Derek Thompson left The Atlantic after 17 years to go independent — timing it to a #1 NYT bestselling book

across presidential, yes, just bolt on. Thank you for your attention to this matter. That's great. Uh well, we have our next guest, Derek Thompson. the uh the uh author of Abundance in the studio. Welcome to the stream. Great to be here. Thanks, guys. Congratulations on the being a a businessman now.

You're a businessman now. I'm a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm the C I'm a CEO. CEO. I mean, I'm the everything. You you name whatever piece corporate suite that you want to name. I guess I am that. I'm CTO. I'm COO. There we go. Feels great. He's about to become a hyper capitalist. Vibe shift. Yeah. Uh yeah.

Talk to us about the move. Uh what uh I I mean we we're going to go into a bunch of stuff, but give maybe just start with a little bit of background and then the decision to move. Yeah, sure. So I I I've been running for the Atlantic for 17 years, which is like honestly like freaking disgusting to even contemplate.

I don't Wait, how how old were you when you joined? Uh I want to say four. I mean much better about myself. Uh the answer is 22. So I joined in September of 2008. Wow. After graduating from college, I was like a comm's intern for a while. Um, I'm currently the comm's intern for my Substack.

So, right back to that old position. Um, and I wrote for 16 16. 75 years at the Atlantic and it was great. And the truth is like I've always had like a little bit of wander lust. I've always felt like I had a bit of an entrepreneurial bone on my body.

There was never a great time to leave because the Atlantic is really a wonderful place to work.

they let you write about in my position in my case about whatever I wanted tech science economics social mysteries and conundrums and finally I just thought you know abundance the book has become a lot of things um it's certainly become something almost like something that could be a full-time job like if I just wanted to reply to and engage with like the political feedback that would be its own job and part of this was like this is an opportunity to do something on my own to do something that's really independent, not put the Atlantic in a position where they're like a non-political organization with a writer who's doing some things that are explicitly political, but also like I just kind of wanted to know, and this is what I said I think in my original essay, um maybe you guys felt like this when you started this um this show, like what does my mind feel like when I wake up in the morning with a new job, a new task for it, right?

Like you work at like a maybe like a VC, right? you know, you work at um maybe a private equity firm and like you wake up and like how do you process the world? You process the world the way it's most remunerative to you at that private equity firm or at that VC.

And when you change your job, you change your mind, right? New tasks, new questions, new mysteries are unlocked. And I wanted to do that for myself. I wanted to like wake up with a new set of questions. And so that's what I'm doing right now. Was there a price that could have kept you at the Atlantic?

Many people say everyone has a price, but it feels like legacy media is not set up to retain superstars. And I imagine, no, look, the Atlantic paid me well and um and the book paid me well. Um I I'm I'm really lucky uh from that standpoint. There's not really a number, right? Like you know, $1 billion.

Okay, now suddenly you're talking about something completely silly. Like I wanted the the freedom, the freedom to say, "All right, like I'm 39 years old, right? If I stay for another 11 years, I'm 50 years old. " Like now I'm basically on the other side of the hill.

At some point, you want to like be in your sort of in your your electric prime. Be like, what what is my mind like?

what is my life like when I give myself an entirely new task of starting my own company of thinking about the world from the perspective of I'm writing for myself not writing for this august institution so no I I don't think there was a number um and I also think it's important to say like the Atlantic is one of these places that as much as independent media is growing and obviously I think that's great there are a couple empires that are growing too the times is growing like crazy the Atlantic is hiring like crazy they pay their writers over overall I think quite well so this was not really about about money at all.

This was about um being in a fortunate position to take uh to take a risk that had nothing to do with money. Yeah. If you just cared about money, you'd become an AI researcher and you join Meta, get 100 million.

Well, we got to pitch him on private equity because he sounds like he doesn't want to be private equity guy, but I think the scale the Substack, start acquiring, rolling up other other independent journalism. Could happen. Uh I I I do want to talk about uh advice from Ezra about this.

