Eddie Huang & Jessica Rosenworcel
Guests: Eddie Huang, Jessica Rosenworcel
Full transcript · Read the full conversation in order, with its original context.
§01Transcript - 00:00 start
five four three two one and we're live welcome aboard Jessica rosenworcel did I do it you did it I was so nervous about that and Eddie Wang of course it's been on the podcast many times number one podcast in the world oh thank you GRE what's up brother how are you I'm chilling man I'm good I just you know I wanted to introduce you to the homie the commissioner from the FCC Jessica rosenworcel cuz think things for things are bad for the internet right now well you are very concerned and a lot of people are about net neutrality and we all have some questions about it and we're excited to talk to you about it so maybe we could illuminate some of the issues and and give us a an understanding or try to help us understand what's at stake here and why are people so concerned well I think people are concerned because the future of the Internet's the future of
everything I mean every aspect of our lives is now touched by that connectivity and it's a funny thing but the agency where I work in Washington the Federal Communications Commission has enormous power and control over our Internet experience and for decades we've had these policies that have been all about Internet openness and what that means is you can go where you want do what you want online and your broadband provider can't get in the way or prevent you from looking at some websites or looking at some videos or setting up some businesses but that changed last month in Washington when the FCC over my objections voted to end net neutrality and as a result all of our broadband providers now have the legal right to block websites to throttle content and to set up sweetheart paid-for prioritization deals and over the long haul that could really change the internet and the web as we
know it now one of the arguments Pro net neutrality one of the arguments for people that were excited about this being signed what they were saying that net neutrality was only over the last couple of years and before the last couple of years net neutrality as we know it the last couple years everything was fine and that it will continue to be fine and that people are just panicked and there was that really bizarre video that that one dude made where he was saying these are all the things you're gonna be able to do you work with that cat I do watch it pie-ya odd fellow yeah yeah well he's a he's a smart guy he's a seasoned lawyer I think it's fair to say he and I see the world a little different yeah so he doesn't he sees this through the eyes of big business right he thinks that this is the free market let the market decide and and that's what the argument
I mean I've even Mark Cuban was arguing against it so I was like wow this is stunning yeah you know for me the net neutrality thing is huge because when I was in law school I read this one book called fighting for air and it documented like the Telecommunications Act in 97 it's like boring stuff right don't go read the Telecommunications Act in 97 but like radio mattered to me more like growing up with the radio like I remember they would actually break records on the radio back in the day like Funplex still does it on hot 97 he'll break records he broke my boy old Drew's record the other day but like recently it's like Clear Channel I Heart Radio they own all the radio stations and it really sterilized content and they play the same songs every hour in every city almost around the world and I when I read that book and I went to law school I realized I was like yo is
because of the deregulation of radio that allowed for all these local independent radio stations in every city that were rapping local culture and state culture that kind of eroded that means of communication and I was like this happens to every single industry we have whether it's radio television but now it's coming for the internet and by deregulating it you're gonna gut it again and you know like when technology started popping in podcast came around I mean that's what enabled JRE and that's why my first place to go is like imma come see Joe because you were one of the innovators with this new technology well thanks but I think what people are super concerned about is things getting blocked right that's that's like one of the first ones yes is that something that we legitimately have to worry about this is a good question here's what I know right now your broadband provider has the
technical ability to block content and websites it's got the business incentive to block or slow access to some websites if they don't have a special commercial relationship with them so now the FCC just gave them the legal green right just go ahead and so I feel overtime this is something we need to be concerned about and so this open platform that was full of in deven independent voices now you've got this new gatekeeper your broadband provider they've got a lot more power than went they used to how close was the vote it was three two and what's the argument for this well that's that's fair um I think there's an argument that you want government out of the way deregulation is going to lead to more competition and we'll have a flourishing of new ideas and content if we just move government out of the way and even if you're sympathetic to that argument here's
where I think it breaks down according to the FCC's own data half of the households in this country don't have a choice of broadband provider I'm familiar with this I'm one of them only have one provider that serves my house so the thing is if your broadband provider started blocking your content or throttling your access to some video in a competitive market you'd pick up you take your business somewhere else but about half of our households don't even have that opportunity so to me the idea that the competitive market will prevent this behavior just doesn't fly yeah that doesn't seem to make sense and that that's an issue in my neighborhood as well and a lot of other people I know as well I mean I think they make deals where only one company whether it's Verizon or whatever has an area yeah they monopolize the area's the limit the opportunities and choices and
when they say deregulation it just any time they deregulate things and say hey we're gonna leave it to the market and have competition I think it's impossible to have that when you have a country with such an inequality an income inequality gap right that's the problem is that all right let's all go compete Joe you're not gonna start a Verizon I'm not gonna start a Verizon right you know I mean like we can't compete with these dudes and even Comcast can't even compete with Verizon like you know these dudes are all getting smashed so there is not actual competition I think deregulation works when you have multiple players and options and that the market actually can come into play but with the economy so top-heavy right now I don't think there is a possibility of competition yeah I mean listen competition is the best regulator we know right we want there to be these
markets where consumers have lots and lots of choices but if competition is an existing you need a little oversight to make sure that every consumer gets a fair shot well it seems like that's where the real argument lies that if there are monopolies and there seem to be in certain areas with in regards to what kind of Internet access you can get that if you don't have regulation then then what is going to protect the consumer what is going to protect free speech what's going to protect say if you are on Verizon and your system is on Verizon what if you decide to make a podcast that criticizes Verizon and everybody says you know hey Eddie Wong's got a podcast criticizing us I want to shut that down and they can just I would have been shut down a long time ago yeah yeah we're not saying that they would do that but they could yeah and that's what's scary that's that's
not good and you know so much of our speech these days it doesn't take place in public places it takes place on these private platforms right so they have a lot of power and we have to think about that as a country and a democracy how much openness do we want and then how do we create a framework in Washington that supports that openness and that's really to me what net neutrality was about the other question I have is right let's say you know for let's say a service provider buys Hulu right or or they buy or they create their own streaming platform called like Zulu right so they start Sulu they could start to charge Netflix more money for using their service they could charge who more money they could charge you know beats more money or whatever so that they have an advantage for their own streaming services and in that way they can culturally control content and
§02Transcript - 09:14 start
you know you're so right and what happens is you as a consumer you just get online and you might not even notice right you might not even notice they're taking you to the video content that they have a special pay for relationship with I think though the biggest harm is to entrepreneurship yes right now look you have a good idea you got a business a service you can go online and you can almost instantly have global reach that's amazing but now you're gonna have to figure out is your broadband provider instead gonna shuffle off all your traffic to someone else who's paying them on the side are you gonna have a fair shot to show your wares and your ideas to the world it's harder because I start thinking like a bad one percenter dude and I'm like alright if there's no net neutrality and I'm the only person that can service Calabasas California Woodland Hills
California well I'm gonna charge all the other streaming providers more money to use this and I'm gonna create a competitor and every single one of these sectors so you can have an advantage if you have your show with me and if you're on the other one I'm gonna disadvantage you I'm gonna tax you basically so right now these are concerns and there's nothing that's actually happening yet this ruling was just passed that's right are there any plans in place for things that we should be concerned with and is there anything that we can do about this current ruling yes there's loads because I'm not giving up in the fight for net neutrality and I don't want you to either we got a few different pathways ahead first in Congress right now they are trying to get rid of what just happened at the FCC they're trying to use this law called the congressional review act that in effect just
