#2527 - MrBeast

[00:00] It must be very easy to get people to do your show. Well, I mean, yeah, seeing how we give away millions of dollars. Yeah, usually people are very excited about it. The actual, the only hard part for us is, you know, if it's a longer one, just the time off work. Yeah, [00:27] So, because sometimes when we shoot like Beast games or stuff, you know, it can go for a month. [00:32] But besides the work stuff, of course. [00:33] Are there people that haven't been able to do the show because they couldn't get a month off work? Oh, yeah, tons, of course. So we always have like – even like the day before, sometimes people get cold feet. So – [00:43] If we're doing something with 100 people, we usually have 10 backups just because... [00:47] I would imagine that the type of person that would do your show would have a job that they could quit. [00:55] Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends, right? Whether it's the YouTube channel where we're doing 100 families compete for $250,000 or it's B-scans where they're competing for $5 million. [01:05] People are way more excited for. Some of the YouTube videos, it's not as grandiose. They're like, I don't know if I want to lose my job for a 1% chance of winning $250,000. Well, how many people, when you do Beast games, how many people are competing? So the newest season we just shot, we grabbed one person from every country on Earth. So it was around $200,000. Whoa. Yeah, which was actually pretty cool because you would put them in these crazy games, and you'd see how someone from the Asian Pacific countries would react versus someone in South America.

[01:35] different upbringing so it's really cool did you have to i mean you must have had to thoroughly vet these people right make sure they're not insane uh make sure you have a serial killer we do the psych and background checks of course no how do you get that information if you're going i mean if you have how many countries are there first of all it's 190 we went off of whatever the olympics do so it's like a hundred something around 200 yeah plus or minus a couple yeah [02:00] So some of them have to have some shitty infrastructure. Oh, I mean, I think one of them has literally 40,000 people living in it. Like, it was – what is it? Not the – [02:09] something sea islands, not the Cayman Islands, but some island country. And yeah, I was like, wow, like my town, which has 100,000 people is two and a half times the population of your country. Well, I was joking with the contestant because I was like, [02:22] If you win the $5 million, you could technically give a $200 dividend to every single person in your country. It's like – it's that crazy. It's that little people living there. Wow. Yeah. That's the kind of country where you're like, I wonder if you could buy that country. [02:35] I mean, the GDP is probably... [02:38] a couple hundred million dollars if I were to guess. Someone like Elon or something like that could buy a country. There's probably thousands of people in America that could. I mean, I feel bad. People from that country listening. Well, we didn't say the country. Okay, true, true. We're good. We didn't say it. Exactly. It's not yours. They should know what they are. They're a country of 40,000 people. That's just what it is. Nothing wrong with that. [02:58] But it's... [02:59] It is weird how many countries there are, and if you've got a person from every country – [03:05] what are the odds you're going to get good data as to whether or not they're a criminal?

[03:09] Well, that's why, I mean, if you saw our budgets on what I have to spend on casting those people, it was ridiculous to be able to get them all. Because basically what we did is we grabbed multiple options for each country. And what I was worried about is that the contestant from blank country would suck. And then the country would be like, Jimmy, you hate us and you purposely picked this absolute moron. So we would pick two or three from each country and then we let people from those countries vote on who should compete. Oh, smart. It wasn't even one. I had to get multiple from each. [03:39] I think I ended up spending over a million dollars just on aggregating and casting and background checks and everything and then putting it out there so people could vote on it. But that way, whatever, like Georgia and Europe, if that guy is an absolute moron, it's on them. They picked him. Right. That's actually very smart. Exactly. How did you come up with the concept for this show? First of all, how the fuck do you have time to do that show as well as do your YouTube show? Yeah. [04:09] of just 18 hours a day filming. And for people who might not have heard of it, it's essentially the largest cash prize of any show in the world. Season one, we had the most contestants of any show in the world and the largest sets of any show ever to exist. And I was just like, what if you take a reality show, but you just ramp everything up to the absolute maximum and season one, we gave away $22 million just in one season. And some of the biggest game shows in the world right now give away $250,000. We're giving away $2 million every episode. Look at that. That's wild.

[04:39] That's so crazy. That's amazing. And then we build a city. And so also, holy shit, my, my whole thesis behind it with this is, you know, you when you watch these, you know, game shows or reality shows, there's a lot of takeaways. And like, after the show, they'll put people in a room, and they'll be like, hey, talk about what happened here. And it's like intercut. And I was like, [04:59] Well, what if we just have a thousand cameras and we just let people be themselves and we kind of just show it in real time? So we also like in season one, we broke the world record of most cameras ever used in any production of any movie show, anything ever. So like this set right here, there's over twelve hundred cameras in there. And the most room is so big. Yeah, it's bigger than the football field. And so there's a thousand contestants. We have to have an A-cam on all of them. So there's like a poll on each of the platforms on them. [05:29] blah blah there's over 1200 here which outside of this the most ever used in production was 400 so like i i literally had to and and this might seem insane but this is why i think the show appeals to quite a few people because normally in a show they would have a story producer walk up to you hold a camera and be like all right you got three minutes you're kind of the bad guy say roughly along these lines almost basically put words in your mouth and then they'd go like person to person with like one camera whereas i go in the microphone i go [05:55] Say whatever the hell you want. We're recording you for the next 10 hours. I don't care, right? And you all have a dedicated camera on you. So then instead of putting words in people's mouths, they can just do whatever they want. So do you have someone who actually has to go back and watch all that footage and edit it and then put it all out as a show? Yeah, exactly. How many people do you have doing your editing? That season, over 150 editors worked on it, yeah. Holy shit, man. It's crazy. And that's obviously why people don't do it because it's like basically we had to spend millions of dollars in cameras.

[06:25] record for most cameras ever used, which then we also broke the world record for most camera cables used, because it's 27 miles of camera cables, broke the world record for the largest control room. Each of these is millions of dollars, and you have to bring in millions of dollars of extra editors, and so next thing you know, you're going to have a lot of money. [06:38] you know, to take it from 10 cameras where you just essentially put words in people's mouths [06:42] to unlimited cameras and they can do whatever you want. You can show who they actually are as opposed to what you think they should be, right? With the story producer, it costs a lot of money. It's a lot of effort and time, but it shows through in the final product because now, [06:54] You know, you get more natural, like less scripted things when people are just themselves. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. We all like to find ways to save ourselves some time, like ordering out for dinner or meal prepping so you don't have to cook during the week. If you're a business owner looking to hire, a great time-saving hack is ZipRecruiter. Its newest feature lets you meet the most interested, qualified candidates first. [07:24] And it doesn't just let you meet candidates faster. You can hear why they're interested in their own words. Save time and meet great candidates sooner with ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Rogan. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

[07:54] see the big picture. [07:56] And a great ability to put together things regardless of what the budget is, like regardless of how much money you're going to make to do the best product. Like I always thought that about you when you were doing – when you first started doing your YouTube show. I'm like the amount of money and time and effort involved in this is like above and beyond what most people are willing to do. And it's way more than a traditional television network would ever do because a traditional television network would look at the upside. [08:26] at the money and they would go we're going to spend x amount of money to make it this much better but if we just take it down a couple of notches we save 80 yeah and they would do that but you're like can we make it even cooler let's put all the money back into the show which is very risky man because not just very risky uh [08:46] Um... [08:47] It's just very... [08:49] you have great foresight like you really see the big picture of it obviously you have the number one show in the world like you have the most watched show on earth you know your youtube show is the most watched show on planet earth so it's obviously working but it's like that ability to take to make that set must have been bananas that is a fucking enormous building did you have to build the building uh no so that that's in toronto but it's basically an airport hangar i mean we [09:19] this, that also is like a thousand trap doors because every single one of those, the trap doors open when they get eliminated. So that set alone was like $15 million. I mean, it was crazy. Oh my God. And thousands of people's time and stuff like that. It's actually...

[09:32] Where we film Beast Games is actually a pretty big deal because it creates so many local jobs for people. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah, like there, it was pretty wild. Can you say where you film it or do you keep it under wraps? That one was Toronto, Canada. Okay, cool. And every time I'd walk around on set, people were loving it. Because even though we filmed for 30 days, there's months leading up to it and months after. Sure. It gives people consistent work for six months, whereas before they're going project to project every week. But yeah, back on the going above and beyond, that's kind of my whole thing is like, [10:00] why make content that isn't great? And we just ask ourselves, how do we make the best content possible as opposed to, you know, how do we make the most money possible? And when you just... [10:09] shockingly going with that approach, you just kind of make a lot of money. Yeah. And well, and also it's I tell my team all the time to like a big difference between us and other media companies is [10:19] you know, usually like people at the top will always shoot down crazy ideas or tell you it's not possible. Like whenever you have like these crazy brainstorming sessions. And I tell the team, [10:28] Technically, anything is possible. If as humans, we really wanted to, we could technically blow up the moon with enough nukes. Now, we're not going to do it because it's not worth the time and it's not worth spending the money. But you have to have that frame of mind. Everything's for the most part possible if you're willing to spend the time and spend the money. So before you do the work and just figure out what time it takes and how much money it costs, you can't say no to something. Because almost all the time, like we filmed in the pyramids and I spent 100 hours living in the pyramids of Egypt. It was crazy. [10:53] fucking awesome. And, you know, for years, everyone's like, they're not gonna let you, you know, live in the pyramids for a couple days. Like, that's crazy. And I'm like, [11:02] Why not? Like, did you get a no from the, you know, the leader of Egypt? No. Then I'm like, well, technically it's possible, you know, and and after years of talking with them and helping them understand that, you know, it's going to be more of an educational type video. And it's not like I'm not going to run up the pyramids and take my shirt off and be like a lunatic. It'll be really cool.

[11:20] Eventually they came around to it and they loved the video and it worked really well. And it's literally like I could go anywhere in the pyramids for 100 hours. I went all the way up to the top of the middle pyramid. We went underneath it. It was really cool. And I tell my team, even some of my most veteran people, when we get these crazy ideas, their default reaction is to go, I just don't think it's possible. And I go, look, it is. Sometimes it's just time and money. Yeah. [11:44] And is it worth the effort? The pyramid one must have been nuts. Oh, it was crazy. It was one of my favorite videos. Is that your first time ever being there? Yeah, actually it was. And so that made it even more special because I was like learning things at the same time as I was just walking around. [11:57] I'm going to be honest, it was like a year and a half ago, and it's all a little fuzzy because I was so tired. I was just walking around all night, but it was pretty crazy and surreal. And then going down into... [12:07] What's that tomb called where you go down the ladder and like a couple hundred feet? [12:12] underneath the pyramid. I don't know. Is that Osiris's trap? Yes, Osiris's. It was flooded and swimming around under there. It was pretty wild. [12:22] Yeah. Wow. [12:23] I feel like you should do something like that. A hundred percent. I need to go there. I've been talking about going there for years. I just, for me, it's just a time thing. [12:32] My time is – I have so many different jobs. It's not like one all-consuming job like you have. With me, it's like commentary for the UFC, doing stand-up comedy, doing the podcast, and also married with children. It's like I have a lot of responsibilities. So it's tough to just jet off for a – really, ideally, if you're going to go to Egypt, I feel like you should go for like 10 days. Yeah. I feel like at least 10 days. Do you think the –

[12:57] Yeah, I feel like maybe honestly, realistically, like five days, you could do it. Yeah. I'm curious, though, if they'd let you just do a video where you walk around and go everywhere. I wonder. Yeah. I've talked a lot of shit. Exactly. Without saying it, I'm kind of implying I don't even know if they want you there. Well, I never have said anything bad about it. I just think that the people that run it have a very narrow-minded perspective of how all that stuff was made. [13:27] I don't think they really know, and I think there's a lot of gatekeeping in terms of what the official narrative is. It's like how it was all made and who made it and what it's all about. That's why they're really hesitant to accept any alternative perspectives because they have a timeline, and they attribute all this construction. And there's a lot of evidence that that timeline doesn't make any sense. Did you check out the Sphinx? [13:57] it and go in that little room yeah did you do that yeah which that's the stuff i i feel like it would mean even more if you did you've talked to dr zahi right yeah did you have him on the show yeah yeah i'm on the show yeah okay good yeah and so he's obviously the guy so you should just call him and see yeah i'd rather go with somebody else i'd rather i didn't listen to that episode i'd rather go hang out with one of the historians that i know graham hancock yeah graham hancock would be the perfect guy to go with yeah you and graham hancock walking around [14:26] Oh, boy. There'd be some crazy stuff. Yeah. Well, whatever happened in that part of the world during that time frame is pretty spectacular. It's kind of amazing that no one has ever achieved anything even remotely similar to it since. Yeah. And it's at least 4,500 years old. That's just a guess, though. They really don't know. Yeah. You know, it's a crazy place. Yeah.

[14:49] The fact that you got to film a show there is nuts. Yeah. I love how you call it show, and to me it's just a YouTube video, but it's just funny. It's a show. Yeah, I know, of course. And it makes sense because you do stuff with the UFC, and in your world a lot of it's called shows. I mean, whatever it is, people are watching it alone. Yeah, I know. It's a show. It's just funny to me. I haven't heard it called that in years. [15:09] But, yeah, that one was crazy. [15:11] I mean, one thing that I'm really proud of that we did for Season 3 of Beast Games, which, like, in hindsight, I'm not even sure how we... This one we pulled off. So I want to see your reaction to this. Okay. So... [15:24] Basically, the finale, where we have the $5 million, we have the final contestants, [15:29] We filmed it in the Roman Coliseum. Whoa! Yeah, we crowned the winner of season three with the $5 million cash prize in the middle of the Roman Coliseum. Played the first game there in over a thousand years. Wow! That's crazy! I know. I'm so grateful. Like, we just filmed that too, so I'm like coming off the high and I just like... [15:50] like it almost makes like gives me tears like what we shot was so cool we had like a [15:54] a live orchestra. I like the top ring up there too. So like, as the game got dramatic, we would have them like, play louder music and stuff. It was like, so surreal. Like there's multiple, because I've done really crazy things in my life, but there's multiple moments during that where I'm just like, [16:07] Looking around in the middle of the Coliseum as we're like filming the show and I'm like, oh [16:11] Like this doesn't feel real. It was pretty wild. It doesn't feel I mean I went just to visit a few years back and it didn't feel real. It's so strange to imagine like.

[16:22] What that was like... [16:24] How many thousand years ago? What year were they doing the games in the Roman Coliseum? [16:32] I would guess 1,900 years ago. [16:34] So – [16:36] I mean... [16:37] what the fuck was it like being in there while that was happening? And imagine when they flood it and they'd have the ships in there. Yeah, the boats. It's like, whoa, I know. Crazy. I know. It's nuts that you could go walk around it and just try to understand, like, this used to be a place where people used to go to see people die. They used to see people get hacked to death by swords, to see people get killed by lions. Like, what the fuck was? Well, it's also interesting, too, because I did a lot of research, you know, [17:07] job of [17:08] Back then they had the hierarchy and the noble people would sit at the bottom and the poor people would be at the top. It also played a good role of showcasing unity even though there are all these different people from all these different economic statuses. They would all be in the arena there, but it also reminds them where they are. There's so many political implications of it too. Just everything about it. Like basketball games. [17:28] Who gets courtside tickets? I didn't even think about that. Yeah. Jack Nicholson, courtside tickets. Or Jay-Z or whoever. Famous people. Yeah, courtside tickets. True. Yeah. I mean, it's the same thing. I think in the Coliseum, though, that was the most dangerous seats because, like, there was a couple of incidents, I believe, when either a lion or a tiger leapt up and got a hold of some people. Yeah. Well, I didn't hear about that. But when I was walking around, you know, they would have the, you know, emperor, like, seat right there. And I was like, man.

[17:58] If I was a warrior, I could throw a spear at him. This is a killer view, but how did no one ever just kill this guy? [18:06] That's all I could think about. This is a little too close to the battlefield. How close is it? It was like, whatever, four rows up. It wasn't anything too crazy. [18:14] But there's obviously walls when you're walking around, like little walls, so you can't just walk into the stands. So they're kind of trapped in the arena. But it was definitely within spirit-throwing distance. I wonder how long it took to build that place. [18:27] Because when you're walking around, you're like, this is an [18:29] Epic. [18:30] piece of real estate. You guys built an insane structure and they did it [18:39] almost 2,000 years ago or whatever it was. Yeah. [18:43] So it took eight years to build. Wow. From AD 72 to AD 80. Wow. [18:49] Wow. Construction started under Vespasian between AD 70 and 72. [18:58] It was completed and inaugurated under Emperor Titus around AD 79 to AD, so the main build phase lasted roughly six to eight years. [19:08] The Cup is down to its final matches. One trophy, one champion. DraftKings has you covered for every single one. The DraftKings app is now available in all 50 states and includes all markets, bringing the game straight to your fingertips wherever you are. From Florida to Texas to California, you're in on the excitement at the speed of sports. No matter where you're watching, you're always connected and in the game with one app.

[19:38] to get 200 in rewards within 21 days. That's CodeRogan in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours. [19:48] Bet with DK Sportsbook. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. 1-800-MY-RESET. Connecticut, call 888-789-7777. Or visit ccpg.org. On behalf of Boothill Casino in Kansas, bet tax pass-through may apply in Illinois. 21 and over. Void in Canada. Event contract trading with DraftKings predictions involves risk of loss. Availability varies. Bet to get bonus bets that expire in seven days. Trade to get $50 in predictions dollars that expire in one year. Issued every seven days via click-to-claim for 21 days. One non-withdrawable reward redeemable. Predictions offer void in New York. [20:18] July 19th. Terms at dkng.co slash audio. [20:21] Yeah, it's fascinating too because I like to think of like something equivalent now would be like maybe SoFi Stadium. Like that's such a beautiful, massive stadium. I wonder if like 2,000 years from now. [20:32] would that still be there? Like Roman Coliseum is like, [20:36] Relatively still intact. It's pretty crazy. That's what's crazy. Well, it's because it's made out of stone. All of our stuff, like cement, will rot out. There's no way cement lasts a thousand years. All the glass, everything will just get absorbed back into the earth. Dang. [20:49] Do you ever see that show? They had a show like – what was it on the History Channel or something like that where it was After Humans I think it was called. And it essentially showed how long it would take for cities to completely be absorbed back into the earth. It's not that long. [21:04] Yeah. It's not that long. No, it's like a few hundred years and there's nothing left. Wow. Yeah. Actually seems like a good show.

[21:10] Yeah, it was kind of interesting. You know, it was a while ago, so it was probably like shitty AI. It was shitty CGI. They could probably do it really good now. Yeah, but I mean... [21:19] If you go to Detroit, there's houses in Detroit now that have trees growing out of the basement of the house through the roof. Yeah. Like they've taken over the house and nature is slowly but surely absorbing the building. And then skyscrapers are a bigger endeavor, but nature could still do it. It just takes enough time. That makes me – where my brain goes to is it makes me want to do a video where it's like – I bet you there's like an abandoned village or city that's been overgrown. [21:49] on Earth simulation and then living there for a month or so and seeing what it's like. [21:54] That would be kind of cool. Kind of like the Will Smith movie back in the day. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be so fascinating to... [22:01] Or maybe do it with a contestant. Like, hey, if you spend one month in this isolated civilization, I'll give you a million dollars or something. And then seeing how they... [22:10] you know, use, you know, 100-year-old buildings or something. I don't know. [22:13] It's got my brain churning. It was not a bad idea, like an I Am Legend type deal. [22:17] Yeah, but real unscripted, exactly. Right, real unscripted, but then also hire people to be zombies and haunt these people while they're sleeping. I love where your covering goes. You know what I mean? Yeah. Hire people, like CGI them up, scare the fuck out of people. I've been wanting to do that for a while, but I always get, like, hung up on, like, okay, I can make some real zombies, but the problem is, like, how do they kill them? Well, the other problem is what happens if you're not telling these contestants that zombies are coming, you're just trying to get a reaction out of them?

