welcome to the to set dad podcast, will re interviewed dads to discuss their journeys of intentional fatherhood while doing work they care about and living a life purpose. I'm your host, Mike Suiting. Today I have cereal Angel investor and author Jason Calkins. Now the reason I wanted to help James from the show is because he's a pretty prominent figure in Silicon Valley and wanted to get his take on what the future holds for jobs, parenting, education, that sort of thing to hear some insights directly from Silicon Valley. And so he recently wrote a book called Angel Angel Investing and Seeing Future Trends. So this'll was good. Interview went a little bit long. That kind of meandered, but it was very interesting to hear Jason's perspective and I think really insightful to what things we can do to help our kids and our role as father. So listen up. Today on the show of Jason Cal, canIs who excited have on he is.

I mean, there's a whole laundry list of things to say about Jason, but he is a serial entrepreneur, I think first and foremost and also author Angel Investor, of which he wrote about in his latest book, Angel. I think How to turn 100,000 to 100 Million or Something Like That is the title subtitle of the book. But, um, very prolific guy in Silicon Valley and And the reason I wanted to have you on Jason is that as an angel investor, you're always looking to the future and what the future holds. And my podcasts all about fatherhood, especially with people that air founders and doing amazing things. And so I just wanted to say Thank you so much for being on the show and taking the time today.

Well, anybody who's listening, who's the father understands that this is the most important shop title we have, right, and it's our biggest investment. So I think there's a lot of analogies, and I'm looking forward to our discussion about the greatest investment we can make, which is our kids.

Yes, so tell me about the book. Let's maybe let's start there because you've had quite a success already with the book I know and it what's interesting to me about it is it's a culmination of the whole career's worth of angel investing. I mean, you've invested in uber Tesla. A bunch of other big name now big name companies Don't tell me a little about the writing process book and the contents A little bit for the audience.

Yes. So the book was essentially my way of sharing how I went from, you know, Rex to riches essential. He or in this case, from riches toe. You know, mega rich is I, uh I had been an entrepreneur and I was a good entrepreneur. Um, I had stole the blogging company and made a bunch of money when blogging was just starting in. Before that, I had a publication, a physical print publication called Silicon Alley Reporter, and had the opportunity to sell that one for 20 million. And I blew it and didn't sell it. And then the market crashed.

So I've got a lot of wounds, have made a lot of mistakes in One of the things I've learned at the age of 46 is that people tend to not remember them steaks, and they tend to who rally around your victories. It's a nice it's a nice aspect to human nature, I think, in a pretty nasty, crazy environment that we live in right now. Pretty toxic environment in the world. Um, largely do it. I think, without getting into politics, you know, the current political climate. I think it's lead things to be very nasty and dialogue. So I think one of the reasons why podcasts like we both do our so,

um, sought after and having such a huge renaissance is because people would like to have meaningful discussions that are not screaming matches on Twitter, you know, and we would like to hear each other out. So I've gotten very lucky 789 times a. This point, and I have been approached to read a lot of books about things that I've done in my life because I've always been in technology and I've always been, you know, six or 12 or 18 months ahead of the curve. And to be truthful in the Internet industry, if you're 6 12 or 18 months of the curve of something that's gonna be big, it might as well you might as well have 10 PhDs, you know, in it it literally knowing how the Internet works in 1993 94 95 or knowing how online service has worked in the mid eighties. You just put your so far ahead of everybody else. And if you know about crypto currency today or you know about augmented reality,

it's the same thing. You're just six months ahead of the curve. When it comes to Angel investing, there are certainly, you know, half dozen or dozen people who have more experience than me. The interesting thing is, none of them have chosen to written a book, So I'm the first successful angel, really, to write a book about it. I mean, there's been one or two technical playbooks about howthe. Legal documentation works in angel investing, but they tend to be written by people who have no success or modest success. You know,

at the, um, at the fringes of angel investing, but never by somebody who is in the heart of Silicon Valley, who had six unicorns. And that's the That's the track record that got me the ability to write the book with Harper Collins, and it's doing really well, and the book is meant to be extremely candid. It is no guarantee you're gonna win. There's a significant chance you're gonna lose, but I thought it's worth writing so that people understand how great wealth is created in the world. Then people don't understand that it's a mystery. It was certainly a mystery to me. Um, when I was growing up, I had no idea how wealth was created,

and I learned it over decades. And the book is my way of just paying it forward and sharing it. Ah, book for anybody who is, um, successful at their craft, a book is a true opportunity. Cost. Because you, if you were a director of movies to write a book for a year or six months or 18 months about making movies, you just cost yourself making a movie or two on, and for me it costs me making another 50 angel investments. But I felt like it was a good pause for me to go. You know what? If I write this book, I think it'll help a lot of people, and that's really honestly why I did it

Now. That's really cool, I think, and I think it is from what I've seen it, you know, there are a lot of people were reading it, especially younger people that air their new word angel investing or that our new or just attack in general, and I think that's pretty exciting. T kind of tell the story of your journey and then say Okay, here's kind of how Here's the nuggets of wisdom I can pass down, and obviously that's gonna proliferate into, you know, the next generation, if you will. Um,

speaking of what is really designed for founders to Yeah, that's the interesting. I would say eight or nine out of 10 people reading it are actually founders.

Okay, so speak to that a little bit then they're seeing, you know, they're the ones that actually found in the company's not investing in the company's, but those principles, you know, how do they carry that into their companies and seeing ahead of what? What's coming?

Well, it's super easy for somebody who's a founder to identify who Angel investors are today. You know, there's different databases out there. You have something like, um, angel list or crunch base or matter. Mark the other, the investors. Finding them is not the problem anymore, but understanding what makes them tick, how they make decisions and what they're going through. In other words, having empathy for them um, and understanding the other side of the table. Um, those are the things that most founders don't take into account.

So, as a very small example, you know, founders tend to paint the rosiest picture possible. Sometimes they do that at the expense of the truth is a kind way of putting it. In other words, you know, out of, ah, 100 investments, I do due diligence on that. I'm really seriously considering investing in two or 3%. Don't make it through the due diligence process because specifically of lying. And ah, you know I am. The number is probably higher and probably don't catch some people in lives.

And so if 5% of people went out of 20 or maybe 10% are lying about the state of their business, this is a very bad way Thio operate in the world because the cost of being caught in a lie is great. And so I counsel people in the book by just showing deals that blew up because of just, you know, I could say fraudulent behavior. But in most cases, it's naivete and desperation to paint the best picture. If you're an angel investor, the opportunity is investing in companies that have yet to break out. In other words, investing in potential. You don't have the expectation that things are perfect. Yet founders think, Oh my God, if I have you know, out of the 10 months of data I have,

if three of the months or down and seven are up, something's wrong. I have to figure out a way to prop up those three months is like, No, you don't. It could be seasonality. You could be bad luck. It could be a tweak in an algorithm in the APP store or Google's ups. You know, it could be any number of reasons it could be. One bad review is costing you 1/3 of your users. You gotta fix that. So it's a lot in there for people, and it's, um, one of the great concerns I have.

