I actually think if you talk to Nick Denton, Nick would say that
he's actually very thankful that this lawsuit happened because
the entire pure set of Gawker, Huffington, Pose, BuzzFeed,
etcetera are now basically worthless.
If you're a journalist at the New York Times, you'd probably
have more power than your average billionaire.
But with great power comes great responsibility.
Man, Spider Man has changed our culture for Yeah.
I don't even know what a public service Pulitzer is.
It's the biggest one. It's.
Yeah, great. The answer is maybe start
building new religions. Do you agree with this premise
that there are important things that society would like to know
that don't just come online? It's 2924 year old Oxford law
student meets Peter Thiel on a campus tour and casually
suggests the idea that would eventually bring down Gawker.
Today on Newcomer we hear from the man who planted that seed,
Aaron D'souza. Now he's back with the PED
fuelled Enhanced Games and Objection AIA Peter Thiel back
platform that lets anyone challenge news article,
triggering a line by line investigation by former CIA and
FBI agents. I'm Eric Newcomer, author of the
Newcomer Newsletter. Where I cover.
Startups and venture capital. Let's get into it.
So it was October 2009, I was a 24 year old first year law
student at Oxford University. I had literally been on campus
for like 5 days. Remember this is about nearly 20
years ago. A friend of mine was dating
Peter Thiel at the time. And he said to me, oh, me and my
boyfriend are coming to campus. And you know, I knew a little
bit about Peter as PayPal Peter as we, we knew him then.
And he said, oh, can you like show us around campus?
So I was like, yeah, sure. So I gave them a tour around the
the campus of Oxford and we were just like walking around the
gardens. And Peter was the very first
billionaire I had ever met. And I said to him, oh, you're,
you're a billionaire, you must not have any problems.
And he said, Oh yeah, I've got lots of problems.
And I said, well, what is your, your greatest problem and what
can I do to help you solve it? And he said, it's there's this
gossip about lad Gawker. They're writing this horrible
stuff about me, and I don't know what to do.
And I said, well, why don't you? Why don't you sue them?
He said, well, if I sue them, he'll get more attention.
I said, well, what are you going to do?
He said, well, you know, me and my friends are thinking about
buying them for $30 million. And I said, well, that's that's
terrible because you're going to reward bad behavior.
And I said, well, aren't there lots of people who are in your
similar position who don't have the resources to sue Gawker who
aren't billionaires? And I said probably the most
important words of my life. I said maybe you can just fund
someone to sue Gawker on your behalf in sort of like a proxy
war. And Peter was like, oh, that's
really interesting. I said, oh, let me go write you
a paper about it. I'm not sure if it's legally
possible. Maybe that's why it.
Hasn't. What is students solution?
It's like I'm in school, what's the thing?
I will deliver a paper. So I will write, I will write
you a paper. Yeah.
So I, so I went back and I went back to my my little desk, my
little room, and I, I wrote a paper about whether or not this
would be legal. And I literally like, you know,
this is before ChatGPT or anything.
I went to the law library. I looked at the rules about
litigation financing. I think I talked to a couple of
professors and a couple weeks later Peter was back in Europe
and we met up and I presented him this idea.
I wasn't looking for a job or anything.
And he said, how much and how long would it take to destroy
Gawker, like bankrupt them? I and I had no clue.
So I said, oh, better, a big number and a lot of times at
five years and $10 million. And he's a great, I'll send you
the money, now let's get started.
And it took exactly 5 years and it took exactly $10 million.
And we approached it not like a legal case, but more like a
start up. And so we built a focus team.
How many people? At its peak, we were employing
20 people. Including people working for the
law firm you brought on. Yeah.
We know we set up the law firm specifically for this.
Oh, really? Oh, OK.
Yeah. So you you go to find the lawyer
before you found the case, is that right?
Yeah, so. So we knew that there were going
to be cases because Gawker published so many articles.
So they would publish several hundred articles a day and their
back corpus was like a million articles or something.
So we were. Like there must be a target.
There must be a target, right? I.
Mean that in some ways is the intellectual argument against
this that like somebody who produces that much stuff is, you
know, everybody breaks the law in some way, you know?
Like, if you produce that much content that quickly with such
low editorial standards and compliance processes, you must
break the law at some point. And so if you were just, you
know, my thesis was, well, we can just consistently monitor
this every single day, taxonomize all the articles and
then reach out to the get the lawyers to reach out to the
subjects of the articles and say, hey, you know, we have a
philanthropist who does not like Gawker.
Do you want to sue them? And that's literally what we
did. And then we knew we we, we hit
the jackpot the morning of the Hulk Hogan.
They literally posted 10 seconds of people having sex which.
Yeah, which is unauthorized. And then Charles Harder, who is
our lead lawyer, was friends with Hulk Hogan's lawyer.
And so the minute that article got published, phone call David
Houston, who was Hulk's lawyer, said, yeah, we we're definitely
in. What can we do?
Let's let's Hulk smash them. And that began the journey.
What? So, you know, Gawker, owned by
Nick Denton and run by Nick Denton, had Valley WAG, which
was if you were in Silicon Valley.
I mean, it was a force to be reckoned with.
It was a key sort of publication shaping the narrative.
I mean, not a lot of respect for privacy.
Owen Thomas, the reporter, famously said Peter Thiel is
gay. Is that the exact headline?
I'm sure you know Peter. Thiel, what was the headline?
Yeah. Peter Thiel, This gay?
It was. Before my I think probably it
was. 2007. Yeah, yeah.
I don't even think I graduated high school yet.
Yeah, this is how long the saga went on for.
I mean, Owen Thomas says, oh, everybody knew.
And so it's just a matter of just like, putting online a
thing that, like, all the insiders knew.
So that happens also, you know, Valley Wag was obsessed.
You can respond to that. But I just want to give.
It was obsessed with, like, Clarium.
And then it was also just like, you know, you know, I know
people where they post pictures of them, like, in a hot tub, you
know, just like everything, you know, it'd just be tracking to
the rich people. Yeah.
And So what? Was it the outing that made
Peter Thiel the angriest? It was, but we also have to
remember, you know, 2007 is 20 years ago.
The attitude towards being gay has changed very rapidly and
Nick Denton is also gay. And Owen Thomas, who wrote this
story. And Thomas is gay.
And and so it was this, you know, very homophobic attack by
gay people themselves. Yeah.
And I always say that Nick Denton is wished wished he was
Peter Thiel, right? He's like an Oxford educated
philosopher who tried to be a tech entrepreneur and like
really failed and is gay too. And I, I think he was always
quite jealous of Peter and his success and, you know, coming
out as a very personal thing. And, you know, no one should be
outed against their against their will without their
consent. And I think we can all agree
upon that today. And it was something like very
wrong that they did. And it wasn't just that they
just attacked everyone in Silicon Valley.
They attacked everyone in in Hollywood without any
journalistic integrity. And like, you know, I talked to
a lot of journalists now and I use, you know, the Gawker
example and they say, Oh, well, Gawker wasn't journalists, you
know, they weren't at. The time people definitely
thought it was. Yeah, absolutely right.
You know, when, when, when we came out of, of the woodwork in
20/15/2016 to disclose that we had funded the, the lawsuit, It
was, you know, the New York Times and, and, and you know,
the Combat Journalism review, all were saying that this was
the most terrible thing imaginable, this chilling effect
on journalism. Well, I definitely, yeah.