Obviously, you wrote a book with him. He's been at the New York Times. He's been started his own thing. What was his advice to you as you kind of stepped out in this next uh next? Yeah, that's interesting question. No, no one's asked me that that question before. So, I told Ezra three days before the book came out.

Uh we had just done here I'll set the scene for you. We had just done um Freedakaria show and it was one of the first interviews that we did together and we were in the Hut. You guys are based in San Francisco. We're in LA calling. You're in LA. Okay, cool.

So, so in New York, Hudson Yards is that like enormous like skyscraper mall, right? and we go like get some food and we get some lunch and um we sit down and I say, "Hey, by the way, just so you know, I'm starting to think a little bit about doing something independent. " Um this was before Abundance became what it was.

This was before a single book had been officially sold. I said, "I I kind of think I want to do something on my own. " And he said, "You know why? Like The Atlantic's a wonderful perch. " And I honestly told him I told him what I told you. I was like like the job of like being a content creator, right?

It's a it's a weird and wonderful job. Your job is to wake up in the morning and think, what do other people want from me that lives in here that I can put out here and give to them? It's a really weird and wonderful job. And I feel like that work requires a certain amount of churn and experimentation.

If you're stuck somewhere, and I didn't feel stuck at the Atlantic, but I was there for 17 years. If you're in one place for 17 years, there's a certain amount of experimentation that you're essentially choosing to block yourself out of. Yeah. Right.

And so I I told Tim like I really wanted to to experience like you know what what different kinds of questions what different kinds of writing styles and podcasting styles maybe eventually like you know um video podcasting styles would would eventually be unlocked by going independent.

I think that's a lot of the the appeal of Substack for people for people in a certain place or or Beehive or some of these other places. Patreon is really getting into the game here as well. Um it's this opportunity to be like all right what is it what does it feel like to be a content creator for myself?

I'm not answering to anybody else and I'm taking on all of the responsibility and the stress that comes with, you know, being my own boss. Um, I feel like that's an experiment that more people should run on themselves. What about the timing of the launch?

Um, you always hear about the big bump that comes from like a big podcast appearance or something like that. Is there a world where you think you should have been doing email capture in the leadup to the book so when the you did the interviews for the book, people could just go subscribe immediately?

Is this the ideal time? It seems like it's it's really well timed because the like the book has really really done extremely well and so you're you're in this like capturing moment. It would have been probably much riskier to launch this a year from now, but uh did that factor into it?

Did you did you think about doing it before or later? How'd you land on this time? Look, here's here's here's a framework that I that I thought about. It's not like the only framework that in my head except for one.

Obviously, having a number one New York Times bestselling book is a good opportunity to do something new because a certain number of people are already paying attention to like there's a certain amount of obviousness there that I don't want to be like um cynical or or conceited or vain, but I think it's just flatly true.

And there was a certain calculation that was like if I do want to do this in the next 10 years, does it really make sense to think am I going to have another another number one bestselling book in 5 years? Like almost certainly not. Yeah, in 10 years not like it is an incredibly fortunate and frankly just strange thing.

I mean I don't know there's no reason for you to know this. Our book did not hit number one on week one. It didn't hit number one on week two or three or four. It hit number one on week five. Like a a discourse built around the book. Yeah.

Allowed it to sort of like hover in the two to three range and then spike to number one in a way that my book agent said she's never seen this before. Like no book. She said, she said, "I've had a lot of books hit number one, none for the first time in week five.

" So, it was a really original, not original, really maybe unique experience in terms of the way that it hit the discourse, popularity of the demograph. Yeah. Was that a product of like the the the podcast appearance strategy?

I saw Ezra going and you both of you guys going on like a really wide swath of podcasts and and bringing the message to places. And I think a lot of authors when they launch, they think like, I'm going to do like five big things on week one and then like uh you know, I'm done.

But it it felt like you were kind of taking the message to all these different pockets of the internet and really capitalizing over a long time. And it didn't feel like it was necessarily like, okay, you got 50% of the audience in week one and then 10% and then 10% and then 10%.