[22:47] thinks it's a real zombie and kills one of the people yeah well i we would tell him i would have to say this is a zombie simulation and you know and then i'd have to set rules on here's how you kill a zombie you don't use a sword you use this phone and it's lame which is why we never gone around to it but if there ever was a way i do think that would be cool to like recreate a actual zombie apocalypse and and like let someone try to live in for a week because it'd just be cool because everyone's exposure to this is through scripted shows right but to see someone [23:17] down gas stations and there's like food that like we would say this is set in the year 2060 so i'd have set designers and everything design it where it's like only laffy taffy still edible and stuff and it was like a true recreation of it i've always wanted to do stuff like that you could totally do that there's a bunch of abandoned towns no it's just the one thing we could never figure out is how does someone kill a zombie and it's not lame right because imagine someone with a nerf sword hitting a zombie oh now it's like okay this is fucking lame you know yeah uh [23:43] Maybe... [23:44] A paintball type deal? [23:46] Yeah, that's where our head goes, because we're... [23:49] We have a different video, a similar thing. But the problem with paintball and airsoft is then you have to wear a mask, right? Because you don't want people to get shot in the face, obviously. And then it kind of kills it. [23:57] Yeah, unless the zombie masks was the protection. Yeah, we put it over top of the paintball mask. That's your poor actors. Or you just have, instead of like a regular paintball mask, have something that's just a hard structure that is like the shape of your face. Exactly. So you make it deformed fits to your face, and then you give them goggles, something clear so their eyes are protected.

[24:27] You know what, I should hit you up for these zombie things. That actually would work. There you go. That's perfect. That's an airsoft mask. [24:37] That'd be pretty cool. I mean... Oh, dude, that's actually dope. Look at those masks, the half-faced zombie ones. Yeah. That's fucking dope. Like, you could... That would be terrifying. Coming at you in the middle of the night, and you have to shoot those off? Hey, if anyone listening wants to live in an abandoned town for 10 days while zombies try to kill you... I think we're onto something now. Now that I saw those masks, I'm like, okay, I like it, because that could be the zombies. Well, where my head goes, because the videos are so big, right, this is probably a... [25:05] $5-$10 million project, probably would build this abandoned city, do... [25:09] I'm the last man on the planet, and it's like me there for some time. And then afterwards, like a couple months, like film then right afterwards, film a video where I give someone a million dollars. They live there for 10 days, but they have to fend off zombies with their friends. So then we can reuse the set location because if I'm going to... [25:23] completely set deck, basically a whole city. Oh, my gosh, that's going to be a monster. But, yeah, if I did both of those back-to-back, that would actually be pretty gnarly and worth the effort. I think I like the idea now. Now that I see those masks. And I think about, like, paintball or something along those lines. What I'm picturing, too, is, like, ideally we could find a city with a skyscraper because I want, like, someone with a long lens pointed down of, like, someone picturing them on a street. It's pitch black, and they have, like, a fire, and it's them and their three friends. [25:53] and stuff. Like, those shots would be so beautiful. Like, I mean, it would probably be one of the most beautiful videos ever. And I'm picturing we put, like, vines, like, on all the buildings and stuff, too. So...

[26:03] Well, if you wanted no one around... [26:05] It's going to be hard because you're going to have to do it in an abandoned place. Exactly. And you're not going to get an abandoned skyscraper. [26:11] Maybe. Unless you're in Detroit. Well, it doesn't have to be in the U.S. We did a video seven days in an abandoned city where there's like some place in Europe where there was a city that was like war-torn and stuff like that. And it had like hotels and tall buildings and everything. It was pretty wild. Really? Yeah. And there's no one in it now? No, no one in it. Like tourists go there or whatever. But they let us close it off for a week. It was pretty crazy. Well, that's the place then. Yeah. I just wonder if they'll – you know, it's a little bit of history there. [26:41] And also paintball everything. Exactly, yeah. Well, with those masks, we could do airsoft, which would be maybe even easier. Well, actually, no, the problem with airsoft then is the truss system. You don't know if they got hit, so paintball is probably more effective. Yeah, you need paintball. Yeah. You need paintball, and it needs to look good when it splatters against them. If someone on my team is watching this, just clip the last 10 minutes of this and send it to the creative team. [27:04] You guys, I believe in you. Is there another way to kill a zombie other than paintball that would be wild? Yeah. [27:11] Like, is there something else? Well, one thing we've been working on, because I've always wanted to, like, do Hunger Games in real life as well, is to, like, these, like, suits where you could, you know, electronic, like, laser tag where you could just shoot and then it just, like, lights up. What about shotguns with beanbags? [27:30] Because they use those for people to take out

[27:33] like when the non-lethal loads, you know, they have like beanbags that they shoot out of a shotgun. The question I would need is like... [27:41] If I shot you with it like three feet away, would you still be fine? I guess you could probably adjust the pressure and stuff where it's not. Not really. Okay, well. I mean, you could, but you couldn't bury it. See, this isn't Fear Factor. This is Mr. Beast. I understand, but it's a gray line. You know, it's so funny. I need to give you a blunt and let you just help me cook on this video. I can see this is something you're interested in. There's something there. You just have to figure out an exciting way to kill them where it doesn't actually hurt the stunt people or whoever's wearing the masks. [28:11] whoever pretends to be a zombie. It would have to be something. I was thinking light him on fire, but that's... Could you pull up the Seven Days Abandoned City video and just skip to some random part? I'd love for him to see, like... [28:23] the like how it looks because that with what you're picturing and that really would be something you can't find anywhere else and that's what like gets me excited is when it's content you can't find anywhere else that's typically you know a huge indicator that if it's done well people like it have you seen the show from [28:39] from, I don't think so, no. It's great. Great show. But it's about these people. Wait, wait, wait, look at that shot. Pause it right there. So that's just one random building. But you can maybe go to the intro or something if you want to just show them, like... [28:52] Yeah, this whole place. Look at these buildings. Whoa. Oh, my God. This is perfect. Yeah. And then if you pause it there, those are all the buildings in the city. Oh, dude, this is the spot. Listen, the show starts at sundown every night. Okay.

[29:06] As soon as the sun goes down, that's when the games begin. Nothing happens until it gets dark out. Everything is in the dark. And these people have no idea when it's going to happen, when they're going to get hit. And so they try to get their sleep whenever they can. But you keep them awake during the day with tasks. You keep them awake. So during the day, they have... [29:28] All sorts of materials. They have supplies. They have all sorts of things. And they have to figure out how to protect themselves, how to develop shelter, alarm systems for when the zombies are close. Oh, really? Yeah, give them time to, like, figure out stuff to do to keep the zombies away. And eliminate an amount of materials that they can work with. And just let these people get creative in their ingenuity. But then you keep – so they'll be busy during the day. So they're not going to be able to sleep. [29:58] time when it gets dark out yeah then they don't know when it's gonna hit so you have these people sitting around and it might be 7 p.m 8 p.m 9 p.m and then three in the morning shit starts zombies come in and they gotta shoot them all at paintballs and they're creeping in yeah like they're creeping in bro you're getting me excited i mean it would be so fucking cool to like let them build a structure or something and then like in i'm legend where he has to point the lights

[30:28] hide lights throughout the city that they'd have to collect and then set up. So they have good vision around their fort and everything. And then they have like, you know, cycles where they take turns watching and stuff. And then we only send the zombies out theoretically at night or whatever the structure would be. So they have chill time or maybe every night, 40 zombies are unleashed. And then, so they're like, they shot like 35 of them, but they're like, Oh shit, there's five hidden around the city. So that day while they're walking around, they're like on edge and the tension throughout the day would be phenomenal. Yeah. There's so many cool ways to do it. And you know, [30:58] You don't have to tell them that the zombies are only going to come out at night. [31:01] Just have it that way. [31:03] I'm excited. We need to stop talking about this because I'm going to leave and go film it right now. I'm fighting the urge to go call my team. You also, with the zombies, they can come out in the daytime. These people don't know because they never do it. True. Like the first five days, it's only a night. And then day six, boom. Exactly. So people get snatched up in the middle of their house. [31:23] This company we used before as a gel blaster. It's almost like Airsoft, but it doesn't hurt as bad. Oh, it shoots water? And these vests that they have set up, [31:33] are sensors so you can almost like what you're saying. It's like VR, laser tag. So it lights up when you hit it? Yeah, and there's like a whole talking system that says, like, you have this many shots left, you have this much energy left. Can we see a video? Yeah. Wait. Is this a video? We did this at night at somebody's house. Oh, you did? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When did you do this? A couple months ago. Oh, nice. I don't. [31:53] Oh, shit. It's only coming out. Ah! [31:56] Wait, actually, now that you've got music... [31:58] You pointed out, I have seen Nerf gel blasters. I actually never thought of that.

[32:01] so that's I mean you could just redo the set the suits that it makes sense yeah and then reskin the guns because those look a little lame but yeah that would be it's kind of lame yeah I kind of like shotguns with beanbags I think I let's fuck people up easily picture the aesthetic you're looking for I gotta I have to find the blend between Joe's like recreation of this video and like what I could actually do but they're [32:22] I actually am more inspired than ever. I think it's very doable. It's very doable. You just have to figure out a way to make it exciting, but still not hurt anybody. Exactly. Not hurt the zombies. You'd have to, like, armish people up somehow. I mean, well, the thing, too, is, like, [32:37] you know, um, [32:38] One thing that would help is like if the zombies were ex-Navy SEALs or something, then it's a little different than if they were like typical Hollywood actors and things like that. So I've learned for like some of these other things, like it's also who you cast to do it. Right. If it was like Navy SEALs dressed up as zombies and I paid them all, you know, they wouldn't care. [32:55] Also, it could be like a zombie army, like an army army. [33:02] some [33:04] army somewhere got... [33:07] Taken over and turned into zombies. Yeah, those are the people you're fighting against so you could you could put them with like a [33:14] plate carriers on and you know you could armor them up a little bit so they could take some hits. Have some lore behind it. Yeah. It would make sense too. [33:25] Bro, I'm sold. I just got to find an abandoned city. Give them glowing eyes. That's the only way you know they're out there. This whole podcast is going to be Joe helping me figure out how to do zombies. Dude, it would be fucking terrifying. It would be awesome. Imagine there's people that are in this city. There's no lights. There's no electricity. And then at nighttime, it goes dark. And maybe they have flashlights, but each flashlight only has one hour of battery life. And so you have to judiciously use that flashlight throughout the evening.

[33:55] Shut it up. So you give them a little extra tension that the flashlight's going to die because you only have one hour of flashlight battery. And then you see these red eyes. [34:05] Like, you give them, like, a slightly glowing red eye. Yeah. And that's how you can find the zombies. True. That would be cool. Yeah. So you just look out into the woods. Yeah. You can see the fucking eyes, man. You see the eyes. That would be crazy. Yeah. And the other thing, too, would be... [34:20] Because I go to, like, how do we execute it? We could do it, too, where, like, there's, like, every day at, like, a certain period, we pull off all the dead zombies, which are humans, and we just swap them with, like, I can have recreated versions of them there. So there's, like, actual zombie bodies, like, piling up. Right. So as the video progresses, they're, like, literally stepping over, like, mannequins that are set decked identically how the people were so when they die. And then they're just, like, literally stepping on zombies as they go building to building. And that would be crazy. That would be crazy. [34:50] chalk outlines around the zombies. [34:52] So you can identify the fact that this one's a dead zombie. Or no, don't. Do it. Let that be the fun part. But then if we put a crazy prize on it, we could do – you only get the – or maybe the prize is split amongst everyone who survives the whole 10 days or whatever. And then it's like to really build up like this crescendo at the end. We could have it where the final day there's a massive invasion coming or something. So it's like the whole time. What if like every day more and more came? So day one it was 10. Day two it was 20. And then 50. [35:22] 400 zombies come on the final day. So the whole video, they're prepping for this Game of Thrones type invasion. Not only that, but the people that get killed by the zombie, we think they're out of the game, but they actually become zombies. So when you think you won at the end, now the final game is you're competing against the zombies. The zombies who can't win because they're already dead, but they can make you lose. Yeah, and they know you're for it.

[35:52] What if the contestants are ex-Navy Seals, too, so they have real strategy and stuff like that? That would be cool. Just get the most badass people that you can get for this zombie thing, like survivalists, martial artists. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, that would be crazy. Dude. Actually, that's not bad. Like a UFC champion, a Navy SEAL, like a Taekwondo, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, all right, what happens if you put six experts in different fields together and simulate a real zombie apocalypse? Right. [36:22] 50 acres of this abandoned city sealed off. We set decked it all. And every day a wave of zombie that gets bigger and bigger until the big crescendo at the end hits. And if you survive it all, you split a million dollars. I think the really difficult challenge is figuring out a way to kill zombies that's not lame. And doesn't hurt anybody. [36:41] Actually doesn't kill people. I don't know if that's your second thought process, but of course. But it has to – because if you're hitting them, even with the gels off, it'll look kind of cool, but it's like pew, pew, pew. Exactly. Pew, pew, pew. No, it's got to be ba-bang, ba-bang. And I could add those sounds and pose, but we're big fans of practical. So I'd have my team take apart the guns and see if there's some way they can make it, even though it's shooting the gel, like make it go bang, bang, and then add like the effects. And we'd have to reskin the guns to look like real guns. It would have to be some – it doesn't have to look like real guns because it could be a gun from the future. [37:11] But that's lame. When you think of zombie apocalypse, it has to look like a gun that they grab from some dude's tape that they found in a house, right? That's what a zombie apocalypse is to me. Yeah, I guess. Yeah.

[37:23] so it would have to look like a real gun so that's why i like the shotguns with the beanbags and also with a shotgun like you're only going to get so many shells like you like as long as you don't have one of those big like tarant tactical ones that has actually a magazine it holds like [37:38] 15 rounds. I think a regular shotgun like a Benelli, how many shells can you put in one of those? I think six. [37:46] I think maybe six. Something like that is good, too. You have a limited amount of bullets, and reloading is hard. [37:51] We just got to find out. Maybe if it was like 20 gauge shotgun birdshot with a beanbag. [38:01] Maybe that wouldn't fuck people up, but it would make a big bang. Yeah. And you'd be hitting them. [38:06] And if you could find a way to light up wherever they got hit, like if you could put them in some sort of a suit – [38:15] Where when they get hit, there's like gel packs. There's no way you can shoot shotguns at people. Yeah. There's just not possible. Not a real one. You're so wrong. But here, he's living in his utopia. No, no, no, no. I haven't seen his eyes light up like this in years. Let him have fun. No, no, no, no, no. The shotgun's like a gun at a person. Okay, well, I don't know a lot about shotguns, so let's find out. I'm never going to have someone point a real shotgun at someone else. Yeah, you will. Trust me, we're going to work this out. Oh, you want to help co-direct it? I'm going to help. Yeah, you'll see. [38:45] I'm basically seeing the back on one shot Joe. He's like "Yeah!" It's like the Navy Seals are fighting off the zombie apocalypse. I want to be one zombie one night. I'll sneak in. Everyone's like "Who's that bald guy over there?" That's just like "Oh fuck yeah!" Shotgun damage on a zombie. You have to blow their head off, right? How would you? Oh god. Don't even get them started. He's gonna be talking about hit damage for 20 minutes forever. It depends on what kind of zombie. Walking dead zombies are so stupid you can stab in the head with a pencil and they die.

[39:11] Remember, it was just going through the head because they would shoot them with those crossbows. And, like, crossbows wouldn't even kill a person. Like, with those field tips, they're using field tips. This is basically like a pencil going through you. It's not like a broadhead. Like, if you shot an animal with a crossbow, you would use a broadhead, which is a big, sharp blade that cuts a giant channel through an animal. What those things are using is target points. [39:41] It would just stick in their head and then they'd be dead. It's so funny because – Get the fuck out of here. I watched the same thing and I'm like, oh, that's cool. Different audience. Well, it's just all it takes is like one arrow to go into your head and you're dead if you're a zombie. Yeah, totally. One arrow. This is nonsense. Yeah, right, guys? Yeah, one arrow in the head. You'd be – yeah, you wouldn't die. The thing is people have lived – humans have lived through arrows through the head like that. Accidentally gotten shot in the head with a bow and arrow, with a field tip and lived. [40:11] pencil going through your head. Really? The way people die from an arrow is hemorrhage. You die from massive hemorrhage. And it's usually because there's a blade. So like this, like this is what the Native Americans used to use. But that's wide. This is actually, yes, that's an actual arrowhead. But the thing about this is when it's attached to a stick, this is cutting. So it's causing hemorrhage inside the body. The little field tip doesn't do that. And the field tip wouldn't puncture enough veins where you just bleed to death? Maybe, but most likely not. I mean,

[40:41] heart, yeah, you'd be dead. But if it just goes through this side of your lungs and pokes out your back, you'll live. Wow. Yeah. Would you want to live? You would be in pain. It would suck. It would certainly suck. But it's not like getting hit with a broadhead. My point is... [40:55] I don't remember my point. But if I had a point, it would be there's got to be a level of shotgun that's the – what is the lowest powered shotgun available? It's not a – I know 20 gauge is light. I've used those before for like shooting clay pigeons, and I've used 12 gauges. [41:16] You don't want to get hit with a 12-gauge. [41:18] Even if it's a beanbag. [41:22] Uh... [41:24] smallest gauge. [41:25] Equivalent to a 67-gauge shotgun. Oh, here we go. Now we're talking. That's a bitch-ass round. Let's see. [41:31] Oh, God. Let's see what that looks like. You're so funny. Let's see what a 410-gauge shotgun or a 67-gauge shotgun looks like when they shoot it. It looks like a bullshit gun. It looks like it's going to still hurt. No, no, no. You'll be fine. [41:46] Okay, can I test it on you? Yeah. [41:49] Yeah, just give me a plate carrier and if you're going to use a beanbag, yeah. Because that's what I'm thinking. Like if you have a chest plate, so a plate carrier is bulletproof. Yeah, but what are you going to hit? Everything you'll cover up. You'll cover up the shoulders and the arms. You give them like military style armor, like body armor. [42:08] Because none of this is going to penetrate. So if it's a beanbag round, what it is is just like it's basically a bag that's going to like –

[42:17] Yeah. Shoot out of the shotgun and blast you. But I don't – they're not lethal. Yeah. [42:23] Let me see what it looks like. I don't know which one. Just go to a video. Just go to a video of lowest-powered shotgun. That's weird looking. That's cool. That one looks cool. That one does not exactly what it looks like. That's a revolver shotgun. Yeah, that's dope. I've never seen one of those before. Huge power, it says. [42:40] Interesting. Yeah, the title is Smallest But Deadliest Shotgun. Yeah, I think it's smallest in terms of the size of it, not the round itself. Yeah, this isn't good. I did ask for lowest power, but that's not what people want to click on videos. I know. I feel like most people who buy shotguns are looking for shotguns that don't. Well, how about this? Look up 67-gauge shotgun. Oh, I've done that here. And does it show you a video of that? [43:05] Okay, let's see what it says. [43:07] Let me see what it looks like when it's shooting. [43:10] This is a 12-gauge. [43:12] Oh, that's a big... Yeah, that's... I'm trying to... Yeah. So they're like modified 12 gauges. [43:18] That's a lot. I just don't get what the point. The shotgun isn't going to kill a zombie. Yeah, but it could in this game, Jamie. I know, but you have to get so close to get a fucking headshot or whatever. It's more fun to get snipers and grenades. I don't know if you have to use headshots. [43:36] This little kid's going to shoot a shotgun? Yes. So that – okay, let me see. Can you give me some volume? Yeah. [43:42] Let me hear this. Back that up a little bit.