And I, I oppose the lawsuit, to be clear, I mean probably less
stridently than I did at the time.
I mean, I do think there are you a libertarian, very libertarian,
right. I mean, isn't the best answer to
like a Free Press problem, just like more more speech?
And just by saying, OK, you could get sued, you you create
fear among even sort of more sensible publications instead of
just answering the problem with with more speech, like what's
what's your response to that argument?
No, I I think that the courts are a very important process and
and like the rule of law, is remarkably important.
As we'll get to with Objection AI, obviously.
And, and you know, the the problem that I observed with
Hulk Hogan is saying Hulk Hogan is a, you know, a true
celebrity. He is very wealthy by, you know,
the standards of an average American, and yet he could not
acts afford access to justice. You know, to go through the
entire court process cost $10 million.
It took years. And, and, and I think we can all
agree that is the the dysfunction of modern life.
Like the rule of law is the backbone of a capitalist
economy. If you can't have rule of law,
you can't have capitalism. You can't enforce contracts.
And you know, the court system is so slow and so expensive, how
do we have justice? In the Gawker case, Gawker would
make a similar argument to what you just made, which is that
they might have prevailed if they weren't bankrupt, sort of
by the time, you know, because they had to what, pay the bond.
The bond made them unable to stay alive.
You don't buy that. No, I don't buy that.
And I actually think if you talk to Nick Denton, Nick would say
that he's actually very thankful that this lawsuit happened
because the entire pure set of Gawker, Huffington Pose,
BuzzFeed, etcetera, are now basically worthless.
And so he was able to you know, Ariana Huffington really like
she sold out at peak moment. He.
Just got out of a business that was never going to succeed
anyway. You're saying it's like it was a
wake up call to like this isn't going to work.
Right. You know, Gawker was going to be
destroyed by the changes, by the changes to the algorithms on the
platforms. You know, the advertising based
model would never have worked. You know, it was like kind of
profitable because it was like run as a very scrappy operation.
They were never able to raise external capital.
But I'm just saying. But the four, but like the the
bankruptcy in 2016 actually help Nick Denton get to an exit much
faster. And he, and he admitted this in
an article I think in Vanity Fair a few a few months ago.
Right. But in terms of like the legal
process playing out and getting justice, if you assume justice
is the actual, like all the appeals have been made, Gawker
couldn't even afford to get to the end.
You know, it didn't even play out.
It played on a particular jurisdiction in Florida that
seems more hostile to the sort of San Francisco, New York media
set, you know, then if you sued them in those.
States they were sued in in a court that like normal American
people appear in not not like but as new.
York elites are not normal Americans.
The the jury of the peers of Nick Denton is, you know, elites
of. Not what he got, you know.
It was actually quite a telling moment in court that in our
opening statements, we referenced the fact that Gawker
had just leased these are very expensive offices on 5th Ave.
And we and we use this as an example like, well, you know,
these fancy. The wealthy here the.
Wealthy elites in 5th Ave. and everyday Americans like in Hulk
Hogan, Terry Bollea, you know, he's like this hometown hero he
played, played baseball for like, you know, the, the
Pinellas. County obviously has no problem
with being wealthy. I mean, he celebrates.
Yeah. There's an argument made in
court to a jury. Who's the How did you pick the
lawyer? It's like Charles Harder.
Charles Harder, Yeah, who has become a now a very famous
defamation lawyer. He's counsel to Melania Trump,
among many others. You know, Charles is a very
special individual among lawyers because he doesn't think like a
traditional lawyer. Most lawyers are like, how do I
bill more hours, right? That's all they think about.
How do I build more hours? How do I make this more calm
eluded because they're always acting in their own incentive.
Charles, you know, would be a sort of entrepreneur.
He thinks outside of the box. And because this wasn't just a
legal strategy, it was also PR. It was data, it was technology.
You know, it's a capital financing structuring tax and
there are so many dimensions to this which, you know, Charles
and I sort of Co founders of this project brought together
and you know, I've never found another lawyer like him.
The the, the idea that, as I do know for all conversations I
prepped with Claude, not even an not an advertisement and it's
it's biggest concern with the Gawker suit wasn't the actual
like substance, but just the sort of financing issue or like
what, what is your view? Like if we lived in a culture
where people are sort of funding all these lawsuits on other
people's behalf, like. But that is the culture today.
So you know if you slip and fall, you know at a podcast
studio you will get a no win no fee contingency lawyer.
The lawyers do it, you're saying?
Yeah. The lawyers are financed by
hedge funds. Gawker was financed by a sketchy
Russian oligarch named Viktor Vettlesburg, who's eventually
sanctioned after the Ukraine war.
And so ultimately, like, you know, financing is just a normal
part of this equation. And like, should an individual
not be able to access like, philanthropic funding to pursue
justice, like, you know, you would say, can the ACLU and
other NGOs not bring lawsuits or, you know, support lawsuits,
right? I I I don't think so.
Do you like some of media? I mean, this is gonna be
relevant to later in our conversation.
Like what? What do you like about media?
I think media has a very important job to communicate
facts, right? You know, it's the only
constitutionally enshrined private sector position in most
countries, right? You know, like doctors, lawyers,
engineers, and, you know, teachers are not enumerated with
special powers in the United States Constitution, yet the
press is. And so I think the press does
have a very special role to play.
But with great power comes great responsibility.
And, and Spider Man has changed our culture for the Yeah, is
there a right? Here in New York City, right,
You know? Is there a news outfit or
individual journalists that you think embodies like, you know,
that's good journalism? I think as a category, I think
podcasters are very interesting because they have to build an
emotional relationship with their listeners in a way.
That you're like, right here, We're doing it.
This is the best. Right now, yeah.
And, and, and I think, you know, there's a higher degree of trust
that podcasters have to have. There's something, there's an
emotional abstraction that happens with print journalism or
written journalism that you don't feel that the the sort of
reader is interacting with a human being.
And I think podcasting has and the sort of content creation
community has shown that trust is actually the most valuable
commodity. Like Joe Rogan would not breach
trust with his listenership versus I think text based
publications are much more willing to break that trust in
in the goal of achieving. Clicks.
I mean, there's a way to frame what Gawker did.
Was it stripping the humanity of sort of the rich people it's
focusing on, it's writing about them a way you would never want
to write about individuals sort of like shows them in sort of
like the they're nothing like you and just sort of the early
demonization of sort of the rich in a way that the podcast is
sort of the opposite. You you have somebody on, you're
like, oh, you're, you're a person.
You're. It's not like some.
Person and we're. Not talking about real people.
And you know you can't like selectively quote me.
You can't. It's much harder for you to
inject your opinion. I have a right of rebuttal right
here. It's it, it's I think it's a
much better format than narrative construction text
based media. It just doesn't seem scalable
for you couldn't cover the Trump administration through podcast
alone. I think you could, yeah.
Yeah. So have you have you seen the
Epstein Files podcast? No, I no, I haven't.
So this is the number one podcast in the world right now
and it's 100% agentic. So they downloaded the three and
a half million Epstein files emails, dropped them into an LLM
and then used 11 labs to produce all the other.
There's no humans involved in it.
And so you know my and we'll get to this with objection.
It's like media does three things, research, synthesis and
distribution. Distribution got unbundled by
the social platforms. Synthesis is being unbundled
right now by AI. And then the final step is that
research is going to be unbundled from the traditional
media owners. And so I, I'm of the view that
in 10 years time, all content will be individually and gently
generated for each, you know, consumer.