everything that the FCC just did so it's a way to wipe out what just happened and while the odds are long there's more than 40 United States senators who have sponsored that law and in the house side there's more than 80 members of the House of Representatives so there's momentum growing in Congress to take a look at this issue and maybe fix what the FCC did and if you're sitting out there and thinking they're not listening to you we should do is something totally old-fashioned you should pick up the phone call your members of Congress and your representatives and let them know you care about this issue because that still today is one of the most powerful ways of conveying your opinion to those who represent you when is the vote happening on that it is not yet scheduled I think it's gonna happen first in the United States Senate mm-hmm and later in the house I also
think we are gonna have litigation we've already got a few states attorneys general who want to sue to overturn this we've got some big companies some public interest groups so I think it's fair to say we're going to court and then we're also seeing activity in state houses and that we've seen net neutrality legislation introduced in Nebraska Nevada Washington State Massachusetts California lots of places and I'm not sure how that all comes together legally but what you see is this momentum growing that people are not happy with what Washington just did the thing that I'm worried about with the state's laws right so just to lay it out for the listeners right there's people will well the government will pass the federal law but then states have their own rights to regulate certain things let's say we use marijuana laws as an example because recently a lot of states passed the
legal marijuana laws right but then Trump gave people the power to enforce federal laws about marijuana more stringently right he was telling the federal government hey enforce our federal marijuana laws what's really Jeff Sessions right yeah yeah his goon is doing that but so how would fatter ilysm work if states started to pass their own net neutrality laws versus the the FCC Commission yeah those are hard questions I mean they go right to the Constitution what's interstate what's within the state's authority but I'm just standing back and seeing really just a lot of energy on this issue there's nothing else that I've worked on in Washington where this immediately state houses decided to put pen to paper and introduce legislation and I think that that momentum is what's really exciting here well I think everyone understands the insane power of the Internet and what what a cultural
shift that we've experienced over the last twenty years I mean it's unprecedented in human history there's never been anything like it in terms of access to information in terms of the rate of change the way people look at things the way the issues get discussed this cycle of news which is like what ten hours now stories come in and out I mean Hawaii just had a fake missile attack and everybody already forgot it's already on to the next like what's the next thing I posted I check my phone because I think we have to fix that we should certainly show what happened in Hawaii someone went crazy we're still learning it looks like it was a state-level issue but you can't have things like that happen we got to figure out a way in this digital world that we get accurate information to people faster and we got to come up with better systems than what we just saw you
need somebody pressed a button and sent out a text that said that there's an incoming ballistic missile a possibility a threat of an incoming ballistic missile this is not a drill and then I have friends in Hawaii and everyone went crazy people were crying in the streets no one knew what to do and of course this is a state that was attacked you know less than a hundred years ago during World War two so this is their yeah it's not an unusual thing for them yeah yeah I had the privilege of working for Senator in a way from Hawaii years ago and I think Hawaiians are you know they're graceful they're resilient but they live with the knowledge that they are susceptible to some attack yeah so this gave them 40 minutes they're worse forty minutes of their life and the amazing thing to me is it took like ten minutes or so for this to be corrected on Twitter it took took up another half hour for
our official systems to update and say in fact this was a mistake yeah once we found out here that out can't let that happen yeah but then once I figured out it was a mistake I was like whoa maybe I should ask Jessica if we could send like a national message on my birthday 12 a.m. March 1st and be like you up just a nationwide booty call FCC will not be helping I had to ask that's a big question yeah no but what Joe was saying about the internet and how it opened things up like personally for me like today's Martin Luther King jr. Day right and I remember reading letter from Birmingham jail as a kid Jonathan Swift Modest Proposal as a kid and Tupac me against the world those were like the three works that made me want to write and I started writing since I was 15 years old never gave up but no one would buy my writing right the only place that will buy my writing was wrote a wire and
I would write fantasy sports updates for them I covered the magic and I covered the Knicks but all the way until I was like 28 years old no one wanted to buy my writing it was blogspot that allowed me to write in my own voice and find my own audience and then people started to see whoa there are like weird children on the internet that like Eddie's writing like he's creating Elaine and I talked to my publisher at Random House and they're like yeah you created Elaine selling books to people who don't buy books non-traditional readers and so without the internet without blogspot without that ability to just project my voice and hope someone connects like I never would have happened I know we're living through it in real time but it is totally radical as a matter of human history that you can reach out reach around the world and build community with total disregard for geography and
find people who like fantasy sports or something like that and build community around it that's an extraordinary thing and it has no precedent in human culture and with translation software now languages no longer even a barrier I mean it's changing and shifting as as we speak new technologies are being developed I mean Samsung has a phone now that that Note 8 where you could just highlight something instantly translate it I mean they have earbuds where you could put that on the pixel where if you talked to me in Spanish I'll hear it in English and this is crazy stuff yeah this is all change out what that does for commerce or diplomacy or your ability to talk to me across a table without having a translator in some clunky way try to describe what I just said no these things are amazing and you want all of our collective genius to drive them and not have big gatekeepers like our
§03Transcript - 18:10 start
broadband providers in the way yeah it seems to be a real issue and I think that we should look at the Internet as something different than almost all other services because it is our ability it's it's it directly affects our ability to evolve as a culture our ability to exchange information it's it's so critical and it's it's so unprecedented and this is a very powerful thing and you know people would love to have it go back the old way and have you get your news on ABC and NBC and CBS and that's it people would love that because they control you sure I mean it would be way easier to keep the world you know informed in the way that they would like yeah it would be easier for regulators in Washington to I mean there's this orderly chaos on the internet but it it creates it listen it has challenges but it it's unearthed communities and created economic
possibility for people like nothing in our history yeah I think it just it's changing who humans are you know I think there's more of an understanding of each other there's more there's more compassion I mean there's also a lot of hate and there's a lot of anger and there's a lot of but I think with the bad there's more good yet undoubtedly there's much more good into me it feels like a freedom of speech issue you know like it's if if this internet kind of superhighway is controlled and there's tollbooths everywhere and it gets privatized like I'm I lived in Florida we didn't have money for roads I saw when things got privatized it's you just pay more you don't have the same service it's it's one of those things like it has to be regulated it has to be protected and it has to be guaranteed as a thing for all human beings not even just Americans well it's just it's
to me how many people are against the idea of having an open Internet it's I just well you know most of the polling I think polls are always you got to be careful right because they can ask a question one way and get an answer but the best one done was right before our boat by the University of Maryland found eighty-three percent of the public supported net neutrality opposed what we were doing but who are those 17 percent dummies that's what I want to know I think anything you can get the American public to agree to what eighty-three percent is it pretty I think it's wonderful but I'm stunned there's a 17 percent yeah seriously but isn't there a bunch of people I feel like there's some and I wrote about this on Twitter recently without judgment I said that net neutrality seems to me to be one of those ideological issues where if you are on the right you support it or if
you're on the left rather you support it where you're on the right you would like it to go away so I'm also totally disagree with the plea I think if you are a Democrat or a Republican you benefit from net neutrality and Internet openness if you're conservative or liberal if you're big business or a small business you benefit from Internet openness and the history of net neutrality is something that doesn't get discussed enough which is that it began the first time the FCC put net neutrality policy on paper it was 2005 and I'm old enough to remember that that was when President George W Bush was in the White House in other words this country's first net neutrality policies were put on paper when a Republican was running the FCC it is only in recent days we have characterized this as a left-right issue and I think that's a fundamentally a mistake how did it happen like when when