[43:46] Yeah, that's what we need. We need that kind of shotgun with like a beanbag round or rock salt. I got it. The team, they're listening. They're on it. Yeah, something where it makes an impact. There's a sound like a gun going off, but you can't really kill anybody with it. Yeah. This is totally possible, dude. You'd have to have like very strict safety protocols in the set, though, because one of the things, [44:12] When I first moved to LA in 1994, there was a guy that a friend of mine actually knew, who was an actor, who was on a set, who took a gun that had a blank in it and thought it'd be funny to just put the thing to his head and pull the trigger. And he didn't realize that just the actual air coming out of the gun, if you put it right to your head, is lethal. And he blew his brains out. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, with a blank. [44:37] He just didn't. I mean, or like the Alec Baldwin situation. Yeah, that was actually probably negligence because it seems like there was an error where they were using like real rounds. And then they would take the same guns. They would use like real rounds on a range and then take the same guns and bring them to set. And they didn't clear everything. [44:59] I don't know who's responsible for that. I don't know what ultimately came out of that. [45:04] You're never supposed to point a gun, even if it's not loaded. You're never supposed to point a gun at someone, ever. In movies now, like if you and I were doing a movie – Which is why I'm like so hesitant to this whole shotgun thing. Welcome back to reality, Joe. We're going to be fine. In movies, you're supposed to – like if I was shooting at you in a movie, I'm really supposed to shoot over here. Yeah. And I think that came out of the movie The Crow.

[45:25] because Bruce Lee's son died because there was something that was in the gun itself. It wasn't even a bullet that killed him. It was like there was a particle or something that hit him from the blank. When there's effects in CG and everything is so good now, too, you probably don't even have to put a blank in there. You just overlay the sound effect and put the effect in. No one would even be able to tell sometimes, too. That's true, but you want something that's scary for the actual people. And the recoil. Yeah. [45:55] Like a really light shotgun. And I guess even if you know it's a blank, like having a gun pointed at you as an actor makes you feel more in this situation too probably. Well, just rock salt. If you have a really light shotgun, even if it's a 20 gauge with rock salt, it would suck. It would sting. But if you've got these guys all protected – [46:16] And you could find a way where when it hits them, like you have gel packs on them or something. So if you have them all, they're in like these like tattered looking white outfits, right? And when you hit them, there's red gel packs underneath and they splatter. Yeah. And you could, you know, if you get a direct hit. We did something similar when we recreated Squid Games. We put like squibs on them when they got eliminated and grew up. And so, yeah, you'd put like little squibs.

[46:46] would go across the body. Yeah. Yeah. So you could do that. So [46:50] If you do that, actually, you could have blanks and maybe a laser sight. Exactly. That's where we went with the Hunger Games stuff is laser tag, and then it would just trigger squibs if you pointed at them. And then maybe in post, like, we'd have a track where the trajectory of where the bullets were, and we could just overlay, like, the lasers or whatever in post so you could visually see it. But obviously in the time that you were actually filming, practically, it would just be, you know, invisible. You'd just know if you got hit, if your suit lit up. [47:20] You could... [47:21] sync up a laser tag with an actual blank round. [47:27] So you can make the boom and then the laser actually hits the person at the same time. Okay. Right? Yeah. That wouldn't be hard to do because if you have lasers, you have guns that shoot lasers, that's what laser tag is. That's a pretty simple mechanism. [47:43] All you would do is have sort of a dual trigger setup where you have, as you pull the trigger back, you get the explosion from the round going off, and you also get the laser at the same time. And so the squibs go off. You say the boom, and then the squibs go off, and you have it all coordinated together. And then it looks wild. And so then you have these zombies. [48:04] Boom! You shoot them. You see splatter all over their chest. Yeah, the only other thing we have to figure out is where is this going?

[48:13] gore and have a lot. So we might have to hit up... Amazon. Yeah, wherever you used to put Fear Factor and stuff. Because that definitely seems like a more... It's going from, like, we're usually family-friendly to now this is very rated R. But it is sick. Yeah, it's not family-friendly because you're killing zombies. Well, yeah, you... [48:30] You know if something's family-friendly or not, if you say eliminated instead of killing? Yes. If you're eliminating zombies, that's family-friendly. If you're killing zombies, that's rated R. Well, they're already dead, so you're eliminating them. There you go. See, now we're back. See, they're already dead. And you can tell if a show's for 18-plus or 13-plus before they shoot the person or whatever, if it cuts away. And there's all these little things. Dude, this could be wild. This could be fun. [49:00] whatever, whatever, a blank check, just make it happen. Oh my God. Amazon should do it. They need people over there anyway. Yeah. Or I mean, really even Netflix, anyone, really? Like it's, it's the biggest no brainer in the history of ever. Like the, actually the fact that no one's recreated this is kind of absurd when you think about it, but it's also like, [49:15] If traditional, independent of the shock and stuff, you're talking about traditional people with traditional worldviews did this, it'd be so stringent and structured and stuff like that. [49:24] If we did it with, like, the Beast Games mindset where it's just, like, there's cameras everywhere. They can truly do whatever the hell they want. And it's not, like, this, like, guarded thing. And it's an actual abandoned city. Oh, my gosh. It would go crazy. Now we need a task. Right. [49:39] We need a goal. The goal would be survival. Right, but maybe survival while you're trying to accomplish something. Okay. Well, then this is like a mechanism that usually would work well, is the tasks every day will grow the prize pool. And if it's on a streaming platform –

[49:54] then the price will look could be crazy, right? It doesn't have to be a million dollars. It could grow to 10 million theoretically if they weren't being cheap. And so then it could be like every day. If you complete the task, I put a million dollars in the price pool. Each episodes one whole day. [50:06] It's 10 episodes, 10 days. And so they could technically grow the prize pool to $10 million. [50:10] You put some, like, you know, the UFC people and, like, Navy SEALs and, like, these hardcore people, and you tell them, like, they could potentially share $10 million? Bro, they would be trying their butts off those 10 days. The footage would be crazy. I mean, they would probably be, like, practicing during the day, like, their rotations and everything on, like, holding off zombies. It would... [50:27] That would be really cool. Yeah, they would run training routes. Exactly. You know, it's really interesting. We'd have to figure out how the zombies get them. [50:34] Because you don't want physical conflict between the stunt people, the zombie people, and the contestants. You don't want them to actually fight. Exactly. Right? So you would have to have rules as to what – [50:45] It would probably be [50:47] My default intuition is if the zombie just purely touches you, then you're just dead. Like, we wouldn't be able to take it any further than that. Right, like 28 days later zombies. All they have to do is, like, scratch you. Yeah, or breathe in front of you. Yeah, exactly. But in this case, if they touch you, that way it's not like the Navy SEAL, like, [51:03] pushing and flipping them off like because if you went to push them or touch them then you'd be out so people be keeping their distance but even then it'd get pretty crazy if they're like because they're obviously they would run and there'd be chase scenes and stuff so uh honestly like i know some great stunt choreographers like ken and a bunch of other people i would just call them and be like yo how do i do this and they'd probably be like oh here's how i would do it or whatever dude this could be mad yeah this could be a mad to set the stage it's like abandoned city dozens

[51:33] a wall around it so the seals and whoever the contestants know like this is the edge they're walled in [51:38] And then, yeah, they're walking around. And then we have some of the best set designers in the world come in. And, like, basically we'd pick a time in the future. We'd say this is 50 years in the future. And they would match exactly what all these buildings would look like 50 years from now. They'd put vines on this. If there's a gas station, they'd go through. And, like, this is what would happen to Doritos 50 years from now. They'd literally mirror it identically across, you know, 100 buildings. And then we'd have a helicopter fly in, drop them off. [52:08] Yeah. [52:22] right which is distracting them from building their fort then i uh a helicopter will drop another million dollars on their prize pool so then it's like so episode one they complete the task before the zombies come at night and then it's like i come in on a helicopter we have a rope lower down a million dollars it's massive in ones right and then it unhooks and now they have two million dollars there like good luck guys and if there's six of them then it's like you're now if you survive are all winning over three hundred thousand dollars [52:48] And then, you know, but if you grow the prize pool to $6 million without getting eliminated, you're all millionaires in nine days. Bro, that would be crazy. And then, yeah, the zombies come in. We figure out the practical guns with the right sound effects. Yeah, practical guns, right sound effects, and what entails you getting killed by a zombie. Yeah. Like, how do they – And the other thing, too, to make it fun is if a zombie eliminates one of you, they get one-sixth of the prize pool or whatever. So now the zombies are incentivized, right, to try to – so then it's like if a zombie touches the Navy SEAL, whatever.

[53:18] the way is, it's like [53:19] Congrats. Now you're a millionaire if it's later on. So then as it goes on, things are going to get really tense on both sides. It'll be really cool. Yeah, dude. Because that's how you take it where people don't want to be zombies to now they're excited to be zombies. They're like, ooh. I actually sneak up behind them and I get a million bucks. People are going to want to be zombies anyway. True, because it's going to look sick. It's going to be sick. Honestly... [53:41] I would want to be a zombie. Just imagine walking in a horde and role-playing being a zombie. That would actually be a pretty cool happen in. Dude, it would be so sick. It's total pitch black. There's no power, no electricity. You just see red eyes in the woods. Oh, my gosh. While these dudes are sneaking in. And you'd have to have some sort of rules, like how the zombies can move, whether they can run, whether they can – you know what I mean? Yeah. Because we have to decide, are these 28 days later zombies? [54:04] that run at you? Or these, like, walking dead zombies that are, like, kind of, like... We'd probably start off that way, but they evolve with time. And I'm a big fan of, like... [54:13] Usually when you have like... [54:15] people who are playing certain roles, they usually end up going rogue. It's really hard to get hundreds of people to do, like, certain things, like, you know, in an unscripted sandbox environment. So we'd have to constrict them in a way where, like, if we didn't want them to move past a certain speed, we'd probably have to figure out some way to put, like, a chain around their feet or something that physically wouldn't allow them to do it. Or, like, if you have 300 zombies going, right, you can't redo it, right? Like, if one of those zombies goes rogue and scratch, it's like, I can't reshoot the shell, right? That's what's so high stakes about the things we do in an unscripted world.

[54:45] make it where they couldn't do things they're not supposed to do in a perfect world. Or if you have 300 people, if 2% go rogue, that's still six zombies going rogue, which is brutal. This episode is brought to you by Blue Chew. I'm sure you've heard of Blue Chew by now, but let me tell you what they've been up to. They've been on a mission to get you bricked up for years, and now the number one brand for better sex. Over 5 million happy men have bought Blue Chew for better sex. And you know what? Girls love the results. [55:15] Two, their new four-in-one chewable Blue Chew Gold is for performance and passion. Two ingredients maximize blood flow for stronger, longer-lasting boners, and two get you in the mood. It's designed to dissolve under your tongue for fast results. They are number one for a reason, and we have a special deal for our listeners right now. Buy two months of Blue Chew Gold and get the third free with my code ROGAN. [55:45] Visit BlueChew.com for more details and important safety information. This ad and the products being advertised are intended for a United States audience. Yeah, it is brutal. But I think with proper planning, if you really sit down and plan out what the zombie's task is, what it means, and what these people are doing,

[56:15] zombies you got to give them stuff to do during the day so that they're fully occupied so they can't sleep [56:22] Okay. It's really important. Like the more they do during the day, it optimizes the amount of money they can win. Like as they complete tasks, if they stay alive, they have a higher threshold. Whereas if someone just fucking sleeps all day and doesn't get anything done, even if they survive, they can't make any money. Yeah. I get what you're saying. You know what I'm saying? And that works that these are hardcore people. So it's good. Like if I had normal contestants, they'd be like, oh, this is horrible. You want that though. You want people to bitch out. [56:52] to quit because there's always going to be people that won't quit. Me and you are hold to different standards. If I did that, there would be maybe 10 trillion articles written about how I'm the most evil man on the planet. What? If I made it too hard where people couldn't sleep or whatever. No, listen, you can't read those articles. Fuck those people. You just got to make an awesome show. The awesome show is you keep these motherfuckers awake and you make it so that they can choose to sleep if they want. But there are tasks to achieve. [57:22] a lot of money. But if you don't complete the tasks, you can't make any money even if you survive. Bro, I'm sold. Amazon, Netflix, whoever wants it, let us know. Right? You gotta keep these motherfuckers awake so that night time is terrifying. Can you imagine seeing people sitting there with their shotgun? [57:38] Just nodding out and then opening their eyes and looking out and seeing red eyes in the woods like, fuck! We get a tight shot of their faces as they're asleep. And then one of the other guys goes, zombies! And you hear bang, bang. And then they wake up and they grab their gun. Well, that's the problem of people randomly shooting wild while there's other people around them.

[57:56] So it kind of would have to be blanks and lasers. Because now that I'm thinking about it, like, people are going to spaz out and accidentally shoot someone in the face. This is where – Especially if they're tired. I've done – I mean, obviously you did unscripted with Peter Pryder, but I've done lots of unscripted stuff with lots of people. And exactly. When you're talking about the shotgun stuff, I'm like, you know, there's just no shot in hell that we'd ever be able to. It would have to be like – but I love the gel rounds. And we could do it in a way where we set the guns where it looks really cool and we can recreate the sound effect. But then gel rounds, like, it's essentially like the Nerf ones. [58:26] They're like water that explodes on impact. Those would be perfect, honestly. Yeah, but you want blanks because you want the bang. You want the bang for the people, for the psychological effect, the fear. It's in the middle of the night. It's dark. You're making a bang go off, the flash of the bang going off. And then maybe to avoid people being able to shoot each other, maybe at nighttime they're completely separated. Maybe at nighttime. No, you want them together. [58:56] want in the shots is you always want to [58:58] people to be able to tell what they're competing for and like their why. And you usually, but you don't want to have to say it, right? You don't want to have to say, oh, I'm competing for this money. But if you have the money in the background of the shot, intuitively viewers will be like, that's what they're competing for. So like a fort built around it, where they have walls and they're standing on it and you see the money behind them in the shots, like intuitively to a viewer, you're going to instantly understand the motivation and it's going to be... [59:18] I mean, it would just be so crazy, the shots. Maybe it's like a super advanced game of hide-and-seek at night.

[59:26] Where the people can't talk, they have to be very quiet because the zombies have hyper-hearing. You give the zombies walker game ears. You know what those things are? No. It's like, do you ever go to a gun range? Yeah. Because you have those headphones. Oh, and they amplify. You can hear everything else way louder. But when guns go off, it kills volume above a certain amount of decibels. Yeah. So they can hear everything. [59:56] key in on it. They'll know where the people are. And these people have to hide from the zombies at night. [1:00:03] True, because I guess the other thing is if they built a fort around it, how would the zombies even get to them? Right. Because now they're going to have elevated walls. So instead of that, you have people that are trying to hide. So you've got these zombies slowly creeping through these abandoned buildings looking for people. Yeah, we'd have to get it to them where the seals and stuff couldn't lock doors or anything. Right, right, right. No locks. So basically – No doors have locks. That's what makes the hide-and-go-seek so good. All the handles or all the doors are removed. Yeah. There's no locks. [1:00:33] brainstorming more but theoretically they all have to hide in a different building or something they couldn't be in the same building yeah and then the zombies scatter across the city and then wherever you are in the building people have to be able to get to you the zombies have to be able to get to you unrestricted right yeah and so maybe before we release the zombies we'd have a producer just go in and and walk a path like all right there's a factual path where you could die to the zombie this is good and then we'd let them loose

[1:00:56] That makes it no cheating. There's something... This could be wild. This could... Honestly, this is one of those things where... [1:01:03] I say this to my team quite a bit, it's either going to be the worst show imaginable that people clown on, or it's going to be the number one show ever. And there's no in between. You don't do this kind of all right where people are like, "I like it." It's either [1:01:14] cringe, we failed, this sucks, or it's like... [1:01:17] This is the greatest thing ever. Why did this not exist before? Like The Walking Dead or what's the HBO show called? [1:01:22] The last of us? Yeah, the last of us in real life. How has no one done this? You know what I mean? Actual true simulation. And if we executed it properly, I really could see it be a number one show in the world type thing that people would like. Because also you have to think the world is ran by clips these days on TikTok feeds, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts. And it is arguably the most clippable thing ever. Like any 10-second scene of that, you could just throw on YouTube shorts and go viral because it's freaking zombies getting shot at. And you know how cool they can make those masks look? Yeah. [1:01:52] a real special effects guy to work on those masks? Yeah. Like one of those experts from the movies? Can you search up Mr. Beast Zombies? We have a video on our channel from, like, I mean, God knows how long ago, seven years ago, where we did, like, make, like, a mini zombie horde, but not, like, in a simulation like this just for fun to see how people in public are to react. And, like, it looks disgusting, the things they were able to do. It's pretty crazy. Yeah, modern special effects and makeup artists, they could do amazing stuff, man. If you could find, like, a close-up of my face or... [1:02:22] Like, it was like crazy. We just brought in people for... Is this where they come in? Yeah, like that kind of stuff. Like, look at my face right there. Like, pause it.

[1:02:30] It's freaking wild. Dude, you could totally do something like that on the outside of one of those masks. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Exactly. Exactly. [1:02:39] 100%. Yeah, that was really all bad. That's the look. What yours looks like with like the teeth and everything and fucked up flesh, that is the mask. Exactly. So you take that hard airsoft mask and you put that shit on it. Joe, the problem is I want to go work on this now. It's funny, I have this thing where... [1:02:58] So this might sound like crazy to some people, but when you feel your heart rate get elevated, when I talk about an idea and I can feel my heart rate get elevated, I'm usually like that's a good indicator that it's like a good idea because it means I'm getting like – Dude, this is a good idea. Yeah, I know. I can literally feel – or not anymore, but like a couple minutes ago, I could feel my heart beating because I was getting excited. And that's like – that usually almost always correlates with people because if I'm getting excited talking about it, you have to think like a lot of things right now are – [1:03:24] because of TikTok and Reels and stuff, they go viral because of word of mouth. And so like if just talking about the idea gets someone excited, then that usually means like a lot of people are just going to talk about it. And if a lot of people are talking about it, obviously a lot of people watch it. And so that's why I call it kind of like the heart rate effect. [1:03:39] That's like my number one signal that people are going to talk about this and freaking love it if we do it right. I can see it. I can see scenes. I can see darkness starting to settle in on the town. And I can see the people trying to figure out where to hide and what to do. And the eyes at night. That was genius, too. Yeah, dude. I can see the eyes. And it's interesting because it's like combining the Venn diagram of us, right? You're –

[1:04:00] kind of representative of the very, like, uh, [1:04:03] I don't know. [1:04:04] like just ability to really think deeply of like what makes it fucking cool and Evan you're really hyper fixating on what makes the zombies cool and like the realistic nature of it and I'm hyper fixating on just kind of the overall set design and things there's like a Venn diagram in the middle where we combine like the two like obsessions and it really like merges together makes something beautiful. Yeah, man, and you could also have like, [1:04:28] Not just zombies. You could have some other things that are out there, too, that can get people that you don't know about. Yeah, Jamie, can we get 10 days on his schedule? Can he be one of the – actually, no, because you don't need the money. But it would be cool if you were competing in it because then – [1:04:42] That would be insane. Yeah, it's too much time. Exactly. Just cancel some podcasts. I like the idea of it, though. How about we – or never mind. You pick them up in the car to take them to a podcast, and they're like, oh, whoops. We're in an abandoned city. Oh, here's your shotgun you talked about a year ago, Joe. Wow, anyway, zombies are coming tonight. What, he's going to leave and not shoot zombies? Come on. Have you ever done sandbox VR? [1:05:06] Uh, is that the one where it's like the, you just go in and there's random worlds and you can walk around on it? Uh huh. It's, it's a warehouse. You go in there and they have fans and stuff. So like simulates like the wind and you go in there and you put on a headset and you put on a haptic feedback vest and one of them is called Deadwood Mansion. That's my favorite one. Okay. And you go in there and you shoot zombies. You're in a mansion. You're in this like abandoned mansion and rats come out and zombies and there's guys in the ceiling. It's fucking awesome. Yeah. You would love it.