And so you can get your like, customized podcast exactly what
you want, right? Your daily dose of the Trump
administration if you wanted. But that, I mean, that makes it
very easy to live in sort of a fictionalized world, right?
If it's I hear what I want to hear, it's not rooted in what's
happening necessarily. You can hear what you want to
hear, but you could also identically dial up and dial
down the bias, right? So you could actually say, you
know what I want to, you know, the, the, the Rush Limbaugh
version of the Trump administration today, or I want,
you know, the economist version of it, right?
And I think that would be like a, a very powerful way to
continue to. And yes, it's going to come with
a lot of complications. It's going to disintermediate
like traditional power brokers in the media.
You know Rupert Murdoch, who was probably arguably the most
powerful man in the world 20 years ago.
You know his empire will be practically worth that's I
would. Are you down on Rupert Murdoch
or? I well, you know.
I know we have only like a. Yeah, yeah, No, as, as as an
Australian, you know, I see the power that the Murdoch empire
has has wielded and like, you know, as an Australian who lives
in the UK, two countries that for certainly several decades
the Murdoch media empire controlled, right.
You know, the Prime Minister of Australia was effectively
appointed by Rupert Murdoch. Yet like News Corporation, which
is the the greatest media empire, certain greatest
newspaper empire ever produced. That includes the Wall Street
Journal, the Times of London, all the papers in Australia.
Do you know what its market capitalization is?
No, I'm sure it's something embarrassingly small.
Yeah, so like Tesla's like several trillion, Apple is
several trillion. I'm.
Trying to guess what. You know.
You know it. Fresh or what?
Is it 15 billion? OK, one, five.
Yeah, right. You know, Enhanced Games, which
is like, you know, a wonderful company that I do at the back of
a cocktail napkin is worth $1.2 billion on the NYSE today.
So let's get into enhanced games and then I want to keep going to
objection like so enhanced is it it's steroids, right Or what
what the idea is to athletes can take whatever they want.
No. Athletes can take whatever is
legal. Legal and medically prescribed.
OK. And so you know my my.
Legal in their country in the United States.
Legal where they can they. Take it.
Fly over that, Yeah. Well, they've actually been in
it in Abu Dhabi where we have a clinical trial being undertaken
with their equivalent to the FDA and it's all medically
supervised, a doctor prescribed. And so you know, where enhanced
games came from is that I, I learned that 47% of elite track
and field athletes admitted that they are using band performance
enhancing drugs, yet only 2% were getting caught.
And this is like peer reviewed scientific research that was
actually funded by the World Anti doping Agency.
And I said, well, why should we be lying, right?
Shouldn't we be able to be the best versions of ourselves that
we can be? Like you know, and the media is
actually really amazing like social media is unbelievable.
So I made a video, I dropped it on a 0 follower account on
Twitter and it got 9 million views in the 1st 24 hours.
And like, within a day, investors started messaging me
and saying, oh, this is really cool and.
The funny thing about being a great photo of the media is the
media loves it. Yeah, yeah.
The media wants to talk about itself.
So if you're willing to argue with them as sort of this
booking point pointing case, you know, it's, we're happy to sort
of hear it out and talk about it and on your, all your websites.
It's like media contacts here, like, yeah.
No, no, because I'm super open about this.
It's like, yeah. If you're interested in having
me on your podcast, you can e-mail me at
aaron@aarondesusa.com. Built to be consumed like to be
exciting to be in a way that they want to talk about it and
therefore. Get distribution and so the the
most important conversation I've ever had in my life was with the
Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Russo, who who.
Peter's gonna be pissed about that.
No, I'm #2. Yeah, so but so Maria got the
Nobel Peace Prize. She's a a Blogger in the
Philippines. Oh yeah, yeah.
Yeah, for fighting the dictator Robert Duterte.
And she said to me, to understand the world, you have
to understand just one thing, which is social media.
And to understand social media, you need to understand just one
fact, which is that controversy travels 9 times faster than
truth. And you understand that.
You understand why we we have crazy Donald Trump, not boring
Jimmy Carter, Why we have wild Kim Kardashian, not boring
Humphrey Bogart, right? And and I was like, wow, that,
that, that makes a lot of sense. And so when I was
conceptualizing the idea of the enhanced games, I was like, oh,
this is going to go so viral because everyone in the sports
establishment, every journalist will want to talk about it.
And the very first reply on that tweet was from an Olympian named
Manson Henry. And he wrote please don't engage
with this. If it gets attention, this will
be very bad or. Something to that fact.
It's like and there you are doing it.
You can't help yourself. Yeah, right.
It's like 200,000 followers. They were like, oh wow, like
what is this thing we are? And then it was like, should we
not engage with this question mark and then bang like a few
big accounts retweeted it and. You know, are largely resisting
it, right? I mean, you're gonna have your
first games, but it's not clear that this is actually gonna
succeed as a cultural product. Well, so the reason I was so
confident in it is that it it is very simple.
As human beings we are only interested in seeing the very
best of human performance. And so if at the end of the
month in Las Vegas a lot of world records are broken, or if
like the same Bolts 100m world record is broken, then we are
the fastest sporting event in the world.
And if you're a Nike, do you want to sponsor the fastest
natural athlete or just the fastest athlete, period.
Right. And I think there's something
very important about being the best.
And as humans, we don't really care, you know, whether they're
natural or enhanced. Yeah.
Why call it? Enhanced at all?
I mean, in some ways what you're saying is.
It's the open games. Right, right.
It's just everything. It's just like to be human is to
take advantage of any whatever. Well, so, so the Olympics used
to be for, for from 1896 until 1992, the Olympics were only for
amateur athletes. And it was viewed that
professional compensation was somehow diluting the integrity
of sport. It was cheating.
And you know, if you were an athlete who ever accepted even
$1.00 in professional compensation, you were banned
from Olympic competition for life.
And now, like high school athletes are professionals and
you know, like this whole NIL stuff.
And so I think we're going in that similar direction both in
terms of sport and in culture, right?
You know, I, I, I got up at 6:30 this morning and went to work
out at Equinox and Hudson Yards. I'm like, I look around there,
I'm like, everyone is enhanced, like everyone is enhanced.
And if you're not enhanced, you are are giving, you're giving up
an advantage, right? And we are in this now
competition between humans and machines with AI.
And as human beings we need to become.
We need every edge we can get. Absolutely.
Yeah. I mean, it is sad, you know,
with cycling that just like that they were all that so many
people were using drugs that it became a game of getting away
with it. And there's so many that.
Don't lie, just do it all out in the open, right?
And that's the same thing I, I feel with journalism, right?
So it's like some journalists want to be objective and just
produce facts and some want to be highly subjective and push
their own narrative. It's like don't hide behind the
veil of objectivity. I mean, you know, I was at
Bloomberg for six years and so let's move into your new, new
company. I mean, I, I just think, you
know, I was at Bloomberg for six years and, you know, is the view
from nowhere type reporting where you don't really say what
the writer thinks, though obviously as you drift it, you
know, if you write for business week, it has more of a tone
there, there. And then we would write new, you
know, newsletters that almost had even more of a tone.
And it just becomes I get the value.
It's like for the AP and Reuters in some parts of Bloomberg where
it's like, even if the reporter has a perspective, trying to
have you from nowhere when you cover the Fed or something has a
lot of value. But for a lot of types of
stories that are so complicated and there's so much perspective
involved. I think just admitting, as I do
now with my sub stack, that I have a point of view.