It felt more like you're having different frames on the same conversation again and again and actually building that momentum. Yes. So if we were doing like book publishing economics 101, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um the book publisher controls very little distribution themselves, right?

There's very few channels of exposure the book publisher controls themselves, right? Even if you love reading non-fiction, my guess is that you aren't going to randomhouse. com to check out their non-fiction titles every Tuesday when the new non-fiction titles come out, right? What do you check?

The New York Times book review, um, podcasts that you listen to, other sites that review books, right? Um, TV interviews, those are the channels of exposure. When you're a book author, you're basically in a position of begging.

You're in a you you go to Fred Zakar and you say, "Please, please, can you talk to me about this book? " And you go to Barry Weiss and you say, "Please, can you talk to me? " And you go to the far-left podcast, you say, "Please. " And you go to the right-wing podcast and you say, "Um, you know, Ben Shapiro, please.

" You're asking, "Please, please, please," of everybody and their assistants and the assistants producers and the producers assistants, you're begging the entire world. Yeah. Made this and almost every author is doing that.

Every author is in this position of begging because often other people control channels of distribution that they don't. Now, in Ezra's case, he he arguably has with the Ezra Klein show like the the medium of exposure that is most successful for launching books. So, that's unique experience for me and my co-author.

That said, two things. one. Um, I would guess that if you really looked into the numbers, what sold this book early on, despite the impression that you gave that this book was on a lot of different podcasts, what sells books is still television. And the reason why is not because television is bigger than podcasts.

In a weird way, it's because television is shorter and it's a worse product. But a worse product gives you a better amuse for the book. If I talk to Lex Freedman for 4 hours about abundance, exactly how many more hours do you want to spend inside of abundance? Like that's a great point.

Talk to Fred Zakaria for 10 minutes about the book. It's this little amuse bouch that makes enough people think oo that sounds exactly what I want. The future Democratic Party, the future of liberalism.

So my feeling is that while podcasts are important because in a weird way the product of a book is even more the conversation about the book than the product than the book itself, the best way to sell a book, weirdly even in this like podcast heavy moment is still television. That's my that's my unempirical Yeah.

vibey bet right now. That's fascinating. Yeah, I love that. Um, yeah. I mean, I noticed that with uh I mean Ezra on his I believe it's his own branded podcast channel put out a 20 minute video essay outlining the thesis for the book. It also that video did very well.

I believe it went viral and got maybe millions of views. That that feels like number one bestseller on on that week, but I think that happened on week one, not on week five, which is interesting, which is weird. Yeah.

I mean so what happened was um uh John Green the author of the fault in our stars uh who's become a non-fiction writer wrote a book called everything is tuberculosis and that book I I I don't think I can share the inside numbers that I have told we did great week one we did that book kicked our ass like we weren't even we weren't even close like I don't know if you guys are what kind of sports fans you guys are like that book was like the Miami Heat sorry that book was the Cleveland Cavaliers compares me with the Miami Heat.

Like every single a blowout. It destroyed it. So like we we weren't even close to number one number one big one.

Um and that does go to show that that with book selling, it's all about channels of exposure and is already a celebrity owns their channel of exposure and so the book publisher by giving them a lot of money is essentially buying their channel of exposure and that's partly what they're paying for.

Um but yeah, the strategy, you know, beyond strategy, there's this question of like how do you sell how do you sell a book? Then there's also this question of like I don't mean to get like weird existential, but like what what's the job of a book? Like what what's its job?

And I think the job of a non-fiction book is to get people talking about it. Of course, you want people to buy it, but like or start your presidential run or start your presidential one, honestly.

You do it the other way around because the best way to get attention for yourself like if you dudes if you guys run for president is a ticket. Yeah. You'll get a ton of media exposure. A ticket. We haven't even thought about that. That's hilarious. Then you'll build then you'll build your book totally free.

It's totally free media because all these people the New York Times is like they have to talk to you guys doing in the Washington Post like what are these guys doing right?

You get all this media exposure then everyone knows your name then you go to a book publisher then they give you a lot of money and then you have this this um platform that's been co-constructed by media organizations that were to build it even though they didn't even mean to.