Um, and one of the reasons I wrote the book is I'm very concerned about the future of jobs and the future of wealth creation. When you and I were growing up, I get the sense where both Gen Xers you correct me if I'm wrong if you're a millennial, but I think you're a gen Xer

lolo into the millennial. Yeah, so in between there,

in between the Well, if I'm gonna put you in the does it, I put your writing. But if there's a matter for either category, the fact it we were both trained to whether you're, uh you know, uh, early millennial or a late gen Xer We were all trained. That wealth is created largely by getting a great job, being frugal and owning a home, paying down your home, continuing to be frugal. And then maybe buying a second home and renting it out or having a you know, to family residents, we rent something out and you maybe start collecting some rent. And maybe when you die, you have a house or two.

Or maybe you hit the home run and have five houses for three houses and some 401 K and you die with a 1,000,000 or $5 million in the bank account. The fact is, when our parents bought their homes, I discussed it with my family and they paid 45,000 for their brownstone in Brooklyn. In marriage? Yeah, and that was 1977. I was seven years old when they moved there and we went to public school. So there wasn't a cool school expense, uh, up until high school and there was some minor Catholic school expense for high school. Ah, and my mom was making probably $25,000. Is a nurse, maybe 30 of my dad's making 20 25 grand is a bartender. Sure,

they're combined. Income was about one x the cost of the home. In other words, you know, if they saved 10 or if they put 10% of their income every year towards their home, they'll be done in 10 years. They would own it outright. Ah, they put 5% or they don't. And 20 years now, people with two white college. Others are blue collar jobs, obviously two people with white collar jobs. They were blue collar jobs might make 75 K each today 50 to 75 cage, so they might be in the 102 150 k range and even to blue collar people making 150 make 300,000. If you bought that same brownstone,

same brownstone is now worth 1.2 million. It would wind up being four times to white collar people salary, and it would wind up being almost 10 times blue collar people's combined household income. So it just gives you an idea of how that hack that way to make money is gone. So how is money gonna be created? Well, I can tell you also that 30 million jobs in retail and driving are going to slowly, um, or violently evaporate on dhe. That's the question nobody can really answer candidly. I think it's going to be closer to rapidly than slowly. And you can see that in the fact that when people fought for a higher minimum wage, which does not seem like an unreasonable request, I mean, it's not gone up. It sparked a flurry of startups that I saw here in Silicon Valley startups that would get rid of cashiers as one example.

So cashiers fight for $15 an hour in ah, you know, which is a living wage. Ah, in a city of barely living wage, in fact, in a lot of cities, and that then motivated those same companies to invest in kiosks. So if you go to McDonald's in San Francisco on a number of locations. The idea that you'll order from a register from a person a cashier is just going away. I think Panera bread got rid of all of them. So there'll be no more cashiers, just like I don't know. The last time you went through a tollbooth and actually said hi to a person and handed in front box but those jobs in a long time. But I specifically remember waving and talking to those people being fascinated by the one who went over the Verrazano Bridge. Um and,

you know, fascinated by the line. Now they're literally not only are they using E z pass, they're ripping out the booths because they know the boots will never exist. And even if you don't have an easy path, they just take a picture of your license plate and send you a bill. So what? All of this means we're gonna live in a really horribly ah, beautiful and horrible Ah, future. The beautiful part about it is people would have to sit in a toll booth or make you, ah, coffee and sit there for 12 hours or 10 hours making coffee or driving a truck 12 hours a day until you're exhausted and sleeping in the back of a truck and being under massive pressure that leads to people having massive anxiety, heart attacks and even, you know, taking stimulants to stay awake.

Crises that we see they're going to go away because robots will do that horrible, arduous work. The downside is, what are those people going to do every day and what will they find? King. You know, you could you could I feel bad for a person working in tow Booth. I think that's a little bit. Or you can feel bad for a bartender or a barista or whoever you want to feel bad for, because of how hard the work are. But I've done jobs like that, and I took pride in those jobs, and my parents did jobs like that, and I know they took pride in it. So you know we have. We're at a crossroads,

and our kids are going to live in a world that flips three times in their lifetime, and our lives are flipping once in our lifetime, the introduction of the Internet and maybe a I. So arguably twice. I think in our lifetime we're gonna see the world flip and the Internet has changed everything. And a I and robotics gonna change everything. Our kids, they're gonna go through a biology revolution and implants and all kinds of other interesting revolutions. And so how do you prepare

your kids for that? Exactly? How do you know what I'm doing? What do you think? That? Because the reason I'm curious about that Jason's because the things that you're saying, So I'm in. I mean, actually Michigan. So I'm in the Midwest, so we're a little bit behind, obviously, the trends we're going on in Silicon Valley, but yet that is definitely on the horizon. So you as an angel, investor insider intact, I would say.

And in Silicon Valley, probably at the at the very bleeding edge of all those things, simply knowledge of all those things. And so I'm really interested in saying like, Okay, what's the conversation? How do we pray? A prepare entire generation for a three times, four times, five times world flip that they're gonna have because the traditional model of education, or even things that they're experiencing are built for the previous. You know that the model you were talking about with your parents even you know that buying the house and the the just doing the blue collar job or just, you know, the jobs exist today. But if I guess what has to change to adapt to that new future that you're describing,

so I believe the education system will not serve them well. Um, and although I think socialization and some basic skills that you learn at school reading, writing, arithmetic, socializing, um, are all things that you know you can't go wrong with knowing how to do math and knowing how to read it. It's kind of a precursor to a lot of things. Um, I don't think the school systems particularly served us well, our generation gen X because I see a lot of 40 year old 50 year old contemporaries of mine who didn't get into the technology business who are now going, Where's my cells job coming from or what am I supposed to do now? And I think they're gonna have a hard time and even hear about ageism, Um, and people being aged out in Silicon Valley because they're a 50 year old programmer and they don't have the ability to work the hours or, you know,

in certain people's minds there not a sufficient or they don't know the skills, whatever it is. You know, I'm not saying I agree with any of that, but that is the complaint that you hear. So I have taken it upon myself to teach. My daughters have a seven year old and have two identical twin 16 year olds, and I'm no expert on parenting. But I am an expert on entrepreneurship, and I am an expert on making your own way in the world. And with my seven year old, I take her to my incubator and she sits in a doctor about angel investing. What I d'oh! And I told her in the past year she has the choice to go to college, or she has the choice to open a business with her dad, and she can choose what she wants to spend that money on.

And here are the pros to college, and here are the pros to starting your own business, and she can take the money and do whatever she wants. I mean, is that the age of seven? I'm having this conversation with her, and she's very fascinated by business. Obviously, Um, and if she wants to be an artist, that's fine, too. She happens to have a dad who can afford to, you know, underwrite that. So she's lucky. My tag, couldn't you? I didn't have that privilege. My dad didn't have the belly to underwrite.

Um, you know, you have artist aspirations, Jason.

You know, it's interesting. You say that, Um, I it was never something presented to me as an option then. So I I Sometimes I listen to Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits play, you know, telegraph road or private investigations for Sultans of Swing ago. How I would have loved to have been able to play the guitar like that. And in writing the book, people have mentioned, you know, I don't know, one out of three rent mansions in the Amazon reviews which have been just humbling, say that I have this incredible writing style and that people can't put the book down and it's must read, and they just love the writing style ago. Cheese.