a jet pi proposed this legislation and passed it it baffled me I thought net neutrality was a thing we had all agreed on it was like we're never touching this how did this happen well you know through it's a whole bunch of boring Washington procedures whereby they circulate out a proposed rule making rule but I mean like how did how did he get the power and leverage to pass this I think that he was supported by people in Washington including some broadband providers and was led to believe that with deregulation we would all be better off and then what what I find interesting is Google Amazon Facebook these these big power players used to be very vocal net neutrality keep the internet free things like that they're not as loud as they used to be they seem to just be quiet on it what do you think is going on there well first I want to point out that those big companies through their
association are gonna be intervening in the lawsuits in favor of net neutrality yeah so that's true yeah but to me net neutrality has never really been about big companies it's about who's gonna be the next digital platform who's gonna be the next startup and the next player the big companies can always find ways to build relationships and manage this kind of lack of neutrality online with their leverage that come from size it's it's the question of who's gonna start something up that you and I may not see because they didn't pay off their broadband provider it's the Entrepreneurship that has me most concerned makes new small business yeah so when I was saying that there's seems like an ideological rift there's certain people that are not very well-versed in this issue that automatically side one way or another this is a thing that we do in this country culturally a right-left thing
you see it a lot with global warming where you have a conversation with people they say the global warming's it's a natural process natural cycle the earth goes through it and then you actually talk to them about how much research they've really done on it it's almost none yeah it may they fall into these ideological groups and those pull yourself by up by your bootstraps right wing you know there's this sort of conservative way of thinking that they'll let the market decide and this is that that conversation I don't think that's an honest conversation if you're dealing with monopolies in in regards to Internet access which I think a lot of and I am and you are a lot of people are its a giant part of living in America and that tribalism that yes grabbing right now it's really deteriorating the quality of our dialogue in Washington yes find a way to fix it because
we're not gonna move ahead without actually having some back and forth on these things but this is like the one issue I'm like it actually brings people together 83% of people supported percent yeah it's undeniable but it that's what's scary about this country now is that even when so many of us agree about something when one very powerful group a lobby the broadband companies get behind somebody with some control they can push the needle you know it's funny if you in my email inbox which was an explosive thing leading up to this vote was full of people writing and telling me their stories but a whole bunch of that more like you know I'm a registered Republican but I want you to know or I supported the president but I believe net neutrality is really important it was striking to me like once you got out of the talking head types yeah she found is that there was really broad-based
support for net neutrality well what's stunning about this administration is how Trump's administration is just going ham for business they are going ham for offshore drilling they're going ham for diminishing State Parks and starting to tap into resources whether it's mining or fracking it's like he knows the world's gonna end in 25 years or something he's like just go take it all here's the thing he doesn't have 25 years yeah and so the world is gonna end in 25 years I mean if you're a 72 year old guy how much time do you have left if you have 25 years those last 25 years you're you know you're barely there yeah it's insane there's nothing gonna be left after this administration well it's real weird it's because it lets you know like people used to think well the president is that much power look at what's happening there's there's a giant shift in environmental policies
Environmental Protection Agency's been gutted is that's the scary stuff the scary stuff is how much emphasis is placed on business and how little on the world in which we live I mean we have to balance that out also how we got to focus on the future right yes it is not a given that we're gonna succeed in everything if we don't start planning you and when I think about the world my kids are going to inherit it's going to be digital they're gonna be environmental consequences why don't we start doing something about that right now there's not a lot of urgency it's one of the weirdest parts of being a person as people look so short-term and they always feel like someone's gonna fix it yeah you know I mean isn't that the the attitude someone's gonna fix but look at right now the economy's booming joblessness is at all-time low and they'll just start throwing all the good
§04Transcript - 27:06 start
stuff your way well yeah well when you just start raping the environment and the businesses go hey there's a lot of process prop profit to be made here let's uh let's get going let's start hiring some people yeah it's like all the money goes to the offense in Department of Education is good at Department of Energy has got at Department of environments all these things are gutted everything that has to do with our even present and future its gutted the only thing that's going is business and defense and what's the argument for that the argument for that is that as business booms as you can show homes will be trickled down more opportunities for you know businesses to clean up the environment and profit off of it and yeah but it's never work commissioners like you can like trickle-down economics has never worked in the history of the history I have my
doubts about it yeah yeah I've heard but I've ever pro and con for it it's it I think at the very least the Trump administration and I'm trying to look at it through rose-colored glasses is a fascinating experiment and like in so many different ways but it's also I think made us all more conscious of our role as citizens yes people have to talk back to Washington they have to speak up we need our representatives to hear what people think and I think we got a little comfortable there yeah believe in the system just runs by itself but it does better when people participate and I think that there's a lot more demanded of us now as citizens no matter where you fall on the political spectrum I think it woke us all up to that fact besides just calling state reps senators what else can people do participate in letter-writing campaigns get things in your editorial page you know
I don't mean the big papers yeah I wrote something for the LA Times about this a while ago but um I mean in your your local papers tell them why it's important tell them how you built a business using online activities and how may be going forward that's going to be a little harder I think making efforts to make sure that people understand this at a local level is really powerful well it's very disturbing to people that 320 million people can give how many we have 320 somewhere in there out that can be affected by five people yeah it's crazy right it's insane five unelected bureaucrats look that's who we are have this extraordinary power over what we can watch see hear and learn I think that um there's something in that that strikes me is not right and the idea that in the end just three of them voted to roll back this openness so three people changed it for 320 million people
that's crazy that's that doesn't seem like the end three people by the way who were not voted in so they're unelected which it's just bananas I mean there's no question about it that's a terrible idea like if you give people the option you said hey do you think that five people should be able to decide whether or not the 320 million plus plus the rest of the world really yeah because it's if you're super podcast gets cut off you know you're not gonna be able to reach Canada either who do you think that they should be able to stop access to information I mean people defied eighty three percent of the American public it's it's insane and that's the type of that makes me feel trapped in this country sometimes because we didn't elect these people right you know yeah I think I think you gotta make a choice which is you gotta choose to be optimistic because it's the only force
multiplier we have which is you're gonna decide that if something's not right you're gonna call you're gonna write letter so you can write editorials you're gonna build campaigns around things because in the end that's the only way to change things and if all of us felt a little of that spirit gosh today if not everyday I think that that would make extraordinary difference and we're already seeing its impact in Washington there are more people showing up in the capital city for votes for marches there are more people reaching out to their members of Congress than ever before and I just think we're gonna have to sustain that energy if we want to create some real joy I think it's about more people who have an opinion values that are trustworthy in the community running I think more people need to run because for a while we've I've actually looked at government or something like I maybe