[1:05:36] ideas if you do that because you mean we we're co-producing now you're too invested you just spent 34 minutes on a whatever podcast like ripping on it well there's something to it man i i just i see it in my head i'm like that would be an amazing show i just see these people like in the like in a parking structure like setting up getting ready and the sun's coming down and they're like look we got it we have about 20 minutes of daylight left yeah and you realize like god i'm so fucking [1:06:06] They're like, there's still $200,000 left we could earn today, but we need to start prepping this. And one guy's just greedy as hell, and another guy's like, we're going to lose if you do that. And then, like, infighting and stuff as we're getting, like, dramatic, like, you know, B-roll of it from, like, wide shot. Because everything, too, could be shot really far away. So, like, it's like lenses are punching in, and so it's not like there's a camera crew on them. And you could have each day when it's tasks, right? So you have to accomplish something, and the more you accomplish, the more money you could potentially make. Each day is an escape room. [1:06:36] So every day there's new puzzles to solve, and then you're getting fucking tired because you're not sleeping. Actually, the escape room is a good through way to do the task. It's not like some goofy stuff like move this rock from one side to the other. But like an actual escape room, and maybe the million dollars that Winnie stays inside like – [1:06:53] So it could be like I drop a volt every day in the middle, and then you have to do a series of things to figure out the combination that are hard. Yes, yes. And then when you solve it, then it goes on the money pile. Have you done many escape rooms? I live in Greenville, North Carolina. There's not many there. Me and my family, we do them everywhere we go. They're fucking awesome. And the best ones are in Vegas. They have an It one in Vegas, It one and It two. It's fucking incredible. It's so good. And it's huge.

[1:07:23] place and they actually have pennywise the clown they have an actor who wears the fucking suit and looks just like pennywise and scares the shit out of you yeah it's amazing but those kind of people you could recruit those kind of people to design puzzles and things where people have to do every day and then you're dealing with sleep deprivation and people having to work together and now oh my god dude and i know the perfect people for it we uh [1:07:47] for Salesforce, we did their Super Bowl commercial this year. And in the commercial, I hit a million dollars in it. Like, basically, if you watch the commercial... [1:07:55] Just with your computer and the commercial, you can win a million dollars. And there's like a bunch of random clues and puzzles hidden through it. And so the first thing it took you to a website that just like loosely explained it. Over 60 million people visited that site and attempted it. But it still took weeks for people to find the million dollars. And it was like one of the craziest internet like puzzle hunts ever because it would like take you to this website, which then would take you to this other one where you'd have to call a number. And like it's a four-hour voicemail. [1:08:25] blah, blah, blah. And if you weren't recording this, you're going to have to listen to all four hours of getting hang up. And then it's just like sending you everywhere. And it's basically like a hundred of the most complex puzzles on the internet. And like it took this like group of like really high level puzzle solvers almost an entire month to solve it. Even with a million dollars on the line. And millions of people were trying it. And there's a whole subreddit dedicated to it. And so... [1:08:45] I just basically went on Reddit and I got all the most cracked out puzzle solvers in the world. And I was like, if you had unlimited budget, how would you make the most insane puzzle ever? And then that's what they came up with. And it was like, it's like hard to even articulate the steps on it. Like some of it was...

[1:09:01] uh how do i i don't even know how to describe it it's like so complicated like sometimes there's like a page with like a bunch of buttons on it like a million buttons but only one works and you have to go through and click it all and so some of them were mundane and then other stuff is like you know paragraph attacks and you have to like use some old language like decipher the text to figure out what the words were and so like each puzzle required like a different skill set to like get through it yeah yeah [1:09:23] I could think of all sorts of different things you could have these people do like during the day, these different tasks, different puzzles that they have to solve. [1:09:33] Yeah. There's like languages I didn't even know exist. So like in the commercial, I'm wearing a belt that just had different colors on it. But if you put the colors in order, it like translates to this thing. And I mean, I don't even understand what half the things were, but. [1:09:45] people were able to figure it out eventually. Like, they were just showing me, like, oh, this represents Braille, these dots. And so we put them in this wave, and then if you combine it with these colors and – [1:09:53] It got, like, pretty insane. And so it all ties back to, like, the Super Bowl commercial and, like, every little thing in there. And, like, one part of the puzzle is you have to find locations on a map. And, like, in the commercial, I'm holed up a grenade. Yeah. [1:10:05] And it's like a one plus question mark equals like whatever. And it ends up being like, but the text is yellow. And like it's like a stone was drawing on it. And like it basically meant yellow stone. And then you put in yellow stone in like this location thing on a different website. And then it unlocks this. And you had to draw like a circle on a globe. It got like pretty crazy. Wow. Yeah, I know. Which is why like tens of millions of people attempted it. But it took almost a month for someone to win a million dollars. And like there's a million dollars online and all you needed to win it was your computer.

[1:10:35] So it was pretty cool to see communities form, and people are doing daily podcasts and updates on it of what the next step of the puzzle were. Because what you'll see in these puzzles too is like, because we also did one years ago. I love doing these online scavenger hunts that with just your computer you can win a bunch of money. And you'll see like... [1:10:51] When one person will solve a thing, [1:10:54] And then hundreds of people will solve it right afterwards because they'll go post it on Reddit or they're working in groups. And so it will be like standstill at like step 42. No one's there. And then you'll just see one person goes on this website that's step 42. And then tens of thousands of people will go there. But then as you get closer to the end, you stop seeing that effect. They start being more secretive and quiet about it. And so it's pretty cool to see the psychology of how they do it. You could have these people completely unarmed in the beginning. And the only way they can get guns is to solve puzzles. [1:11:24] just find them, right? Because if it's a bigger city, we just go... Well, maybe that's the puzzle. The puzzle is finding guns. Like, if there's some sort of a puzzle, and if you unlock that, it'll give you the location of where guns are. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe... [1:11:40] You know, I also think of like fun stuff, too. Like we could give them like there could be a gun safe or army in the city. But it's like they have to like break into it. Right. And that could just be a thing that takes like a ton of time. Like so you have to go find. [1:11:53] you know i'm maybe one of the contestants we make sure is like uh certified in like explosives and stuff and there's they have to like oh no no no shot of stream platform would be okay with this but it would be cool if we let them like there's like mixtures and stuff to make a bomb hidden throughout the thing and they have to go find it and he makes like a mock c4 and puts it on it and you know and then that's how they get in the gun safe but maybe it's more like uh what's that hacksaw or whatever and it's like you we make you get a safe where if you hacksaw it for like 10 hours you you can like break the lock on it and get in so then someone just has to stand there

[1:12:23] a stethoscope and a book on how to crack safes. True. And you have like click, click, click, click, click. Yeah. Try to figure it out. Yeah. And someone's just like there for like two days straight. But then if he gets in, it's just straight loaded with ammo and stuff. So it's like a risk reward. There are old school safes that you can do that to. I don't know if they can do that with the new ones. Yeah. But if you have like an old school safe where you can actually hear the tumblers turning. Exactly. Click, click, click. Well, we could also just build the lock. [1:12:53] It's possible. Just get the safe that looks aesthetically how you want and then just replace the lock, right? Yeah, just make it so that it's... [1:13:00] fix it's solvable exactly complicated yeah yeah that would be cool because then it's like well i'm a big fan of when they have agency and so it's like [1:13:08] You know, it's like we could even lay it out there like this will take days to solve. Yeah. And so you could spend days going collecting guns or days making money to grow the prize pool. Or you could spend days trying to get lucky on this like safe that is doable, but there's no guarantee you figure it out. And having tons of stuff like that, that's what like makes it interesting, too, for the viewer, because you're like I love in these kind of reality shows where a viewer can ask, what would I do? Right. Yes. And that's what tends to be what like people in families when they watch together, they love like like in Beast Games, when I offer someone a million dollars. [1:13:38] eliminate your friends, you know, sometimes people turn down the million dollars, sometimes people take the million dollars and eliminate their friends. And like, that's an interesting thing to go, well, if I was in their spot, [1:13:47] I don't care. It's a million dollars. The point is to make money. That's why I'm on the show. But other people see that and they're like, [1:13:53] no, like my integrity is worth, you know, I wouldn't take a billion dollars over my integrity. Right. And for, you know, and some people, you know, even though it's a game show, they're like, no, I care, you know? And so, but giving them like these kinds of dilemmas all throughout it too. So then as a viewer, I can be like,

[1:14:07] Yeah, I wouldn't do that. I would just go scavenge, you know. It'd be cool. Also, you could make it so that... [1:14:13] Ammo and certain supplies are only available at night. [1:14:19] So they're incentivized to move. You have to go out. You have to decide whether or not it's worth getting caught and, [1:14:26] Whether or not you can sneak around and grab the ammo. And then you also have to find it. You have to find the ammo, maybe find food, find supplies. Like supplies are left in duffel bags at night. You know, bro, there's so many ways we could take this. Something that would be cool is every night we move their pile of money into a random building that they don't know. But it's all pre-selected, so it's not worth screwing them. So like we as producers know the ten buildings each episode. So then night comes. [1:14:53] come in, lift up the money, and we put, like, a helicopter literally lifts it up, puts it on top of a different building. So now they have to get set up in this building to defend it, but they weren't planned on it. So that's why, because also, yeah, that's the other thing you have to make where every episode's not the same. So then now every nighttime would be different because they're in a different building. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. [1:15:13] And finding like – having like random ammo caches. Maybe during the day they have to solve the puzzle that – [1:15:22] lets them acquire a map... [1:15:25] And then they have to figure out [1:15:27] Where these random ammo dumps are and supply dumps are and food dumps are. So they're already hidden. Well, actually, you know what? You have to go out at night to find them. What would be really cool is if we can find a bandit city that had like –

[1:15:39] miles away like some other little location that we could like so they find a map and it's like yeah on the other side of those woods but it's like a 10 mile hike you know what i mean and so could you get there go grab tons of ammo and then get back before nighttime right and so then that's also like i'm a big fan of like scene diversity and biodiversity so things don't feel repetitive so then they're going to a different city but they're million or whatever the price will is still in the other one so you have to go and then come back to defend it at night and so it's like now you get like [1:16:05] You can like do a cut because you can have the people in the city. You have the people journeying through the woods. And it's like interesting to cut back and forth. And then if they go out to that city and they make the journey and they realize it's going to take us 10 hours to solve this. By that time, it'll be 2 in the morning. It's already going to be dark. We should go back now. Let's go. Fuck it. We're here. Exactly. And then agency, right? Do they stay and spend the night there and trust their friends and they have no – maybe no walkie-talkies so they can't communicate. And their friends are like holding down a fort with a million dollars on top. [1:16:35] And we get so many cool shots like that. I mean, we've only done this in an hour, right? An hour or so. [1:16:42] There's so many different possibilities. If you just sat down and worked, it must be so fun to do what you do, dude. Exactly. Well, this is what we're doing right now is we're what I would call blue sky. And we're not thinking about, for the most part, restrictions. We're just thinking about what's great content. And a lot of that's lost. Like people in a lot of writers room, they didn't say like, you can't do that or that's not possible or whatever. And it's like. [1:17:03] Right now, we're just figuring out what is the best show possible, and then I'll just have people go figure out what is possible or not. And in reality, everything we've said is possible. It's just certain things will require a little bit of time, like the safe, using a modern safe or changing the lock.

[1:17:17] That's possible. What does it cost and how long does it take, right? And you just go through and you attach all that to everything. And you do a very first principles way of going about it. And it's just objective. It would take X amount of time. It would cost as much money. [1:17:27] And then like, you know, and then you just go through and figure out what's worth it, what's not, as opposed to, you know, every step away, people be like, no, you can't do that. Go ahead and redo it. And it's just like a. [1:17:36] It seems obvious, but I'm not really sure of many media companies that approach it like we do. No, well, the thing about what you've done is you've built it from the ground up. [1:17:46] with yourself and with your team, right? So you've never had a bunch of executives telling you what you should be or shouldn't be doing. And that's why it's so great. It's like these bunch – you have creative people and then you have the business people. And the business people, they think they're creative, but they're generally not. And they want to tell the creative people what to do so that they can say, that was my idea. And so then you get a bunch of people in meetings that give you terrible advice and terrible ideas. And then they also want to compare it to shows that have already been successful. Well, we've already done this and why don't we do it this way? [1:18:16] Purple cow effect, which everyone knows. What's the purple cow effect? So if you're driving down the road and you see a cow, who cares? You'll never think of it. But if you're driving down the road and you see a purple cow, you're going to think about it like, why was that cow purple? And it'll stick in your brain. It's the same thing with content. If it's a show you've seen multiple times or a format that's similar, you won't think twice. But if it's a purple cow, but something you've never seen, then you'll think about it again. And that's what's counterintuitive to how, like you were saying, most execs think. They think, well, we did this before. It did well. Repeat it. But it's actually the inverse of how you should look at it.

[1:18:46] That's why with Beast Games, I've worked with Prime Video because they just give us creative control and they're like, "You know what you're doing, you can do it." But everyone sees that creators are growing bigger and bigger audiences and so a lot of every platform on Earth is trying to work with them. And I can't count the amount of times a creator's worked with this streaming platform and then what they have is great, but then the execs start giving notes and it starts to lose a little bit of the soul, a little bit of the funny. And it goes from this amazing thing to like... [1:19:10] It's all right. And it's like, it's just so frustrating because it's like you're paying them [1:19:15] Because they get millions of views of video because they have a core audience. And then you're stripping the thing away that got them that core audience. And it's like, why are you even working with them at that point? And more and more platforms are like waking up to it. But it's just like comical how slow they are to it. And like, they should just trust them more. [1:19:29] Well, it's hard for them because they have to put up so much money and not everybody is Mr. Beast. Yeah. That's the problem. It's like you have a great vision and you're really good at executing, but some people aren't. And so if you're going to dump a bunch of money into something and you see them making a disaster, like the Joker 2 or something like that, you're like, hey, hey, hey, what the fuck are you doing? Of course. And that's where it's like – [1:19:50] An exec might be a disaster, but a creator might be a masterpiece. And so that's obviously where... [1:19:55] But it's evolving. I mean, I think obviously with Obsession, they just gross $400 million. Isn't that crazy? I know. I still haven't seen it, but I heard it's amazing. Oh, what? You would love it. I know. I just don't go to movie theaters anymore. I don't either. But that one, with how well people are talking about it, I had to see it. It'll be streaming soon. I think it'll be streaming in July or something like that. Yeah, Obsession, Backrooms, which are made by a creator, Mason Digital Circus, they've been crushing it, Iron Likes. So it's like Hollywood seeing it more and more. But the writing's been there for years.

[1:20:25] creators back to back to back to back. Well, did you see Talk to Me? [1:20:28] Uh, no. Talk to me, the horror movie? No. It was great. These two guys from Australia, they were hilarious. These two brothers, they came in and they talked to me about it, but they were making YouTube videos. Yeah. What's their name again? [1:20:40] It's called Talk To Me, right? No, what's the creator's name? Jamie will pull it up. Old Mac Brothers. [1:20:45] Michael and Danny Filippu. [1:20:46] Okay. So they're so funny. They're on the podcast. What's their YouTube channel? Both of them speak like a million miles an hour. Yeah. I'm... [1:20:54] I can't think of their channel. [1:20:58] The Rack-a-Rack-a-Rack-a, yeah, of course. Yeah, I've... That movie is great. Have you seen it? No, I haven't seen it, no. It's really good. It's really scary, and it's very original. Wait, when did you have the Rack-a-Rack-a-Rack-a-Brothers on? A couple years ago. Oh, really? [1:21:10] Two years ago? Yeah, they talk fast as hell. Dude, they're just... I'm trying to corral them. It's like, hey, I don't know what the fuck you said. They're super cool guys. Last time I hung out with them, weirdly enough, they're really into Uno. And I, whatever, I like competitive games. And I played a $1,000 game of Uno against some of them. And so we filmed it for a little short for them. And I lost. And I was like, okay, well, at least this will be funny. And then after they leave to go back to our show, they're like, fuck, the SD card's corrupt. And I was like, oh, what? [1:21:40] We didn't even get to upload it. It was just funny because it was like we had this like mini set and we were playing like a really intense game of UNA. We were like slapping cards down. SD cards corrupt. That's crazy. I know. It was like wild and like we were like flipping desk and like going like we were just the most batshit game of UNA you've ever seen. And it's just funny the kids came like like taking over top. Yeah those guys are super cool. Well they made a movie about a hand.

[1:22:04] And so it's like this ancient hand that looks like a sculpture and it's got all this weird cryptic writing on it. And if you put your hand on it, you hold on to it and you say, talk to me, like all of a sudden you get. [1:22:19] possessed by something. And you're supposed to let go within a certain amount of seconds. And if you let go within a certain amount of seconds, you're okay. But somebody doesn't. Somebody doesn't let go. And it's... I don't want to say anything more. It's really good. Is it like Scary Scary? Yes. Yeah, it's a horror movie. All right. It's fun. Okay. It's really good. My fiancé loves horror films, so... You'll love it. It's really well-matched. And it was like... When I saw it, I was like, this is crazy. These guys are like super young guys. Just energetic, enthusiastic, [1:22:49] to make a horror movie and it's all done in Australia so it's like everyone's driving on the wrong side of the road and they're all Australian people so it's like you don't have to have famous actors to make these amazing movies yeah it's like it's not really necessary well like the back rooms I think the the director I think is like 20 years old or whatever I mean very very young and I think it just crossed 100 million and obsession same thing right yeah yeah I think they're a little older but yeah in their 20s youtubers and they make like a lot of [1:23:14] Curry, just the silliest, goofiest skits on TikTok and Instagram reels. And now, you watch Obsession, it really is one of the best movies I've seen in a while. And it's just hilarious to see the jump. But when you look backwards... [1:23:27] It's kind of like Steve Jobs says, it's hard to connect the dots going forward, but you can connect them looking backwards. When you look back at his skits, they were very well shot and very, you know, like beautiful. And you can kind of connect in your dots. I can see how this person made hundreds upon hundreds of these little scenes on TikTok and Instagram. And then that led to being able to compile a bunch. And it was like essentially practice for the movie.

[1:23:47] And it's just cool to see the progression of so many directors going over. And what's interesting, though, is... [1:23:52] When you see these things happen, there's obviously a delay, right? Because producing films takes sometimes years. And so now that you see all these hits, bang, bang, bang, coming out of the creator space over in traditional Hollywood, then you're not going to see the fact six months from now. But 18 months from now, I would bet money you're going to see dozens of other movies made by creators. And obviously these people are going to get more funding because now everyone's eyes are being opened to what should have been open a while ago. But this is what people are watching now, especially people under the age of 30. [1:24:22] two hours a day flipping through sub-60 second vertical feeds of TikTok reels and shorts. And this is culture for them. This is their world. Yeah. I don't watch, besides Christopher Nolan, I'm not really going to a movie theater for anything. But when a creator drops a movie, I'm like, okay, I want to see what they did. I always want to see what new innovators are coming up with. Like people that are just thinking outside the box that aren't. [1:24:46] They're not trapped in that sort of a weird world of like how to make a successful film. They just – they have a creative vision. They're just trying to follow it out. And people are not limited to whatever genre you know them from. Just because someone makes like funny TikTok reels doesn't mean they can't make a great horror film. Exactly. But think about like – [1:25:04] Jordan Peele, right? Made Keenan Peele, made this comedy sketch show, and then all of a sudden he makes these, you know, like Get Out. And you're like, what the fuck? It seems like comedy sketches is the gateway to great horror films. I mean, I'm sure people have connected that dots. I'm probably like two years late to saying that, but I never even realized that. But yeah, Keenan Peele.