This comes from me. This is my perspective.
And trying to say, what's your opinion on.
Yeah. And they're willing to pay for
that, right? And they're saying, you know, I
like your point of view, right? I like the vision you bring to
the world and I'm willing to subscribe for that.
I and I think that is very powerful.
But like when you're Fox News and your slogan is like fair and
balanced, right? Or the Washington Post or you
know, the worse is the New York Times, right?
So 20 years ago, the New York Times, according to you Gov was
equally trusted by Democrats and Republicans.
And now, effectively, it has zero trust among Republicans
because what they discovered is that if they're willing to, you
know, confirm the bias of their readers, they're more willing to
subscribe. And that's why they have such a,
you know, very healthy subscriber base right now is.
I mean, Republicans largely consume their news on TV, right?
I mean, they print, print news. Consumers are just Democrats by
by and large. Well, yeah, it's like, but also
like, you know, millennials trust TikTok as much as they
trust The New York Times. Which is sort of incoherent.
What does it mean to trust TikTok?
It's like whatever's in your feed, you trust.
Yeah, you, you, you. Trust what shows up.
Like I mean I like TikTok but I don't know what it means to
trust it. But the New York Times has a
feed too, right? It's just a feed of.
I love Jamel Bowie's a TikTok feed.
He's a New York Times columnist. But anyway, let's it's objection
AI, right? Objection AI So yeah, explain
the thesis behind the company. So the thesis is very new,
right? Seed funding, Peter Teal is.
Investor Balaji Srinivasan, the former CEO of Coin Base.
Who's who of media haters? Yeah.
Media skeptics. Yeah, I mean, they love it in
certain ways. I mean, Balaji was just Bellagi.
Is it Bellagi? Bellagi.
Is that what he goes by the he was just on with Taylor Lorenz,
one of the which I loved and and obviously Peter Thiel like is
obsessed with media in certain ways and tracks it very closely.
Everyone who is powerful has to understand the media.
Like you cannot be powerful and not participate in in the in the
media. And so the point of objection is
that the Gawker lawsuit took 10 year or five years and $10
million, and that is not accessible to anyone.
And we have created the first accountability system for
journalists. So anyone, but particularly the
subjects of media reporting, can file an objection to a piece of
content. Then a team of investigators who
are former CIA and FBI agents will get to work.
They will investigate that article line by line, source by
source, and try and basically replicate what the author has
written and verify it. They will importantly put all
that information into a public data room which the original
author can rebut. And then AI looks at that data
room and comes to an analysis about what is true.
And I think this brings to an important point is that like
journalists say that their job is to hold truth, truth to
power, and that powerful actors, whether they're politicians,
billionaires or CE OS, should be subject to high transparency.
But if you're a journalist at the New York Times, you probably
have more power than your average billionaire.
This this I think is a core conflict, right, that the media
often says we have no power and the billionaires have unlimited
power. And then the billionaires are
like, listen, all the with all the money in the world, the
thing I care most about is reputation.
And the people who control it are these random reporters
who've never even, you know, worked in the industry that I
Right. Yeah.
And so they both like, it's like you're rich and you control
reputation. But, and, and what journalists
forget is that they are part of these media empires that, by and
large, are owned by billionaires.
I just don't think there is command control like I I really
do think 1. Come on.
I, I just, I was a New York
Times intern, like the Solsberger.
There's a culture like journalism, you know, but I, I
think it was sort of a good culture.
It's like, you know, you check your sources, you give people a
chance to respond. Like there are lots of things
that like, I've joked before that there's like a priesthood
of media, right? Like media's sort of like non
economic in certain ways. They're all these like you win
by, you know, getting awards, not necessarily by building the
biggest business. So there are these cultural and
sort of, you know, inbred sort of principles, but I, I just
never really felt working at any media organization.
I think you're lying to. There's like, I think you're
totally lying to. The most egregious, like I tried
to write an essay, so it was subjective in the opening
remarks for Business Week, criticizing like billionaires
sort of having too much control. And it felt like that piece sort
of got killed for like I was basically saying it's not their
money that's the problem. It's like if you control
platforms anyway. So there there have been like,
but they're they're they're sort of the outlier, right?
Like on random controversial, like the fall of Uber or
whatever. It's not like Bloomberg was like
weighing in like I'm team benchmarker team Travis, right.
For the most of these things. They don't give, they don't care
you. Know, but like, you know, go
over go over to Rocketeer Center, 6th Ave., walk into the
News Corporation building you feel the presence of.
Rupert definitely on the sort of key political.
Absolutely every, every detail in that building, you can feel
the presence of Rupert Murdoch. But of course, that's a sort of
conservative outlet that many of the New York Times, you know,
the this side that I'm more aligned with would say, yes,
that's deeply flawed. No, no, but but I, I think that
liberal journalists don't have the self-awareness to realize
that like Sulzberger and the Sulzberger family, which have
owned the New York Times for what a century now, have that
same influence in building the culture of an organization.
Maybe not in the day-to-day operations, but it's just the
culture of the organization. So like you talk to any CEO of
like an NYSE, this company, they will always say that culture is
the number one asset of any organization.
The culture of Gawker was created by Nick Denton.
The culture of a fox was created by Murdoch.
The culture of the New York Times was created by Salzburger,
right? And ultimately that is the core
value of the organization and, and and there are now economic
motivations, right? So like Nick Denton was very
famous for being the very first media proprietor to have like a
dashboard up on the wall showing how many clicks articles we're
getting, right? And this was like, and and like
he would directly incentivize journalists based on how many
clicks. So they would get bonuses every
day. And now that is.
Perfectly normal. I mean, I I think the New York
Times is one of the best institutions in America.
So we are extremely far apart and we can debate it.
I want to come back to it, but I want to finish explaining what
objection AI is before. And I agree that you create a
culture and that decides sort of what the publication is about.
But aren't you're conservative or, I don't know, you believe in
culture, right? Like, isn't culture like
important? Like you want companies with
good cultures? So yeah.
And the fact that there is a culture itself isn't a problem.
No, no, no, absolutely not every organization has a, has a
culture, right? So it's, it's impossible to have
a cultureless organization. But let's, let's be frank and
honest about what that culture is, right?
So the New York Times is a Democratic paper now, but it's
not a Republican paper. It is not a neutral paper, but
it is not a neutral arbiter of truth, right?
It is a political mass set. And that was, and it's, it's
obvious that it is. That is a conscious business
decision that has been very profitable for them over the
last 10 years. In the in the OK, we're gonna
talk about the New York Times a little bit.
I mean, the they certainly could be more to the left, right.
I mean, there are like pretty, there are traditions of
journalism where you would be more on a team like, you know,
the Guardian or. The like in the UK.
In the UK there's much more clearly like we're on this team,
we're on this team with this team in America, You know, I
think the argument is that they're, you know, fundamentally
these newspapers are like pro democracy and there's sort of
one party consolidating power. You know, like the just like if
you look at that, we're going to get into.
Deep argument that like. Literally the House of
Representatives is moving away. Like the percentage the
Democrats would have to win to win the House of Representatives
is going up by percentage. It's not like 4%.
They'd need a 4% swing, yeah, to to win, but like to to.
Suggest that one party doesn't believe in democracy.
Yeah. Like, is that your interest?
Trump Trump is literally flirting with whether he would
have another term regularly he gives out, I think hats that say
he would he would have another term.