could never be part of this is a totally different thing like I just I'm a resource of candidates and I go vote and that's that's my interaction with it but I'm starting to realize that even if you don't want to run or even if you want to run it's a possibility and and you number one you can like encourage your other friends to go run and you can look at who is trying to start campaigns like I'm 35 now and and there are friends from law school that they're like hey I'm thinking about running you know like I want to throw a fundraiser who should I speak to and then you know there's a guy that I played basketball with in a basketball league he's like I'm gonna try to run for governor of California I'm like good luck but like I'm gonna follow what you're doing and I think more people need to run but if you're not running hold the people that are running responsible ask the difficult
questions like be a part of the the kind of vetting of that candidate and be hands-on in the process of that person's candidacy are you running for president with Oprah my thing is that you know I think we all need to have a stake in the cat's that are running and ask the questions that need to be asked because you know I've been one of the people that just shows up maybe two weeks before the election two weeks before the deadline of like the the absentee ballot and I go research for two weeks and I go check out all their like pros and cons of each candidate and after two weeks I decide but you know I should be involved more than that well you guys announced your congressional run right here right I'm too busy I'm too busy isn't that the problem though the people that would want to run for president or whatever elected official oftentimes are too busy I mean I
I think if you ran I mean I'm not really cleanup you could really do it you got a bit of platform that I'm not interested I just I know it's important though you know find a way to participate in public life and give back mm-hmm and whether you run or support someone or encourage your friends and they don't have to be the person who was the student council president in high school you can some people out there my thing with candidates are great so Joe we've had disagreements on show we disagree about certain things we just scream oh well it was a minimum universe to change my mind based yeah by the way I changed I there's a knee-jerk reaction to you yeah I've talked about this I was talking about universal basic income okay net neutrality was sort of nerdy yeah you're talking about UVI a-- thank you I'm out on this show yeah automatically knee-jerk oath ah don't do
that it's bad for a human nature you give people money they get lazy but then I thought about I said no you're just giving them food and shelter you give people food and shelter you're still leaving open ambition and you're also freeing them up for the possibility of perhaps exploring things that they would really truly love to do where they have money and I think we start dealing with automated vehicles automated trucks yeah and trucking and shipping and driving is a giant business it's it's a huge part of what people have like there's some extraordinary percentage of men who drive for a living and if you eliminate that you're gonna have a lot of people out of work you have we have automation that's coming to factories in all these different places it's gonna eliminate the need for humans cut out all the human error well what are we gonna do with all those people and what are we
gonna do with all those jobs and how do you give these people this newfound possibility to do this this avenue for exploring new potential career paths well the best ways have their money taking care of in terms of like food and shelter like have to give them the freedom to explore ideas yeah because it's a benefit a lot of people have and then they do great work and you take that stress off their plate but I talked about the conversation because we had it we had a good discussion about and then it went on for weeks on Twitter we kept talking and then we both kind of came around on on things and I was like yo this is great and when I think about candidates I think about I would vote for somebody who they're gonna stick to their guns and they're gonna do what they said they would and their values aren't gonna change once they go to DC that's all you can ask for from a person be honest
§05Transcript - 35:47 start
about who you are and be who you are when you go to DC well I'm looking at the future of civilization right like where are we now and with this insane change we've experienced over the last 20 years because of the internet what is what is it going to be like in 20 years from now and what happens to the average person the average human being and we have this idea that you're supposed to show up 9:00 to 5:00 for a job and that's what you do and then you work till you're retired but that's all something that people invented I mean this all of this is a new thing in terms of human history this is not the only way human beings can live and the idea that this is the only way to use our tax money or resources is the way we're doing it currently that doesn't seem to be that logical and I would like people to have more opportunity to innovate and create and more freedom where they don't
feel shackled down like there's a lot of people out there that just feel shackled down by just the need to feed themselves and survive yeah and also just even school like I started reading and listening these podcasts about sleep right and it's a it's a scientific thing some people are not morning people she's laughing is yeah but like those like reading and listening to podcasts about sleep yeah well you could get insomnia listening to listen to this dude and he was talking about like it's a scientific thing some people are on a different body rhythm they just don't do well in the morning and he looked at schools in the school schedule and the school schedule is based on mom and dads they have a nine-to-five based on traffic and let's try to get these kids into school for high school too earliest then middle school later than elementary school after that and some people because
they're morning people they're just at such a disadvantage and high school college this is like kind of an educational industrial complex if you don't fit in if you're not cookie cutter and the way your body and your mind works you not gonna be successful and and speaking of what Joe's talking about is I think I genuinely believe like even some of the silliest people I've met everybody has some sort of genius we're just not like fostering the unearthing of that and like look there's some there's some hilarious stuff that happens at Bauhaus at the restaurant but I tell myself every time I'm like all right like this guy totally messed up making this bow this guy totally messed up butchering this chicken bleh find a place where he can succeed like put him in a position to win and that's a lot of responsibility it's a lot of responsibility it doesn't always work
out but but usually it does usually you find out like you know what that guy is really good at making the sauce you know like put them on the sauce like you have to find a place for people to be successful but our society have to find their own yeah the problem is if you do have a nine-to-five job and you're trying to feed yourself and get along you're gonna have less chances to innovate you're gonna left-left chances to take risky decisions and just try things out that is why internet openness is so important though yes because this was a platform and a space for you to go experiment build community find communities figure out what your genius might involve which may not be what you're doing at work every day and I think the idea that Washington is mucking around with that it's just crazy well I definitely don't think they like the fact that people have this ability
I definitely think if you could if the people who created the internet knew what they were doing when they released this on the general public they probably wouldn't have liked to give people the kind of access to information and the ability to change things what we've seen through Arab Spring we've seen through so many different cultures that are using this to change the way they interact with each other you know what's interesting during our net neutrality preceding Tim berners-lee who invented the web and Vint Cerf who invented the Internet along with some real icons from early days like Mitchell Baker from Mozilla all wrote us and said do not change these rules and it seems like when you've got that incredible genius of these people who created this connected world for you and told you that this agency in Washington is gonna really mess around with it it
strikes me that um we should have listened but we definitely should have listened but we also shouldn't have this place where five people get to make this decision it's insane yeah going to what you just said Joe it's like even even like let's say my role at just to explain from my role as the owner or manager at the restaurant it's not necessarily always my job to create a role for somebody and find a way for them to be successful in my restaurant I'm hiring a cook I'm hiring a manager like this is the job description hopefully if you're coming for this job you can do this right and I think what you said really opens something in my mind which is the government should not be always prescriptive about like alright we're all gonna go to school at 7 o'clock you're gonna study hard and you're gonna get these grades you're gonna go to college like that's not a path to
success for everybody but what it should do is enable people to be creative and find out what works for them we need to give people the freedom to contribute to society you know I think we're trying to manage the masses without looking at the needs and the ideas of the individual and everybody has their own likes and dislikes and creative kinks and things that I mean how many people could have lived a life of misery but got lucky somewhere along the line and found something that they loved and and pursued that and I think that there's not a whole lot of guidance in that regard but what there is on the Internet is examples of other people have done this and you can connect with those people and you can there's so many communities when it comes to like I'm ended I'm not I don't I'm weird about stuff I like knife making the craft of it I love the idea of forging things I