Maybe I could've been a writer that was never presented to me. Responsibility was presented to me as a possibility was cop fireman. Maybe, if you get your together? Uh, I'm sorry

I don't have this for you tonight. We can bleep it out.

Okay, Sugar together. And you get your butt in gear. Maybe you could wind up being a lawyer or, you know, a stockbroker. And so I think the expectations were set really low for me. And I think that did, you know, put me in a position where I just went with what I knew, which happen to be computer. So I got lucky that that was the thing. Um, so we'll see whatever she wants to do, but, um, she's been giving her an allowance.

So if she gets the newspaper from the driveway on Sundays, when I get the New York Times and print, if she brings up packages or she does some other tasks around the house, there's a dollar available. Ah, and, ah, she's staying and inches babysat some neighbors birds, and they're super nice. And give her, like, 10 or 20 bucks a day for doing that, which is ridiculous. But ah, I told her if she wants to open this ice cream store, she loves ice cream.

We will get her an ice cream machine which literally arrived yesterday when she had $300 savings and we bought the $300 savings ice cream. Now, if she can sell Ah, 50 pints of ice cream to our family and friends and she's keeping a book with the costs so she'll know her cost of good, she'll know what she can sell it for. And she's gonna We've been doing the research phase, which has been wonderful, going to the top ice cream stores and trying the flavors and writing notes about which flavors people seem to be enjoying. So she's learning market research, you know, learn cost of goods and unit economics. And she'll learn marketing when she starts selling this to people. And she's gonna learn customer support and success and feedback when they give her feedback on what flavors they like. And then I told her literally, that will open a pop up store, Um,

or a, uh, well, goto a farmer's market and sell her ice cream. And ah, then if that works out, maybe when she's 10 years old and my twins or five will open a little ice cream store in our little town in the peninsula, and she can have her own ice cream store at the age of 10 and worked there after school. No, I have. I have my own plan. I don't think anything she's learning in school would ever allow for that level of, you know, focus. And it will give her a sick advantage over her contemporaries. And that's really what life's about us.

You know, you gotta have an edge because you know it. You know, people don't want to believe that the world's a zero sum game And I can tell you, man, it is largely a zero sum

game. So what do you do? You see, I think that's interesting. You know, what you're doing is trying to give your daughter RIA world knowledge and saying this is the theory, you know, maybe reading in school. But here, this is how the world actually works. So you're giving her that edge and that, I guess, advanced knowledge that maybe she would pick up down the road. Is that do you see? Um, those trends in most of the people in in your that you're dealing with, you know,

the entrepreneurs that are doing that with their kids, you know I tried to. That was with my Children to, um But what are you some of the trends even like in the schools that you're seeing that maybe your daughter goes to that are trying to prepare, You know her for the next generation. Whether that's, you know, you know, because they talk about, you know, information isn't, You know, you won't need to be recall, You know, just the rote memorization and things like that. It's like,

it's more of those things that you're describing, which is the business acumen, or even the ability come up with new ideas and logic and reasoning. What do you see in trends in that way? That air changing the actual schooling and may is a happening in Silicon Valley? Is that our people working on that? I mean, what do you see in those areas?

You know what? Um, I see a lot of Ah, I see a lot of people focused on exactly the wrong thing, which is status in competition. And there, literally in Silicon Valley in the Bay Area, um, obsessed with their kids getting into college is they're obsessed with them taking Ap courses there, except obsessed with them hitting math achievement that is unhealthy. And I think they're obsessed with being in the best schools and having their kids alongside other you know, highly affluent people. So, literally, where do the founders of this $1,000,000,000 or $100 billion companies kids go? I need to go there. So there's a lot of shallow trying to keep up with the Joneses,

and I looked at a bunch of schools that were for gifted kids. My daughter happens to have a pretty high I Q. In some areas, and then she's got learning challenges in some other she'd look is off the charts on Verbal, which makes answer. Dancer, writer and, uh, her mom went to an Ivy League school, so we talked to her. We know in a certain way, and we explain what words are using our Amazon. Alexa, that is a game changer in terms of vocabulary. So I really I come. I came up with a whole technique which we could get into if you're if you're interested about verbal ability and just making that a focus because I do,

then communication and verbal ability is something that will help kids get through this next challenging environment, the ability toe, actually, you know, indicate that right? One of the great skills, communication and leadership skills. So you know, I'm focusing on that. But I mean, I watch these kids and it's really heartbreaking here. Like there's a very high suicide rate amongst high school kids in Palo Alto. It's not talked about, but I think we could talk about it candidly here because this is not a show for kids, but they actually don't like to talk about the Palo Alto suicide problem. Um,

because of something called induced suicide. Um, but or like a cluster of suicide, it turns out, when you write about suicide, more people, um, well, consider it as an option. And, um, Palo Alto High schools are so competitive. Ah, that they lead the country in suicide death rates. Now just let that sink in for a second. Palo Alto is a place where you know,

Facebook, Google, Apple employees live. They are wildly successful, and their parents were wildly successful and kids air jumping in front of trains to the point at which, from what I've read, they are putting guards at the train stations to make sure kids don't jump in front of the trains. This is amongst the most disturbing things I've ever heard. And when you look at it, it all is, um, around a peer pressure to get into, um, these incredible schools. So, um,

Thio lead from one of the most affluent places in the country to lead in the suicide rate of Children is should give pause to the parents in this community. I'm not in Palo Alto, but I'm in the surrounding area. And this were literally talking about a place where homes go for $2000 a square foot. The average home in Palo Alto might be $4,000,005 million which would be in any other community, the most expensive, you know, mansion and compound. You know, if you were outside of the Bay Area in New York City and you know, even Los Angeles would be a pretty ridiculous place. Ooh, people are really trying to figure this out, and you can look up Palo Alto suicide rates. And, um,

it's just I'm looking at a story right down From 2003 to 2015 Palo Alto's youth suicide rate per 100,000 people was 14.1. And ah, those are much higher than the country rate of 5.4 deaths per 100,000. So they're literally triple Ah. San Jose saw the most youth suicides during that period of 113. Young San Jose residents died by suicide and the city or elsewhere. So, you know, 19 young Powell to residents died by suicide in the city. It's just unbelievable that, um, this number of young people are killing themselves, and it literally is over competition in school, according to what I've read, Um, and they're really trying to.

