together and saying, “Oh my God, the DMV is going to get better. This sounds awesome.” I have a lot of respect for Elon, but sometimes on Twitter he's twisting the knife a little bit.

You don't need to twist the knife. We all want this. It's something we can come together as a country to support. This sounds great. Don't twist it—just let it be. Show your wins. When you do something wrong, we can acknowledge that what we did was wrong, and we'll respect that.

It bums me out that this has become so partisan. I do understand that there are a lot of people on the left who are making it partisan as well. They're weaponizing it.

There was a crazy clip between Joe Rogan and Elon where Rogan asked, “How does all this go down, actually?” Elon said, “I can't really speak about the corruption because I'm afraid it would get me assassinated.”

It was the weirdest 2-minute clip. Then they just left it and moved on. My brain was like, “What are they talking about? What must be going on there?”

Chamath Palihapitiya

There's a lot of money going out the door.

Andrew Schulz

Who's killing Elon? If we're going to have World War III, don't you want the guy who has the rockets to go to Mars on your side?

Chamath Palihapitiya

Yeah, you want the super-genius on your side, for sure.

Andrew Schulz

Another thing that's really interesting to me is that people keep asking, “What's Elon's play? What is he doing here? Is he actually going to take over?”

Elon has been dealing with local government for so long, trying to push things through. He's not an American citizen, so he cannot be president. He is at the highest position he will ever be in his lifetime in America. You can't get higher than being the right hand of the president, since you're not from America and can't be president.

I think he's going to behave really well because now he's in the most powerful position he will ever be in. If you want to talk about power plays, you have to watch out for J.D. Vance.

That guy has high emotional intelligence. That's somebody I would be keeping my eye on if I were Trump.

Elon is going to be your best friend, because it's only downhill if he pisses Trump off.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Interesting. Interesting little Manchurian candidate for J.D.

Andrew Schulz

No, no, no. I'm not saying he's going to do anything bad, but don't treat him lightly. Don't sleep on J.D.

New Yorkers do this all the time. We hear someone with a Southern accent and think they're a goofball. That guy went from a broken home in Appalachia to Yale and then became vice president. He's 40—he's your age.

Chamath Palihapitiya

He called Trump Hitler or something, and ended up as his vice president. He said, “I'm a Never Trump guy.”

Andrew Schulz

To say that he's not emotionally intelligent is to say he doesn't know how to manage up, or whatever that term is. He's savvy. Keep an eye on him.

Jason Calacanis

Andrew Schulz is playing at the Funny Bone on April 16th and 17th. He'll be at Chuckles on the 20th. Two-drink minimum. You know where to find him. Incredible Netflix special. Who do you think is the funniest, if you had to take a wild stab? Me, Jason, or Friedberg?

Andrew Schulz

Okay, so you can say me. Jason is the most naturally inclined to be funny. He's probably the funniest to be around.

Chamath will probably get the biggest laughs when he says something funny because he's not asking for much. He'll just say something that's like a dart, and it'll hit you. You'll be like, “Oh.”

David will structure something really funny, and you'll be like, “That was clever. I see how you did that.”

David Friedberg

I was actually funny myself when I was an astrophysicist. I did Summer Stock.

Andrew Schulz

That would be my take. If we're off the pod, I think Chamath says some wild shit that everybody goes, “What the fuck?” I think you say that the most.

Chamath Palihapitiya

There you go. Andrew Schulz picks me. They have it, Mom. I would like to clip that.

I like the way Schulz pronounces it, but I may go with Chamath. I like that—“Cham-ch-ch.”

Andrew Schulz

Chamath is too—it's too used, actually. We should go to a different pronunciation.

Chamath Palihapitiya

I love “Chamoth.” Chamoth is just so—

Andrew Schulz

It's tough with the names from over there. My podcast co-host is Akaash. Everybody calls him “Akash” now, but his name is spelled with 2 A's next to each other, so it's “Akaash.” It is tricky.

His parents specifically picked a name they thought Americans would be able to pronounce. They calculated that, and they were wrong.

That's a beautiful thing for a kid. They could have named him John or Steve if they wanted to. They had to keep it real, though.

Chamath Palihapitiya

When I could read and write English well—it was my second language—and I saw my name written out, I was like, “What the fuck did they do to me here?”

My middle name has about 15 other letters. Name a name that has “math” in it. They knew what they wanted.

Andrew Schulz

Yes. They were like, “If you can pronounce this, you can solve the Pythagorean theorem.”

Chamath Palihapitiya

This is harder than the SAT. Be an engineer.

Andrew Schulz

I'm so proud of him. He's going to figure it out.

Chamath Palihapitiya

Andrew, is it racist if I do an Indian impersonation? I know I can do Italian and Irish, but can I do Indian?

Andrew Schulz

No, it's funny, bro. I don't think so. I think it's about the intent.

Actually, I don't even think it's the intent. If you say certain things—if you say “B,” for example—that's my love. If you say little things that are more than just the sound, then it becomes different.

But if you tap into the culture to let them know, “Hey, I didn't learn this from The Simpsons. I learned it from my buddy's family,” then I think you'll see Indian and Sri Lankan people say, “Oh, he got it. He's got friends. He knows.”

Chamath Palihapitiya

I'm going to wait until I make my move to comedian. I'm going to save it for when I get my Kill Tony set.

Andrew Schulz

What's your Korean act? Can you do that? Can we go through it?

Chamath Palihapitiya

I can go Korean because my wife's Korean. I'll tell you: My father-in-law is an industrialist in China. I went there and said, “Hey, listen, I'd like to marry your daughter.”

He said, “Okay. 2 conditions.”

I said, “Okay.”

He said, “Do it fast,” and he poked me so hard—a reinforced poke with his finger—on my shoulder. I got a bruise.

I said, “What's the second thing?”

He said, “No refunds.”

I had to marry her within a year because he knew. He had 4 daughters, and he was like, “Listen, I have to move inventory.”

Andrew Schulz

I love it.

Chamath Palihapitiya

I married the oldest daughter. None of the other daughters could get married until I married my wife, which was the greatest thing I ever did. We have 3 beautiful kids. You know how it is.

Good luck. You're going to have a second and third, Schulz. I know you've got some.

Andrew Schulz

I hope so, man. 3 is the right number.

Chamath Palihapitiya

If you want to do half-Elon, you can go with the Chamath plan. He's on 6 or 7.

Jason Calacanis

I'm on 5, bro. I'm on 5.

Andrew Schulz

5.

Jason Calacanis

Well, anything's possible. Friedberg's on 4.

Chamath Palihapitiya

I'm on 3. I think 3 is the right number.

Andrew Schulz

I'm going to catch up, boys.

Fixing the American Dream with Andrew Schulz | BidClub