Cenk Uygur

0:00You're listening to DraftKeyes Network. I feel like I'm looking in a mirror here a little bit. But there's some similarities in this story and my story, Jank Eugur is a media titan. He made a media company out of magic hard work and nothing. And I don't know how he did it, but part of the reason that we're here is to find out. The Young Turks is, you could find a TYT at on Twitch. You could find it on all these social media channels, giant following, and it's The Young Turks on YouTube. Welcome. Thank you for being with us. Thank you, Dan. I appreciate it. Yeah, the TYT is the network and it's got 24-hour channels on Amazon Prime and YouTube TV, Samsung, LG, et cetera.

1:04And as well. You say that very casually, as if you meant it. And you knew that was going to happen all along. That's not how it happened at all, is it? No, no. And Young Turks is a flagship show. So yeah, no, we started my living room. I actually very close to hear about a mile from here, right off of Sunset. And it was me and Ben Manquitz. And every once in a while, I got the tiniest celebrity guest, Joey Tata. If you remember him, he ran the peach pit in Beverly Hills 90210. So he comes into my living room in a one bedroom, crappy apartment in Sunset. And he's like, oh, so this is where I die. Right. That's just, it was like literally like run down place. Eventually I moved because somebody got stabbed there and it was blood on the whole way. So that's where we started the young Turks. Me and Ben with just two mics like this, going talking on serious satellite radio. And then we just built it and built it and built it. Well, but hold on, let's go back before that you're in law and are you happy in law?

2:05Are you unsatisfied? Or is it not what you expected? So I'm an immigrant. I came when I was eight years old. And so I have immigrant parents who are like, we get good education. We go, we become corporate lawyer, then corporate CEO. OK? So that's the thing my dad could wrap his head around. And that's what he grew up idolizing as like the top of the top in America. So he really wanted me to go to business school. So undergrad, I went to Wharton. And then for they really wanted me to go to law school and being a good immigrant son, I went to law school, I went to Columbia. And then so right now at that point, we're riding high and Turkish communities like, oh boy, wait, they're going. I got a nice office in DC, a block and a half from the White House overlooking a park. It was amazing. And I go, except I think I want to be a talk show host. And then that's when my parents, the entire Turkish community is like, no, don't, don't. And so I was a lawyer for about seven months.

3:05And then I went back a couple of years later to do two more months just to make money as an ass jamer lawyer. But I hated it. I despised it. I wanted to leave it as soon as I could for three reasons. One is it is moral issues. And lawyers make peace with that. But I couldn't. So we were doing corporate officers and directors liability litigation. What that means is when CEOs screw people over, our job was to defend them. And our clients were just the worst of the worst. To be honest, I was like, one of the guys ripped off Adrian Danley. That's the case that I asked. I said, I can't do it. Can I get out of this case? And partner was like, yeah, I get it. I get it, right? He lost all his money this guy, right? But he's like, you know, you're a lawyer. And I thought of my head not for long. OK. So I just couldn't do it. But were you just doing what your parents wanted? This is common to the immigrant tale where chase the safe paths, architect, doctor, lawyer, engineer, that my father wanted me to be an engineer.

4:06That's what he wanted. Because those are those offer safe paths. But I like you had a creative bent and some of those things. I was bad at math. I didn't like science. So I wasn't good at some of the things I needed to be good at to be the thing that my father wanted me to be. Yeah. So I tell this sometimes in front of different sets of immigrant communities, and it really resonates. But in Turkey, there's only four professions. OK. There's businessman, lawyer, doctor, engineer, period. There is no fifth profession. And so when I try to explain to my great uncle, who was like the elder of the family back in Istanbul, that I was a radio talk show host at the time, he just couldn't understand. He's like, what is that? Do you make any money? And then I explain, well, it's kind of entertainment. And you know, we are sometimes serious, but sometimes Joe, he's like, oh, I get it. You're a Paliaccio, a clown. And I'm like, well, I wouldn't describe it that way. But I get it. Yeah, it's entertainment. And then of course, Turks being with the area