[1:25:23] Curry, Baker, a bunch of other people. [1:25:25] So funny. Well, it seems like if you're creative, you can be – like most people have a variety of things that are interesting to them. You like comedy movies, you like horror movies. And just because you make comedies doesn't mean you don't have some good ideas about something that's absolutely terrifying. Yeah, and I wonder too – I feel like horror films, it's a little easier to do on a smaller budget because it's like – [1:25:45] a lot of it is like the unknown and you're not necessarily having to show it and suspense and stuff. Whereas like, you know, you don't really see like, [1:25:51] I can't really think of like a sub like couple million dollar action film that like really crushed because like obviously those are very expensive. So it seems like also a good place where you can make something like the difference between a hundred million dollar horror film and like a ten million dollar horror film, I would argue honestly really isn't. [1:26:07] that big right because it's more depends on what you're doing right but it's like what makes it good is is the the premise behind it right like the tension and like if the the the thing that's scary it like makes you feel that way but like feelings aren't directly correlated to money spent and like you know you you could have like this monster that doesn't appear to the end and you don't need to like cgi it throughout the whole thing but if you tell the story in the right way and the constant tension it you can uh [1:26:32] feel like phenomenal throughout the whole thing. Yeah. And a lot of the older films that didn't have the kind of special effects that they have today in terms of like CGI, like there was something better about not seeing the monster, like American Werewolf in London is the best example. You barely see it. You see it for like literally half a second, a few times in the early parts of the movie. I haven't seen the movie. Oh, you haven't seen it? No. Oh my God, it's amazing. Speaking of not seeing a movie, I did watch Ex Machina after the last podcast. How good is it? Yeah. Oh, it was really good. Really good.

[1:27:02] honestly, I was like, [1:27:03] It's probably silly, but I'll watch it because Joe told me it years ago. I loved it. I didn't realize it was that good. It's one of my top ten all-time favorite movies. It's so good. Also because it's coming. It's coming. [1:27:14] That's coming. Oh, now, yeah. It's more relevant than ever. Did you see the computer electronics show from Vegas this year? Computer electronics? With the drones? CES. Well, they have everything. And one of the things they had was an AI companion. And this AI companion is a hot Asian lady with big boobs. And the lips don't sync up with the mouth, which is with the way the sound's coming out. But it's talking to you in AI. Yeah. So it literally can have a back-and-forth conversation with you just like perplexity can. Yeah. Or chat GPT. [1:27:43] Yeah, and it's doing it with a voice, so with a hot voice. I mean – And it's like that's common, dude. Well, of course. I mean the language model is already there, right? Yeah. You can open up Jimny right now and talk to it like a normal human. Yeah. And if you just tell it to respond quick, it will talk to you. And it will talk to you with slang. Exactly. It will talk to you and say that part. Yeah. Well, one thing that's – it's funny. [1:28:06] I play this board game a lot called Dune. Whatever. Like, I'm a big nerd. But there's like this one... It's called Dune? Yeah, Dune the movies? Yeah, it's a recreation. What's funny, I hadn't even seen the movies when I started playing the game. I didn't realize there was movies. I didn't even know there was books. I just... [1:28:19] was looking for fun strategy board games. I used to play a lot of Catan, but the problem is Catan. It's like dice roll, and if you get unlucky, you don't really win. There's games where there's a skill ceiling where the best player always wins, which is chess is a perfect example of that. But then it gets to the point of, well, if you want to be really great at that, it's who spends the most time doing it. So I don't want one that's 100% skill, but I don't want something that's too much randomness. I take board games a little serious because I love strategy games. Because if it's too much dice roll, like theoretically Monopoly,

[1:28:49] Catan, then it's like [1:28:50] Who cares? It's just whether or not you got lucky. So it's like I did a lot of research into finding a game where there's a little bit of randomness, so it's not just about all your life, but there is an infinite skill ceiling. And that's where I kind of landed on this game called Dune, and I started playing it. And it also had to be a game where enough people played it where I could actually find people play it. [1:29:06] And I got really hooked into it. But it's ironic because then I saw, like, the movies are dropping. I was like, oh, yeah. [1:29:12] And then all the characters started to make sense after I watched the movies. I've been probably a thousand hours into the game. I was totally backwards on the IP. But anyways, because we were talking about talking to one of the top players makes YouTube videos on it. And I was kind of curious. [1:29:27] like, uh, what he would do if he was like in certain move, like positions as me. So I just took all the transcripts of like a hundred of his YouTube videos and I just put it into Jimni. And, uh, and I was just like, Hey, you know, uh, respond to me based how this person would and talk to me like this person would. And like, what would this person say in this scenario? And then when I was like playing a game, I just asked the questions like the player's name is Dino, whatever. But, uh, and so I called it Dino.io and, uh, I'd be like, what would Dino.io do here?

[1:29:57] words from all his videos, like dozens of hours. And it was... I know one of Dino's friends, his name is Che. And I was like, would you take a bullet for Che? And Dino's like a very analytical guy. And the AI was like... [1:30:09] "Well, it depends. Is it in the foot? Is it in the chest?" And it responded exactly how my friend would. Like to a T, with his same mannerisms and everything, I was like, "This is crazy. This is absolutely insane." And then I would put it where he was on a Discord call and like, "Dino, we would be playing." And then I'd ask questions and I'd be like, "No, actually, Dino, don't say anything." And I'd ask "Dino.io." And it would respond exactly how he would respond in most of these situations, because it had so much contextual relevance from all his livestreams on his YouTube channel. And it was pretty crazy. [1:30:39] And yeah, and so it was just so surreal. So talking about like the robot thing, I just wondered too, if you put like a pendant around someone's neck and you just recorded them talking for like a week or two, and then you just fed that into an LLM, and then you were like, hey, talk to me like this person talks. Like you could have that, you know, whatever Asian robot you're talking about, you could have it literally talk to you like some other human, right? Because it's interesting too, 'cause I was like, hey, give me a breakdown of Dino's speech. And it was like, hey, [1:31:06] 0.15% of his words are um, uh, around 0.3% of what he says is like, it gave me like a full breakdown of like the last hundred thousand words he said, what percentage they are, how he typically structures his things. Like if you put them in a stressful situation, he'll like kind of respond more like this. But if it's more chill, he'll use this vocabulary. It was like really cool. Uh, but also scary. Cause I was like, man, [1:31:26] I have a lot of me talking, right? Like this podcast, theoretically, people could just take dozens of hours of this and just make like a little Jimmy.io. And it's enough where it can pick up on my speech patterns and how I would respond to certain situations. 100%. They can do that easily. And then just put you in a robot and now Jimmy lives forever. Exactly. Or you can just have your robot be whoever, which is like kind of weird. Like, ew. That would be very weird. You living with you. Imagine you have a robot. Exactly.

[1:31:51] and you get the robot to do stuff around your house? Instead of hiring a housekeeper, you come home and Jimmy's vacuuming? Oh, God. Well, more cynically, or not even cynically, just sad. It's like if you lost a loved one or something. Yeah, I know. That's pet cemetery talk. Yeah, but if someone's really grieving, they might do it because they want some normalcy back or something. I'll probably feel empty and hollow and even creepier. [1:32:14] You have a robot that's pretending to be your husband. [1:32:17] yeah yeah fuck off that's crazy i know but it's just i don't know these next few years are gonna be crazy man everything's developing so rapidly and yeah it's just i [1:32:26] Yeah, it's... [1:32:28] 2036 is going to be completely different than 2026. I know, isn't that? There's never been a time where the future is so uncertain, where no one can give you a really accurate map of what 10 years from now looks like. The difference between 1930 and 1940, not much other than world events. You know, yeah, the difference between like... [1:32:48] 1600 and 1700 not much not much different maybe better boats you know maybe better muskets yeah the difference between 2026 and 2036 is gonna be who fucking knows i know man full-on blade runner i mean it's just like the some of the people i see working on like you know augmented reality glasses and like we're you know like there's animes where people get trapped in video games and stuff like that and i could really see like [1:33:15] With AI advancing with more and more compute where you could just put on a headset and live in a video game, you could literally just generate whatever the world is you want in. Literally, 10 years from now, potentially, just real-time generate the video game you want to be in and cater to what you like. Just so many possibilities. Obviously, with humanoid robots, it's just skyrocketing. It doesn't take a genius to see, well, with computer intelligence getting better and humanoid robots, all these just tens of billions of dollars pouring into it. Obviously, someone's going to figure out how to merge them together.

[1:33:45] Ten years from now, we're definitely going to just – there's going to be humanoid robots and so many things that now would seem weird as hell. But ten years from now, we'd be like, oh, it's normal. Ten years from now, you're going to have a show where people have to figure out whether or not someone's a robot or a real person. [1:33:59] I would say 10 years from now, that would be five years from now, probably. 10 years from now, I feel like that would just be like... [1:34:05] you know, [1:34:06] is this a rock or an iPhone or whatever? Like no one would care. They're just going to be normalized to it, especially like younger people, like younger kids who grow up with chat, GPT and AI and stuff like that. It's like. [1:34:15] It's just intuitive to them to go use these things as opposed to other means. And so it's just like as that generation, once they become a thing, then give it a couple years for people to get used to it and normalize to it. And then it's not going to take that long. Yeah, it's going to be very, very, very weird. [1:34:31] Yeah. [1:34:32] It is. [1:34:33] And it's also scary because you don't know the implications, whether it will be negative, positive. Some people will be negative. For other people, it will probably be positive. [1:34:43] Like if you're a VFX artist in media, you'll probably be able to spend more time doing cool stuff and creative work and less time going – [1:34:50] frame by frame and like [1:34:52] No one actually enjoys rotoscoping someone's hair so you can remove a background shot or whatever. So for certain people like that, ideally, it would allow them to – instead of – you just draw a circle around them and then it just collapses on them and AI just figures it out. So you're not going frame by frame and drawing around their body and it does that and you can spend more time doing actual creative fun work. [1:35:14] And hopefully that's where it goes and not to the point where you just don't even need the person entirely. But it's like anyone's guess where the puck ends up stopping, you know?

[1:35:23] Yeah, it's going to be real weird, man. [1:35:25] Real weird. [1:35:26] It's going to be interesting. You know, hopefully we'll survive. [1:35:30] But I mean, I'm an optimist. I think we'll survive. But yeah, I'm an optimist, too. But I have a feeling that we'll have a different role. [1:35:38] In society. That's for sure. I don't think we'll be the leaders anymore. [1:35:42] Oh, that far. Okay. Yeah, I think AI is going to take over most things. [1:35:47] Yeah. Including government. [1:35:49] including allocation of resources. It's going to probably restrict people's ability to make decisions because we're so destructive. [1:35:57] I listened to your podcast with Marc Andreessen and I do like what he said, or not like, but it's just interesting when you pointed out that like, you know, AI is the smartest doctor in the world, is the smartest blank in the world, is the smartest of everything, right? And typically, you know, billionaires like him would only have limited access to these high level professionals in each industry. But now it's essentially democratized that and everyone has access to the smartest person in the world in each of these industries. [1:36:21] it is pretty interesting because if it is, uh, not omnipotent, but all knowing and knows all these things, like it's like scary because it's like, we don't want, I, as a human, I'm like, no, I don't want to make those decisions. But if you like purely take emotion out of it, logically, it's like, well, [1:36:34] Would you rather a human with flaws that could do something fairly bad or this thing that has a lot more context and knowledge and experience, right? You say you want an experienced person making a decision. Well, technically, this has the experience of everyone ever in history on the Internet, right? Yeah. But it's also – [1:36:48] I don't even know, man. It's crazy. But hopefully, for the most part... [1:36:52] Right now, at least it seems like it's allowing people to do less like busy work and less things that they don't enjoy and focus more, at least in media. And I'm seeing focus more on things they they do enjoy. Like I was saying, like the example of not having to roto every single frame on a body or, you know, being able to pre visualize scenes or whatever. So it's like it seems and everything I'm seeing and maybe I live in a bubble on Twitter, it seems like it's not killing that many jobs yet. But not yet. Yeah, but it could.

[1:37:22] so much wealth for everybody that we no longer have to think about money in terms of like you need food you need shelter like yeah like this is universal high income is elon's concept yeah he thinks that literally people are not going to have to work anymore then the problem with that is like then you run into human nature problems and so we have to teach children how to pursue their interests rather than how to just worry about having a job to feed themselves yeah and so then [1:37:52] them at an early age that going after tasks, completing tasks, doing things that are difficult and challenging is actually exciting and fun. And that's what you should generate. And then we're going to have to reward people based on that. And it's just to figure out like what incentivizes people to do things. Because if they don't get incentivized and then [1:38:13] We also have VR and AR and games that you can play all day long that are way more exciting than real life. You don't want to just take your government money and play Call of Duty all day. Especially if it becomes VR Call of Duty. Exactly. That's where it's going to get hard because I think of how addicted to video games I was when I was a kid. I mean still to some degree now. And if it was in a headset and a completely different world, oh my gosh, my poor mom. Good luck getting me out of that.

[1:38:43] videos and playing call of duty when i was younger and you know uh but if i was like actually in a headset oh and all my friends are on it yeah you know and then you take it off and now you you have freaking homework and like real life stuff and like you went from the most overstimulating beautiful different utopia world where everything's amazing and you're with your friends and you're having fun and then you take it off and you're back in like real life which sucks like [1:39:05] That's like a whole different level of addiction than current video games would have. I mean, I don't know what the timeline is on that stuff, but it's clear that that's going to happen in our lifetimes. That's the matrix, and that's coming. And there's going to be multiple levels of that, and it's also going to exponentially get better and better with each iteration. Exactly. There's no way to stop it. It's going to happen. And that's sandbox VR, but times a million. If you go and play those games, you're in a small room. [1:39:31] that's like a part of a giant warehouse where they have these things set up and your room is, you know, like 50 feet by 50 feet and you move around and there you do a bunch of stuff. But if this is an actual fucking warehouse, you have physical boundaries that exist like and then you're in a virtual space where as you're walking, it looks like the actual ground that you're walking on. Yeah. And you're involved. You won't be able to tell what's real and what's not real. And with those omnidirectional treadmills and stuff when someone cracks the code. Yeah. [1:39:59] It's a, you've probably never heard of it, but there's a popular anime called Sword Art Online. It's where, it's just a guy gets trapped in a video game and he lives his life through there. And I remember watching that when I was younger. And I remember like, when I was really young, we're fresh off of watching that anime. I was like, man, I hope they figure this out in my lifetime. So I'm like 80 years old, I could just put one of those on and just live in the video game. And it's like, at first he's scared, but then he ends up loving it because it's just like, everything's great. And, um,

[1:40:25] And yeah, so... [1:40:26] I think a [1:40:28] Well, the problem is like what's real and what's not real. You know, is it really important for things to happen physically? [1:40:36] in the real, air quotes, real world, or will it be just as fulfilling to exist in these virtual worlds? I remember when I was younger, I would play this game called Wizard 101. It's like World of Warcraft, like an MMORPG. And there are definitely times in my life, maybe there are short periods, where when I was a young kid, like, [1:40:55] My character in that game definitely mattered pretty similar to me in real life. I was really hooked on that game. And so I could see it. Look at people who've dedicated their entire lives to World of Warcraft. There's probably hundreds of thousands or at least tens of thousands. And it's like if you could recreate that same effect, people would feel that same way. If I'm 90 years old and I'm bedridden, I don't care. Put that headset on me. I'm done. Let me just live it out in here. [1:41:25] IV in me? I don't even want to take the headset off to eat. Well, then there's a question of, is that already happening right now? [1:41:31] So if a [1:41:33] simulation exists and it's so good that it's impossible to differentiate between the simulation and real life. [1:41:42] There's a lot of people that are very intelligent people that believe we are inside of some sort of a simulation currently. Elon's one of them. He said the odds of us not being in a simulation are in billions. Really? Yeah. [1:41:53] So something akin to a simulation he believes is running right now. So maybe we are in Beast Games. Some me, a thousand years in the future. Yeah, the hundredth version of Beast Games. Yeah, with compute growing and growing. If someone figured out how to harvest the energy of a single star. Maybe that's what this is about. As we grow older, technology becomes crazier and crazier, and it reaches some sort of a tipping point while we're alive, and this is the end of the game.

[1:42:23] So... [1:42:24] That would be crazy. Right? It reaches some sort of event horizon. Or it's some actual civilization similar to us, but then they just wanted to – they lost, you know, like how we lost a lot of our ancient history, they did too. So this is a simulation to see how did we come to be with all this stuff. And so, yeah. I mean, yeah, if you're harvesting the energy of the sun and you have all that compute, I mean, look at what we're currently able to do with just data centers on the planet. Like it's not far-fetched to think you could have someone put a headset on or whatever and simulate. [1:42:50] trillions of things. Not just that, but then there's the reality of the structure of the universe itself, like subatomic particles acting differently when they're observed versus not observed. Yeah, so it's like, okay, what effect is consciousness having on reality itself? And are we limited in our senses and our ability to recognize the impact of it? And do we live in a siloed [1:43:20] of sight, smell, touch. There could be way more weird shit going on around us all the time. We just don't have the ability. And that's what the simulation is. Exactly. It's not as simple as like you show up with your lunch pail and you go to work. No, there might be some weird shit that's going on all along with consciousness. [1:43:41] - We did a video where we helped a thousand blind people, or people who couldn't CC again with cataract surgeries, and I did think about that. It's fascinating because if they didn't have other humans around them, they just would have never known that sight was a thing. - Right. - If we, as other humans, didn't tell them, I mean, they just couldn't see. And so it is like, is there a sense that we might not be aware of that-- - A bunch of them, I bet. - Yeah, who knows? - Yeah. - I mean, but that is an interesting thought experiment. And 'cause to those people,

[1:44:10] It was... [1:44:11] Yeah, actually a random memory I just got too. We also did a video where we helped a thousand deaf people hear again. And a lot of them, it was just giving them like really, really advanced hearing aids and they just hadn't heard in years. And there's this one scene we did where a guy had a newborn child that was like a couple years old, but was deaf since the child was born and had never heard his child. And so we put it in and it like really, really amplified sound where he could actually hear. He hadn't heard sound in God knows how long. [1:44:41] to say daddy and he like [1:44:43] loss that was the first word he heard in years and it was the first time he ever heard her and um... [1:44:48] I don't even know why that memory popped in my head. That's incredible. That was like one of the most special things we've ever filmed was like – [1:44:54] That moment right there, I was like, wow, that's crazy. Yeah, we assume that the senses that we have detect everything that's around us. But we know that's really not true because they're so limited just in terms of our ability to see things, right? We see more things with a microscope than you can with the naked eye. Exactly. And we have no idea what the senses are missing. And all you have to do is ask yourself, if you were those people and you didn't have other people around you telling you, you wouldn't have known. Like you would have thought that was reality. Right. It's just, yeah. Yeah. [1:45:24] I don't know if we'll ever know, but... [1:45:26] Well, just think about the sense of smell, how weird that is. There's an invisible thing, and when someone farts, you go, oh. Exactly. Yeah. And, like – [1:45:34] You'd have no idea. If you didn't have a sense of smell, you would just be existing just like everybody else. And then without a sense of smell, life is not that much different.

[1:45:44] You know, it's different, but not that much different. Like everything looks exactly the same, but no one can smell anything. Yeah. You know, but think of like gases and all sorts of like a gas leak in your house or weird, weird shit. These smells skunks. [1:45:56] All that stuff you'd be missing out on. I guess if you had to get rid of one of the five senses... That would be the one. Yeah, exactly. I feel like that's the least necessary to survive. It would suck. Food wouldn't taste as good. Yeah. You wouldn't know if you had BO. Yeah. But for the most part... [1:46:10] Your odds of living don't really drop that much and your overall happiness wouldn't change dramatically. Yeah, the only thing that would be a problem is impact by chemicals. You wouldn't be able to smell horrible chemicals that your body is rejecting. There are certain things you smell. You go, oh, what the fuck is this? I've got to get away from that because your body is letting you know this is toxic. Whatever you're breathing in is not normal air. [1:46:33] You would – environmental poisons would be a problem. But other than that – [1:46:38] Regular life, if you lived in a contained, safe environment like most cities, most offices, most places that people work, it's not that big of a deal to lose your sense of smell. Yeah. [1:46:48] You know what's funny because on the car ride over here, I was listening to a podcast we did, whatever, four years ago. And it's like, it's actually like the entire podcast, I was way younger back then, was all about like YouTube data and analytics. I don't know if you remember that. And it's like, [1:47:04] I do... [1:47:04] One thing I've noticed, it's interesting because I started making videos when I was 11, so my entire life is on the internet. My puberty, every development and stuff. I look at our old podcast and it is so...