The problem is so bad that they're trying to get the media to not cover it, because it's so difficult for people to grok or understand that they just don't want to inspire more of it. And I understand that. But again, I try not to talk about this issue too much on my podcast or other places. But I feel like this is a safe space or the a proper place to talk about the show is about parenting. And so you know, why is this? Yeah, it's ah, it's just incomprehensible. And it's the parent's fault. Um in my mind when this we have something that's statistically significant, it's the Parentsfault, and I'm not saying any parent is responsible for their own child's suicide. I think collectively the parents are responsible,

though, because they put an emphasis on If you don't get into Stanford, if you don't get into Harvard, you know, not good enough and they're all just on this road to nowhere. And I What I always tell parents who are freaking out about where their kids go to school. I remind them like I'm a kid from Brooklyn who went to public school. I went to see very in high school for private. I went to Fordham. I had a three year G p A. I think, Ah, I was a 71 three year student that's very in high school, like

literally a 70 fun out of 100

And I said, You know, a lot of people who work for me went to Ivy League schools and I have a large amount. I have a significantly have significantly more success than most of the people I meet from Harvard and I went to Fordham and I barely got through that. I did that at night there was not this correlation between, uh the correlation between success in the New World order and this random world and going to an Ivy League school is just That's gonna break, I believe. And certainly happiness is already broken. And the people who are gonna be happy in life are the ones who feel a sense of mastery, that they have control over their destiny and that they don't need to be better at the f A tease or have gone to a better school on the person next to them. They should judge themselves by the work they produce in the world, how aligned that work is with their own interest and to the wake up every day with a sense of joy that they get to participate in some something purposeful that matters to them. And if that's playing guitar like Mark Knopfler or writing books like you know, Stephen King, or painting or doing math or working at NASA or Tesla or uber or wherever you wanna work or opening an ice cream store. All of these things are valid, But we're living in a time where,

because of things that instagram and peer pressure. Everybody thinks they need to live this Kardashian lifestyle. The Kardashians are not Ah, happy family or a family to aspire to be anything like it's disgusting, dysfunctional representation of a family. And I don't know how much of it's really made up, but you have a group of young kids You think I need to be like these vapid, you know, fame, balls that are just blaming out in the world. And we're sending very weird messages to our Children successes. Either being this m I t you know, perfect s a T Stanford track or being the Kardashians. And having you know so many likes on Instagram, This is not what life is about. And certainly for women.

Um, and young girls, they're pushing him toward either this, you know, sexualized adulthood very early, where they have to be posting their pictures of Coachella and Snapchat and their self worth comes from their outfit and their lipstick and how whatever body modifications they're doing and not from the work they produce in the world or how deep their friendships are and how meaningful their pursuits are in life. And I'm going to raise my three daughters to be bosses, not bossy, but to be bosses like Cheryl Sandberg says. I want my daughters to feel like they can accomplish anything, to know what it is that motivates them and what they would enjoy to d'oh and just makes them super, super confident in their ability. Because the stuff in school is just, it's foundational and it's great. I think people rely a little too much on the school and not enough on themselves. So I'm just making massive investments now in watching what they're interested in and then trying to based on what they show interest in,

which is a Reggio style of education, which my wife, who's brilliant, you know, taught me about, You know, she taught me about all the different educational things. She just reads all the books, and then I draft off of her knowledge of it. But Reggio Emilia, if you look it up, it's kind of like a Montessori philosophy, and it basis is if you look at what the kids interested in, they show an interest in orcas. Okay, well,

let's teach them math or science or projects that are based upon orcas B and then make the whole theme of the year orcas and then culminate the year on going and seeing an orca on a $20 boat crews out of San Diego. And if you can't afford to do that, maybe studying, ah, workers online by watching documentaries and you know, just going all in on a Workers because now they learned, Oh my God, the pursuit of knowledge about something you're passionate about that could be so meaningful to them. And they get this incredible reward of going deep on a subject, right? But you know the skill. I try to explain to the founders who I work with write because I basically take over the parenting role, right? In some cases, when you're the angel you get looked at as a parental figure, somebody with a mentorship figures not a mentor is not exactly apparent,

but it's not. It's pretty close in many ways, and, you know, it just sat down at lunch yesterday with the group of three of my founders were incredibly successful. They said, Okay, where do you guys want to be in five years? What does success look? You have offers to buy their company, and I said, Okay, it's success for you, each to make $6 million. Is it each of you to build this company for another four years and make $60 million each or a success for you to work together for the next 10 years to make a company that is legendary and never goes away? And that can be your legacy? And they're just sitting there like, Well, we had questions about the pricing of our product

and, you

know, from from should we do this business deal and should we hire this person, I'm like, you're gonna You're super qualified to make those decisions. Let's have Ah, let's step back for a moment and look at the whole chessboard, right? Let's make a decision here. And it could be a different decision for each of you. I I painted three scenarios. Six million, 60 million owning the company indefinitely. Each of you should just honestly say which one you think you're leaning towards or rank thumb. You know, they rank them and they all drank from the same. So, you know.

Yeah, I think young people are just not even. I'm talking about 20 somethings who are people in their thirties, even who just don't have anybody sitting there saying, What would success look like to you for me? I figured out what success looks like for me a while ago, and I'm living it. And every day I wake up with a sense of joy that and I pinch myself. I get to do what

I do, but because But it sounds like it, you know, the definition of success is painted by the value system. At least right now on the current set up in paella, although you're talking about is you have all of these keeping up with the Joneses, um, activities where it's like success is getting into the big school. Success is getting the highest score successes, landing a job, you know, at some start up, protect company post graduation from the purchased Aegis School, you know. So then that begets attitude in the twenties and thirties to say I don't know what that I'm supposed to do, because this this value structure that I had is actually not accurate, and I never really learned how to asked myself questions or have that self guided approach of education that you described where it's saying,

Hey, I wanna have someone that comes looks alongside me in the eye and really helps me understand what it is that I'm interested in it and then gives me a framework for self guided education toward that, you know. So that's where it's interesting to hear you talk about the Palo Alto scenario because it's almost like, Is there anyone that's doing that? Sounds like you guys were doing that a little bit, and I would imagine there's probably some others in your spheres that are doing this. You know, Montessori esque type education where you're saying you know what it's it's more about teaching them to have intrinsic motivation and curiosity. And how do we do that, as opposed to just

forcing them down

this path of credentials and high scores and prestigious schools and everything. And I'm curious like, how did your wife arrive at this? There's other people doing this is it doesn't sound like any startups trying to tackle that, or there's not any You know, things on the horizon because one of things to Jason is that you see this trend of not only keeping up with the Joneses but also a trend of lack of focus you know, everyone's a d D. There's no there's no slowness to ask those questions, and that's why people aren't asking those questions. And so it's almost like if you can do that and you can slow down, that's a competitive advantage in and of itself, right? You know, we don't have a world of people that are chasing after these things. They're distracted by these things that becomes your competitive advantage, which is interesting to me. It's like,

Well, how do you build that? You know, that's why I'm asking for my kids. And that's what I wanna help people with, You know?

