When Should You Give Up on Something Important? | Brian Keating (Part 2)

[00:00:07] So this is part 2, but it's completely different from part 1. Completely different topics, 100%. And what this episode ultimately boiled down to is when should you give up on something that's important to you?

[00:00:20] And we also talk about some BS that's been happening in college campuses lately and, you know, some things that have been personally hitting both of us. So here's Brian Keating again. Enjoy! This is your James Altucher Show. So, yeah, we haven't really caught up. What's new?

[00:01:00] What is going on with you? What's the latest stuff? Well, you know, things are kind of interesting for me. I've finally gotten to a point where, you know, I don't really have... I would say I've accomplished a lot of stuff in the last few years.

[00:01:17] I've had, last year was my best year, you know, that I've ever had in my whole life. I had just incredible trips and fun family time and great stuff at work. And I was on your podcast a couple of times. The highlight of the year?

[00:01:32] And you helped me prepare for my Joe Rogan podcast. That was the last time we talked back in August, I think. And then I went on Joe Rogan and I was on Jordan Peterson's podcast. And I did some teaching for Jordan Peterson's online university.

[00:01:48] And, you know, it was just a great year except for the really horrific terrorist attack in Israel, which happened about a week after I was there celebrating my Bar Mitzvah with my family in Israel. Basically a week or two later, we got back and all hell broke loose.

[00:02:07] And then that was really, I mean, kind of compensated for all the joy in some sense in the year and really just left it as a very negative year overall because of my connections to Israel. How's UCSD University of California in San Diego?

[00:02:28] How's it reacting to all of this? Is it similar to like what we saw with Harvard, MIT, Penn or is it? Yeah. I mean, nothing is as bad as those. I mean, those were, I mean, truly just horrendous public relations disasters.

[00:02:41] I still can't believe the woman at MIT is still in her job. And that's really pathetic. At least you have any, I don't feel like they've even questioned her. Like, and she's, she's the one who kind of started off with like genocide.

[00:02:55] The word genocide depends on the context. Yeah. That's right. Just crazy. Yeah. I've just never seen such incredible cowardice and just unwillingness to call something horrific by its real name. And it wasn't, it was just, if you told me there'd be the worst terrorist attack,

[00:03:15] the equivalent of 10, 9, 11s for this country the size of Israel. And then the next day at my campus, there'd be, there'd be, you know, kind of vigils to commemorate the martyrs of Palestine.

[00:03:30] And, and then eventually there was an ISIS flag flown in front of the student government voting to declare anti-Semitism, a condemn anti-Semitism which failed.

[00:03:44] So there was a student government, and these are not Jew, these are mostly Asian and Caucasians or what almost none of them are Jewish on the student Senate.

[00:03:52] And there were like the students for Palestine were putting up ISIS flags in front of the student center building and telling them they're complicit in genocide. And, you know, this happened within weeks of the worst massacre in, you know, modern history since the Holocaust.

[00:04:07] And it was just, you know. What I don't understand, like, first off there's so many, like, whenever someone argues about this, whatever side, it always comes up. Okay, the killing, there's this kind of strawman argument.

[00:04:23] Israel's bombing Gaza, the killing of children is, we all can agree it's an evil thing. And yes, that's a, that's like a true statement. Killing children is an evil thing. It just so happens now. Israel's bombing Gaza, children are being killed.

[00:04:37] But how come the same, so there's this strawman kind of argument to kind of fit it into that model. But meanwhile, if like someone robs a bank, they go to jail unless they return the money and they still go to jail.

[00:04:51] They committed a crime but maybe the crime is lessened if they try to undo the damage of the crime, which can't be done when there's murders and rape and all that kind of stuff.

[00:05:00] So how come the same people say, okay, well we can stop the killing of children. We can prevent it if all the hostages are returned and the leaders of Hamas, who are criminals, are turned over.

[00:05:12] So how come that's what I don't understand is why does it like AOC, you know, all these people and AOC is very talented politician, whatever. But they're all saying ceasefire immediately. There was hostages taken. There's even American hostages taken. Why weren't they calling for that?

[00:05:28] Yeah, I mean there's just no, there's no consistency. I think, you know, Israel's, you know, Douglas Murray said something, you know, like Israel's the only country that can't win a war but it also can't lose a war.