just think I find that fascinating and I follow like dozens of these guys on Instagram that make knives and hatchets and metalwork and tools and furniture I'm not making furniture have no desire to make furniture I'm not even thinking about it but I like watching this and I like watching these people communicate with each other and explain the methods and the techniques they use and this is a you know an Avenue where a young kid could see something like that and go I want to make furniture like that seems like a cool thing look at this amazing decibel that is - yeah like when you were growing up you wanted to do that you were gonna go to some library and go to that third exposed to it and look things up you would never see the video correct and that the number of people doing that oh it's so casually and quickly legitimizes it for you as something to think about - or
pursue yeah amazing yeah I had a I had a knife made out of meteor it's made out of meteor how hard is meteor steel it's metal its iron oh wow they make it with the iron that came out of a meteor and my mausi fire arts made it for me how did you cop meteor I contacted them I contacted him and I well I knew there's a guy named Steve Cramer that makes some and he made one for Anthony Bourdain yeah and I don't want what he got one I'm like I want one of those he's got a meteor knife how do I get a meteor knife so my kitchen knife is made from a meteor damn yeah that's Cleopatra's it's really was made by that really got a step by my knife game up cuz I just I still just used a cleaver man I'm so like ancient Chinese with my chopping it's just a cleaver well there's nothing wrong with a cleaver yeah this is it just looks cool cuz man here I could ya know I could expand the
Arsenal add a meteor chef's knife to you tell everyone it came from a beer when they come in to your kitchens yeah showed it to a couple people I just got it recently but it's uh I just I think that this new world of the Internet in terms of like the ability to explore these communities and like you said video like see the video of someone like this o'clock this Russell bill made this clock for us that that grandfather clock I mean that dude made that all out of metal he welded it all put it all together I mean this this kind of stuff to me is so fascinating and I don't just like it because I'm interested in the craft of it all I like it because I see it as an opportunity for people to get out of the grind yeah like you can make things if you can make things and sell things if you have an internet connection and you have an Instagram account which is free
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and you have an iPhone you take your phone you film something you talk next thing you know you're selling things I mean it's an incredible time for like opportunity to escape yeah the biggest lie people fall for is that they're they're bad at something or they're not valuable it's like you may be bad in this structural definition of a human being that goes to school and gets a nine-to-five job maybe I was terrible I was terrible yeah I got fired from a Boston Market I got fired from the waterworks like I couldn't work anywhere I got fired as a landscaper people's lawns I couldn't do anything but then it's like when you become in control of your own and you go do what you're passionate about it's like well then I became successful and I try to tell people all the time like if this doesn't work for you the straight and narrow doesn't work for you like think of a way
think think about what you think your strengths are and play to that don't let anyone tell you you're a failure you're unsuccessful because you don't fit the stereo I think it's really important though for successful people like yourself to tell their failure stories we don't do that enough well I mean I lost the restaurant because I sold all you can drink four loko like that was like I went out in flames you're good at telling your stories but I think that that's true generally I feel like I wish I could ask every member of Congress to tell a failure story they would never do that those people are trying to pretend there's something different well I was a terrible law student okay anything more explosive like for did you ever sell four loko at a lemonade stand oh I can't tell you I absolutely never did that and probably never will any other failures
yeah I got some parenting failures that I'm gonna save my children from announcing in public have a good call good call yeah I feel like it's important for people to relate right they have to be able to say Oh Eddie wasn't always a successful guy like he was a 19 year old kid once too that was also struggling that's very important it's very it's I think it's one of the most important things that people can understand that failure is an opportunity to learn and that horrible feeling of failure is really your friend yes that horrible feeling motivates you to change I mean I fail all the time I play basketball yes oh we had a double-header I was I was cooking on a grill I was making lamb skewers for four hours in the morning went straight from the kitchen to this basketball game in San Gabriel Valley playing with it's like an Asian Basketball League so I'm actually
like kind of tall like I'm like a small forward and there's like little younger dudes at 25 running around me I did not have played well the first game I was washed the second game and these kids it's probably like 23 24 years old running past me elbowing me and I got so mad and I acted out I started like yelling at them I started like beefing and I got home and I I told my fiancé about it and she's like you know why are you beefing with these kids they're 25 like like you're old of course they're gonna run by you you playing a double head and you came out of the kitchen and it was funny cuz I was like not willing to let it go but then I was like I gotta work on myself like every single day like I fail at something and I failed at like being like the elder statesman in the basketball we being composed being composed I lost my composure I started making fun of these kids for no reason
and I was like that's not me you know like basketball sometimes brings out the worst in me but I was like alright today I'm gonna be a better person we'll go back to that league next week and be like a nice dude and if some kid washes me and wets me in the face like it's fine well sometimes you just need to experience it so that you know okay I just have to be more composed when that comes up and when you didn't expect to experience it then someone hits you with that elbow you're like what you man yeah and the next thing you know it's intense boxing basketball it's the most like sports is the most humbling thing for me I'm not built for it like I'm built to fail at sports but you try anyway I try cuz I try cuz it's the thing I'm the worst at so I always want well it's great for the mind the thing about Sports is you're forcing your body to do things that are uncomfortable and in
doing that you're not just exercising your body you're also exercising your mind and that's one of the things that I always try to relay to people that are negative about physical exercise and exertion because they think that it's some sort of a frivolous venture that's just vanity you just want to look good or use your body but there's a mental aspect to having the ability to push through discomfort that is extremely valuable and if you don't have that switch where you can be comfortable being uncomfortable because you've done it a million times if you don't then you're you're gonna be panicky you're gonna be weirded out by it and that is a mental weakness yeah so in that ability to push through discomfort helps you not just in physical exercise in exertion but it also helps you in work like if you have to push through certain work things instead of getting up and getting
another cup of coffee figure out what the you're dealing figure out what with this problem you're working on concentrate like focus yeah get at get after it be comfortable being uncomfortable I don't believe in trickle-down economics but I believe in trickle-down mental strength yeah I mean I start in the gym every morning and like whatever happens in the gym it humbles me it gives me like you know some kind of like energy and I bring that throughout the day like what got you hooked in jujitsu well I've done martial arts since I was a little kid but I think there's something that is inescapable in my life at least and that is that there is no disconnect between the mind the body that there are one thing and that you can work them individually but not really because when you are working your body you need the mind to do that the intensity of my workouts is one of the most important
aspects of it and that's fuel a hundred percent by my mind yeah it's not by my body and Plato said that since 5th century he always wrote about like how training the body is just as important as training like the rest of you especially martial arts I mean it's just it's everything because you're high level problem solving with bad physical consequences you're you're trying to avoid injury and humiliation and all these various things that are a part of martial arts and in the meantime you're trying to maintain composure under pressure and you're tired and you have to understand the ability to push and push through discomfort and push through exhaustion but it also feels the mind it's it's very important yeah fighting that three-round fight I was like my first three round fight I got so scared I was shaking the whole time but I just told myself dude there's no backing out
you're in the ring you have to go forward keep going forward and like just out of fear I'm a pressure fighter just out of fear like I have to be a pressure fighter because I don't think in my first fight I knew I did not have like the calm in me to counter or or do what like the game plan was I was like I just have to pressure these hands and move these feet but then I got through it I got lumped up a few times I won the fight but I was like whoa I feel like I could do anything now and so now I keep sparring and I keep fighting because if I can be composed in the ring with someone trying to kill me then like I I can be composed on a podcast or in a meeting or like it's a negotiation it's it's the best martial arts is a vehicle for developing your human potential and that those things are all connected and it's a it's a critical lesson for young people and if you can push through hard