[1:47:19] like brutal. I have borderline autism on this one subject. And it's like, I was so one-dimensional back then because I was just young and I'd only ever done one thing. It's just so interesting because it's like, [1:47:30] If someone were to theoretically search Mr. B. Joe Rogan, if they clicked on either one of these podcasts, it would be two completely different experiences. Right. Well, you look differently. Yeah. I mean, you look great, man. I was saying before the podcast, you look fantastic. You lost weight. You look really healthy. Thank you. Yeah, I was telling Joe before the podcast I lost 50 pounds between the last one and this one. That's awesome, man. Yeah, and last time when you had asked me about movies or you asked me about all these things, because I was listening to it on 3XP on my car right here. [1:48:00] Every single thing I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I was like, one thing and one thing only. I know YouTube. I know nothing else. And I blocked everything else out of my world, which is interesting because I actually think that wasn't a positive, right? I think if I consumed more other medians and culture, it would have been better inspiration. I would have been a better storyteller. So I actually don't think it was a good thing, which is why I've since then opened up and I let more things into my mind. [1:48:30] it really worked out to your benefit. I don't think it's a bad thing. Yeah, no, I think the hours put in, yes, but it's like instead of consuming four hours of YouTube a day, allowing myself to occasionally watch a movie, I think I would have been more tapped in and understood how to tell stories. Well, you were younger, and that's part of the process. I know. It's just so funny listening to that podcast, because even I, as myself, I watched that. I was on the car. I was like, wow. I seem borderline like a freak on certain things here. You would change the subject on certain things,

[1:49:00] And then I'd instantly bring it back to the one thing I knew, like YouTube data. And I could tell that I didn't even know. And I would just be like... [1:49:07] Oh, yeah, that thing. Anyways, retention. And it was just so funny listening to it. But it's just interesting, though, because, you know, [1:49:14] I'm sure you see a lot of your podcasts you do, most people consume it through clips on social media, right? That's their exposure to it. Most people consume most things through clips. Yeah, and what's fascinating, though, is clips don't have context on the time range, right? Right. So whatever, a clip from the podcast we did years ago, I'll see on my feed, or it'll just randomly start going viral, one of them now. [1:49:36] And sometimes there'll be things that... [1:49:38] I've grown up or I don't necessarily agree with or whatever. I speak differently. But because they're not time-stamped, it's interesting because a clip from something you did years ago can randomly go viral now and people won't even know that it's years ago. It's so fascinating because they just pop off. And it's like [1:49:54] More people are going to listen to this podcast through like random clips, probably... [1:49:58] 10, 15 times folds than actually going on Spotify or wherever you post it. Yeah, probably. And it's so interesting because that's the new form of culture, especially for younger people, is... [1:50:10] sub one minute ish vertical content that they swipe through the feed. But it does inspire people to listen to the whole thing. Only a certain percentage of them will do that. [1:50:21] But it's like that's a thing with sporting clips. Like you see the game-winning touchdown. You watch that. It probably gets watched more than the actual full game. I saw a survey of like 56% of people now prefer to watch a sporting event through clips as opposed to like the actual thing. Like they'll just get on their feed. I guarantee you that's the case with like the UFC because I know for the UFC when they analyze the performance of a show, like how many people watched it on Paramount Plus versus how many people consumed it.

[1:50:51] on TikTok. Oh my gosh. Yeah. [1:50:53] It's many, many fold. It's like, you know, they get hundreds of millions of views on social media. Yeah. Of different, you know, different sites. I haven't watched the fight live in a while, but like, you know, the White House one, I mean, I saw everything on my TikTok feed. I mean, I probably saw 150 clips of it. So I have like a relatively good grasp of what it looked like and what happened, but I didn't watch it live, you know. If you wanted to watch that one live, really, you should have been there. [1:51:20] Like that was when you really absorb how bizarre it was to actually be at the White House. It was very bizarre. The whole thing was very surreal. Like me and Daniel Cormier and John Anik, there were so many moments like the day before the event where we're rehearsing. So we're standing by the octagon. I made a video of it where I put it on DC. It's like the White House. And like I'm showing the White House. There's the cage and then the White House is right there. And the flyover and everything. Nuts. [1:51:50] That's how I felt. Yes. But I didn't get the – Well, you know they were going to do Elon Musk versus Mark Zuckerberg in the Roman Coliseum, but it was going to cost $150 million. [1:51:59] Just to secure the venue and set everything up? I mean – [1:52:02] I could have hooked him up. Also, it would have been a terrible fight. Elon would have been destroyed. It would have just been a clown joke. He thinks he's big, and so that's going to be enough, but Mark knows how to fight. Mark is really into it. He trains all the time. He's obsessed. He brought this guy that I know, Dave Camarillo, who's a world-class coach, who's a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, judo black belt. He's been training him. He's training with hardcore people. I know he's very obsessed.

[1:52:32] I don't think he'd care if I told the story. Like, the first time I talked to him years ago, like... [1:52:36] you know we just shooting the shit chatting and then like at the end of it he's like yeah you want to come train mma or whatever at my my lake and i was like oh um no but i appreciate the offer but it's just like instantly like that i could tell that's like his way of like bonding and building friendships and like yeah he just like he was being very serious like he wanted to roll and i've never done that in my life and i was like oh yeah he invited me to go bow hunting with him so it's definitely not fake like that was a one-on-one conversation oh no no no i know you [1:53:06] He's just like puts on the facade or stuff. But like, oh, and ironically, like our first time meeting, he's just like, yeah, let's hang out. Let's do like go roll on some mats and stuff like he was being dead. Well, the way you could tell that it's not fake is watching him train. [1:53:18] Because there's no way he could be that good if he's not actually putting in the time. Yeah. Because even his striking, his jujitsu, all that stuff is like, it's clear. There's many hours been spent working on technique to achieve this level of proficiency. I mean, he doesn't look like a world champion or anything like that, but he looks like a guy who's training a lot. Yeah. You know, there's no way you can't be enthusiastic about it and be doing that. So he's definitely really into it. [1:53:44] I listen to whenever you have a podcast and you talk about the UFC and stuff like that. It always makes me like, I feel that masculine urge to go train and do it. But it's like, [1:53:53] it's [1:53:54] I wish I could fork my life and have one where I keep going down this path of just grinding 18 hours a day and building all these companies, and then another where I could pursue fun stuff like that. Because that would be fun. Well, how old are you, Jimmy? 28. 28.

[1:54:07] Yeah, you're still so young. You could just do this for another 10 years and amass so much money that you could never spend it. And then 10 years from now, just slack off a little bit on that and just go do a bunch of stuff. And not only that, you could create content doing a bunch of stuff like Mr. Beast discovers the world. You could do anything, man. You're so young. You have so much time ahead of you. Yeah, it's hard to even – I think you like – as humans, we like build the patterns and stuff. [1:54:37] every day for so long that it's like, like literally like ingrained in me that it's hard to ever really imagine a world where like it shuts off because you have to think like I started when I was 11. [1:54:46] So basically now all I really do is just, you know, work, whether it's building companies or making content. And like another 10 years from now, that'll be essentially 20 years straight of like training my nervous system of like, [1:54:56] This is what you do all day, every day, like constantly be in war mode, obsessed with it. So it's hard to envision a world where I could ever shut it off. You know what's interesting? You and I have been doing it about the same time. [1:55:06] Like we started this podcast around. [1:55:09] 17 years ago. Holy crap. Yeah, it'll be 17 years in December. [1:55:14] I think so, right? [1:55:16] I think in this December, it's 17 years. So it's basically on these parallel paths. Which is crazy. You know what would be funny? Is if, like, envisioned, like, 17 years ago, you had 11-year-old me sitting here, and then you sitting there, and, like, comped it to today. That would be amazing. Yeah. That would be amazing. I was not going to do that. So what are you going to do? You're going to do a show on YouTube? Where'd you get this idea? YouTube. Does your mom know about this? Shouldn't you be in school? I'd be like, I don't know, such a, like. How many hours a day do you spend?

[1:55:46] Making on content? Hey, man, go outside. Go talk to a woman. [1:55:51] I mean, back then, too, I was so, like, introverted and self-conscious. Like, I probably wouldn't have said anything. I would have been like... [1:55:56] uh-huh, uh-huh. You know? Because you have to kind of be a little... It's interesting, too, because it's like... [1:56:03] very accepted to be a content creator. It's like cool, people love it. - Yeah, now. - Even parents now, they're like, do it. And they realize that while being a content creator, you learn a lot of different skill sets and it teaches self agency, et cetera. But back then, I mean, it was like, you're batshit crazy, very frowned upon. - Right. - And like, so it's so funny to see how that changes, because like, [1:56:21] It's the number one most coveted job in America right now. If you were to go survey 100 random teenagers... [1:56:27] a lot of them, a good chunk of them would say they want to be a content creator. Maybe not specifically a YouTuber, but between TikTok, Instagram, influencer, like, you know. Yeah. It's probably the number one job that kids want. It is, factually, yes. But, you know, when I was coming up, [1:56:42] Heck no! What are you, a weirdo? That's not a job. YouTubers don't even make money. How are you going to make money? You're going to be homeless. It's so funny to see how it changes. [1:56:51] Um... [1:56:52] Same thing with podcasts. [1:56:54] Back then, I would tell people I'm doing a podcast and they would be sad. Like, oh, poor guy. Like, what the fuck's wrong with you? You used to be on TV. Like, oh, I'm having fun. Yeah, you've fallen from grace. And it's so interesting, too, to see, like, you know, as, like, YouTubers and stuff first started getting big, like, they all used it as launch pads to jump to Hollywood. And then it's, like, the ones like me who are just, like... [1:57:12] Who really cares? You know, like just stay over here and focus on YouTube are the ones that are the biggest. And like just believed in the future. This is the same as podcasts as well because there's a lot of people that started off podcasts and then their podcast got a little bit of popularity and they went and did a show somewhere. Yeah. And it sort of stalled them out in the podcast world. Exactly. Because now you're working for the man, air quotes, and you're working for some studio or something like that. And split time and you're not as passionate and stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

[1:57:42] Because a lot of people don't realize that [1:57:46] you know, um, [1:57:47] Not everyone can make tens of millions of dollars or maybe be as successful as you or I can, but I do believe most people – [1:57:54] If they find something they like, [1:57:56] put in a lot of hours, like a ridiculous amount of hours, consume, you know, basically everything's available on the internet now, consume all knowledge available on how to be good at certain things. [1:58:05] and then do a thousand iterations on it, then they can come out the other side and do it for a living. You know what I mean? - Yeah. - I feel like they're, but most people aren't exposed to that kind of, [1:58:14] I mean, to be honest, rhetoric, like they think still, you know, their parents went to college, God drew you, that's how you get a job. And so a lot of people today, because obviously your parents educate you and teach a lot of these things, and I'm not saying college is bad, just think it's the same pathway. And then they get in a lot of debt and they don't fully realize that, you know, if you just like... [1:58:30] There are certain content creators that might blow up in two years, and there are others like me that take 10 years, and it's just like a distribution chart, and probably the average is somewhere in the middle. There's no set time frame you can give yourself. But if you're surrounded with other people obsessed with [1:58:44] the certain thing you're obsessed over, whatever it is, you put in 10,000 hours. And in those 10,000 hours, you do 1,000 iterations, and you consume all knowledge available on it. [1:58:51] It's like, you know, the better you do it, the further to the right, like the two year mark, you'd be of being able to do it for a career. But, you know, it's. [1:58:58] Sometimes it will take longer. And you just have to give yourself enough time in it, but eventually you can make it happen. And I think that just more young people need to hear that, really, because they just don't even really –

[1:59:08] the dots don't connect in their mind that that's really even an option, right? Well, it's a completely new career path, right? And the only re the only way that people really can get a map of the territory is from someone like you, who's gone through the very early days of it. And they could show, hey, not only is this guy successful, he's fucking hyper successful. Like, this is not a dream. Like, this is a possibility. You just have to figure out your version of what he did. Yeah. And it's a process. But I would argue it's not even just for content creation. Like if you want to be an accountant or really anything, it's like, [1:59:38] Just put in a lot of hours, do a lot of iterations, surround yourself with great people and obsess over it. Stay focused. Stay focused, consume it. Yeah. And then recognize, like... [1:59:45] You might be like, oh, well, this person did it in 10 months. Why is it taking me so long? It's just – it's average in statistics. And just give yourself enough time frame and like it's hard to – again, I'm not saying you'll make tens of millions of dollars. But if you want to do that thing for a living, if you follow those traits, like it's going to happen eventually because – Well, you have to be process-oriented, not goal-oriented. The process is getting better at stuff. The goal of being financially secure comes with it eventually. But if you think I want X amount of money, well, that's what you're going to think about. [2:00:15] about the actual thing you're making so it won't be as good so you'll probably never get there bingo yeah and this is the you know one of the cool things about owning a comedy club is that we've uh set up the club so there's a real path like these people understand how you can become professional yeah because becoming a professional when i first started was this very vague of weird thing like you never no one knew how it was done yeah like you went to open mic nights you did open

[2:00:45] Yeah. [2:00:55] We have a real creative director, this guy Adam Eagid, who is the creative director at the Comedy Store, the talent coordinator. He watches all the open micers, and he finds people that are good. We have two nights of open mic nights, and then we have Kill Tony. So we have Kill Tony, the show, which is every Monday, where these people pull a random name out of a bucket. And you have a chance to go up. Phenomenal show if people don't watch it. It's hilarious. The best fucking show ever. Yeah. And these people get to do one minute of stand-up, and... [2:01:21] If it blows up and they do well, they get to come back. And if they get to come back, then all of a sudden millions of people have seen them do stand-up. And now they're selling out comedy clubs and they have real careers. And some of these people were just grinding it out. And my friend Dedrick Flynn, he was out in Atlanta doing it. And my friend Ari Matty was in Estonia. And he went to Australia for 10 years, just grinding, trying to make it in comedy. Gets on Kill Tony. Boom. Now he has a career. It's incredible. [2:01:51] Right. If they're doing stuff in Estonia or other, I'd never want to see it. But if they're on Kill Tony, I'll see it. Exactly. There are millions of people like me that we're not like we're casual comedy watchers. Right. I don't you know, maybe I'll watch Netflix special here or there and I watch Kill Tony. And so, like, yeah, if you don't exist in one of those two things, you just don't exist in my world. And there's so many people like me. There's a lot of people now like that, particularly. And we wanted to set up a network. We wanted to set up like a real pathway where these people can you can see, hey, other people like.

[2:02:21] Like Cam Patterson, he was a doorman at the Comedy Store and now he's on Saturday Night Live. Or doorman at the Mothership, rather. And now he's on Saturday Night Live. He started out at the Mothership. And he was working there as an employee. And he's funny and I know who he is. He's amazing. Because of Kill Tony. Yes, because of Kill Tony. Exactly. But there's multiple versions of that now that are coming out of the club. And so we wanted to set it up like that. So... [2:02:44] You still have to do all the work, but we want to, like, illuminate the pathway. Exactly. Like, there's a clear pathway. Well, because it's different skill sets, right? Like, being able to get attention and get in front of people might be a different skill set than being funny and being able to make them laugh and, you know, the things that make a great comic. And so it also makes it a little straightforward for people who might be just world-class cinema on comics, but they don't know how to scrounge up enough money to travel the world and do all these things and smart enough to figure it out. And so, like, handling that part, because at the end of the day, like – [2:03:11] As a viewer, I just want to watch 20 people, right? There's also you have to be able to see other people who have done it already and how they did it. So because of a guy like Cam Patterson goes from being a doorman at the mothership to now being on SNL, people see it and they go, oh, it can be done. What did he do? Well, he kept killing every time he got on stage. So that's what I got to do. I got to work on my set, really grind it out. And I was with this guy three years ago, and now this guy is rich and he's famous. This is amazing. [2:03:41] working for... [2:03:43] I'm sure you pay well. Yeah, but I mean doing road gigs and doing whatever you can, guys are barely getting by. But that's the key. It's like you've got to know that it's possible. And before someone like you became a real content creator, imagine just trying to explain to someone what your YouTube show – what your goal was. Imagine this. Imagine –

[2:04:07] 15 years ago, you sitting down with someone when you're 13 years old and trying to explain, I want this show to have hundreds of millions of subscribers. I want billions of hours consumed worldwide. I want it to be like one of the biggest shows in human history, and I'm going to do it on YouTube. They'll be like, you're out of your fucking mind. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Well, back then, like viral videos back then were like 2 million views. [2:04:37] back then i want to get 100 million views of video like i mean people would call you the the lunatic like you're just delusional not even delusional like a certified like lunatic like you're not even living in reality but now that you've paved the path and then you've shown people that it can be done now you see everyone's it has a lot more confidence to reinvest it's a real career path it's a real career path if you pursue it the way someone pursues learning how to play guitar and being in a band like do it the right way i want to be a pilot what i have to do i gotta go pilot [2:05:07] Go through the process. [2:05:10] I don't know if it's factually, but it's like millions of people over the next 10 years that will find a job being a creator or working for creators. I know dozens upon dozens of creators who are hiring dozens of people each. I have 150 open recs in my business. I mean, these creators, hundreds of thousands of people are going to become creators themselves full time, and those creators are going to hire millions of employees over the next decade or so. So even if you – which is what I see, a lot of people who try to become a creator who end up failing, they end up being phenomenal partners or employees for other creators, right?

[2:05:40] growing so big and there's just so much demand for it because not everyone who did stuff in traditional Hollywood acclimates as well over here. So there's just so much. Everyone I know just needs five or six people. So it's like, [2:05:50] It's a pretty useful thing, and it's almost like the equivalent of getting a college degree, right? If you're a teenager now and you put in 5,000 hours, 500 iterations, you obsess over this thing, blah, blah, you come out the other end. Even if you don't make it as a YouTuber, now you know how to edit. Now you know how to tell a story. Now you have all these character traits, and, yeah, some other YouTuber will pick you up in a heartbeat. [2:06:07] Yeah, for sure. And it's also it's this is the new Hollywood. I mean, this is really I mean, literally now four of the biggest films came from creators. It's like not even like it is like a factual thing now. Some of the biggest new IPs are coming out of them. Yeah, it's where all the viewership is going. I mean, [2:06:24] When I was on this podcast last time, it was probably like whatever, 1.8 billion people use YouTube every month. Now it's over 3 billion. That's nuts. It's growing, and it's not slowing down. It's growing more and more and more, which is what I said would happen last time I was on here. And what I still believe, I don't think these things have peaked. I think they're going to keep growing. And it's just what younger people use. They never watch television, which is obvious to me and you. But to some older people who still watch news and get it through there, it still blows their mind that they're like they never use cable. [2:06:54] now. [2:06:55] outside of like, you know, watching an NBA game or an NFL game has never used cable television. They've never even seen it. They don't like they don't even fully understand. Like they're like, like sometimes when I'm talking to like a younger person, like if I'm like trying to get a gauge of what do you think of our new video? Like, I'll just ask, like, have you ever watched cable television to see what they say?

[2:07:13] And they're like, no. And I'll explain to them that there's like two to three minutes of commercial breaks, kind of like when you watch NBA. But instead of like a sporting event, it's like – [2:07:21] entertainment and they'll be like why [2:07:23] Why would you do that? Why would you put three minutes of ads every four minutes? And I'm like, well, that's just how things were. And they're like, [2:07:30] Why? It's so dumb that they still do it that way. It really is so dumb. It makes no sense. It makes no sense. You don't have to do it that way. They could probably make as much money through product placement and having an ad at the beginning of... [2:07:43] And doing it, and you'll probably get more retention, you'll probably get more views. Like, no one is going to sit and watch CBS. What's even crazier is you would have to pay money. You'd have to pay, like, $50 a month for cable to then have, like, 33% of what you consume via ads, which is a higher ratio than when you watch YouTube, which is free. It's crazy. Wow. And then you wonder why people are moving in hundreds of millions of droves over to this new forum. [2:08:08] And then there's podcasts, which is like – [2:08:11] How many podcasts are there now? [2:08:13] Oh, pfft. [2:08:14] Millions, obviously, but how many successful ones? Yeah, obviously there's millions. But I mean the barrier to entry is the lowest. At least what you're doing is complex. You've created a show. You have game shows. You have charity shows. You're giving away stuff. You have a bunch of crazy things you guys do. You have tasks. You have to plan it out. Podcasts, you're just sitting down. We talked for five minutes before we started this podcast. We said, hi. Hey, you look great. What's up? Good to see you. Give me a hug. You gave me some caffeine to get me cracked out.