[00:05:39] Like there are only countries where you could tell another country how they should react to the slaughter of their civilians, you know? And so there's been, I think that there's a narrative that Israel's the colonializers and they're white and they're successful, which is all lie.

[00:05:57] I mean, I was there in September on the high holidays and so ordinary Jews don't work during the high holidays but there's a ton of Arab and Muslim and Bedouin and Jews and all sorts of other Israeli citizens. I mean, they're 20% of the Israeli population are not Jews.

[00:06:16] And the Arab Israeli citizens, okay, so these are in Israel itself, Latin Gaza, West Bank. So they're from all Middle Eastern countries. They're Arab Muslims and they're Israeli citizens. They have full equal rights in Israel. Yeah, they have a political party. They're on the Supreme Court.

[00:06:35] They serve in the military. So one of the guys I was with, it was very interesting guy, his father, they're Bedouins and they, his father was retiring after 26 years in the IDF as a colonel. And they're devout Muslims. And this guy was really wild, Muhammad.

[00:06:55] Every single guy was Muhammad or Ahmed or Ahmed, Muhammad. And we talked all the time. He doesn't like Trump but he hates Biden. Everyone feels like they have to talk to you about politics whenever you're with them.

[00:07:07] This is in their version of Uber, driving around to go see my relatives on Rosh Hashanah or whatever. And to a person, they were like, you know, there's their, you know, they have full rights. They own restaurants. I mean, Israel is even more liberal a democracy than America.

[00:07:24] I mean, there's a gay party in the Knesset. I mean, there's, you know, forget about Arab party and there's ultra-arthodox and there's... How does the gay party, what's their stance on taxes? Yeah, I think they're very sound money efficient. They're very Austrian economics. Really? I don't know.

[00:07:43] But they, you know, so it's a very vibrant culture and all the... You know, it's interesting. The highest educated Arabs in the world live in the Palestinian territories. You know, they attend schools in Israel. They are taught by Jews and Arabs. There are incredible social programs for them.

[00:08:02] They serve in the military. I mean, to call them, you know, just the world is, there's a special hatred of Jews. And it's always been that way and Jews have faced this. I thought that anti-Semitism was kind of overblown.

[00:08:16] I can say, well, you know, you have all these, you know, kind of crazy people. And yeah, of course, you're always going to have, you know, there's 10% of the population thinks that aliens are visiting us right now or Elvis Presley is still alive.

[00:08:29] And, you know, 10% of the population are alcoholic felons. And, you know, so of course you're going to have some nut job. I didn't think there were no anti-Semites, but just a degree in the virulence

[00:08:39] and the hatred of, you know, tearing down posters, you know, there's a one year old baby, you know, turned one year old today. And there's a hostage. I mean, this has never happened in modern warfare. And then, you know, they have plenty of rockets.

[00:08:52] You know, I remember they said like Gaza is going to be out of fuel and the hospitals are going to be out of fuel and food. And I just don't know, you know, when I was there,

[00:09:01] I actually thought for a very first time in my life that there was a possibility of a two-state solution just talking to the Arabs. But I realized I only met Arabs from the West Bank.

[00:09:11] And those are the, you know, those are the ones that are most closely in contact with Jews because, you know, Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 and it's a Jew-free zone for the last, you know, 17, 18 years. But in the West Bank, you know, Jews and Christians,

[00:09:27] and I was there with one of my wife's friends and, you know, our whole family. And she went to Bethlehem and, you know, she's a Christian. And, you know, it was wonderful. But, you know, now I think there's absolutely zero chance. I don't see there's any possibility.

[00:09:41] You know, there's even more support now in the West Bank for Hamas than there is in Gaza. Like Gaza is totally destroyed and reeling from it. And, you know, I had been sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

[00:09:54] But, I mean, there's just no way you can envision making peace with people that will come. Like it wasn't just the military wing of Hamas. It was civilians. There was like a thousand civilians that came into the Kabutzes

[00:10:06] and those were people that had worked in the, you know, done, you know, in the restaurants and the Kabutzes. And they, you know, they had work permits. Like we have people from Tijuana that come to San Diego every day.

[00:10:18] I mean, if they were launching rockets and cutting off the heads of babies and burning whole families alive and videotaping it on GoPro's and then sending the video to the parent, you know, we would, I mean, Tijuana would probably have, you know, like zero population.