He he is a president that had his summoned his followers to
put pressure on the House of Representatives by sort of
coming into it to to dispute an election result.
But like a, a democratically elected president of the United
States who won the popular vote, right, and a democratically
elected Congress, right, who fully in, in, in full compliance
with the Constitution of the United States has appointed the
Supreme Court. But I don't see anything
undemocratic. Well, there, right, The, the
idea, you know, this idea, I think the Washington Post slogan
like democracy dies in darkness, like, and when Basil's cut 30%
of the Wapo's newsroom, like people felt like this was like
the end of democracy, right? Like be honest with yourself,
right media, you are, you are generating clicks by writing
articles for billionaires. You are not the guardians of
democracy. The take the.
Like, get off the New York. Times story on Cesar Chavez like
that. That's one, right?
That story doesn't happen without the New York Times doing
reporting. It's on a leftist saying that
he'd, you know, abuse some of his followers.
I mean, they're the biggest. Like, I've been cancelled.
I wasn't really cancelled, but people were screaming me on
Twitter was like, the New York Times had broken the story on
George Santos. And there were a lot of people
on the left attacking The New York Times for failing to do it
before he'd been elected. And I guess from my experience
as a journalist, there are lots of stories that just would never
be published, that people, once they're published, people assume
like, this is part of our culture, this we've learned this
thing. And so these outlets like The
Washington Post, New York Times are the ones most frequently
doing those types of novel stories that without them would
never have been published. And so we lose that when those
papers lose capacity. Now, I'm not saying every
reporter at The Washington Post was delivering that kind of
story. The New York Times is a multi
billion dollar publicly traded company.
Are they losing capacity? No, they're gaining capacity.
They are doing well, but we were, it was the Washington Post
that I, I do think it's helpful to have multiple of these
outlets that are doing sort of novel reporting.
Well, it's like, do we really need like lots of local
newspapers and then. Do do you agree with this
premise? I like to have lots of local
newspapers. Do you agree with this premise
that there are important things that society would like to know
that don't just come online? But does that mean that we have
to, like, create a special privilege position for The New
York Times? So you, you agree, you just
think that I'm just saying it's part of what gives the New York
Times value. If you don't give them any
credit for the fact that like the core thing they do is this
really hard thing that there are sort of facts about the world
that are not online, especially as we enter an AI world, this
matters more and more. There's I feel like.
But like, like what Sam Altman is doing or like what I'm doing
is like, I think really important to our society, but we
we don't get a special constitutionally enshrined
position in society. But you were defending the
constitutionally enshrined position, right?
No, no, I was noting that that it exists.
You don't think there should be a constitutionally enshrined
position or? Well, I think with great power
comes great responsibility, right?
If, if it is for the distribution of facts, right,
then I believe that there should be a constitutionally enshrined
privilege. But then, you know, there should
be a very high liability for libel, for invasion of privacy,
you know, to the point where I think it actually should be
criminal, criminalized, right, Because it it if you, it's the
same thing with politicians. If if you give politicians great
power, right, they're in the corollary, if they are corrupt,
there should be huge consequences.
This is what Lee Kuan Yew you did with Singapore.
He said, yes, we're going to pay our ministers extremely well and
they they wield almost dictatorial power and they were
able to take a mosquito infested swamp and make it the richest
country in the world. He said if you're corrupt,
straight to jail. It's straight to Changi prison,
right? Brutal.
And I don't believe that there has to be both sides of the
coin. Sure, there's a lot to unpack
there, but I want to. I want to go back to objection
be, I guess first of all, from the sort of I've been maligned
by media side. Why do they wanna come to you?
Like don't If I'm paying someone, I've been maligned.
I want the person I'm paying to deliver like the result I want,
which is like, I'm the good guy, whereas you're saying we're
gonna deliver the sort of objective truth.
Yes, exactly. And so if you've been maligned
by the media, you would say the media got the facts wrong,
right? They strung a bunch of anonymous
sources together. They selectively quoted.
A bunch of people, right? So, you know, I think, you know,
the example I frequently use is the Ronan Farrow article about
Sam Altman in The New Yorker a few weeks ago, right?
Ronan clearly went out and said, I'm going to write an article
about how bad Sam Altman is. He didn't say I'm going to go
gather a bunch of facts and and then be an objective viewer of
this. He, he clearly had a narrative
and he found a lot of sources that will confirm that, some
which were on the record and some were off the record.
But he he admitted he spoke to 150 people and he distilled that
down to deliver the narrative. He exactly wanted to deliver.
And what was the consequence of that?
Two days later, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam's house.
So that story should never exist because they're random crazy
people. That number one, Ronan, should
be held to an extremely high standard because he's wielding
monopoly power greater than one of the wealthiest individuals.
Wait, why is it monopoly power? Because he has an immense
ability to distribute. Right in The New Yorker, Yeah,
it's like a dying publication that's a laughable New Yorker
has prestige, but it is certainly in no way a monopoly.
It's like. Not not a financial monopoly,
but it's a cultural monopoly. No, there's like there are other
publications you could run in like my my sub stack, like yeah.
But running, running, running a narrative like that, you're
you're a sub stack versus the cover of the.
New Yorker The New Yorker in no way has a monopoly.
I don't know how. It's a powerful.
It's a. Powerful cultural institution,
but it isn't like Free Press culture in America.
Like you don't even think it should be more speech like.
No, it should be more accountability, right?
So every on the record source. Isn't this gonna ruin the
Internet? Because the most sloppy people
with their speech are random commoners online, right?
Commenters. Commenters, we're not supposed
to say that, but whatever. The same difference the the
elite media. The elite media you know is far
more intentional with what they say.
They at least talk to lawyers. Random people like opining
online are are much sloppier. Although, you know, the
corollary to that is that, you know, you have a citizen
journalist like Nick Shirley who's just like a kid with an
iPhone that did better investigative reporting than
anyone at The New York Times. That's definitely not true.
I mean, it's it's not clear. It's very hard to assess what
he's presenting. Well, and and but it's also very
hard to assess what Ronan Farrow and The New Yorker is
presenting. So like, how can we make
journalism better? But I mean, Sam Altman is going
to be a figure of like mini profiles.
Like to me the answer on Sam Altman is definitely Ronan
Farrow. Like has a narrative people.
It is a we call it a story. Like people want a story to have
some. He talks to a bunch of people.
And even if you were arguing in court, opening arguments,
closing arguments, they have a narrative you're presenting, but
you organize the facts. But you you need to present
evidence well. You present evidence in the
story. You're like, I talked to blah,
blah blah, no. Because this is.
What happened? I can get correct I.
I go to court and I present my narrative.
It's adversarial. It's adversarial, and the
documentary evidence must be presented.
So the average federal court case in the United States has a
quarter of a million documents supporting it, right outcomes,
A50 page judge judgment. So there's like a 99.99%
compression ratio. The New York Times writes a big
investigative piece might be like 2000 words long on average.
According to Chachi PT, they have 1010 on the record sources.
And if you assume they speak for an hour, that's about 100,000
words of information that is distilled down to like 2000.
So you have like a 98% compression ratio.
And So what I'm trying to do with objection is to fix the
decline of media. So according to the Gallup poll
in 19 seventy, 70% of Americans trusted the news media.
That's down to 28% today and 8% among Republicans.
And you know, I'm here in New York City today.