5:07is like, does it make good money? And I was like, well, that makes OK money. He's like, OK, good enough. OK. So this was the conversation around our dinner table growing up. I told my father, who was always fighting with his bosses, that I wanted to do something that I enjoyed and that made a decent amount of money. And he's like, good luck with that kid. Like it wasn't something that he thought was possible. But I wasn't thinking a whole lot about money when I started chasing it. Take me back a little bit, though, going back to the beginning. When you come to America, you're thinking it's what? Oh, so I was eight. So I didn't, it didn't dawn on me that we were really going to stay. Because you go into the mind of a small child like that. You're so used to what you grew up with. It just seems unimaginable that I'm on a different planet now. Like America was so different than Istanbul. And so about two weeks in, I woke up in the middle of the night sobbing. And I remember going to the top of the stairs.

6:09And then my dad came out and put his arm around me and started talking to me. I said, Dad, I thought we were going to go back. I thought this was like a magical kind of experience in this wondrous land. But we were going to go back. And I was going to see my friends and family that I grew up with. And he's like, no, no, no, we're staying. And that's when it really sunk in for me. And so as a little immigrant kid, there's two diverging things in your head. One is you can't believe that your life has changed so much. And so you always miss not just friends and family. And I had a lot of friends and family that I grew up with. Cousins. And we had a really tight circle of friends even at that age. I'm still friends with them at this age. So that's how deep the relationships were. And you miss the food, you miss the culture, et cetera. On the other hand, you get to America. And my experience was, oh my god, this place is gorgeous. This can't be real, right?

7:09So we go to my elementary school in East Brunswick, New Jersey where I grew up. And there's two baseball fields in a soccer field. And I'm like, is this the richest elementary school in the country? And they're like, no, it's a really normal one. And I'm like, wow. Because in Turkey, the only soccer field that was a real official size soccer field that wasn't a stadium was at Bosphorus University. And we thought it was like, that's the top school in Istanbul. And we thought, wow, look at that. They got a whole soccer field. And I come here and everybody's got a soccer field. They've got two soccer fields, three soccer fields at the junior high and at the high school. Then you get, you know, it's almost a big city. So you grew up mainly in concrete jungle, right? And I grew up in an apartment building. And the apartments are tiny. We come here and my dad sold, built a business in Turkey, sold it. And we get a normal house in the suburbs in East Brunswick. But to me, that's not a normal house in the suburbs. That's a castle, right? I'm like, so how many families live with us here?

8:11And they're like, no, no, it's just you guys. I'm like, this giant house with all of these rooms and a thing called a basement. And this enormous tract of grass, because remember, it's like, when you're growing up in a city, there's almost no grass. So I'm like, this grass is ours. I can play soccer all day long with my friends here. Didn't realize until later the Yossas have to mow that lawn. But were you throwing up the middle class in America? Because you had money and the family had money, right? And yeah, no, no. So that's a good question. So my dad's side of the family was with Dirt Poor. He's born into a house with no electricity, classic immigrant story. Like they didn't have a refrigerator. They make their food fresh every day, right? And so he had nothing on top of nothing. He literally has separated the wheat from the chaff because he was a farmer, right? And he's like, I wouldn't recommend it. It's a real pain in the ass. And in fact, my uncle got him to get off the farm by saying, hey, I found this magical thing called college. And instead of working your ass off on this farm

9:12for the rest of your life, you could work hard in school and then get a nice car and a house and a hot wife. And my dad's like, oh, that sounds good, right? Hard worker to begin with goes in that direction. But born absolutely poor. My mom's side was a little bit wealthier within the context of South Eastern Turkey, right? In the little town that they grew up with. But my dad gets into studies his ass off, gets into the top mechanical engineering university, top engineering university in Istanbul. And so what was amazing about that, Dan, is that back then, Turkey had free college. OK, so we can't afford free college in the richest nation on earth here, but Turkey in the 1960s could. And what it did was it took all these really bright kids who had no money or were middle class in Turkey and elevated them. And all of a sudden, they all started running their own company. So my dad and study getting a job, which is totally reckless, built his own company. So there's a million great stories about that.