[00:10:35] There wouldn't be a building there. It would be completely leveled and we would be, have the, you know, first Marine armor division would just be sitting there forever. So I am completely pessimistic. I've changed 180 degrees. I don't think there's any hope of peace, you know, right now.

[00:10:51] I think that there's, you know, there's calls for it. But so it's been, you know, you asked me how am I doing? So it's been pretty rough on campus as well. I mean, you have people, you know, that my students that I teach, I have a student.

[00:11:06] I won't say his name, but he's a devout, you know, Muslim. And, you know, and he's super, he's just like so sweet. He's the only one of my students and I have Jewish students. You know, it was like, how are you doing? How things been?

[00:11:20] I've had many Muslim students. I've never once thought I should boycott and protest Palestinians. They shouldn't even be allowed to come to campus. And this is like common now that they don't want my Israeli colleagues to visit campus. They don't want us investing in companies that do business.

[00:11:39] And I'm just thinking like I'm teaching these students and you can't teach someone that you don't like. You cannot teach someone that you don't trust. And similarly, you can't learn from someone who you don't like. Like so if these students are with me and I'm very vocal

[00:11:55] and I've been quoted in newspapers and in the Chronicle of Higher Education and, you know, they know how I am. So it's just like an untenable situation how campus became the focal point for both Israel-Palestine relations and for anti-Semitism and the greatest display of anti-Semitism since the Holocaust.

[00:12:17] It's just, it's completely blown me away. And it's something I feel unsafe, you know, being in a place that, you know, this campus it's the leadership is just so equivocal and not just taking a stance. Look, we're not supporting anything. Hamas is a terrorist organization.

[00:12:37] So when you say you want to have a vigil for the martyrs you're saying that they, what they did is martyrdom and that's legitimate and the killing of innocent civilians and rape and hostage-taking and beheading is okay. And so to have this on the, you know, place where,

[00:12:54] you know, there should be the most revered intellectual scholarship undertaken. It's truly ridiculous. And I'm a professor. I have students that are like terrible. They had to call the police. They were, had to be evacuated from this meeting

[00:13:08] where they had the ISIS flag on display outside, you know, like some young girl, you know, Jewish girl she can't take, you know, defenders are screaming in her face and holding up an ISIS flag. And this is at UCSD. It's not a political, it's not Berkeley.

[00:13:23] It's not Columbia. And so I think, you know, we've, we've let in a lot of people into our campuses that don't share American values and don't see the virtue of the only democracy in the Middle East. It's kind of been a real eye-opener for me, but...

[00:13:40] Yeah, and it's an eye-opener in the sense that, like you said, I didn't realize it was so big, the eagerness to which they wanted to cling to a cause that was anti-Semitic. Yeah. Like I didn't realize how big that was in terms of the population, percentage

[00:13:58] of the population of the U.S., particularly among young people. I never say it. I mean, I got email after email. Look, I got emails from the chancellor, from the board of regents, from the president of the whole UC system, you know, when Roe versus Wade was repealed,

[00:14:12] you know, there's psychological services available to you and there's this and that and you may have a safe space and if you want to have counseling. And then, you know, for days after this, it was like, you know, we are troubled

[00:14:25] by the events in the Middle East, you know. And only after, you know, hundreds of professors and students and huge uproar and we asked our chancellor to confirm that, you know, whether or not genocide is context dependent and he never responded about it. Really? Yeah.

[00:14:46] So should he be fired? Well, I think when you become a university bureaucrat, your number one job is to keep your job and I actually said, you know, it's a good thing that UCSD isn't as prestigious as Harvard or something like, if you're the president of heart,

[00:15:01] like what is she going to do with her life? Like there's no place for her to go or McGill. You don't think there's some like think tank funded in part? I mean, who would like, there are, no, no, you're right. There are people in government,

[00:15:15] I'm sure, you know, like. Like there's money. Oh yeah. There's a lot of money out there that comes from like Qatar and. But that is the most prestigious funder. That's right. But that is the most prestigious. In other words, she achieved the apex of my profession,

[00:15:29] which is president of the world's most prestigious university. Right? There's nowhere to go in that contextual domain, but down and so. But she is making, she's still a professor there making a million a year. But think about it. She's been out of the career of being a professor.