I'm going to talk to some of the biggest media proprietors in the
world. None of them are really focused
on solving this trust dimension. Like, you know, if you talk to
journalists that say, well, why don't you just pay journalists
more money, right? That doesn't actually solve the
structural problem. So how can we actually fix the
structural problem of the decline of journalism #1
journalists need to show their work, right?
So if you're gonna write a story and it's backed up by sources,
like just upload the source videos, right?
Upload the source documents. I'm not against what you're
saying necessarily, I just think that like practically, my
readers are not gonna go and spend the time to audit.
No, no, no. But this helps.
You like it helps another company, potentially mine my
work, but my actual readers are sort of deciding, do I trust him
or not? No, no, no, I, I think that the
trust will be higher if you presented all of your background
material right. So This is why podcasts are very
powerful. It's like, you know?
If they're consumed mostly through clips like people, it's
like nice to have the whole thing, but like most people but
it but in the core monetizable audience wants they want a.
Clip, but the clip is the opening wedge to watching the
full unredacted transcript. And so maybe only like a small
percentage of your audience wants to go like really deep,
but that's like very meaningful. And in the era of AI, our
capacity to read is unlimited, so having an open public data
room attached to every story would actually substantially
improve the quality of reporting.
And I, I, I, I don't. I don't think you can doubt this
at all. I, I think it could be valuable
and I agree I think journalism will be open to it if like the
reader shows interest in this stuff.
Like, I think if you can convince journalism, you know,
companies that people will trust them more because, you know, you
can have a nice way to show, like, the sort of archives of
their reporting that that could be the case.
I'm somewhat skeptical you'll succeed in getting enough
readers to like engage with it that it really changes their
reputation. I, I, I actually, I don't think
it's about readers engaging for generating monetization.
It's actually for AI training, right?
So 20% of all the data that ChatGPT is trained on is news
data. But as I said it, new SATA is
like 99% compressed. And so if one had access to the,
you know, unique first party recordings, this is a constantly
refreshing source of data that could be used to train the most
advanced AI model that it's ever existed.
I wanna get back into like the pieces of what objection is
because so one is sort of you've been, you know, there's been a
hit piece about you having have have a response independent
investigation. There's another piece which is I
guess it maybe not a profit Center for you, but Sir, I don't
know if it's brand exercise or what, but like we'll create a
contractual agreement for whenever you talk to a
journalist, you should sign an advance.
So so. One thing that's like really
shocking about journalism is that Jesus, we.
Can keep that in so you who's slick and who's not on the.
Show Yeah, one thing that's really shocking about journalism
is that we sign terms and conditions when we do everything
in life. You know, when I go to the
physiotherapist, when I go to the swimming pool, when I check
into a hotel. But when we do an on the record
media interview, right, there's there's no paperwork, right?
I came here to your studio today.
I know I was gonna laugh about this.
I didn't say anything. Yeah.
Right. And it and it.
But should I have sent? Why?
I mean, for a podcast, why should we say anything?
Well, what is? What are the usage?
Rights of all this? I guess I cut it all down.
Yeah. Like, are you gonna like, you
know, shouldn't it be better if I say OK, you you assure me that
you will not that like you will publish the full unredacted
version of this, including you spilling the water on your shoe,
right? It's like, I don't want that in
there. If I spilled water on my shoe
would definitely go in there. It would be like repeat no?
Yeah, exactly right. So you have the full unredacted
version of this publicly available on your YouTube
channel, right? Yeah.
And like this should be I. Just think media is such a
shitty business as it is. Like it's going to be hard, you
know? Anymore like Burden, but.
But I think this is actually what structurally needs to
happen is that someone needs to come through and I, this is now
my job to say, how are we going to restore trust in this very
important institution, right? So subjects need to have
contractual relationships with reporters.
Reporters need to show their work, right?
They need to show it in, in the most comprehensive way possible.
Like, why do we trust courts? Why do we trust science so much
more than we trust journalists, even though 50 years ago trust
in these institutions was all about the same and journalists
have fallen off the Cliff? It's because in science you have
to show your work, right? It's peer review, right?
So wouldn't it be better if the New York Times was going to
publish a massive investigative piece that it goes to like Fox
News first for an independent review to make sure that, you
know, if they're using anonymous sources, it had been, it's been
correctly done that, you know, they've weighed both sides
correctly, right? That, but that's that's what
would happen in science, right? I, I want to dig in.
I mean, a piece of this is you, you don't like anonymous
sources. Is that fair?
I mean, you're coming around a little.
Bit anonymous sources are a massive power asymmetry and that
there is a technological solution to solving it.
OK. Well that that might end.
I mean, because like in tech reporting, like a lot of deals
are just reported anonymously before they're announced.
Yeah. And, and, and, and as someone
who is a, you know, a technology venture capitalist and founder,
right, you know, the quality of this is just so sloppy.
There's no more more often than not like if you report like the
valuation terms like they're right and people want to know
that information. And a lot of these like rounds
are like widely known among like lots of people who haven't even
like signed contractual agreements.
No, no. But like, you know, I saw an
article in the FTA couple days ago, it's like early open AI
investors are criticizing Sam Ullman.
And then it's like, well, you know, there were lots of people
who are early investors. Are they people who invested in
a triple wrapped SPV? I'm just trying to point out
that there are a lot, there are plenty of genres of reporting
whether it's like factual, like financial information, like
where it's almost become part of the process that like even the
the people involved are leaking it sometimes people.
Involved are leaking it, but like ultimately there should be
external about verification of the use of any anonymous source.
Yeah, I think if you can figure out like verifying anonymous
sources that come true, we were talking about this.
I think if you can verify that anonymous sources come true,
those people should get extra, extra credit.
Yeah, it's like, because that's the hard.
That's good journalism. And so one thing that we'll
we'll be releasing in a couple of weeks is the first ranking
system. I know.
I thought you were gonna have in time for me to know where.
I stay where do you stand on on the list?
And you know, journalists rank hospitals, restaurants,
universities, you know every. Yeah, I think bring it on.
Journalists will love it. I just think any fair list is
going to put like, Reuters and AP at the top and Reuters at the
AP write stories that are generally and also far more
favorable to like Democrats than most.
You know, like Fox is not going to do well.
Like Fox got sued and settled for what a huge.
Sum of time or the the Dominion voting case?
Yeah, there are many there, right?
And I, you know, I my first real job after as a New York Times
intern, I work for the Washington Examiner.
But but but, the reason why the New York Times doesn't get sued
is because of New York Times V Sullivan.
Because there's such a high standard for.
Such a crazy high standard that was lobbied in for by the media
industry. So I'm my point is just, I've
worked in conservative media. Like I was writing about like
local. There's the Washington Examiner
covering DC City Hall, which was more even handed just a little
bit like we love cars and hate unbalanced budgets, you know,
like is like, Oh my God, they're going to, you know, kill,
they're going to create traffic. But I just felt conservative
media like pretty sloppy. Like I do think like print media
is more buttoned up than TV journalism, like the New York
Times is more buttoned up than. I'm not sure that, OK, so the
New York Times is an outlier because they have an economic
model that actually works. Wapo doesn't have an economic
model. Right, they're they're not doing
great right now, but WSJI mean the Washington Post's what just
one, I think the public service Pulitzer for covering Trump's
like administrative state like I think those were good stories.
No one cares. No one cares about this stuff.
Like, I don't even know what a public service Pulitzer is.
It's the biggest one. It's yeah, great.