Yeah, there's a lot in there. I mean, they're you. If you look at a d d n a D H d an Asperger's in the soul spectrum, you know, society has gone on. We study things and, um, you know, people's existence. Ah, constantly having inbound email, text, Snapchat, et cetera. Um,

this is having an impact on people's brains and their psychology and their anxiety as a society. The things that will kill us continue to go down. The idea of dying a violent death has gone down significantly for many reasons. You can read about Steven Pinker or listen to Gavin de Becker Or read Gavin de Becker's um Toxie Disintegrate podcast with Sam Harris Seenu. The idea of dying of island death has gone down significantly in society. The idea of living in abject poverty or starving yourself. You know, we're starving to death. Famine. These things have gone down precipitously, you know, infant mortality. A lot of things in society are trending the right way. So much so that the things that are left that will kill us, um, are going to be,

in many ways self inflicted and highly avoidable suicide being one of them. Because after we get rid of drunk driving and the 30 or 40,000 people a year that die in the United States from accidents, you know it's happening every day. Ah, 100 people dying from car accidents. Um, you know, when those things start to fade Ah, what's going to be left? In fact, if you look at death from airplanes in the modern or I should say in the United States, the don't say, Ah, I think the proper etiquette is to say if you compare the Western world to the developing world, ending Third World is considered not as tactful. I don't think it's insulting,

but having people say the developing world in developing worlds where there aren't as many laws and oversight, you know? Yeah, dying in an airplane commercial airplane. Very possible. Um, in the United States, like we have years, go by where nobody dies in a commercial jet. And then we have, you know, spikey moments where you know, terrorists kill thousands of people with commercial jets. And, ah, we've gotten to the point where we're just looking at that one instance,

we we put lock pit. We put doors that can't be broken down to protect from terrorists. So we kind of try to solve that problem. And then we have a suicide, a pilot in Germany who runs a plane into a mountain because he's suffering from depression. And there might have been a similar thing, and I believe was Egypt. Right. So now the way we're dying and airplanes is not because of airplane malfunctions. Um, it's from pilots downing the planes because they're either suicidal or terrorists or distraught, right? It's It's not from the actual act of flying, just kind of getting fascinating when you think about it. Um, and it's a long way of saying,

you know, our kids are gonna, in all likelihood, live, um, in a world where the idea of starving to death is not the leading cause of death. But overeating is the leading cause of death, right? Something that is, in fact, self inflicted. Right? We make these bad choices, right? So it's kind of interesting as a parent or our parents. Parents were just like,

How do we keep this kid alive? You know, And that's because they didn't have seat belts in cars or they, like kids just jump around in the back seat like my parents. Just the idea of us putting seat belts on or anybody putting a seatbelt on on the car on the seventies was like, Why would you put a seat bold on that makes no sense. That's not why their seatbelts on these cars. They just literally people. People would tuck the seat belt into the seat so they don't have to deal with him. Yeah, I mean, you probably remember this

right, like the station wagon with a fold up seats in the back. The back

It was like. Okay, how's this gonna work out? Um, so you know, there's certainly like this. That was weird. I was talking to an educational psychologist because we were talking about our daughter who has got this like, she's really, really high on verbal ability and certain other traits and then doesn't want to sit in a classroom. And so they're like, Hey, I do you feel about medicine mitigation? And I'm like, How do you feel about medication? Like I'm talking to a 70 year old school psychologist is like, Well,

you know, in the last 30 years, I've seen kids who cannot sit down and shut up, like, be able to sit down and shut up and pay attention in class and not be a disturbance to the class. And these kids are gonna need to learn that when they get into the workforce and they need to sit at a desk all day, Course, how are they gonna function in the world? And my wife And I just sort of like, listen to this and we got We're like, Okay, let us think about that. We got in the car and my wife's like, What do you think about it like that sounded pretty crazy to me. I think that's exactly what I thought. We're literally thinking that a kid who wants to run around at the age of 56 or seven or eight years old is broken and that they need to be medicated so they can sit in a classroom for six hours without talking.

It's crazy. This is crazy madness, and parents are like, Well, I don't have. And then you have this other problem with parents are under resourced and have to go to work, and we talked about just how people have to be dual income just to even get by. Forget about, you know, moving up in, You know, the ladders of society to a different station in life where they can maybe move from being poured to middle class or middle class, upper middle class or even middle class to affluent is very hard. Mobility's hard social mobility is very hard right now. It's it's a challenge. And so for a parent who is exhausted at the end of the day,

a single parent or even two parents, this might seem like a pretty good option to put their kid on a drug that makes them less more manageable. So I don't judge those parents. But I do think as a society the idea of people sitting in an office and shutting up for 12 hours a day is not the future anyway, right? Like everybody that works like, let's get foosball tables. Let's put voluble outside. Let's let people work for two hours and then go do some physical activity. Standup asks all this stuff so we we know this in Silicon Valley like you need. People need to go exercise their building campuses with walking tracks and tell people like work for 90 minutes, get up and go for a walk for 15 20 minutes, Talk to one of your co workers and go have a cup of coffee and then go back and maybe do yoga, go to the nap room and then go work again for a couple of hours, and they work in a burst e style fashion and some schools no sitting your sit down and shut up right is really ah, in the benefit of the teacher in the administration and the structure of the school,

not in the, uh, interest, the kids So we did a hard pass on medicating. Yeah, it's and way doctor a lot of other parents who have done it, and I think they've done it under pressure and duress from schools that just don't want to deal with a student, too, you know, kicks their legs under the desk. It seems crazy to me, the kid is got energy. That's fantastic. We should get them out there and let them play and run and do what they want to do. Yeah, is very disturbing to be like this whole mess.

I think the medication of kids is probably and I'm no expert, but I gotta think it's 10 times what's necessary 20 times what's necessary. And if there's a group of kids who just have that much energy, we should just create, you know, schools or classrooms for kids who have massive amounts of energy and just have them be out in the inn, you know, in nature and learning in a literally learning in a park and have, you know, math, be a stop along the hike, like just constructed for kids to get some exercise, and all these kids are getting overweight. So it was weird. Yeah, we're being with factory farming of kids.

And I'm not gonna allow that to happen to my kids. I mean, we're not factory farming. Our kids. If a school can't accommodate a kid who's got high energy, then I'll just home school them. And I'm very lucky to be in a position to do that. But I'm very worried about, like, the disadvantage a lot of parents are at a time. I I came out okay, but maybe I didn't come out. Okay. Maybe I had a Maybe I'm not. Maybe I had other options in life. You know,

you look back on your own life, and you're like, Wow, I was a product of that factory farming. We were brutal. Last generation that was hit in class. I remember kids being hit by brothers. That's a very in like we were literally physically assaulted by teachers. Kind

of great. That is pretty crazy in this day and age. To think back to that, I

hit by a teacher. Your parents were like, good. Listen to the teacher, you know? Yeah. How you d c? Yeah, literally. Corporal punishment was a thing in the early eighties. I mean, I don't make in the nineties it was, but I think we caught the tail

end of it. So So this I am with you. I think it's a huge issue, and I think it's It goes back to Angel investing really and seeing what's ahead and saying The landscape is changing, changing for the negative on the schooling aspect. And then it's changing for, I think, the positive. A lot of ways in the workforce and the trends in technology. But you have this mismatch of equipping the workforce and equipping the next generation to deal with this new, um, landscape of jobs and and the professional work space. And I mean, who's at tackling this? I mean, is it because there's no money in it? Is it because no one knows what the heck they're supposed to do?