[00:15:45] She hasn't taught a class in 20 years. She hasn't done research in probably 30 years. She's not going to be going to conferences talking about how to be a best practice as a president because she's not a president. All of her skills are perished, you know, perished.

[00:15:59] And yes, of course she's still getting paid. Of course they didn't fire her. Neither did they fire the woman at Penn and from her professorships. So, you know, and they also didn't fire the president of Stanford who either plagiarized or committed academic malfeasance himself. This guy, something Levine

[00:16:19] last year and he just went back to being a professor. So I'm like, wait, you can still be an academia? Like academia is the only position where you can get fired and still keep your job. I mean, it's unbelievable. I don't know of another.

[00:16:32] I mean, I mentioned Tim Cook, you know, is embezzling money and they're like, okay, well, we're going to demote you from being CEO, but you're going to be chief engineer of the CRE team. It's insane, but academia is totally normal.

[00:17:04] So, like you said, this totally transformed the year for you and making it a net negative, your best year ever. This year, what's going on? Like obviously it's the same thing is happening, but do you have any, how's the podcast going?

[00:17:18] Do you have any projects on the horizon? Yeah, the podcast has been going really well. It hit like right after I was on your show and Rogan's show, I hit number 71 podcast in the world. Wow. That was pretty cool on Spotify. And yeah, it's really...

[00:17:34] Last time I was number one was like 2016 maybe. Yeah. You know, because it's a function also of how many new signups you get. That's right. You must have gotten a lot of new signups after Rogan. Yeah, so that was great.

[00:17:47] And we kind of kept in touch a little bit and I'm supposed to maybe see him in April for this eclipse that's going through Texas. And really kind of in this interesting phase right now where I'm just really trying to tune in,

[00:18:03] be with the family, concentrate on my research. So the Simon's Observatory is going to hopefully start taking data in April. Do you think you're depressed a little bit? I mean it's impossible not to be depressed from everything that's happened in Israel.

[00:18:19] And just feeling like I chose this profession, the life of the mind, and this is all I've ever wanted to do and all I could do. And really found this podcast to kind of be almost like a salvation, a respite, you know, a different career.

[00:18:36] It is a different career for me in that, you know, kind of the David Brooks, you know, Second Mountain kind of scenario where now it's, I've kind of garnered as much as I think I can in my profession, you know, like I don't need more attention.

[00:18:52] You know, thank goodness I'm funded well. I've got great students, you know, fully tenured. And so in terms of my mountain number one, I feel super content. And so now it's about, well, like how do I give back? How do I, you know, scale and do teaching?

[00:19:11] And the podcast has been, you know, this incredible outlet for me. Like tomorrow I'm supposed to talk to Sam Harris, you know, for the first time. Oh really, you haven't had Sam Harris on? No, no. I mean, you know, it was, you know,

[00:19:24] for a while it was, you know, kind of like, well, do I want to talk to him? Is it going to be, you know, beneficial? Is it, you know, cause, you know, he got very political on one hand and he kind of withdrew

[00:19:35] from, you know, social media on another hand. And I didn't want to talk to him about, you know, the same old stuff of, you know, what did you think of the Biden laptop? And so, you know, I really want to do, so I've kind of pivoted like this,

[00:19:47] this way that I want to do podcasting now is I used to feel a lot of pressure and it's thanks to you, you know, or blaming you in some ways, cause you prepare so well and you always kind of conveyed

[00:20:00] that one of your superpowers was like how well, you know, how much you invested in research and reading, you know, books and stuff. And I just kind of got a little burned out from that. Like do I have to read the entire book of,

[00:20:13] you know, every single thing that Sam Harris has ever read, you know, before I have written, before I go and interview him? No, I mean, I've read quite a bit of Sam Harris books in the back in the day. Sometimes actually I avoid some guests

[00:20:27] because it's too much to read. Yeah, I know for him it certainly is. And you know, so now I'm like, well, why don't I lean into what's unique about me? For example, do you know Morgan Howsell, this guy who wrote The Psychology of Money?

[00:20:39] Like he's supposed to come on in a couple of weeks. He has a good new book out. I just ordered it. Same as ever. Oh yeah, it sounds really good. It is really good. But he's done so many interviews. Like he's really good at doing interviews

[00:20:53] and he's got his own podcast. And so I was like, I want to have you on, but I don't want to spend a single second talking about your book. In fact, I've picked up like where these people are interested in science or consciousness or thing.