But that's, I don't know what the argument embedded in that
is. I do think the news consumer
being sort of pretty low quality is part of the problem, right?
We don't have a discerning you. Just consumer you stupid
Americans aren't smart enough to read the newspaper.
It feels that way right now, I think.
That is such an elitist. An elitist.
Are you kidding me? Like I I admit that I'm an
elitist in my. Cuisine, but like, you know, I'm
a capitalist. Like I don't I don't, you know,
I don't apologize for this. I like I, I.
I don't, I don't apologize, just in believing the elite, like,
yeah, part of what makes The New York Times work is those
reporters are very sophisticated.
No way but but then the their craft.
But but then the the problem is there that you know, it's this
oppressive economic model, right?
The average journalist in the New York timer earns like 120
grand a year. You can't even afford like a a
walk up studio in the. West, I agree.
Let's figure out how to make them more money.
Or I don't know what your point is.
Is that that number one, the economic model doesn't stack up,
right? And, and you know, my concern
principally is that the media proprietors were caught off
guard by tech 20 years ago. So the first unbundling of
distribution, you know, people like Sulzberger and Murdoch did
not understand. Now they really understand that
this unbundling of synthesis is happening and they're petrified
by AI because ultimately the core task of journalism, which
is the the the synthesis of narrative, is going to be
completely unbundled. Yeah, I I don't know that they
actually get it yet. I.
Don't think they get it because like I.
I I just had somebody, I can't even remember who it was, but
some journalists was like journalism.
I mean, AI is never gonna get a scoop.
I'm like, they're all these public records online, Yeah,
where they just pull something out, like distill it in a like
scoop of idea, but also scoop of fact.
And like public filings, like AI is definitely gonna get scoops
in those domains. So I definitely agree with you.
The AI is coming for not all of journalism, not in fact, the key
thing it's not coming for is the human anonymous source, you
know, the the thing that's not getting put online.
So a lot of the things you don't like about media, that's what
media is gonna need to become even more in a world of AI.
But this is the, you know, I'm, I'm actually like here in New
York, not to do podcasts, but to meet with media owners.
Is that media owners understand that the second unbundling is
happening with AI and synthesis. Now, what they don't understand
is that the unbundling of research is going to happen and
that's going to be the, the, the death knell in the coffin of, of
traditional media, right? Because if the research
component of news gathering, right?
That that empathy of sources and that very humanized element, it
can become unbundled through technology, then the power of
the traditional media apparatuses to clients
completely. But what do you see?
You see this as like Teegis type, like this sort of
research, like we're going to pay people to make calls, like
AI to make calls. No, no, no.
I I think it's a combination of AI and humans to to work as a
sort of like an expert network or hive.
So are you familiar with GLG? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
That's a genre company. Like GLG, but you know, with a
strong technology platform for doing unique first party
research. So you say, OK, we want to
research the if equinox is underpaying its employees,
right? So instead of 1 reporter going
there and like talking to every staff member about their pay
rates, what if there were like hundreds of people
simultaneously? Work.
I know you confuse me because that's like extreme journalism.
It's like, I love it. Like we need more of that.
Stuff, this is what I'm, I'm not anti journalism.
I'm, my goal is to increase the trust of journalism.
So like it's, it's just gone down for 50 years.
And so I will know if I'm successful, if in like 10 years
time we're like, oh wow, it's suddenly gone back to like north
of 50%. And I don't think anyone wakes
up every morning trying to fix this problem.
Like Rupert Murdoch doesn't, the Salzburgers don't.
Well, they try to do it by practicing the journalism that
they believe in, but. No, they're trying to make
money, right? And I.
Do not think the Salzburgers are like optimizing for when they
want to make money, and I'm glad they figured out games, but
they're optimizing for all publications.
They, I mean, sorry, of all industries, media has tried to
hold on to some sort of principles even as it's hurt
their business. Model.
They're just trying to patch the leaking ship, right?
Most of them, they're like, that's what they're trying to do
right now. And you know, they're they're
not thinking about like this massive structural transition
that is going on. Like, you know, there's probably
like one or two like very good thinkers in the top echelons of
these media companies who are thinking about AI and the
synthesis unbundling. But I can assure you that no one
is thinking about the research unbundling.
The actual accumulation. Yeah, the the, the, the how
information is acquired and, and and and there's some elements of
how human thought is used to adjudicate rank train tag that
information. But Balaji has expressed this
point of view recently that sort of like everything that should
be written about is sort of the stuff we put online like that
that is sort of like online is our self presentation and that
the stuff offline that's like private.
Do you agree with that? Because I find it, I feel like a
key part of understanding how society works is like, what's
your life actually look like? Like to me, I feel like we don't
have nearly enough visibility into all these people we hear
from all the time. Like, don't we need to know what
like? Do you need to know like?
I feel like we need more of a portrait.
We all become the part of what people like about podcasts is
that they get a little bit more of the humanity.
But I want an even more extreme like.
Let's give a real sense of like. But I think AI is actually like
very good at that. So it's like, you know, I was
talking to a journalist and they were like, oh, you know what
colour is like Peter Thiel's couch like, And they were like,
I want to write this like in depth personal piece.
And I'm like, don't you know how to use Google like you know you
could like if you knew what you were looking for and AI can do
this very well. You would be able to figure out
where his houses are, who his interior designer is, and you
know what his taste in art and. Art.
Well, journalists don't want to be like, probably, right?
They want to know. They want somebody who's seen
the couch. Not like, oh, it could be.
No, but like you could actually find all of this stuff.
It's already all on all on the Internet.
I'll throw up the gauntlet find I don't think you can find Peter
Thiel's couch couch. You might see a picture that is
of Peter Thiel, but it'd be sort of hard to know that it's like.
No, but AI is actually very good at that.
You you could, you know. Come back right in the comments.
Here's There's a picture of Peter Thiel's couch people.
Smart, smart engineers out there.
Can you can you figure out what what kind of couch Peter Thiel
has? Specifically the whole like
Antichrist sort of thing. I mean, you made a point earlier
in this discussion that the this stuff that gets people's
attention is, you know, sort of controversial.
Like do you think this the Antichrist thing is like a an
attention seeking? Strategy.
I I think you know. This is Peter Thiel giving a
bunch of essays about the Antichrist.
So and it potentially being like Greta.
Yeah, yeah. So no, I think what's more
important is to think about the place of of God in our society.
And so all great businesses are cults.
Yeah. Right.
And like we know this one, like Apple and like AI is kind of
this cult dimension to it. The New York Times is a cult.
Media elite. Media circles are definitely a
cult. It's amazing leaving a company
and you're like, Oh my God, I cared about all these like
weird, weird things, weird things.
And then you're out of it. You're like, I don't care about
that at all anymore. Yeah, so I definitely agree with
you. I mean, but but they're called
in a non negative way to sort of that's how humans work.
Yeah, it's how humans work. And so why do we work that way?
And so Jean Paul's Sartre had this thesis is that human being
that on an evolutionary biology level, species that cooperate
will will out compete those that do not cooperate.
And the manifestation of this in humans is religion.
It's like this like social glue that pulls us together and in
the in every civilization for the entire history of the world
up until the fall of the atomic bomb, we were religious.
And then after the atomic bomb, we have become an atheistic
society. And Satra called this the God
shaped hole. And so we now fill this God
shaped hole with things like the cult of, of, of carbon, right?