workouts you could push through whatever career path you want you're trying to teach me respect too because it's like you can get bodied anytime you can get dropped at any time like being grateful for when you have both arms and legs and you're standing on your two feet because you could be dropped at any second so but I mean do you do physical active sport oh yeah I guess you've been waiting to jump in this conversation I grew up in New England in cold country where in Connecticut Oh in Connecticut that's not a Hartford okay you're one of those people is that is there like a Westport my thing my girl is from Westport New York oh yeah yeah yeah she's from West four so I grew up skiing all the time and I still love skiing I still I need the thrill of flying off of something that makes me uncomfortable in order to relax in a perverse way so when I have vacations
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that's what I do I take my kids who right now live in DC with me and it's pretty flat there so you got to go take them to see some mountains and you got to go make sure that they go down something that's a little bit too steep every single time because I think you build some resilience when you get down something like that and you turn around and say well I did that I can do some other things yeah yeah I think there's some resilience in living in Connecticut too weird and plus it's not really a state Connecticut's like my way between New York and Boston no I would Connecticut Rhode Island it's a different California people if you're not awesome oh I married someone who grew up in Boston Boston while I was born New Jersey but I grew up in Boston got rid of it hurt myself on TV when I was 19 I was like that accent its embarrass listen to my own accent I now go home
and I hear people with a New England accent and it feels like a sweet and comforting like it's great we were drunk when everyone is drunk it seems like it's normal Vaughn can you do can you do a little bit yeah PACA see I thought you like listening in a you talk I thought you were from the South for a second no no yes because you don't have a New England accent no no no but I've been living in Washington for a while plus she's a politician this you gotta get rid of that you have the ill politician like the leader of the meter talking it's on I like a metronome you do this thing with your hands like Clinton used to do that and do this thing what we need to do in this country I never understood that yeah thing people would always tell me what I do voiceover like slow down slow down and like I can't slow down like my voice totally changes if I slow dies
it's gonna come like shot out of it that is true if you go back to Washington you decide with your congressional campaign it's all gonna happen you are gonna slow down when speak yeah like you can hear your periods and commas I just like run through sentences you know what would Trump as president I think all bets are off I think you do whatever you want now I don't think there's any rules yeah calling other country all's you can even get crazy Joe I'm telling you I really think you should run I'm gonna link you can bring mad people together you can you bring mad people together and also like I think number one umber one like I think you're one of the few dudes who can get the like really wild white people to like think about things like consider them you like have some perspective and empathy like the wildlings yeah I really believe in Joe as the guy that's like alright the
crazies trust him and then like he can get them to think about things from a different perspective mmm I don't know if that's good no it's a good thing dude like your appeal to you appeal to like all people but like like I meet a lot of people they run up on me think oh you're on GRE you're pretty left you're a little you're a little crazy but I enjoy talking to you I'm like you thank you man like I mean I come on the show so I can speak to like a different audience than just like you know hip-hop Asian dudes in my DME ghost and soy sauce like you know it's not that big that's very nice there's a weird thing about the listeners of this podcast is they don't they're not left or right no there's like a weird mixture of people but that's good that's yeah yes so much more of that in this country right now I mean we're not gonna we're not gonna do things if we don't start listening to
each other like I don't usually identify as left as people call me that but it's like your content on the show galvanizes cats from like all around the world well I I don't identify as left either but I do when it comes to so many issues when it comes to gay rights when it comes to civil rights when it comes to just across the board things that you would automatically consider liberal but also the freedom to express yourself like that's that to me is the marketplace of free ideas is one of the most important aspects of developing a civilization one of the most important ways that we understand about each other and you gotta have an open mind it's like I was saying like you bringing up that universal basic income and I was like get the out of here with that and then I thought about it and I was like baby there's something I always like to explore my reactions to things and if I
have a reaction to something and I'm at automatically dismiss it I go okay it was that valid or did I just dismiss it because it's easier than to have a nuanced perspective that's formed over time and a lot of critical thinking yeah and so I stopped and thought about it all and I think at the very least it's something that merits consideration and maybe could be a some sort of a project with good see let's see if that works yeah we have some countries doing expert yeah that right now though they're different than us culturally and I think yeah culturally as part of it that is a problem well America is just so based on competition competition is so powerful over here and I think that's good and I also think that's bad because ultimately it's like like if you could grab Trump and and and get him on mushrooms and let it explain just somehow another let the universe explain to him this is a
temporary experience you're trying to gather up all this money and gather up all these resources and gather up all this influence when this this is all fleeting it's sand that slips between your fingers there's no way you can grasp it for real the real experience is the shared moments that we have with each other and the more we can enhance that for the people around us the more you can use your power to enhance people's perspective change people's way of interfacing with this world that we live in and recognize that we're all just living together we're all just a part of this community this competition thing most of the competition is with yourself most of it the vast majority of it and those other people that you're competing with you should cherish them because they're fuel all those people instead of looking at them as the enemy those people are your friends although your mole
bitter rivals are the greatest motivators you're ever gonna experience those are the people they're gonna push you here's the but don't be toxic about it yeah you could be you could be you could be peaceful about it yet Joe I love competition cuz it's number one it's amazing to watch like you know lo uh Klitschko Anthony Joshua I think greatest fighter like the last 20 years it's like easing lid for that boxing match yeah Loma chenko riggan though that's not competition you know like that that was that's an experience though that's that's an experience total just snatching of a soul well he's a different animal Romo chenko is a different than the matrix you know the story about his dad what his dad made him do know made him stop boxing and do Ukrainian dance for four years that's why he's got that ridiculous footwork yeah cuz his footwork is everything and I know he
does a number Association too which is crazy but what I was saying about competition is like you know P politicians always we need competition we need competition like but who is competing with service providers there is no competition it's just beating up on a bum you know it's like we all live to watch great competition but you have to foster competitors you need actual competitors for there to become imagine if what we're experiencing with Internet was also with food imagine if like only a certain people could bring you your food yeah you know like oh you live in Charleston yeah you got to get your food from Mike yet it's basically like growing up eating food in Orlando there's like one in a category right well food for your mind yeah food for your mind is real I mean the fuel that you get them the information that you get from the internet that is fuel
for your mind and whether you get it in the form of actual food or whether you get it in the form of information these are both very critical things you need a wide variety of different sources for are you bringing up a good point even just let's say food delivery right it started off you would call the restaurants and it was difficult you had to save the menu from every restaurant then seamless comes around and they're like we're putting a whole the menus on here and we're just helping facilitate you get things from the restaurant but it wasn't like for restaurants we didn't necessarily like seamless because then had to have your own delivery workforce they took a big cut of what you were making in a lot of restaurants they didn't even break even using seamless so then like places like caviar came around and post mates came around and they supply the service the delivery people
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the consumer pays more for the delivery and the restaurant makes their money and it's like whoa now that actually created a competition between delivery services now you have an evolution and now you know everybody gets what they want you get so much that's all happened little folded menus yeah that's how we used to do it yeah and if you lived in New York you get home and it's like 20 sushi menu putting something under my door yeah yeah a lot of slip-and-fall in your own apartment cases from those menu look look it's what happened what's happened through the internet in terms of people not drinking and driving because of yeah that's changed the way people get around if I went to high school with uber well I would have been good when when will you in front of the Comedy Store lyft is blocking the goddamn driver to the Comedy Store nine out of ten times when you ought to leave