[00:21:06] And like sometimes he'll just talk about like, Einstein said this about compound interest. And so I'm like, well, let's go into that. Let's not talk about, well, you know, we should invest in stocks, you know, in Pepsi and that's boring. He's talked about that ad nauseam.

[00:21:21] So I agree with that approach. I think all these podcasts are better as conversations. And I think to some extent, you know, I watch a lot of podcasts, I see a lot of podcasts. I kind of learned that not only from experience

[00:21:35] doing podcasts, but from watching Joe Rogan, who I think is obviously exceptionally good. And he did, he reads zero. He has, I think he's read a book. He just turned into a conversation. And I sent him my books before I went, you didn't open them up.

[00:21:48] I don't even think they were there. But he likes to design kind of the vibe and make sure that the conversation is in a state of flow. And, you know, he just, you're with him and you just feel like you're extremely important.

[00:22:01] And there's something about being in person. And I know that, you know, you've done mostly and I've done mostly remote interviews in the past. No, I've done mostly in person until COVID. So the first half of my history was all in person.

[00:22:14] And now the second half since March, 2020, as in mostly remote, there's pros and cons to both because I can do more podcasts remote. Yeah. And it opens me up to a larger number, they don't have to be in New York city, for instance,

[00:22:27] for me to do a podcast with them. But, you know, it's different. I asked Sam Harris, you know, cause he lives in Los Angeles. And I was like, you know, I could come up there very easily. And, you know, my friend Eric Weinstein

[00:22:39] kind of introduced me to him. And he's like, no, I'd rather do it remote. So, you know, it just made him feel more. And I can understand that like he doesn't know who I am. I mean, he could look it up, but like how much research is,

[00:22:49] it's a lower stakes when you're remote because you just show up on a video screen. I do feel like there's something to be said about doing stuff in person. I did one with Brian Green when I was in Manhattan in November.

[00:23:01] And that was really cool to be in his office. And now there's a different vibe set when you're in person. But yeah, I don't know if it's like, you know, if I should kind of lean in that sense and try to figure out,

[00:23:16] I've kind of tried to stop doing any kind of advertising or any kind of, you know, I just do the automatic advertising on YouTube and I do the automatic advertising on, you know, a megaphone or Spotify. And not having, cause I was like, what do I need?

[00:23:33] Like, do I even need to get money from the podcast? I mean, doesn't that make my life? I mean, I know it's your job and that's great and you should get paid for it. But, you know, dealing with sponsors and then deadlines

[00:23:44] and then, oh, they didn't like the way you read this link and you said .com but it's really .org. You know, I'm just like, damn, now I have a boss. Like, I don't need that anymore. So I'm trying to withdraw from, you know,

[00:23:56] any, you know, saying no in the power of no and trying to, you know, just do what I enjoy about it. So no, I wouldn't say, you know, depression. I would say the question of like, is there a goal with podcasting? Is it an infinite game?

[00:24:12] Do you just want to keep doing it forever? You know, if it's not my job, I get, you know, I get rewarded for it. You know, I have a big team now doing my YouTube videos, which has really exploded. You know, I've got over 200,000.

[00:24:25] Yeah, you do really good on YouTube. I never really caught that wave. Yeah, it's the only way to get discovery, right? I mean, there's no podcast advertising that really works. And now with Google, I don't know if you know this, but you know, Google podcast is going away.

[00:24:40] So I think they're driving everybody to YouTube podcast. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with your, you know, kind of YouTube following and downloads. Well, you know, I think if you have subscribers, they stay. Yeah. So I haven't really, I haven't really,

[00:24:55] I grow subscribers would not as much as like you did after you were on Joe Rogan. Like growing subscribers is difficult, but maintaining subscribers is not so difficult. And I'm very happy I've maintained, you know, I started off with a nice audience and I've maintained it. Yeah.

[00:25:12] I mean, you've been doing it, you know, almost as long as anybody. And I just, I've really enjoyed like meeting, you know, the people I've met like Jordan Harbinger, I met him in person. Finally he came down to San Diego. Oh, he's such a good guy. Yeah.