[2:08:44] And that's it. So there's zero preparation other than the preparation that the host does beforehand. But the difference between that kind of preparation, the kind of preparation involved in one of your shows is fucking immense. And so the barrier to entry just to be someone who's a content creator, like a podcaster, is – [2:09:02] How many podcasts are there? Let's guess. How many do you think there are, Jamie? Active podcast. How many have been uploaded this week? Active, yeah. Still posting on them. Yeah, let's say. Seven million or something like that. That's crazy. Yeah. That's crazy. [2:09:20] I would guess. [2:09:21] Active, probably one million. Please put this. This is what I want to know. How many podcasts were active in 2009? Ooh. [2:09:32] Oh. [2:09:33] Let's guess that. Okay. Put that into our AI sponsor, Perplexity. Perplexity probably has the answer to that. Wait, they sponsor you guys? [2:09:40] Is that why you had the founder on recently? Yeah, well, also because he's cool. I talked to him, and we started talking about ancient Hindu mythology. I was like, dude, this guy would be a cool guest. I have a download. I haven't listened yet. He's really interesting. He's a fascinating guy. We were talking about these temples in India, and I've been down these multiple rabbit holes about these temples that they carved out of a single site. 2009, there were 69,000 podcasts. Holy shit. But that's not active. That just means 69 in Apple's directory. [2:10:10] had done one at some point. [2:10:12] But then, yeah, I would wager a small percentage were actually active at the time.

[2:10:15] Still, that's a lot. [2:10:17] So that's when I started. Now, what is it now that I'm curious now in 2026? How many podcasts are there? [2:10:23] Oh, I bet seven million. [2:10:27] Yeah, actually, I'm going to up mine to 10 million. Worldwide. I'm upping mine to 10. What does it say? So since 2009, there were 69,000 versus several million shows today, depending on the database you look at. [2:10:40] Okay. But what is the number, though? 4.5 to 4.7 million podcast shows globally as of 2026. You know what I'd be curious of? How many people do content creation full time? I wonder what it is. Oh, that's a good question. Okay, let's figure that out. Yeah, and compare that at the same time frame. Let's guess. How many people make a living doing content creation? In 2009 versus now. I'd say 2009, maybe. Zero. Yeah, or 1,000 or something. You? No, I was a little kid. I'll say 5,000. [2:11:10] Okay, maybe five. Content creation is like a very online content creation. Yeah. But the problem is that's like bloggers and – Yeah, through social media. Yeah. 2009, social media is just coming out, right? Oh, true. You're right. 5,000 is probably coming out. So let's just think – let's just not even think about that. Let's just think about today. How many people are professional content creators today? Let's guess. [2:11:32] I say $25 million. [2:11:34] I would say lower, probably eight. Let's see what that says. Eight, nine? Yeah. That's probably more like it. The barrier to entry you're making me look up here is also tough. In the U.S., like taxpayers, people who are filing or just like kids who have made five bucks. Worldwide, how many people do content creation full-time, right?

[2:11:49] Yeah, just how many content creators... [2:11:53] How many professional content creators are there worldwide? Just let perplexity try to figure it out. [2:11:59] I will, but I'm just like, it's [2:12:02] I know what it's going to do what do you think it's going to do? [2:12:06] It's going to freak out and it's going to say, there's a lot. [2:12:09] Let's see what it says, though. That's going to say the same sort of thing. What does professional mean? Okay, people that make a living. [2:12:16] They pay their bills off of content creation. [2:12:20] It's not a. [2:12:22] I know. It's not a great question. But let's just see what it says. Just out of curiosity, it might have an answer. [2:12:27] How would it know, really? Yeah. You don't. [2:12:29] It could guess because it guessed there 4.5 to 4.7 million. It's probably just going to look for any database online. Eight to 12 million professional content creators worldwide, depending upon how professional is defined. Roughly 200 to 300 million people identify as content creators globally in 2026. Holy shit, man. [2:12:51] Holy shit. Are they making money? Are they not? Yeah, this seems relatively like it got the gist, though. Yeah, it got it. [2:12:58] It wasn't a problem, Jamie. You were pessimistic. We don't have an answer. It's given us rough data. The rough data is 8 to 12 million professional content creators. 200, 300 million people identify as content creators. So out of those, which kind of makes sense that a small percentage of them are going to be able to figure out how to make a living entirely off of it.

[2:13:20] One analyst estimates that about 4% of creators... [2:13:23] are professional, meaning they treat content creation as their main job and earn a full-time living. [2:13:30] So that makes sense. Yeah. That seems about right. And that's about right with kind of a lot of things. Yeah. There's a bunch of people that try it and a small amount of people actually – like if you think about how many people – [2:13:43] If you go to an open mic night in stand-up comedy and how many people are actively participating in open mic nights where they visit one or two open mics a week and how many will eventually become professional stand-up comedians and make a living off of it, you're probably in the same range of like 4% or something like that, probably less. [2:14:04] Yeah, it makes sense. But the interesting part is that number is going to keep skyrocketing year over year. I don't see any signs that any of this stuff is slowing down. Especially if people see that this is a real path. This isn't a pie-in-the-sky dream. There's a lot of – I mean at this point, if they don't see it, then I don't know what to tell you. I'm literally spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year or investing hundreds of millions of dollars a year into content. And so it shows what the upper bounds look like. [2:14:34] it back into the business. And by doing that, your content is just so much more advanced than anybody else's. And that's such a big risk because a lot of people would say, I'm making all this money and who knows when this is going to end. Let me squirrel this away and make sure that I've got money saved up forever. You're just like, fuck it. Let's just spend it. Let's go hard. Well, it's what I used to call the...

[2:14:56] Creators would back in the day reach like 5 million subscribers. And then it was a real inflection point that I would notice where they'd either keep growing or that's where they'd start to teeter off. Because it's around the time where they'd start to make good money. And it's either like, okay, now they have a house, they have a car paid off, and like the ones that are really money motivated. [2:15:12] they kind of got that security. And so that burning fire that was pushing them to do crazy things kind of started to die off. And it's like the Fermi Paradox. For quite a few people, it's around that range where you see your favorite creators start to get lazy, upload less, not put as much effort in, not care as much. And so... [2:15:28] But yeah, I never really had any of that. [2:15:31] I mean, like I probably talked about last time we were on here, I used to live in an apartment that I would share that was $720 a month, so like $360 to rent. [2:15:38] And I drove a 2006 Dodge Durango that cost a couple thousand bucks and I just didn't have any liability. So I was just like, screw it. I'll just keep my lifestyle cheap so I can just reinvest it all. God, that's so wise. Most people don't do that and most people don't have the discipline to work as much as you do. Well, yeah, and the harder part too is when you have the pressure of your parents and stuff. And I don't know, I'm weird. Like when my mom would – [2:15:59] I mean, as sad as it sounds like, she would literally cry sometimes and be like, man, I'm just so worried you're going to lose everything. Like, what if these videos stop getting views? And I don't know what would come over me, but I'd be like, it'll be fine, Mom. Don't worry. And I just like very calmly just say it to her. I wouldn't argue with her. I'd be like, just have faith. Well, you were right. I know. And we're great now. But it's up to parents. Parents always worry about their kids. Exactly. So I don't think it's like she was doing anything wrong. By all purposes, like she was doing the right thing. It's just so you also have to overcome that pressure as well because there's so many forces around you where even if you believe in yourself.

[2:16:29] takes this one person like saying something like that puts self-doubt in you and then you're like okay you know um but that's where i'm a big believer if you really want it just keep your liabilities low like live below your means and that way it's like you know it's a little easier to be riskier if you aren't you know have all these things you gotta afford because what really changes if you fail that's definitely smart but there's something happens also to people where um just the constant grind of work it diminishes their enthusiasm and they lose their perspective [2:16:59] God, you're so fortunate to be able to do this. Yeah. You're so fortunate. Exactly. And... [2:17:05] People just get really complacent. It's so easy for people to just forget how fortunate they are to be able to do what they're doing. I'll admit it. Sometimes I get hit with that where it will be a late day of shooting and I'm in an airport and a bunch of people are following me around and filming me and I'm like, ah. [2:17:23] You know, and you get those thoughts in your head where it's like, [2:17:25] this is really the life I wanted. And you like start to like, you kind of regret your decisions, but then you got to like snap out of it. And you're like, [2:17:32] Okay, like the small subset of time, yeah, it might be brutal, but for the most part, I'm doing dope stuff. Like I'm in the pyramids, I'm in the Roman Coliseum, I'm doing like beautiful, amazing things. I get to entertain and help people and it's like, and you just have to, I think it's very important you're around people who like, if you have a group of people around you who when you get in those negative thought loops, encourage it and help you spiral, then it's bad. Right. [2:17:54] which, you know, not everyone in my position has, like, people who are, you know, willing to tell them how it is, right, who are just like, bro, grow up, like, it's fine, you know, this will be done in 20 minutes, and then, you know, your life's pretty good, like, you know, it's like a, it's a weird thing, like, you really, because, like, I've had some of those conversations with people where I give them the perspective, and I can tell, like,

[2:18:11] They haven't had that perspective fed to them in a very long time. And you can see it in their eyes. [2:18:15] Yeah, you're right. And it's like, yeah, you really need some better people around you. [2:18:19] You feel like you're spiraling in these really weird thoughts. But if you look at it objectively, it's not as bad as you think. That's the really difficult resource to acquire is being around positive people, powerful people, people that really get things done and people that are motivating and people that are really exciting. That's because so many people have fast things. So many people do just enough. [2:18:41] Just barely enough. Yep. You're supposed to go all the way. You go three-quarters of the way. You know, so many people... [2:18:47] So many people just, they don't, [2:18:49] But if you're around someone who really gets after it and really is enthusiastic and really is powerful and very positive, then it's contagious. It literally is. It's infectious, and it makes something mundane honestly fun too. And especially if you respect each other, then it just – like it really compounds and so important. [2:19:08] at this stage. Like I say, for newer, younger entrepreneurs or people trying to be content creators or friend groups, everything, even at the stage I'm at, it really is because you are, like you think, speak, talk, act like the people you're around. And like they say, show me the five people you're around the most. I'll show you what your future is. And it applies at every level. My friend Brian Simpson has a great saying. He says, you can't be your own boss and be a shitty employee. [2:19:29] Mmm. [2:19:31] Wait, elaborate on that. So if you work for yourself, if like you're the one who's out there doing it, like so you don't work for anybody. But you also can't be a fucking lazy half-ass employee. He's like you can't be both things. He goes, if you're going to be your own boss, you better be a great employee. And I was like, oh, shit. Like you can't be your own boss and a shitty employee. Like if you are going to work for yourself, you've got to get some shit done because that's a very rare position to be a person that works for themselves.

[2:20:01] Yeah, and I think one of the things that's really powerful about this time as opposed to any other time in history is that there's so many Conversations like this where you get to hear from a guy like you who is doing that so people young people who are listening to this right now Yeah, they listen to you like this fucking mr. Beast is just getting after it man. I want to do that instead of like I [2:20:22] Hanging out with your friend and just gets stoned and plays Call of Duty all day and is always complaining about everything in his life. But meanwhile, he doesn't do anything. They're like, that's not how I want to think and behave. But that guy is. And so you get examples outside of your own personal social circle because maybe they don't know Mr. Beast. Maybe they don't know someone who's out there doing whatever they want to do with their life. But they get examples of it online and they can listen to these people talk and they get inspired. Exactly. [2:20:52] you know, have kids. And I would encourage the parents to like the last three minutes of what he just said there, like maybe play that for your kids. And I can like go on top of it to say, because I agree. I don't think enough young people get exposure to this kind of mindset that, you know, you, it really is time. [2:21:08] friend group, [2:21:08] you know, iterations on certain thing and consuming all knowledge available. It's those four things. And do those four things and like, you'll make it further than you can imagine. And like, you know, there's outliers. Like you, this is what like skews a lot of people's perception is they'll find an outlier of like, well, this person became very hyper successful in this thing, but they didn't do those four things. And there's, there's outliers everywhere. But if you look at statistically, the average, right, the person listened to this, you're not gonna be this one in a million freak

[2:21:34] If you want to make a good income doing something you're not currently doing and you're not currently very knowledgeable in it or have much experience, it's just those four things. Find those people. Put in the time. But it's like if you just listen to every Joe Rogan podcast, you're not going to be a great podcaster. So it's time plus iterations, right? You would have to go do – an example of that would be do 500 mock podcasts while also consuming all of Joe Rogan's podcasts, right? So you're doing both while also consuming all knowledge available about podcasts while also surrounding yourself with other people who want to be podcast. [2:22:04] Right. You have to give yourself like the average might be four or five years. And some people like me take 10 years and you just have to be so in love with the journey that you're cool with it. You're just like, I'm just going to do it till it works out. And, you know, it could be as soon as this. More than likely it'll be here. [2:22:17] But there's a chance it could be there. And if that freaks you out and then scares you, then you probably don't love it enough. But if you're like, well, I'll have fun while I'm doing it, then, yeah, do those four things over the long horizon. And, you know, again, I probably won't make one hundred million dollars. But if you want to make one hundred thousand dollars a year or whatever, it's not out of the realm of possibility. And just those sentences alone for a young person, they hear it. It opens like a third eye in their mind where they've just been told their whole life, go to college, get a job. This doesn't even exist to them.

[2:22:47] about the process and doing the thing that you love to do and trying to get better at it. [2:22:54] So let's say you want a million dollars. Well, you could win the lottery. [2:23:00] You might win the lottery, but the odds are very low. Or you could find a bunch of people that work really hard, and what did they do? Well, they just kept working hard, and they figured out what it is they do, and they made money. [2:23:08] Like, yeah, that's probably more likely. So just go in the general direction. Who knows, along the way, you might hit it quick. Something might happen really quick or you might figure something out and you might be an outlier. But the point is the process is available and the process is available to anybody. Just keep doing something. You'll get better at it. Be objective. Be self-analytical. Like recognize what you're doing wrong and what you're doing right and get better at it and constantly try to improve. And [2:23:35] just because something doesn't exist as, um, [2:23:39] what is your occupation in a form from 2001 doesn't mean it's not a real job. And just because you can't tell people – if I told people at a cocktail party in 2009 that, oh, I'm a podcaster, that means zero. You tell them today, they go, oh, amazing. How long have you been doing that? It's a job now, right? So how did it become a job? A job because people figured out how to make it a job, and they did it, and it worked. And so there's a process.

[2:24:09] that somebody does for a living. I don't care if it's a rock and roll star, stand-up comedian, novelist. There's a thing out there that you want to do that someone is making a living. But meanwhile, there's going to be people who are like, oh, the odds are you making it. And that's like, okay, is that what we're doing? Are we just fucking playing odds? The odds you're dying are 100%. Once you adopt this mindset, though, then the naysayers go from – [2:24:33] Being... [2:24:34] brutal to actually being good because now the naysayers are what stop other people from doing the thing you're doing which actually increases your odds right so once you get over the hump where you know you reach a certain point where you know someone as you're going on the climb like where someone going this is stupid this is unrealistic or whatever where you just like it starts to feel like it goes from like something that makes you nervous and keeps you up at night to like you don't even really care anymore because you've just heard it so many times. [2:24:57] And then it's like, but there are people who hear it and they quit. And so it's technically a benefit for you. So I like to always, not always, but on a lot of things, I like to try to spin it as like a positive too, like, [2:25:07] This thing that's annoying, well, what's the positive side of it? And the positive is technically it will make less people do the thing you're doing, which makes it easier for you. I guess it does, but I don't ever think that way. I just think if someone can do it, you can do it. And the problem is – [2:25:21] You have to make sure that you're not spending too much time doing it the wrong way. [2:25:26] And so... [2:25:27] That's where it helps that someone's already paved the path. Oh, yeah. I mean, if you can get a mentor. Here's the real question. [2:25:32] So 2009 content creators, there's fucking very few of them, right? [2:25:36] What are we missing? What is going to be a job that no one sees coming?

[2:25:43] That's going to be like a content creator or YouTube creator 10, 15 years from now. [2:25:48] You know? Oh, gosh. I mean, it would have to be something with AI that we couldn't even see now. So what could it even be? Like, what would it be that people are missing, that other people are going to... [2:25:59] Mmm. [2:26:00] It's changing so quick, my brain can't even comprehend it. Nobody even thought OnlyFans... [2:26:05] would be a possibility. [2:26:06] that there'd be a large amount of girls that just show their naked body, [2:26:10] For a living. Yeah. Yeah. [2:26:12] I mean, and not even for a living. Most of them don't even get paid very much, but a lot of them have OnlyFans pages. Some crazy number. It's like 10% of girls, 18 to whatever, have OnlyFans. Is that in the U.S.? Yeah. Wow. It's a nutty number. It's crazy. Yeah, and an enormous number of people subscribe. Yeah, I think it's like literally half of American males... [2:26:36] Have at one point in time subscribed to OnlyFans? That can't be real. That's – I think it's like 150 million. Holy crap. Yeah. I think it's crazy. I think the numbers are crazy high. I mean where my head is going, if we're trying to predict the future, maybe it would be like AI filmmakers or like something like that. But I don't even know. But I mean what are you doing there? You're doing – Just recreating the shots. – prompts and making things. Like yeah. It's lame. But what are we missing? Because the YouTube thing, nobody saw that coming. Yeah. The podcast thing, nobody saw that coming. [2:27:06] either. [2:27:07] Holy Fan stuff's not new, though. It's just changed the money. Yeah, just from ads to subscription. But also he centralized it in, like, where...

[2:27:17] Playboy was always a thing where you had to get picked by Playboy. Now all you have to do is just take a photo of your box and put some... There's always the local... [2:27:27] Yeah, I mean, but it's not centralized like OnlyFans is where you go there and there's like thousands and I don't know how many more than that content creators, you know? [2:27:38] Yeah, I don't know. Time will tell. Yeah, time will tell. But – [2:27:42] It's just such a fascinating world that we live in where – [2:27:47] the number one most watched show ever, [2:27:50] in the world is yours. You have the number one – well, if it's on YouTube, then it's the number one most watched show, period. Yeah. In the known universe. Well, right now – You're the most watched person in the known universe. I opened it up on the way in because I figured we'd talk about the size of the show. In the last 90 days, just on our main channel, it's like around 850 million unique people have watched a video in the last quarter. That's so crazy. Yeah, so we're doing around 4 billion views a month. 850 million people is so crazy. [2:28:20] too because we do we did around 12 billion views the last 90 days on just the main channel and of those 12 billion views like whatever eight percent of them are different humans so it's like factually like 850 million like when i say that people are like oh that's 850 million views so like [2:28:35] you know, 80 million. But no, it's 12 billion views, 850 million unique. So it's just like... [2:28:40] It's crazy, man. And it's like what's fascinating is like 10 years ago, like even with cable or whatever, 20 years ago, 850 million people didn't use the same platform, right? Right. It's like you wouldn't have even been able to reach that many people even if you're the biggest in anything. It's like a very interesting time where –

[2:28:55] Essentially, as internet usage grows worldwide outside of China, so does YouTube usage. Because if you Google something, YouTube pops up. Or now if you're Gemini-ing something, they'll eventually have YouTube. Or if you buy an Android phone, which most phones have their operating system, YouTube's there. [2:29:09] Everyone just, as you use the internet, you end up on YouTube. And so that's why, even though it's, whatever, theoretically, 3.2 billion monthly active users, [2:29:17] I would... [2:29:17] be shocked if they didn't hit 4 billion in a couple years and keep growing. It shows no signs of stopping as the Internet's growing. And so it's like – [2:29:24] to be number one on this platform that is basically mirrored to the internet is like [2:29:28] It's crazy. It's a really wild opportunity. And because it's a platform where anyone can upload, the variety of content is extraordinary. Because there's no gatekeepers. A lot of it's trash and nonsense. But there's so many interesting shows. There's so many interesting shows on science, on cosmology, on history, on fill in the blank. [2:29:58] passion for a certain thing and they made a channel and now that channel all of a sudden has millions. Our pages are very similar probably. I have so many like old history videos where it's like some old guy that's just breaking down World War II battle scenes or whatever. Agreed. And like they go as niche as possible down to like [2:30:13] this is like the most, you know, largest fights in history and like a ranking of like 10, you know, deadliest fights or yeah. Like I would say like a third of my homepage is like just history videos. [2:30:23] What does it say here? YouTube uploads, users upload roughly 500 hours of video every minute. Okay, not to be that guy. That's very outdated, I believe. Or actually, no, no.