I mean, I know that, like Ellen must started a school at Astra, you know, first. Like, what are they doing? You know where they do anything innovative or they like, Yeah,

I was gonna go ahead if I'd stayed in l. A are kids. What? It went there? Um um, So, uh, I'm good friends with Dylan, and it is he basically got two or three of the best teachers in all of Los Angeles? Uh, and and, Ah, a couple of my friends Ah, have kids there. And I think they do a lot of project based learning and they have incredible speakers come in. And you know, it would.

It would be what you would expect which, when you have a very small teacher, too, um, student ratio. I think this teacher student ratio needs to be no more than, like, 10 to 1 on. I think that's a society as far as I'm concerned. And, you know, listen, I I would love if we would raise the tax rate on affluent people and I would be in that bucket 5% a year on put that towards education and just triple the number of teachers and society. Education is just paramount, and we we started the discussion talking about the 30 million jobs going away. Here's a really easy way for us as a society to start mitigating against that,

literally quadruple the number of teachers and double the number of hours in school. So as far as I'm concerned, I don't think this is a radical crazy value proposition. School should be available seven days a week. It should be available from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. And your kids can go to it for the standard amount from me 32 3 o'clock. Or if you're a parent of limited resources and you have to work a job on a Saturday. You could drop your kids off out on Saturday school, where they do project by stuff, triple the number of core group of the number of teachers and take the hours of a school and take them from whatever it is 10 months a year, nine or 10 months a year and make it 12 months a year and make it available 365 days a year. Or society would be an amazing, beautiful society would not cost that much for us to have school available for all parents 365 days a year. It is not controversial. Anybody who thinks that that's a large expense just doesn't understand the numbers. What we spend on defense, what we spend tax breaks we've given over the years,

our criminal I've benefited from them. I don't need to benefit from them to a level that they're offered. Ah, you know, anybody who's affluent in this society would say if you went to literally the top 1,000,000 most affluent Americans and said, Hey, we're gonna charge you 4% more on your taxes. And here is what you'll get 365 day education for every American from the age of three years old to the age of 25 years old. And it's gonna cost you 4% more Every I think out of a 1,000,000 the 1,000,000 most affluent people you would get 900 mehndi 1000. Yes, In other words, 99% would say yes and 1% would be like I'm ah, I don't believe in less government. And I'm gonna pull the ladder up behind me and I aren't mine. Screw you, literally.

The other 99% would be like, Wow, what a beautiful thing to do for site. In fact, I'm gonna write that it was a logbook.

Yeah, but I mean, I I would say I agree with that. I think you know just the sheer investment education. It's so lopsided with other so much stuff. We spend our money on us as a country, so I would agree with that in principle. I think the question, too, though, is what step changes air needed in the actual schooling curriculum or the approach to be maybe mawr in lines with some of that kind of Montessori self guided to say, Because what I heard you say the keyword was available, swinging, available, you know, if you made it so that it's a resource that they could come and they could explore their interests or, you know,

not be so regimented and making him sedative desk and go through certain curriculum, you know that to me, that's really interesting to say what what could actually happen if you had a bunch of money if you had the investment money that you know uber has really something startups to just solve a problem? Why not take some money like you're saying and try to figure that out in the same way you know, tackle that problem from a technology standpoint from a curriculum standpoint, from you know, something

I think people are. I mean, if you just look at YouTube and it's a silly example, but your tree house or Lynda dot com. Or, uh, if you look at Khan Academy a large and then you go on to course era at X and, um, you know some of those products we're living in a society where yeah, sure, you can very easily afford to acquire any skill online. You know, it gets being a lot of trouble when I say all this information is available out there. Um, because then, of course, that leads to Well,

if all of the information on how to be a high tech worker or to learn photo shop is online, why don't we have people acquiring the skills? And that eventually leads to the answers I've heard from? People are they don't have the free time and they don't know it's available, and they don't have the precursor education. Those are the three things I hear most often from people who say I'm wrong about the fact that well, the information on how to acquire skills is freely available online. So what? They're right. They're right that those issues, they 0.0 r ah could be challenges individuals. They're wrong about the fact that the information is in freely available online. It is you If you want to learn any, any skill your college professors will tell you, and even high school professors go online to get that, there's better information online that what I can provide to you.

So go look at it online, and then I'll maybe, you know, talk to you about it. But literally, if you want to learn any piece of software, the manufacturer of that software and countless other startup companies around that provided either for free or close to free, like $25 a month. There's literally people who have told me people don't have the free time and they don't have the money. And I say, Well, you know, here's each of those arguments Minimum wage, Most cities, 10 Bucks ballpark. Ah,

so working for Starbucks for two hours or three hours? More than enough to pay for your monthly Khan Academy, your monthly treehouse subscription or Linda subscription. Plus, a lot of that stuff is already available for free. Then they say, Okay, well, people don't have that. They literally don't have three hours of work they could do, and there's a bunch of on demand work available in a lot of communities, door dash uber lift, et cetera. So anyway, people talk down, I think,

to the poor onto the people were struggling and pretend that $20 a month is an insurmountable hurdle to get that elite education or the fact that it's free. So to me, a little disingenuous. But they said they don't have time. Well, the fact is, the average American watches five hours of TV a day. So if the average American is five hours of screen time a day now, you're telling me that this person doesn't have the money, even though it's available for free. Or let's call it essentially free in some cases, and they don't have the time. But the average Americans watching five hours of television and the average American is probably spending $60 a month on their mobile phone. And so they say they don't have access to technology, and it's like, Well,

on your mobile phone is YouTube and Tree House and all these things, so that doesn't actually stand up. The idea that people don't have access to a computer doesn't stand up in the age of a chromebook being $199 or $5 a month or $10 a month. So what? What does stand up in the motivation? Access to even knowing that this is a possibility? Those things I think are very valid. There's a large I talk to people all the time. Like What should I do with my life? When I say acquire skills? What skills? What skills do you think? I mean, go on, linked in and look at what people are hiring for. Go pick 10 cos look at their job age and then,

like I never thought of doing that. I'm like, Okay, your parents never taught you that The way you could figure out what skills are available is to look at job boards. Okay, fine, said Hot. That is possible. And then motivation. People are more motivated to, you know, play video games, watch TV and get the passive or mildly interactive rush as opposed to the slow grind of learning. And so I think, as a society we have to start cherishing the pursuit of skills and education is, and we used to have it in America.

People used to be very proud of the fact that they were acquiring skills, that we're very proud of the fact that they were working hard. There's something wrong in society where people are just like they. Everybody wants the Kim Kardashian private jet, but they don't They don't want to put the work in that it takes to get a private jet. I don't have a private jet. Private jets are absurdly expensive. Probably jet shouldn't be your goal anyway. But if you did have aspirations of owning a home in Calabasas is or wherever they live. And if you did have aspirations of driving a Range Rover, it's a pretty straightforward way to do that, pick a technical skill, acquire it and then become great at it. And I don't know, I get myself in a lot of trouble. But,

um, I do think that we live in one of the most open societies when it comes to access to information and howto acquire the skills in the history of humanity. It may still be flawed in some ways, but I knew when I was growing up you couldn't find this information. You had to go to college to get it right. You got to apply to a college and I couldn't get into the good colleges. I'm gonna get into a good one for him. But I couldn't get into M. I T. Or Harvard or Stanford, where they really had the the really great professors and the really elite knowledge. Now those same professors points to the online course, which is free. Why commentators running a free course on being a start of founder? If you want to learn how to be rich, you could take the why Combinator free course that Sam Altman put together.