Greta Thunberg is like this. You know, it's almost like
praying to the weather gods. Oh, please, you know, if we
sacrifice enough of ourselves, sacrifice our young, sacrifice
our old, we'll, we, we will appeal, appease the weather
gods. And, and, and you know, Taylor
Swift is a goddess, right? And there's a sort of cult.
Innocuous one. Well, maybe just you know, the
cult of Athena was fairly innocuous.
So but so the point about Peter is that and the Antichrist
essays is that I think that the the the God shaped whole the The
lack of religion in our society is deeply under theorized and
helps explain why Taylor Swift has become a goddess because we
lack goddesses in our society. But I don't think the answer is
just then start believing in religion again because.
I mean the answer is the answer is maybe is start building new
religions. An AI, an AI God, or what do you
think it's going to be? Like the rise of AI is,
according to presser, Peter Francopan from Oxford has a
historic analogy of the rise of organized religion.
Right there is this, you know, priesthood that understands the
sacred text and that no one else does.
Like, do you actually know how an LLM works?
Somewhat, but certainly level of a, yeah.
Exactly. General purpose transformer.
So there's there's this now priestly cast who has special
access to the divine. And that you know, normal humans
must prostate themselves too to have access to the divine.
Why focus on I know you didn't write the essays, but you're,
you're maybe as closest. Maybe you'll help me get Peter
Thiel on here someday if I he can watch this and decide for
himself. But I mean, why focus on the
negative instead of the positive?
Like, I I just feel like the Antichrist.
Yeah, it's the darkest thing in the world.
Like what we need is positive value.
Like what should we be worshipping, right?
Yes, and I, I well, but you know, to understand what we
should be worshipping, we must understand what we shouldn't be.
No, I think it's easier. It's much easier.
Like humans love to like, hate the other.
It's easy to like come up with like, hate them.
Like, you know, that's sort of the problem the challenging 1 is
to come up with. Like who should we worship, you
know? But if there's anything to
admire about Jesus Christ is that he built the greatest
narrative in the history of the world, right?
You know a So it's. Ronan Pharaoh He's he's a
monopolist level narrative speaker.
He's a, he's our new God. I mean, I, I, I want to end on
that one. I mean, I just think like, my
view of the culture is that like, Sam Altman is going to be
profiled endlessly, that Ronan has built a reputation with
story after story that people can assess for itself.
Like sure, maybe if there was a lot of like skepticism, he could
release more more information, but but I just think the answer
is more journalism, whereas your answer is scare Ronan out of
doing that term like legal process.
No, my my answer is better structured journalism.
Just how you, I mean, one interesting idea you have is
like have it have like the anonymous sources in some sort
of like, Yeah, exactly. So cryptographic hashes, data
rooms, show your work, peer review like.
I think these are all tools that can be combined to raise the
quality of journalism. And I can I can see it.
I don't making up anonymous sources.
I just don't know that it's like I don't think that's Ronan
Farrow's like problem. I think your issue with Ronan
Farrow is much more likely to be just like a selection of which
how to present the narrative. Exactly.
And so if we now have the tools to judge the presentation of
narrative. I mean, this is, I mean, you're
the guy who like brought down Gawker, which.
I'm the guy who's done many things.
Yeah, you've done many things, but I'm just saying part you're
now building a company that sort of needs equally the people who
hate the media and the media to like them.
Like, what is your message for journalists when one of the
things you're most known for is sort of what many journalists
see as like a hostile act? Like how are you gonna get
journalists to the table? But your but your own owners are
very hostile. Hostile to.
Journalism, like Rupert Murdoch and the and the clickbait
incentive structure of journalism today is very hostile
to the to the art of journalism that, you know, you go to
journalism school for. Yeah, well, I mean, clickbait's
sort of on the way. That problem was a sort of
Facebook specific and some of the clickbait stuff, yeah, it
was more media reacting to the pressures of social media than
something they necessarily wanted to do.
The thing is that media is not in the driver's seat anymore,
right? And, and it's because, you know,
people like Rupert Murdoch and the Salzburgers 20 years ago
didn't understand the unbundling of technology.
And now that is, you know, it's ever present in their and, and
they still don't understand it. Like, it's so painful to watch
these legacy media owners. Like, you know, years ago I was
talking to them about AI and they had no clue what was going
on. And, you know, they did these
sort of cash licensing deals with people like Open AI, but
they should have done equity deals, but they didn't.
I mean, my, my worry with you is just the sort of, you know, if
I, I think a lot of what you're doing is like very interesting.
I support and I and I like this idea of like having to actually
like rank reporters and like assess them over time and trying
to sort of figure out the objective truth online.
And we're gonna have all these problems like with AI, like
right now, they depend on the media in some ways to adjudicate
like prediction markets and stuff like that.
But I, I do worry that a lot of it, like what you're actually
doing in the beginning is sort of just the like go after
stories and sort of for hire. Like we're gonna, you know,
figure out all the information we can to undermine, like this
story. Yes, absolutely we should.
Figure out. But you want to undermine
fairly, right? It's like undermine.
No, no, it's a true process. It's like undermine, you know,
find all the information that could undermine the story.
Because if I'm, you know, assigned peer review, a
scientific publication that's going to go in like the journal
Nature, I should do absolutely everything I can to find any
flaws in the argument. Because if a major publication
like the New England Journal of Medicine or The Lancet publishes
even a modicum of false information, that can have
disastrous consequences. And I in particular, I point to
the MMR causing autism scandal right where The Lancet published
that article. And, you know, in retrospect,
they should have done a lot more peer review.
And to this day, you know, I think if you talk to your
average American, they would think that the MMR vaccine
causes autism, right? And as someone who who got
measles or sorry, mumps when I was in college, because there's
not enough herd immunity, I think that very seriously,
right? And so you think about what
damage has been done because journalists are not subject to
that same level of peer review and scrutiny.
Right. And I, I agree with you.
I mean I think sometimes and I'll wrap up soon.
I know I'm sure you have to go like the, you know, reporters
sometimes because their employees are at a disadvantage
on these like online, like talking about their stories.
Like I feel like one thing that I've really had as an advantage
is just like being self published.
Yeah, this is the subject. Then I can actually, like
respond. Whereas The New York Times is
sort of like, we want to publish the story and let that speak for
itself. That's our editorial process.
And so then you don't have this like ink dialogue.
Whereas like, for me, it's like I need the dialogue.
I want more engagement. I want.
Yeah, exactly. So I support a lot of these
things. And I think some of it is just
like the media industry shifting still to this online world where
you have to be sort of like open to discussion and feedback.
The legacy institutions, yeah, they're adjusting now to the to
the first unbundling of distribution, but there's they.
There's more comment. There's so much more coming and
it's going to hit them like a tsunami and they haven't even
properly like thought about it. Aaron, thanks so much for coming
on the show. Hopefully the first of many.
I really enjoyed it. Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me. Thanks.
That's the Newcomer podcast. Thanks for listening.
Please like, comment, subscribe, check out my other show, this
Ruble Valley show, also on YouTube.
Go to thesubstacknewcomer.co and read our coverage of starps and
venture capital. I'm Eric Newcomer, a long time
journalist. Now I say I'm an influencer who
exceeds expectations. I ask hard questions about the
startup and venture capital industry.
Follow along wherever, watching, reading, and even coming to our
events. I host the Struble Valley AI
Summit. Thanks for all your support.
I love the comments. I love the likes.
Please keep them coming. Thanks so much.
I'll see you next week.