[2:30:38] I... [2:30:39] Sorry. So people watch a billion hours a day on YouTube, I believe. So this is upload. Never mind. This might be accurate. So 500 hours of video every minute, 30,000 hours per hour uploaded, 720,000 hours uploaded. [2:30:53] are uploaded per day. Watching just one day's new uploads would take over 82 years. [2:31:00] day. [2:31:01] Whoa. [2:31:03] Yeah. [2:31:04] YouTube, well, this is the 20 million videos uploaded a day that's quoting. That was probably before shorts. I bet you now that so many people are posting shorts, it's probably like way higher now. [2:31:16] That's nuts. [2:31:18] But I mean, what we're talking about, like having a platform like that where anybody can upload anything, it just makes the variety so intense. Yeah. Like there's – [2:31:30] anything you want to watch, any video you want to watch on nature, any video you want to watch on, you have a question about science, just put it in there. And there's some guy who's got a fucking one and a half hour lecture on it. Exactly. It's nuts. And that's the beauty, to tie everything together as like a bow. [2:31:46] That's why you can learn anything and you can do anything you want for a living for the most part if you allocate the time because it's all there. There's literally on YouTube Harvard classes that are recorded. The same thing you would go into crippling debt to attend is literally there for free, right? It's all there. All knowledge is available there. And if you – it's not easy, right? No one is laying out like how you're doing with the mothership. Here's A to Z on how you can become a Cam Patterson. It's not necessarily there, which is why it's hard. But you can – all the ingredients are there.

[2:32:16] being the career you want to do. It's because all the knowledge is there. I've literally gone on podcasts countless times and said everything I know about YouTube with no gatekeeping whatsoever. I've literally had people... [2:32:29] where was it? I was in some gym. There's, uh, I think it was in LA or whatever in between shoots, just working out. And a guy literally came up to me and no idea who he is, but he's like, I have 3 million subscribers on YouTube. I started like 18 months ago. And like, I just listened to one of your podcasts and I just did like exactly what you said. And I got a friend group. I started obsessing over it. And, um, you know, and I did like these analytical things and I just like quit my job a couple of months ago. And I was like, [2:32:53] no shot this is like a coincidence you were like you're like tracking me or anything he's like no and he's in gym clothes sweaty he's like i was just running on the treadmill and i just wanted to tell you that like i literally just quit my job and i'm making more money because i just listened to one of your podcasts and i was like whoa and it was it's crazy but i've had experiences like that countless times where like these these things which is why i'm so passionate about sharing it like opens people's minds and he's like yeah i just i didn't realize that was a possibility in

[2:33:23] of feast not famine and that's the the good thing about it that there's there's enough opportunity for everybody and i have a contrary and view on that because a lot of creators do see other creators as competitors but i've always been like [2:33:36] like if someone's doing well, I don't get threatened. I'm like, yo, let's just film together. Like collaborators, not competitors. Like what, there's literally trillions of views going on. If you think this person getting an extra [2:33:46] even if they crush a billion views a year, has any impact on me. Like, you're crazy. It has no impact. I mean, people are sometimes spending four or five hours a day consuming content. They watch their little 20-minute video. [2:33:59] you know that they upload every two weeks [2:34:01] no impact whatsoever. And so I think it, it, I was really the first person to kind of adopt that mindset and more people are doing it now, but, [2:34:08] Yeah, that's why I go and share everything. Like, literally to a T. And, like, I'll help people make, you know, some people end up making millions of dollars that I've helped mentored. And I'm just like, [2:34:16] Yeah, it's just fun. Because they always ask me, like, why are you doing it? I'm like, why not? You know what I mean? What's the downside? It's only positive. It's an abundance mindset. And I think the internet encourages that, fortunately. Because television is the opposite of that. So television, the problem was there was only a certain amount of slots. So if the Mr. Beast show was on NBC and then there was another guy who was on CBS, he might also be at 8 p.m. on Wednesdays. You're like, fuck that guy. Yeah, true. I'm not going to give him my secrets. Yes, you would never.

[2:34:46] amount of people that are viewing it is so immense it's an abundance and you treat it like that and it actually just makes you grow exactly it's awesome it's also if you share with people they'll share with you and there's no one who will at this point in my career you know be able to go tell me something that'll make me 10 better but there are infinite amounts of people like to make me a better storyteller or better you know at like you know leader or better communicator or better at set design and it's like it's more about grabbing those 0.1 percent here and there and like adding them together and so like you know sometimes i'll give someone something that you know might [2:35:16] everything for them but then they'll teach me something very small and I'm like oh [2:35:19] that's actually very useful. And if I retain it, I can see how, you know, that would be really cool. On, like, on the set design, on how we could do a background or, like, hey, after X amount of feet, you don't need as much detail. So now we can put more time into, like, the detailed stuff up front. But, you know, and sometimes it would be too particular on things really far. Like, it's all these little things that you just accumulate over being around different people with different expertise. And you just have to, like – Absolutely. Yeah, you just have to, like – [2:35:41] Some people don't see the value in that kind of stuff, but you can – [2:35:44] Learn anything or you can learn something from almost anyone. And I do believe that because everyone has like different things and different experiences and stuff like that, especially as a content creator, because you're also making content for millions of people. So even just learning, you know, what a normal person is going through or what their life is like is helpful for being able to relate with them. [2:36:02] and through the content or make something that is interesting to them. So if you approach people like that, where it's like, [2:36:06] I can learn something from you no matter who it is. [2:36:09] I feel like not many people take that approach either.

[2:36:12] Fuck yeah, dude. I think your approach is very valuable for a lot of people to hear, very valuable for young people to hear. Because if they just follow those principles and just follow your passion and really be disciplined and focused, you could do a lot of things in this life. Exactly. You could be like Jimmy. You could. Probably not. Statistically not. Statistically not. Could you be a person with a couple less zeros and all the numbers? Of course. Yeah, and also just be enjoying your life because you're doing something you want. You're actually creating something. [2:36:42] Yeah. And something you'd be proud of and something that people enjoy. And that makes you feel good. The people are enjoying your work. Yeah. And speaking of something you're proud of. So since the last time I was on here, a big thing I've been working on is, are you aware of how many kids are like working illegal child labor on cacao farms? I think last time I was on here, we talked about how I sell chocolate. Yes. Yeah. Do you know that there's over a million kids that work in illegal child labor on cacao farms? Wow. Yeah. Where? In West Africa. So Cote d'Avara in Ghana, which is where like majority of the world's cacao comes from. [2:37:11] there's rampant child labor. You can ask perplexity. I'd love for you to pull up data so we can see that I'm not just making it up. [2:37:17] And when, um, I think when I last came on here was right after I started a chocolate company and I had no idea like how bad it was. And the last few years I've been trying to figure out how we can build our own supply chain where we can actually get kids out of illegal child labor. And there's, it's like, really, I don't know if you're interested in it, but it's like a lot of stuff I'd love to share on that. No, that's very cool. Yeah. So, um, basically if, if it just asked perplexity, how many kids work in child labor in West Africa and cacao farms? Uh, and, uh.

[2:37:43] Right here, 1.5 to 1.8 million people or children. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty wild. And I had no idea. And it's been like this for decades. So it's so normalized in the chocolate industry that when I would talk to other people who work at chocolate companies or execs, they're just like, [2:38:00] Yeah, it just kind of is what it is. That's how it works. So that's just how they get their chocolate, period. Yeah. I mean, it's not all the labor. It's around, whatever, 46% of the labor. So if you were to work with – how it works is like there's well over a million farms in those areas, and you don't buy from farms because they have no leverage. So farms form cooperatives. It's like these 100 farms will gather, aggregate their beans, so they have a little leverage, and they'll sell it to you. So you buy it from a cooperative, and statistically, 46% of those farms will have child labor. Some won't. Some will. And so you're buying at a cooperative level. [2:38:30] When I went to all the biggest distributors and everyone, you know, that does all the sourcing for cacao. And I was like, so is there any way I can pay a premium and not have little kids work on my farms? And it literally didn't exist. [2:38:42] I was just so mind blown. And it really was frustrating because it just like – [2:38:46] Did it not exist? No one really seemed to... [2:38:49] even think it needed to exist. I was like, you guys, these are kids. You have no issue making billions of dollars in profit on little kids working on the farms. It was like a very weird thing. That's crazy. So that's most chocolate? Well, majority of the world's cacao, as you saw, comes from West Africa. So, I mean. Holy shit, man. Yeah, I know. And so that's what I mean. I'm thousands of hours deep into this. And so I met a different company called Tony's Chocoloni.

[2:39:14] who is like a reporter who started talking about this. Wait a minute. His name is Chocoloney? Tony, but the chocolate brand is Tony Chocoloney. They did ethical sourcing. And I spent a lot of time learning from them. And I've just been on this journey with feastables. It's how can we ethically source feastables cacao? And so we actually, this is a fun thing I've never said publicly. So we started doing, working with certain farms. But then I started around seven months ago, a big case study, [2:39:44] 45%. So 45% of the labor on the farms in these villages was illegal child labor. [2:39:48] And we went on the doors and we collected every single data point. We knocked on every door. We got – there's around 10,000 people that live in those five communities. We knew everything from the child labor rates to school attendance to everything. And then we've – throughout the last few years, we've just been collecting tons of data on why kids work in child labor, how you get kids out of child labor, which most of it comes back to poverty. Big Chalka pays farmers so little that they just can't afford to – [2:40:10] not use children. So part of it is you, you, there's this thing called a living income reference price, which looks at like the cost to actually live there. And you just guarantee your, so we guarantee 100% of our farmers that will pay a living income reference price. And then we work with fair trade, which the cooperatives I was explaining to you, sometimes they're not democratically elected, right? So you can pay more money, but if the cooperative is like someone's stem skimming off money or taking it, it doesn't flow through to the farmers. So we go through. [2:40:33] We make sure it's complicated. It's like, I thought this would be an easier problem to solve. This is a multi-year journey for me. [2:40:38] But we go to the cooperatives, which, again, is just a collection of farms that pool their cacao so they have more leverage. So you can't take advantage of them. And we make sure through Fairtrade that they're democratically elected cooperatives so the farmers actually get the money. We pay a living income reference price. And in exchange for doing those things.

[2:40:53] They have to let us audit and remediate the child labor on the farms. And so in this five-village case today that we did, there's around 10,000 people living in there. And about seven months ago, there was around 550 kids that were in illegal child labor in those communities. And so then we started taking over sourcing from there. So we started doing our sourcing principles and paying the Farmers Living in Raff Prince Prize. Fairtrade came in, come in, started paying the premium. And now seven months later, we just got the initial results after we did our check-ins. [2:41:23] We were getting so many kids out of child labor, there literally wasn't a school because kids just worked on the farm. So like some of these we literally built a school so they could go to school because the goal isn't just to get the kids out of child labor. It's also to get them an education. So they're not, you know, because if you grow up only working on a cacao farm, you have no education. So then you're basically doomed to working on it your whole life, you know, because you don't you don't know anything else. Right. And so we just did our recent wave of check ins where we knocked on all the doors, check school attendance and everything. [2:41:49] And so seven months ago, it was 550 kids-ish, roughly, in illegal child labor. [2:41:53] What do you think it was now, basically six, seven months later? [2:41:56] I don't know. How many? We were able to get a 90% reduction and get it to where there's only like around 50 still in child labor with our first check-in. And now we constitute a kid remediate out of child labor with two check-ins. So that was just the first one. So technically buy our books. They wouldn't be fully remediated because, you know, there might have been an accident or whatever. So we like to double check it to make sure things are accurate. So we'll do another check-in in the future so that we're not – [2:42:18] technically officially remediate it, but it just shows that it's possible to reduce the child labor in these areas dramatically. If you were to apply the things we did there,

[2:42:27] but macroly across the whole country. I mean, you're talking, you could get swarms of hundreds of thousands of kids out of illegal child labor. And so the big way I've been doing, or been on is like, step one is I have to prove it's possible. So then we can start, you know, like most people like you, they just have no idea that there's this much rampant child labor in chocolate. I had no idea until you brought it up. I know, which is like crazy. And it's like, it honestly really frustrates me because no one has any idea. And like, everyone's just kind of cool with it. And I think part of the problem too, is if you were to Google it, they use like confusing language [2:42:57] This is our ethical sourcing strategy. But at the end of the day, obviously, most cows go into big chocolate, and they can say they're doing all these things. But factually, there's all these kids in illegal child labor. So it's like, I mean – And no one's put in the effort that you're doing when you just said that. Yeah. That's amazing, man. Yeah. Well, that's what I'm really excited about. And I just wanted to mention it, A, because obviously you're the biggest podcast in the world, and I just want to educate people on it, that it's fucking crazy when you're buying chocolate. [2:43:27] one of the most effective systems for getting kids out of illegal child labor in the world. By the more cacao we're sourcing, the more we're able to pay a living income reference price and then audit the farms and then get the kids into schools. And it's pretty interesting. With that village right now, [2:43:40] It was a 90% reduction. It went from over 500 kids in legal child labor down to 50. And obviously, we're not done. We're going to keep over time trying to get those 50 out of child labor. But now imagine that if we can keep sourcing more cacao as we keep growing and we can keep getting more and more kids out of legal child labor. And then eventually, because I have over a billion followers across all my platforms, I can show these case studies and then just like –

[2:44:00] you know berate big chocolate into switching over because they make billions of dollars a year in profit they don't have to use child labor and you know and i think step one is showing that it's actually possible to not use it because right now technically there's not really a way you could like you know i think what's really important is getting people to understand that that's happening exactly and you talking about it right now now people will be aware of it because i think the vast majority of people me included were not aware i know so then they hear they go wait hold on [2:44:26] What about this company that I'm buying chocolate from? Are they using child labor and then – [2:44:31] You know, and technically I can never like feasible. I can't say it's child labor free because, you know, it's not like I have security cameras on the farm. A kid could just walk on it and then, you know, well, he lied. Right. So I'll never be able to say making we're doing everything we can to make it as ethically sourced as possible. And that's why I'm doing these case studies where I can literally factually show like people knocking on the doors show like without it. Because obviously, I know as I start to talk about this more, there's no doubt in my mind they're going to sue me because obviously Big Chocolate doesn't like the idea that people are learning that there's so many kids in illegal child labor. [2:45:01] They're going to want me to be quiet. But in a perfect world, they'd hear these messages [2:45:06] And they would have a soul and be like, you're right. We shouldn't make billions of dollars in profit off the back of little kids. Let's just put a little bit of the money towards getting the kids into school and putting people that aren't kids on the farms. And so ideally, that's what comes of it. We'll see in the long run. But right now, I'm just really focused on building these case studies and really showing in depth exactly how they could do it so then – [2:45:27] Hopefully they just come around to...

[2:45:29] give them the avenue to go, oh, we just didn't know. This is cool. Cool. We'll start doing it. Because technically, there isn't really... All these shopping companies are so old. Technically, the people who built and grew it, the founders, they're dead. These are third, fourth generation people. Some of these people have never built a business from the ground up, so maybe you could give them a little slack and be like, they just don't know any better. It's a problem they don't know how to solve. Fuck them. They know. I'm trying to be cooperative because in a perfect world, if we could get them all to switch, I mean... [2:45:57] Well, maybe force their hand. I mean, maybe just making people aware of it will help force their hand. If I wasn't the biggest YouTuber in the world, if I were – here's a crazy sentence that I do believe to be true. If I stopped caring about this issue and did nothing – [2:46:10] than 1.5 million kids in illegal child labor, I guarantee you it wouldn't change at all. Like, it wouldn't change at all in the next 5, 10 years. Like... [2:46:17] Look at how many kids are in illegal child labor in West Africa on cacao farms. Okay, we're back. All right, we're back. Big chocolate scented at a tech. Yeah, we've had this issue. You're good. But listen, man, it's just another example of the – [2:46:29] You're an awesome guy. And the fact that you don't just care about money and you really care about doing the right thing and that you've decided to do this is just another example of why you're great. [2:46:39] Thank you. Well, and I wanted to educate people on that. And another thing. [2:46:42] And also, I think, is a thing that people should hear. [2:46:45] is especially in America, do you know that [2:46:47] I mean, it's probably not going to surprise you, but 40% of food that's produced in America ends up getting thrown away. [2:46:52] I have heard that. Yeah, and so a lot of what we've been doing is working with non-profits and setting up essentially so many stores and restaurants. Just throw away perfectly good food or they'll have things like if something's within a week of being expired.

[2:47:07] They just toss it out because whatever. But it's like it's perfectly edible. There's literally nothing wrong with the food. And we've been just setting up like many – there's a 501c nonprofit called Sharing Excess who crushes at this. And we've been funding and building like these small logistics hubs like one in New York. And we've been through them and then also our food banks. We've been able to distribute over 40 million meals to people in need across America. And instead of like buying food and taking and storing and distribute it, just taking food that would have been thrown away but is perfectly fine and perfectly healthy. [2:47:37] figuring out how in a couple of days to just get it to food drives or people in need. And that's another thing too. Uh, [2:47:42] Illegal child labor and cacao and that are like two things that I feel like [2:47:45] people should just be aware of because it's a very solvable thing. You know what I mean? Like if you work at a retailer, I'm sure a lot of people here do, that throws away perfectly good food because they're like, you know, you never they never want to run a risk of something being bad on the shelf. So they'll preemptively throw it away. [2:47:58] just call a local nonprofit and be like, hey, [2:48:00] every week we tend to throw away food around this time come pick it up. Little tweaks like that [2:48:05] is so simple, but would feed so many people in need and save us so much money. And I feel like it's kind of a no-brainer. And I've literally seen it in effect. Like we're opening up another facility [2:48:14] that over the next 12 months should be able to distribute around 10 million pounds of food. [2:48:18] whatever that is, maybe like 7 million meals. And it's like just taking food that would have been thrown away. And it's kind of like mind-blowing that – [2:48:24] In America, more people aren't aware of that because it's a very... [2:48:28] solvable thing, to be honest. I think there's so many people that are [2:48:32] only concentrating on what's going to make them money. Of course. It's very rare that someone like you thinks –

[2:48:40] about greater good. [2:48:42] And it actually puts a lot of effort. But in this case, that one doesn't even cost you money. We're just talking about instead of putting it in a dumpster, put it in a truck. But the effort to enact later. Well, maybe one of you, if you're a Walmart or I don't even know, some random store owner listening to this, just consider it. Don't throw the food away. [2:48:57] you're an awesome guy Jimmy thank you thank you for being here man it was really fun I really appreciate it yeah congratulations we gotta make this zombie show we'll do it we're doing it yeah I think we should do it I'll handle all the work and stuff but you gotta think about it some more too yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna bounce this around because I got excited yeah I think there's something to it next time next time you see me and Joe together it's gonna be fighting off some zombies all right sounds good thank you it was awesome thank you for having me oh my pleasure thank you bye everybody [2:49:27] Bye.