[00:25:24] I actually met him like the day before October, you know, seventh, he came to my house for, it was a holiday. So we had a, you know, and he's Jewish. So we had a meal together. I didn't know he was Jewish. Yeah, he's trying to get Israeli citizenship.

[00:25:36] Really? Yeah. He's always, he's always trying to, you know, make sure he's got a parachute, you know, to get out of town if he needs to. But you would have a, by the way, it's not in your category at all,

[00:25:48] but you would have a fun time talking to Noah Kagan who was just on my podcast. No, no, yeah. Noah is a good friend. He's been to my house many times for Shabbat. Yeah. He's got his new book out. Yeah. No, he's a character.

[00:25:59] He's been really hustling for many years. Yeah, I met him three or four years ago. I forget how I just followed him on his podcast. And yeah, I've been watching him. I have a copy of his book somewhere here

[00:26:10] because he was, he's going to come on my podcast, but I'm like, it's just a bunch of STEM, you know, nerds. I don't think you're going to sell any books. And he was cool. You know, I got to read it and yeah, he's a great guy.

[00:26:21] The other guys, yeah, I mean, I've gotten close with Jordan Peterson. He's super, super interesting guy. He's always under attack. That guy is, you know, he's got more kind of people attacking him than any person should ever have. Yeah. But he's a soulful, he's a very sweet guy.

[00:26:40] I mean, for someone who's as bombastic, as aggressive, he doesn't take any crap and he's just incredibly courageous. And I don't know, he's got the weight of the world on his shoulders. It's incredible. Yeah. So yeah, that was good. He's been on my podcast before. Yeah.

[00:26:57] And I kind of used it like, I took his, the fact that he's a therapist more than the fact that he's like this modern day philosopher. And I basically had like a therapy session. Yeah. I know actually that you should know the day I recorded

[00:27:08] Hibbs podcast back in March of 2023. I was listening to your podcast with him because I, there are, most of his interviews are just like so abstract, like, and by the way, when I was on his podcast, I didn't talk about like transgender and it was

[00:27:24] only about black hole. It was just like the first part of this pot. It was only about cosmology, the Big Bang philosophy, religion. And he's just incredibly deep individuals. So yeah, I mean, I guess, well, what do you have on the horizon?

[00:27:40] Is it just like, are you, you know, kind of make, cause your kids are gone, right? They're out of the house, right? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I was, I had this, or I still have this theory that

[00:27:51] that as we get older, the thing that drives us forward is this concept of going on a quest. So finding some impossible, improbable thing to seek out and whether or not you get there, you'll have it. If it's impossible enough and hard enough,

[00:28:08] you'll have adventures along the way. You just have to have adventures along the way. So whether it's, you know, what you're doing with your experiments, trying to find the beginnings of the universe or becoming like the best podcaster that ever

[00:28:21] existed, or, you know, I went on a six or seven year journey in standup comedy. I went on and for the past couple of years, I've been trying to, you know, I was competitive chess master when I was younger and I've been trying to, my listeners have heard

[00:28:37] this, but there's a new twist as of this week. Oh yeah. I've been, I've been trying to get back to my old rank, my old rating in chess. And so I've been playing in tournaments and, you know, you keep the title master forever, but your rating goes

[00:28:53] up and down. Yeah. And I just after a 25 year break, it looks like I just can't do it. I'm almost at the point of giving up on this particular quest. And, you know, King Arthur never found the Holy Grail in literature, but they had lots of adventures along.

[00:29:08] I've had, I've had amazing adventures, whether it was comedy or chess or before that running a hedge fund or whatever. I've had amazing adventures in the past two years that I could not have believed, but I just don't know if I could do it.

[00:29:23] And so I have to figure out what to do next. Imagine you say like, I want to be the next Joe Rogan or, you know, some young guy or, you know, but they don't have any, like Joe Rogan didn't just start off being a podcast, you didn't start

[00:29:53] off being a podcaster. You have this whole, you know, backstory, this whole life story before, you know, podcasting was even a word. And, and, you know, that's what makes people interesting. Like to just say, well, I'm good at asking questions

[00:30:06] or, you know, I'm going to be, you know, a raconteur. People don't really care. You know, you could be, maybe you are the, you know, Charlie Rose or, you know, whoever Larry King and that's something natural for somebody to do.