So you should not write the book then go for president. You should you should do it the other way around. Exactly. Um but the but the the product is the conversation. Um and so the reason to go on podcast, the reason to go, you know, on on shows like this Yeah.

is because like you want these ideas to get out in the ether. Like no one should write a book if they don't want to talk about it for 50,000 hours because that is the experience of writing a book. You finish it and then if you're lucky you talk about it for the rest of your life. Okay.

Well, talking about things actually in the book, this has been fascinating so far. I really enjoyed this. um that one of the narratives that I keep coming back to is the the story of California highspeed rail. I grew up in California. I have friends and family members who have worked on that project actually.

Uh, and I think for a lot of technologists and Californians, the the comparison between SpaceX and the California highspeed rail uh, story really draw a very clear conclusion in people's mind, which is that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector.

And I'm wondering how you uh, do you think that that narrative of, you know, one was literally rocket science, but at the same time, we had put things up into space. it wasn't entirely a new capability.

Um the other was a train which you know we've had trains for generations and we tried to build a train and we tried to build capa capability to get to low earth orbit.

One feels very successful and the other feels like we didn't get anything out of it and I think for a lot of people the takeaway is let's not have the government even try and do things.

Let's let the private sector do as much as possible and that tradeoff between if there is an economic feedback or there is a profit motive or a payback that will act as a better incentive to actually get the result that people want which is transportation or the ability to get to space.

Um how h how how have you grappled with that anecdote specifically? I'm a liberal who believes in a large role for private sector innovation. There's no question that SpaceX is an extraordinary company that has done things for rocket technology and especially for rocket efficiency. Yeah.

That no other company in the world has done. No other individual in the world has done. Yeah. How many people has it moved to space? A lot. How how many? Like dozens? A thousand? Hundreds? I don't know. It's just the people are in California. This is our this is our Iran population question. Yeah.

Is there 50 million, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In California to build infrastructure. Yeah. That is a public good for 50 million people is a different challenge than building technology whose proof point requires several dozen.

These are entirely different challenges and that's why we need I would just I would say like SpaceX has provided internet infrastructure for billions kind of count as the people in this case like because that's the that that's the benefit that people really want.

The public benefit is that people in Iran right now canat you know and and and I and I think the the value of Starlink is is sensational. Yeah. But like when you're talking about right I mean when you think about like broadband technology Yeah.

Yeah, like broadband technology is already being built by a lot of private companies, right? So like it's not as if the creation of Starlink is taking away what has historically been a public service and is creating a private company out of it. Like broadband companies exist like Charter exists, Comcast exists.

So I think it's great that there are private companies that are working on that.

When we're talking about questions like public goods, when we're talking about roads and bridges, things that are frankly quite difficult to monetize, and it's not entirely clear that we want to like directly monetize them, like do we want to charge poor people a certain fee every time they use a road or a bridge?

Or does it make sense to live in a rich society with a progressive tax structure such that we can tax the rich a little bit more than the low income and use that money to create a set of public goods that makes life better for everybody that allows frankly low-income people to use those roads to drive into areas where they can provide services for high-income people such that everyone turns out better off.

I I I see a large large role for the federal government and for state and local governments to look out for public goods. And to me, when I say public goods and you look at the actual budgets of the federal, local, state governments, overwhelmingly what we're talking about is healthare, subsidized healthcare.

We're talking about education and we're talking about infrastructure and transportation, things like roads, things like bridges. Um I think there's a huge role for government to play. I I I like having both. like having a mixed economy, right?

A muscular government and also um even more I would like to see and the book is partly about this even more purposeful pro tech pro-science strategy because the truth is if you look at what SpaceX did for rocketry, why haven't we done that for Alzheimer's?

Why isn't there like a SpaceX for like chronic inflammation or SpaceX for carbon capture technology? Um so I I see a huge role for both of these things.

I don't think that the success of government in some places proves that the private sector can't do certain things very well or that the success of SpaceX means that the government should get out of the business of building bridges. Yeah. Yeah. I I I agree with you on the roads and bridges thing.