there's a car pulled up there which is look it's it's an inconvenience but man it's so nice to see drunk people just getting driven around yeah they need to be around you don't talk a lot about the safety element of that oh no it's amazing it's also young people are not buying cars like they used to run it used to be that getting a car entailed your freedom right anymore like device centric yeah and where you go and what you do is virtual especially a car anymore you were segregated because I went to a school where people were bused in from different parts you could be friends with someone at school but if they don't have a car or they live 45 minutes you can't be friends but now you can all meet each other up you can date you know they may not be able to rent the car or have a car but they can take it uber and meet you up yeah and that really is another aspect of the internet
that a lot of times we don't take any consideration is cellular yeah mobile apps apps are the internet I mean it is everything through the internet but it's in the little device you keep in your pocket and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all these different live in a mobile first war yeah like anyone who's building a website now it should be built for that device yeah because that's the first place most people experience that online oh yeah and the only concern that I have about that though is that you know ultimately we want people to not just be digital consumers but to be digital creators and some people I think more of us should be I don't I don't think do many people building things should be you know a bunch of guys in hoodies in their 20s I think world should look as diverse as all of us yeah sure I hope on a going-forward basis we're gonna fix this
internet situation with net neutrality and we are also going to diversify the universe of people who build things for our online one well we really see that in the podcast world the podcast world is extremely diverse there's so many different part whatever you're into you can find a category and a whole shitload of people that are making podcasts about it I mean it's it's five podcasts on sleeping ton on food right yeah food food is actually you know when I was working on this net neutrality show I worked with The Today Show and they wanted to find someone who'd built a business online and they spent time with this woman I think it was Laura's kitchen you know and she had basically started just putting videos on YouTube showing herself and how she was cooking and then you know that morphed over time into a book on a big Empire and she built something from it and it's amazing
if you look at how much cooking has evolved from just hobby online to actual business it's extraordinary it's undeniable like I mean for younger people listening they're they're probably just like guys we know like the internet like everything it's it's undoubted everything happens on the internet and so for it to become this thing that's not regulated is insane it's like it's like getting our roads taken away you don't want like regulation what you want is just a little bit of oversight to make sure that it's fair yes I think that's a good way to put it because I don't I think when we break in a regulation or deregulation we lose the point the point is you just want a little oversight to make sure it's fair and equal playing ground in that everybody's allowed to come to this and recognize it as the important resource that it is the ability to distribute
information is critical to changing the culture the way we interface with each other the way we talk the experiences that we share the way we have access to all these new ideas and information it's just shifting things that this radical right speed warp speed or speed it's just it's the weirdest time ever and so for this to be a monkey wrench thrown into the gears of this by five people on three three choose three sorry present company has investigated yes it's just it's it's hard to imagine that that's gonna stick but with this administration it's not stunning because it seems like net neutrality being dissolved favors these big businesses that would like to maximize their profits anyways net neutrality is the ultimate populist issue right because it empowers all of us online so yeah so so write letters make calls be annoying you have to be annoying run run 2020 Eddie and Oprah
Eddie Joe Joe Eddie Jones a good ticket bro I'm not doing it but good luck good luck you and Oprah I think you're gonna be living your best life what's that mean oh boy Oprah is that part of the secret you're gonna have to work with your running mate on that so um this this situation that we're in right now do you are you confident that there is real potential for it to be reversed I am optimistic that the American public are awoke and there's paying attention now and they're making a ruckus I mean we had millions of people write us at the FCC when I got appointed to the FCC I didn't think millions of people knew what the FCC was I think that's extraordinary and I'm not ready to give up well the last time the FCC was in the mainstream news is when you guys are fining Howard Stern that predates might of course it does that was the also during George Bush
administration how'd you get to the FCC so before I was appointed I served as counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee and I worked there for Senator Rockefeller mm-hmm for a long time and first senator in a way before that and so I got like a front row seat at a whole bunch of digital issues with how we deal with our wireless spectrum how we change our television technology so you know a real kind of nerdy Washington thing but also a new way to see how everything is changing in our economy because of digitization what's your thoughts on crypto currencies yeah I'm you know so I have no special authority on this except that a microphones in front of me that being said I feel like yeah I'm less interested in crypto currencies than I am in blockchain mmm which is the ledger that they used to row to record exchanges in crypto currency it's anonymous and it can be
used by anyone it's extremely low cost and I think there are open questions about how you can make government and a lot of business services more efficient using blockchain that I think are really interesting and have yet to be explored that's what I'm excited about like what's one way a business could use blockchain I'll just make this up say there's some kind of a you export fruit someone puts a bag of that fruit on the table and they say well we know that there are certain fields that fruit comes from you know there might be a disease in it how can you figure out how that fruit got here from the field you know you can go back through your supply chain and call everyone get them to tell you how long it's at over here and who held it and put it in the truck the question is if you can come up with a digital way where everyone as a collective just contributes to that
along the way can that be low-cost more efficient and more fective yeah I think it will change supply chain economics in a really big way and we don't fully understand the consequences for our economy yet but I think it's coming oh that that makes sense kind of like a Wikipedia for each thing yeah I did it with food for you so no no no that makes sense that makes a lot of sense no dogs yeah I look at here's here's high high level nerd but our airwaves around us right our wireless airwaves that power all of our phones we have to divide them up you don't see it but it's like they're zoned so that your phone works the television works all of these things you know but we also have a whole bunch of airwaves that are only used sometimes but what if we could create like secondary and tertiary rights to use them so that our phones were more powerful and what if the best way to do that was to use
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something like blockchain I mean there's there's so many ways I think the Recording ledger for crypto currencies could make our economy more efficient and more powerful and so that's what I'm interested in and that's probably because I don't own any Bitcoin I know people also in journalism have been talking about keeping articles on blockchain so they like internet articles don't go anywhere you know because people can just erase the website like a website it goes out of business than all the articles on that website are gone so some people are putting websites actually figuring out how we maintain our history in this digital world is actually it's a real thing yeah yeah not about that it's like cultural preservation right if we have some sort of a solar flare and you know it kills the grid and we lose hard drives and I mean we that Srila that actually could
be a real thing yeah and blockchain it's kind of an answer from keeping information my hope is that we're gonna eventually shift to voting online do they I think the state of organs and some experiments with that we should study that we should make voting easier yes that's what it comes down to and and make it more convenient for people but then that the thought is well if they're so stupid lazy they can't make their way to a voting booth do we really want their opinion to be expressed I think the busier sitting politician we talk about politics just you have a job you've got kids you're trying to work there from now and then you find out your polling place is open from 9:00 to 5:00 right that's good cause that's insulting I mean I know that when I voted in the election the last election which presidential election I think you can guess the last election in
Washington I had a week 35 minutes before I got in mmm in the middle of my day yeah also so that's that's that's a commitment it's a commitment I'm willing to make it's a commitment I'm privileged enough to take that time and make it we got to make it easier for I'm absolutely joking around and I really do think that we should make it much easier to vote and I think you should be registered to vote the same way you register to drive I mean if you have a driver's license I think you should be registered to vote I think it should be just that easy and I think you should be able to do it online and I think if you have a Social Security number you should be able to vote I think it should be really easy and I think that's not outside the realm of possibility I think we're operating on these antiquated systems and we've accepted them as fact and this is the