[00:30:19] But mostly it should be like your guru in your own field. And then you see these connections, these tendrils that stretch out to other fields. Like I can talk to a finance guy like Morgan Housel, but talk to him about, you know, physics

[00:30:33] and, you know, and, and happiness or religion or, you know, what have you or being a parent. Those are things you get outside of the podcast. Like you can't become an interesting podcaster just being a podcaster, right? Right. But so like this was something though I was

[00:30:49] like this quest on, that might be more related to like my quest on comedy where I was starting from scratch. Yeah. Although I'd been a public speaker, I hadn't been a comedian. It's very different. But this though, it was just, it was like an age related thing.

[00:31:03] Like can I get back to where my youth was? And it's, it's looking like whether I can or I can't, it's looking at least much more difficult than I thought it was, which is surprising to me. How important is like achieving that number

[00:31:18] versus like being, you know, winning tournaments in your age group now? I feel like I want to demonstrate that I could still improve at the rate I was able to improve when I was younger. Well, when I was younger, I studied, I improved. I studied, I improved.

[00:31:36] Now I study my knowledge increases, but my results have not increased at all in two years. And I just, and it's frustrating. Yeah. And so maybe I might write about the experience because lots of, like I said, lots of adventures, lots of life changing

[00:31:55] adventures have happened along the way. And it's been fascinating. Are you doing other stuff like, you know, new tropics or, you know, sleeping? I'm doing everything. Psycho psychedelics or, you know. I've spoken to nutritionist, you know, no tropic people, neurologists, sleep sports coaches.

[00:32:11] The, I took memory lessons from the world memory champion. Oh wow. I've had, I flew to Norway to have dinner with Magnus Carlson. It's the best chess player in history. So I've had like amazing, I've learned so much about the mind, the brain, the body, competitiveness, sports, games.

[00:32:29] You know, and again, what's the difference in the brain between a young person and an older person? How can I use that to my advantage? What those differences are? Do you think that there are things like that? Like I'm just making analogy in physics or in math.

[00:32:42] You know, it's very difficult for a 55 year old mathematician to do. In fact, it's probably impossible. But in experimental physics, you only accumulate and it's a cumulative endeavor. Like it's chess more like math or is it more like experimental physics? It seemed to me, it's hard to...

[00:33:00] It's more like math and less like, I'll take an extreme, okay, because I don't know experimental physics. Yeah. It's much more like math and it's less like history where the average peak age of a historian is 69 years old. Because as you get older, your

[00:33:16] ability to just raw calculate and be creative and see things in your head that don't yet exist is better when you're younger. Like your calculation speed, the speed of your thoughts is faster and your memory is better and your originality is better.

[00:33:31] But as you get older, your ability to say, oh, I've seen this situation before or you could synthesize ideas better. This creates your creativity but like a historian can say, oh, this situation in Israel right now, we have to look at the Balfour

[00:33:50] mandate in 1929 and we have to look at what's happening right now in Azerbaijan or like they could synthesize all these different situations and have a deeper understanding of what's happening. Deepness is important in chess but it doesn't make up for what you lose.

[00:34:07] What you gain does not replace what you've lost. But maybe it's also like the skills that you've been building up over the last 20 years or 30 years are very inapplicable. Like you built up a rapport, collaboration and curiosity supporting underprivileged perspectives, helping people, teaching.

[00:34:31] That has no place in chess. So maybe you've been like, maybe you're playing the wrong game in a sense. No, it's true. And I think, originally I was thinking I'd write a book on this having succeeded at my quest. But now I'm sort of realizing,

[00:34:49] and I don't want to be cliched, I hate when people say it's the journey not the destination, but I've learned so much. And I've even, I would say what's really interesting, my appreciation of a beautiful chess game has gone way higher because I understand much more

[00:35:06] about the game and about games and competition in general because I've studied just the meta aspects of learning and competition and all this stuff. So this is, I've learned a lot and I'm tired though of every single tournament not doing as well as I would have hoped.