I guess my my my worry is like the free market solution to how do I the real problem that you're solving is like how do you get people from LA to San Francisco? Uh how do you move people around California?

And the free market solution is a 1-hour southwest flight that costs a hundred bucks or a Camry that drives you there and maybe costs $20 in gas or something like that.

And so the free market's kind of solved like if you have six hours, you can do it in 20 bucks or if you have one hour, you can do it for 100 bucks and you kind of choose those. And we kind of came in with like we want something that's cheaper for two hours, but it there wasn't this like massive market pull.

And so that it was more like the decision to to uh to create that interim solution uh just just never really happened. But I mean we just just stop there. I love Southwest. I love flying on airlines. I at no point in my life am I like what we need to do is like nationalize United do. But like who built LAX?

Totally right. Like you need public infrastructure or infrastructure that is partly publicly financed. Yeah. In order to create a kind of platform technology a platform for the private sector to succeed.

In the same way if you look at the history of Elon Musk's companies like what is the total number of government contracts and loan guarantees that SpaceX and and Tesla have benefited from in order to become the companies that they are?

I'm pretty sure it numbers in the billions especially when you count all the NASA contracts. Yeah. So I guess the question is like a huge a huge opportunity for a public private partnership to give us the outcomes that we're most proud of. Yeah.

With the California highspeed rail example, the question I I I guess is is it a mistake for the government to pick highspeed rail as an important project? Like was it a misranking? Should have spent more money on roads and or was it just the execution? I mean yeah billions of dollars were spent on a on a rail system.

I mean $33 billion um were essentially um tacitly approved by a bond that was voted on by the public. I think several billion dollars were actually spent constructing rail that isn't connecting anything to anything right now.

So clearly if you were looking back like the total of the total number of manh hours spent and dollars allocated on highspeed rail has not been worth it for people who live in California. I don't want that failure Yeah.

to indict the good that the public sector can do any more than I think you would say that the failure of one SpaceX launch proves that SpaceX is in fact totally overrated like right how much um switching gears a little bit how much are you digging into general research funding we had Andrew Huberman on the show last week talking about his concerns around NIH tell me tell me his concerns can you actually I didn't see that can you so he had a he had a long interview with uh Jay Badacharia.

Uh and uh and essentially the proposal is to cut uh government funding to uh uh university labs and research and scientific research uh labs by something like 40%. And that's a pretty significant chunk. Uh he was very worried about this.

there are some unnecessary costs potentially that he highlighted but in general this is the uh this is the research that cannot be underwritten by the private sector because it does not if you're just doing research on how do how do we fall asleep or like how do we how does the brain work uh at a very abstract or or what is the what is DNA you can't patent DNA as soon as you discover it and yet as soon as you've discovered it boom there's a huge huge you know massive boom in in bio in biotechnology, but it won't be captured by a single patent holder on the underlying.

Yeah. So, that just feels like an area that you could really dig and dive into in an area where it's okay to be kind of skeptical of this hyper capitalist viewpoint and you know, venture-backed companies can solve everything when when the smartest people in the world. It's it's it's broad.

It it's it's a it's a ton of funding of a whole bunch of different research areas. They're all they all can't be underwritten by the private sector in any way versus being very prescriptive. We need a train from here to here and we are gonna hire the people to build it.

That feels like much much harder for the government to get right. I I I agree with the way you guys are thinking about this and maybe it means I agree with the way that Andrew's thinking about it as well. I think what's happening at the NIH right now under HHS is horrendous.

I think if what you wanted to do was to reduce America's annual deficit by $18 billion, which is what we're cutting from NIH. Yeah. You could either cut NIH, like the the the the fountain of scientific discovery for not just the US, but the entire world. You cut NIH by 40%.

Or you could cut the corporate income tax cut by 0. 4%. Like why why not why not just like kind of reduce the size of the corporate income tax cut by a microscopic percent and still fund scientists to discover the basis of Alzheimer's and chronic inflammation and multiple sclerosis and pancreatic cancer.