way things are and I just think that's nonsense it's not a good system totally yeah I mean like if you live in Florida I remember when I was trying to vote in Florida like the polling stations were in churches and I'd go and it was it wasn't an uncomfortable thing to go to a church where I'm pretty much the only Chinese guy voting you know a lot of people say really wild things to you in line like when you're waiting to vote and I'm like I would like more they say well you you probably going for a carry huh you know I mean because it's like the John Kerry year probably going for carry and it's not your business bro you know but also I'm like why do I have to go vote at a church like I don't go to this church you know gets so intense when it comes to voting when it comes it's super intense and and you know they they you know people just say things to you in a voting line and I'm like this
discourages a lot of people that may have a minority opinion in the neighborhood I think you should have some sort of an understanding about what you're voting for too I mean I would like voting to be much easier but I would also like there to be some accountability like you should know what your actual maybe there should be like some sort of a quick online poll or some sort of a quick candidates name yeah I think that violates the Constitution so I'm just gonna say that does it yeah the Constitution had nothing to do the internet nothing back then no I don't want to test for voting I think we're just expressing the frustration where like a lot of people just get assured in like like sheep to go vote for people I think you're expressing that you want there to be accountability yes and you want people to be aware I would like people to know what they're voting about
you could answer what your vote if you understand it you know like maybe there's a some sort of a an amendment that's being passed or something is being passed where you don't understand exactly what you're getting into and maybe there should be a way that we find out if you understand it I know that you have the good intentions for it but I read these cases that once you have a test for people to vote I mean the powers that be I mean look at gerrymandering you know like it's any time you introduce that it it always sets like the populist back but I do i do really connect with Joe sentiment which is like a lot of people voting aren't aren't actually participating consciously in the process yeah I mean listen I think being a citizen is a job you actually you have to spend some time and you know think about what you're authorizing for the world what the
future is gonna look like and how you're gonna participate in shaping it merely by voting I think I think it's a real job and I think more people are aware of that now than they used to be it's also there's so much to pay attention to it is when the elections come around and you just realize all the different things that are up and you just go over all the different issues and all the different possibilities you know like oh god yeah I know I did in California last time like all the propositions like whoa this is interesting actually I California is interesting with that yeah but the local stuff is really important we spent so much time talking about national elections hmm people who around you who really have power to change your life yeah often your most local representatives and sometimes I worry that we pay the least amount of tension to those races oh yeah
we drops on the street and you see some guys got a sign on his lawn for some dude running for some you didn't even know was up it's like I see a politician or a realtor other people do they even need to win one of those elections yeah next we start Eddie that's where you start your empire San Gabriel Valley yeah before you you're the vice president with Oprah that's what you got to do I can't do it man I can't do what everybody get a car basically everyone is 60 G's 60 that's what the universal big if you can't get for 30 30 30 30 to what we settled on was 30 last time mmm 30 seems like you get by yeah yeah you're not gonna get rich you're gonna get by which is good 35 I think 30 is a good place I think they're trying it out in some place with 12 what someone 250 a week 30 is good with some like all right if you do get a job you make some money where you really paying
some taxes you know there's a way automations not gonna hit the economy at the same time or all sectors of the economy at the same time in the same way so I think it's coming faster than we think not that I'm wishing for this I just think it it it is because my stocks and robotics keep going up that's my evidence well Elon Musk is fairly convinced a universal basic income as the way to go yeah he thinks that in the future that's just gonna be inevitable because there's gonna be so many things that are automated there's gonna be so many people that are out of work yeah although I think it will change our conception of work mmm what we do to be productive individuals people work too much that's for sure I agree I think people would work way too much you know I mean you live and then you're dead and you have a heart attack when you're 60 is that really what we're doing I mean isn't there a
better way well how about working three days a week you know or four days a week for three off four on that seems reasonable I work seven but it's things I love so I don't feel like it's work but none of my stuff actually feel I mean how many days would you do the podcast I do it a lot but I have other jobs yeah yeah do the UFC common yeah I do but none of them are jobs seen this is barely the same I love it yeah but also you're your own boss which is wigs makes work way different makes a different things very different than it is for most people yes yeah that's what I want most people to escape I want them to escape the grind of having to be somewhere because someone tells you you have to having to do something because someone tells you have to do it yeah getting a small amount of money while other people make more I just I think though the economy is changing I mean it used to be that
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you were there was an employer with many employees I think increasingly we're all gonna be the employee with many employers and that we're gonna have a web of contracts and activities that we use to sustain ourselves economically over time I think you saw that developing the internet and the new platforms that are coming on board there's consequences of that for health care and other issues that I don't think we fully tackled but I think that there is change coming that lifetime employment and preparing for it with a single degree out of high school is I think something that is gonna look like a historical moment mmm you know there's a Johnny naysayers out there that I always get the whole frustrated by they were like yeah man not everybody can do that not everybody can work yourselves not guess what we're not talking to everybody if you if you're not capable
that's okay but there's a lot of people out there that are capable they just aren't doing it yeah they're scared yeah and they don't have to because we were all scared everybody was scared it seemed like comfort and and in having some sort of security it's a real a real need that a lot of people have that that confidence security and knowing that your bills are gonna be paid and everything's gonna be taken care of that's that's a that's hard for people to shake off yeah comforts also a huge weakness I think at times like a lot of times you know if you're too comfortable you become complacent like challenges failures like that's where I really start to examine myself and I'm like I'd be better tomorrow growth and comfort don't go together yeah yeah for anybody yeah but then people get families and then when you get families you don't want to take any risks that's that's
that's a problem as well people have mortgages and children and they don't want to do anything that might put them in the unemployment line but to be clear that could be a really smart and responsible choice at some point you'll have a lot of people relying on you yeah that's the most rational thing you can do yeah that's a real problem but like a blackjack dealer told me last week scared money don't make money Double Down Double Down I'm showing a four how did that back he pulled a seven I got screwed that's why you go to Vegas I told him I like this why come to Vegas to lose money well yeah well yeah okay and I'd tell everyone at the tables I'm like professional gambling that's what we're here for like if you if you hit on seventeen then always hit on seventy if you hit on sixteen then the or if you stay on 16 stay on 16 grumbling - lets practice professional gambling
professional gambling is not yet on 17 though right that's if what they're showing if they're showing like if they're showing a face card some people hit I mean not 70 well I was saying 16 I meant 16 I said the wrong thing like I always stay on 16 even if they're showing a face card I'm like I just stay on 16 really yeah I'm conservative but then I'll double down I always double down yeah the the hit on 17 that's those wild white people you were talking to the people we need you to turn they're listening Cowboys people listen they're listening yeah all right I guess we probably should wrap this up Jessica tell everybody what your your Twitter handle is it's Jay rosenworcel spell so that's at jro Sen Worc e L and so your advice is people should do the old fashioned thing make those phone calls my advice is make a ruckus maybe without a little noise this is one of those times and I think
being a citizen requires us all to speak up right now make a ruckus online as well let people know in your social media your Facebook Twitter all that jazz yep and in the pornhub comments hashtag that neutrality yeah that's not what she says what I said that's I can't believe that no somebody leaves comments so mr. Eddie Wong on Twitter yeah same thing same thing all right thank you brother thanks for putting together I really appreciate it that's great important people talk about this stuff Thank You Jessica for being here appreciate it and thank you everybody for listening all right thanks Joe