[00:35:26] How do you detach? For me it's been like, oh, I want to see my number of subscribers. I want to get to, originally it was if I ever get to 100,000 subscribers I'd be incredibly happy and I told one of my friends,

[00:35:40] punch me in the face if I ever talk about a million subscribers and now I'm like, well, you know, maybe I could get, yeah, I'm at 20% of the way there in just three years. And if I just like devoted all these resources to it,

[00:35:54] and it wouldn't even be at the exclusion of my research because research takes years to write a single, I've been working on a single paper with collaborators around the world for eight months now and it's been ready to submit for four months

[00:36:07] and it's just like, oh my God, are we ever going to finish this thing? And it's going to be a great result it'll be really fun. But so it's almost like irrelevant how much time you spend in science because, you know, so many other people have to

[00:36:20] be a part of it. Whereas the podcast I can just put in twice as much money or effort and it will grow. So my question is, yeah, I mean, how much of the hedonic, you know, treadmill should I be, you know, fixating on?

[00:36:32] Should I really care about some arbitrary number or, you know, or should I really just say like, well what's, is it just a journey? Because if it's the destination, you're right, like, then I should just only prioritize getting to a million subscribers. I mean it's both, right?

[00:36:47] So everything's a number. So in chess, I was trying to get to a number of particular rating. In comedy, you judge yourself by how many seats can you fill? Can you fill a club? Can you fill an arena? Can you fill a stadium? Can you fill a theater?

[00:37:04] In hedge fund management, it's your returns plus how many assets under management you have. And writers, it's social media followers and so on. So it's, so there's always some number that people aspire to. But yeah, I think you stop aspiring

[00:37:25] to it when it's not fun for you anymore or you have to change it so it becomes fun. It's hard to make losing fun. I mean, on the one hand you can say every lot, you really only, it is true. You only do learn from the losses

[00:37:39] because it's like if there's something fundamental that you missed that you need to learn. There's a blind spot. Now you could, a game you win you didn't have as many blind spots theoretically so there's not as much to learn but when you lose or in anything

[00:37:55] and when you make a mistake in anything what was them? Not only what was the mistake so you don't repeat it but what was the style of thinking that you had that led to that mistake or what concept did you not understand? I'm not talking about chess.

[00:38:06] I'm talking about investing or physics or anything but when it stops to become fun even acknowledging that losses are and suffering is a learning experience that's when you really have to start questioning it and I don't know if I'm giving up too early if I was too impatient

[00:38:26] but it's never been hard for me before to improve at this domain and now it seems to be extra I've never spent like two straight years studying chess in my life I had a one-year period one time another year period another time

[00:38:42] and I was a hit the master level and then I stopped and now it's like oh I'm beating myself up every day about this and then I go to a tournament and I'll lose games that I felt I shouldn't have lost I mean if you're not having fun

[00:38:57] it just doesn't seem, you know it doesn't seem to be worth it you know if you're I mean there's only so much time I guess the question is what is the opportunity cost like what would you be doing let's say you say I did this experiment

[00:39:09] you know in the 10,000 experiments rule I did it and you know most experiments fail right? I mean I don't have to tell you And I wouldn't say this is a failure like I learned a huge amount because I was able to learn with a goal in mind

[00:39:23] so I think that helps learning and that actually probably unlocked different opportunities and experiences and so no there's no way in no sense that you lose you can't lose but what else would you be doing right now I mean what other things like

[00:39:38] light you up and make you interested I mean obviously writing books but you know I've kind of felt like writing books I am writing another book but it's another version of I think like a Nobel Prize Series you know I interviewed another nine Nobel Prize winners

[00:39:51] and I'm gonna just take those learnings and put them in a book and I've not written as much and I've been writing since 1990 I love writing I love the art of writing so that's something I you know I could write about this experience

[00:40:08] and all the adventures I went through and it was a big roller coaster in a lot of ways not just about chess and so I'm thinking about how to write about it but you know now I just have a different conclusion than I thought I would have so

[00:40:22] Which is always more interesting I mean I always feel like you know if you want to bore somebody tell them about your great vacation to Paris you know whereas if you tell them like oh I almost got you know kidnapped and you know and brought to

[00:40:35] Like if Brad Pitt wrote a book on How to Pick Up Girls it wouldn't be that interesting for me so if I wrote that book everybody should read it by the way Alright James well this has been fun let's do it every more often

[00:40:52] Yeah I should go on your podcast at some point and do a round trip to the sun Yeah let's do it I want to come back I want to come visit you out there and obviously you're back here maybe we should do a you know 10 year reunion of

[00:41:04] of TEDx San Diego