You said it really well. Yeah. Knowledge can't be patented. Period. Like when the first scientists who looked inside the Hila monster's mouth discovered that there was a little hormone there that seemed to suppress its appetite and regulate its insulin. You can't patent a lizard's tongue.

But our knowledge, our subsidized knowledge of the liquid on top of the lizard's tongue gave us GLP-1 drugs, which now appear to be something like a miracle drug for everything. I mean, they don't just help people lose weight. They don't just help people reduce inflammation.

They literally seem to, there's a study going on right now that they might reduce rates of Alzheimer's because Alzheimer's might be caused in part by inflammation in the brain.

And if GLP-1 drugs work by not only reducing obesity but also reducing chronic inflammation, they might ironically or um incidentally be a neurogenerative drug that works through the gut brain um interface. That's [ __ ] crazy. And we see this by looking in a lizard. And no smart VC.

Like Mark Andre's brilliant, but he would be an idiot if he told scientists if he gave scientists tens of millions of dollars to just look in the mouths of a bunch of reptiles. That's dumb. That sounds really dumb.

But it's really wonderful to have a publicly funded um organization that asks re scientists who simply discover the truths of the universe with the hope that if it's true, someone along the line can find a way to make a product with it. that makes money and saves people's lives.

So, I think we need a really aggressively funded NIH and NSF. I think what's happening right now in the Trump administration is really, really sad. Um, and Jay Badachara, if you're out there, um, I would love to talk to you about what's happening at NIH because I know you a little bit. We've talked a little bit.

I know you don't want this deep down. Um, and I would love to talk about how we could amend NIH policy to truly make Americans healthy again and make America great again because cutting NIH by 40% ain't it?

Yeah, I think the frustration from Andrew was seeing, you know, the increased spending and and trying to reckon with the the two uh decisions there. Uh, let's switch to something less politically charged. Can you give us the highlights of your conversation with Mom Donnie? You released that this morning. Oh, yeah.

Uh, right. right before we got on the air, so we haven't had a chance to listen, but I'm sure it was uh I'm sure it'll be entertaining. Look, um let me uh give you my reaction as a like a person and then as like a political thinker. Um he's unbelievably charming and engaging and um and thoughtful.

Like you know when you know when you're talking to someone who's listening or who at least is very good at performing the act of making you think you're listening to them like I only know this guy for 37 minutes but um I loved our conversation. I really really loved it. I think he's wrong about a lot.

I think rent freezes are a terrible idea to increase housing supply. I think fundamentally you c you cannot try to cap the price of something whose supply you're trying to increase. The way I put it in the podcast is I was like, you want grocery stores in New York to be better.

If you passed a law that capped receipts at grocery stores at $50, what do you think grocery stores would start doing? They would stop they would stop stocking the shelves because you can't make money selling nice stuff to people if it's illegal to make $51 on the receipt.

So, in the same way, if you cap the price of a good and you're trying to increase its supply, you're you're you're you're tying the hand behind your back that you're trying to use. He was respectful, but we disagreed about that point.

We disagreed about the fact that I think I'm persuaded that while I'm not against public sector unions in the big picture.

If you look at why New York City subways have among the highest um uh transit construction costs in the world in the per mile basis, one part of it is that their union staffing levels are four times higher than the international average. You you cannot build you cannot build anything efficiently.

If the first rule of your company is your staffing levels have to be four times higher than all your competitors, like just doesn't work.

So I asked him whether he was interested in talking to public sector unions, which are a democratic ally, of course, if he was interested in in in building public transit efficiently and increasing public excellence. Um, again, he disagreed.

That said, I was really impressed by his insistence that he wanted to be a politician who was outcomes first and process second. And there was a certain amount of ambivalence that he seemed to communicate to me. Again, maybe he's lying. I don't know him that well. He's a nice guy on the phone.

Um, but there's a certain amount of of sort of procedural ambivalence that I really like in a politician. Like if uh if Jay Badachara came on your show, right, or or if RFK Jr.

came on your show or whoever else in in tech policy, someone in on who's doing AI policy and they told you that the outcomes that they wanted were the outcomes that you wanted.