And it's there. You could read my book in the library for free. You could buy my for 10 bucks. Knowledge is so cheap and available yet people don't want to read books and learn skills and you know it's it's gonna take. I think a lot of I think we're living in this very weird moment in time where a group of people are capitulating and giving up and another group of people are embracing it. And that's leading to this crazy bifurcation where one group of people feels helpless and the other group of people feels empowered. And it's

why do you think that is, though? Why do you think you have a bifurcation like that. I mean, where where does where does that motivation come from? Because I think it bring it back to fatherhood. Like what? What role does Um, the parent where the parents have in that I mean, you mentioned the parents pitching the whole Palo Alto. You know, um, Gators.

I've heard role models is one piece. So if you don't see people like you doing something, people who look like you gender, race, et cetera, if you don't have those examples around you, then you might not consider a possibility. Therefore, it's just not in your consciousness. So because I have no musical talent and my parents had no musical talent, the idea of me becoming Mark Knopfler and being one of the 50 greatest guitar players just never even entered my mind. I didn't know where you got a guitar from. I didn't know howto learn to play guitar, you know, just wasn't part of my upbringing. So but other people who have musician parents, of course,

that's a possibility. And if you have parents who play chess, I suppose you look a moment. My mom's a chess grandmaster. My dad's a chess grandmaster. I'm gonna play chess So the mentoring and the models I I hear from people is one of the main concerns. Which is why diversity in tech is such an important issue. If you cannot see people like yourself in senior positions doing things like becoming founders of Cos well, then you know you may not even think it's an option open for you. So I do think that that is valid. It seems to me a logical that if you don't role models and and consequent and conversely, you know, where I grew up, I saw a role. Models of people who were drug dealers, bookies,

bartenders, cops, you know, like I just thought that was my future. A bookie drug dealer, Far Dender for all the well. And in some cases there were people who did multiple of those. I mean, I knew cops are tended and or bouncers and uh huh, and all kinds of other assorted stuff. So, you know it's you. I think that's probably a valid water. But I'm not an expert on any of this. I also think, but we have a living victim society where it's very easy for people to fall into.

I am a victim in the world is against me, and I think that a lot of societies that reach the level of ah disparity and wealth income end prosperity. That's two things like, Ah, we we have it. We've made it easier and easier for the rich to get richer who made it harder and harder, As I said earlier, for people who are poor or middle class to move up and minimum wage is one of those things. The ridiculous tax rates that the rich pay like the idea that the rich get to pay a lo of massively lower capital gains tax. While poor people don't have the ability because of being not being an accredited investor to even invest in private companies. The system, just to me, seems rigged so many different ways to make the rich richer that I think it's leading to the revolution that we're experiencing right now, which is it doesn't feel equitable. It is in fact, not equitable.

That's very clear, and we should just the rich have to pay more taxes. Education has to be freer and more available, and we have to really work on upward mobility. The fact that wages for you know folks are so stagnant is a problem. Um, And then, on top of all this problem, we rigged the system for the rich over the last couple of decades with capital gains, taxes, et cetera, stuff I mentioned and always loopholes. We rigged that at the exact same time that low income jobs are going to disappear in a very high velocity. This is very bad. Combination is very scary. They're very scary because I see it from the inside.

I'm just like, Wow, if you're rich and you put your money in the stock market and you pay capital gains, you're just crushing it on. Those companies are eliminating jobs. Therefore, they're crushing it. So you have all of this wealth and efficiency creation happening for the people who own the stocks of Amazon, google, et cetera, and who work at those companies and who participated stakeholders in those companies. And then you have another group of people who don't have access to those companies, Which is why I think the angel investing is like this little hack. If somebody really wants to do the work, it's not guaranteed. But it is a hack and a way to break into the system.

I believe in getting your tables. Now, I don't think it's gonna be easy by any stretch of the imagination is gonna be a ton of work for people. Sorry, Sugar don't work for people to break into it, but they're in the book. I at one these air look kind of like ways you can sneak into the tent. And I'm hoping that people read the book and I hope some number of them figure out a way to sneak into the tent like I didn't I snuck my way in, you know, it took me 22 decades, but I did. And so I know it's possible. And I'm not saying some people are like Jason's crazy. If he thinks everybody could be an angel investor, somebody was trolling me on Facebook. I'd like to see you talk to the coal miner about becoming an angel.

Investor knows, like, you know what? I would like to talk to the coal miner about being an angel investor. If there's a coal miner who actually thinks that they could become a successful angel investor and they wanna transition out of that, yeah, I would love to coach them on here is the possible way to do it. Night. I wouldn't talk down to the coal miner and say, Just because you spend your life, you know, pulling gold coal from the ground, you're not gonna be able to figure out what the next great startup is. There's a possibility that somebody could do that. I know because I'm the, you know,

son of a bartender and nurse, and I was able to grind my way there. So maybe the cold, maybe the person who digs coal right now I can't do it, but maybe their kid can, Yeah, but everybody's against, like it's just we live in such a toxic time right now. I just think everybody is. They don't want to hear that there are possible solutions to society's problems because things have been so bad for so long. So I think there's like this burn it down mentality in the world right now. It's also very disturbing, like we've lost all ability to collaborate and use common sense to solve problems. Everything is your team's wrong. My team's right burned it down. It's just

lost. I mean, do you think we've lost empathy? for others, I mean that it's like I think I think so, Yeah, It's like

social media drinks every ounce of empathy

from people. Yeah, and it's like, You know, I'm obviously one. I have a podcast and followed someone to harp on, you know, family values and the role that father's play and mothers play. I'm and raising their kids. But I think all of those trends that you're talking about to me, I see a commonality of, like what? The role the parents to teach proper values in this. And what of the downstream effects when that doesn't happen? And not to say that there's not externality externalities that are affecting that that's, you know, the shift in the job market.

All that but this burn it down mentality. Talk about it is very toxic, but it carries over into your all of life. You know, it's like this perpetual hold state of like nothing matters or I just you know, I don't I don't really care about anyone else, and I just my team's right, your things wrong, all that you're talking about. It's like to me, it comes down to a lot of empathy and value structure and its to me seems like How do you How do you instill that in the schooling process in the in, raising your kids? And it's not an easy problem solved, but I think that is it is a huge issue that's only gonna get worse, in my opinion, because of the bike,

for cation of the haves and have nots, like exactly things you described, it just gets harder and harder to have time and resources to invest in those things. So you naturally have less of them, you know. And it sounds like though the halves are doing much better a job because the suicide rates are really high. So it's all bad.

Yeah, it feels like it's all bad, except,

you know, E don't make the super super

negative hears things. It does feel bad because our expectations are high, that things will continue to get better. And it, you know, for a lot of people, it's not getting better, and we live at a time when you can open your phone and see the worst thing that happened in the world or the funniest, cutest thing that happened in the world. So we are addicted to these little devices. You open them up, and it's like by the way, some people went to a carnival and the carnival ride broke. And here's a video of people's bodies flying off of the carnival ride. And I saw that the other day and I was just like, Oh my God, you know,

I just had a carnival and I just felt so depressed about it. And I was like, I had this whole conversation with my wife. Never let our daughters on these carnival rides because there's there set up and broken down by a bunch of, you know, teenagers and they're rusted and they're old and they travel hundreds and thousands of miles a year all over the place. It's just way too dangerous than a ride at Disneyland, which is like bolted into the foundation and checked, and nobody ever dies on a Disneyland ride. But people die at country fairs or get mangled all the time. We're never

letting our child is

like a big, like discussion. And then I see that video, and then I sent it to my wife. But I'm like, Oh my God, we're like, actually get to see the bodies flying off the ride. But then you also see, you know, ah, you know, people saving each other's lives and incredible acts of kindness. So you have to really retrain your brain to say OK, every death and every piece of suffering is going to be documented and served up to us by an algorithm by Facebook that is designed to mess with our emotions because they want to get more people addicted to this rage, sadness and joy cycle. And that's why Facebook is growing so much because,

literally, there's a team of really highly intelligent people over their PhDs and whatnot. We're saying what's going to have the deepest impact on you right now? And those people need to take a deep look in the mirror and say, Why are we effing with people's emotions with an algorithm to this level, right And fake news was one of the you know things. It's like showing you fake news is going to make you log into Facebook more so literally. You know, if the Russians gave a bunch of data and, you know, came came bringing Analytica abused that data or, you know, to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on Facebook, Facebook essentially posted fake ads that they reviewed with fake news. This is the theory going around Silicon Valley, and it seems like it's going to be closer to truth and false.

Some hundreds of millions of dollars were cash by Facebook to post fake news that were targeted at African Americans because Facebook, which a target by ethnicity and they targeted African Americans with ads to get them to not come out for Hillary, that were fake news and maybe some of that money. And that's a big maybe came from Russians or Russian interests or Russian profits, profits from transactions with the Russians that maybe are not directly from the Russians but a profit from the Russians, Who knows? And maybe there's some stolen data that was used to target these people that maybe the Russians hacked. Or maybe the data in the ads came from Russian hacked misinformation. So Facebook may have been complicit in cashing checks that they knew promoted fake news. Two. Get African Americans who came out for Obama to not come out for Hillary. I let that sink in like people in Silicon Valley need to really take a deep look in the mirror. If that is, in fact, what happened. And that's why they're getting subpoenas from what I understand and what you can Google.

And maybe that's why Zuckerberg is on a tour of America trying to bond with people because he knows exactly how bad this will look when the whole Mueller investigation comes out right. People don't know this listening in, Well, likelihood. Facebook reviews every ad on their system. So somebody some human, whether it's a low level, high level midlevel Oh, you know, I'm sure some of them got surface to high level people like Hillary Pizza Gate. People are being molested in the basements of pizzerias that don't actually have basements like, you know, like those kind of ads were on Facebook. And who paid for and how were they targeted? Right? It's like Facebook needs to think.

Shall we allow you to target the African American people in a swing state? Were the white people without college degrees and this swing state? Ah, but political ads like, Is that how we really want our democracy to run? It seems like the people that Facebook may have they might be too smart for their own good, like, really smart at manipulating people really smart at making money and damaging our democracy and the feeling and the goal of having an equitable society,

which goes back to like the values of, like, the structure for that. So you think we started this by saying, You know what, what values do people have and how they build those? And then what? The outcomes that are that you're describing is essentially a lack of values. Toe. Look yourself in the mirror and say, What am I doing here? You know, in the empathy for others and like, what is the consequences of these actions or decisions and what you know, it's It is speculation in a lot of ways of who actually did that, how that else transpired. But at the end of the day,

is it Is it a values, Um, question And I don't know, You know, I don't have an answer,

so they haven't Everybody

is to no idea exactly

how screwed this up it is, but we are terrified of the future and trying to do our best, trying best to make it just a little bit better for kids. You know. I think maybe check back with me in 10 years and

I might write a

parenting. Just what I've learned it is the most important job. I literally considered it my most important job. So

So? So I think, Yeah, we'll probably end it on that. But I typically ask someone what their two cents are, you know, to send dad podcast. So, Jason, you know someone having their first child knew? Dad, what is one piece of advice that you give to them?

Well, um, there is a four letter word for how Ah, I think kids, Um, the kid's value the most t i m e. And you know, of course, your kids and you're gonna love your kids. That's like a default. You can't not love your kids. I mean, there might be some edge case of a psychological disorder where people don't actually love their kids. But you will love your kids. They will feel love. You will feel love from them. But really love is spelt t i m e in my mind.

And I, uh, encourage people to take their device. And when they're out with their kids, we'll leave it in the glove compartment. Leave it at home. Go on a hike with your kids. Um, and it's not the number of hours. It's how present you are in those hours. A person on their phone. I see it with some friends of mine who are addicted to their phones. They're playing with their kids in the backyard for three or four hours. They're kids feel ignored, and they're in a constant battle with their kids to get them off of their iPhones. And,

ah, you know, kids are gonna follow your lead. So I just take my daughter on a hike where there's no phone reception or I just turned the phone off and we hide for two hours and then we go have lunch. Maybe I'll check to make sure there's nothing going on. But I tell my wife, you know, phone's gonna be off. We're gonna be on this trail. We're gonna be in this movie, and we're gonna be going for this place for sushi or Bobo, whatever it is. And you know, just be present, be present. And I'm you know,

I started doing meditation with my daughter, which is really, really hoped, I think, with kids with a d h d or a D d or any kind of focus issue. Um, this is one of the great things you can do.

Just some resource is on that with kids. I don't okay off the google that up that I might put something to show notes and try to find some because I think that that's a good point because it's an alternative, that medication topic that we talked about. But uh huh, I think

hiking in nature like justice, magical for kids. I take I take my daughter hiking every week, we go crabbing together some physical outdoor activity, and also they're gonna sleep better like this. Always, just like battle to get kids to sleep like your kids on an iPad for four hours. They just ate ice cream, and you're trying to get them to bed. Good luck. If there is going to be, it's going to be a disaster. Take your kid for a three or four mile hike and then have or go on appearing crab with them for four hours in the sun, you know, outside in nature, and then, you know,

you get them home and they just walk to their bed and they just my daughter when she's out with me for the day, she had literally says, I'm going to bed now, Dad and walks to bed. There's there's no debate over bed. It's like I'm exhausted. Dad, can you snuggle with me and read me a book? I'm like, Great! I've read two pages shiv meditation com dot com The company of an investor and and they have meditation for kids and sleep stories for kids. They were really well, just for a little plug. It's not expensive. Calm Galen dot com

that up. All right, great. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to the show. You can find out more about us and sign up to receive updates at to send dad dot com. If you like what you heard or just want to say hi, you can shoot me any. That might at Tuesday dad dot com. Please leave a review on iTunes if you like. The show helps us to get the word out to the most people possible, and the show has made possible through the support of the secret International building Soft.