They were ambivalent about what process it took to get those outcomes, but they were going to try their damnest to make sure that when they left office, those were the outcomes that everybody could agree about. Right. There's something that's like very refreshing and like non ideological about that perspective.

And I heard a little bit of it. That said, you know, I'm Is that Is that tying into changing his mind around how police should be funded where he We talked about him changing his mind on two things. One, he told the New York Times he's changed his mind on the role of private developers in housing.

I think he used to be more on the side of like the government should build up the houses. I'm more on the side of the government should fund some of the housing construction, but like we've got private companies that are really good at building housing.

Let's let's not do what the private sector is already doing um too much. But the other thing he changed his mind about, as you said, is defund the police. He talked four years ago, 5 years ago about defund the police being um a slogan that he believed in. And now he really his policy is fund the police.

Um he thinks that police don't solve crimes fast enough and that in many cases they're forced, this is clearly true, to act as social workers rather than police officers.

And so if you got a police officer or say 100 police officers who have to basically be, you know, street therapists and social workers all day long, how are they going to solve crimes? how are they going to stop crime? And so he said he's changed his mind there a little bit as he talked to more police officers.

And the end of our conversation was, I thought, a really refreshing um point that he made that he thinks that his job, he sees his job as surrounding himself with people who aren't too fast to say yes to all of his ideas. He likes being around people who challenge his ideas.

And I think that's I think that's a useful thing for really I mean anybody, any politician or executive. And so there were many things in the conversation that I was impressed by.

Um but you know also fundamentally I think it's just important to say there's there are very big differences between socialism and liberalism and he's a socialist and I'm a liberal. So we're not going to agree about everything but you have to be able to talk to people you don't agree with.

What are you hoping to see out of tech uh the intersection of tech and Washington in a post uh Elon White House world?

You know, um, we got to get beyond this this insanity where the administration attacks on progressive thought become attacks on the kind of talent America needs to train and attract and retain to keep our dominance and to keep the really valuable information clusters that we have here.

If we attack Harvard because we're pissed off at them and force all of the international students to leave or if we encourage some of the smartest people around the world who deep down want to be at Caltech, want to be at Harvard, want to be at Duke and we push them to be in London and Beijing and Shanghai, we are losing so many great ideas, so much elomeration.

the interaction effects that happen when you put a lot of smart people together in America. Like it's important that Silicon Valley is in California and not in Brazil or France or Poland. Like there is a special sauce to America. I think you want to you want to attract retain these people.

I I want to I want us to rationalize our talent and immigration policy and not have it be a kind of unfortunately like assassinated bystander in this war between the Trump administration and a progressive movement that they think has gone too far.

Um I think we really need to to get back down to um a reasonable basis on on immigration policy in particular. Um and then I would like to I would like us to add back the funding to NIH and NSF.

um you know are I'm sure Andrew talked about this a little bit like is it possible that there are so-called indirect costs right money that I work at Harvard let's say uh you're NIH you give me some money for my Alzheimer's um study you also give me money for Harvard is it possible that that Harvard money that those indirect costs are too high yeah sure let's have a public debate about that let's have public testimony let's not cut NIH by $18 billion and say well hopefully we're only cutting the the fat and none of the muscle um so better immigration policy Um, and uh, and better science policy.

Number one, I wish I had a good answer on AI. Um, I don't know what the hell the next 5 years look like. Um, I feel like the smart people that I follow change their mind every six months. Sometimes they accelerate, sometimes they decelerate.

Um, I wish I had like this sort of crystal ball that could tell me what like optimal AI policy coming out of Washington looked like. Right now I don't, but hopefully in the substack I'll be able to get some answers there. Well, we're excited to follow along. That was great. Thank you for joining. This was great.

Thank you so much. Yeah, we'd love to have you back. We could talk all day. All right. Great. I'll do it. Have a good one. Talk to you soon. Later. Bye. Um, sorry I went way over. I thought we I thought we were 5 minutes over. We are 11 minutes.