10:13This is my wife is from Taiwan. And it doesn't match Chinese culture. And it kind of wigs her out. But like Turks are go getters. We're like number one per capita in entrepreneurs, America's number two. And Turkey is like pretty distant above America. So everybody wants to be their own bosses, that old school, Ottoman mentality, run the place, et cetera. So my dad asks around to everyone, hey, do you need anything? Do you need anything? This finally gets this call. As it turns out, we need giant magnets. And my dad's response to that is, what a lucky break. I make giant magnets. And then my wife was like, but he doesn't. So what did he do next? I'm like, he figured it out. He figured out how to make giant magnets. And then spring machines and then other kinds of machines. And so he built up a nice size company. And back then in 78, there's real right-left conflict. So the communist right on the wall, we're going to kill you, capitalist pig.

11:14And he's like, capitalist pig. I was on the farm like a minute ago, right? But he doesn't like any safety issues. So he's like, and he loved America. He always wanted us to come to America. Because he'd done his graduate school work here. So he's like, pack your bags, let's go. So when we get here, we have enough to afford a good house in the suburbs, not like anything spectacular, but like what you'd see in Stranger Things, right? Classic American upbringing in middle class. And then my dad had enough money to buy a five-story building in Eaton Town, New Jersey. And it was only 25% full. And for the next 30 years, he turned that into the thing that we made our living out of. And as the foundation that we built our family on got to 100% occupancy, actually, at one point got it to like 105% occupancy, started selling advertising space in the elevators, started selling space in the closets, right? And so he just kind of built a second business by hand here. And I used to go work in construction there.

12:16I probably shouldn't say. But at the age of 12, we'd carry sheet rock up fly-five flights as theirs and learn to work ethic, right? Is that where you learned it from your parents? Oh, definitely. So both my parents are entrepreneurs, get into my mom later. And they're both incredibly driven. You just can't stop them. So they pass that on to me. And my dad's work ethic was legendary. What are the examples, not necessarily of his legendary work ethic, but how it was passed on to you? Like what did the discipline look like? Are you watching or is it because they're being hardasses? Yeah. So number one, you see by example, my dad's constantly working and trying to provide for the family and has a sense of responsibility that's so complete that it's unquestioned, that you see the man of the household earns a living and provides for his family. And he does whatever he has to do and works as hard as he needs to do. Makes giant magnets. Yeah. And if you need giant magnets, I'm your guy. I'm going to make that so my family can eat, right?

13:18So he was in the best role model I could imagine. Then when it comes to me, and how did he pass on those kind of values, one through example, but two, like I would get a 98 on a test. And my dad would say, what happened to the other two points? OK. That is exactly what happened with my father. I ran away from home because I brought home all A's and all he did was ask about the B. Like I was 35 years old. No, I was, I was like 11 years old. And I just ran away from home because I'm like, what is this? Like how can this be the standard? I bring home A, B. And that's the consequence to it. Yeah. So what, Dan, I hear you and my sister had a similar reaction that you did. I had a little bit different reaction. My reaction was subconsciously, I realized later, oh, my dad thinks I can get 100 on every test. My dad thinks that there isn't anyone who is going to do better than I am. Like he believes in me 100%. So that affected me a lot. That gave me a ton of confidence.

14:19And so, and there was no end to it. You're right. I'd get 100 and he goes, so there was no extra credit. Right. I got an award and he's like, but it wasn't Harvard. So into this day, he's like, you know, if you work hard, though, you could have gone Harvard. I'm like, that it's OK. We were fine. We made it, right? Well, how good is he about expressing pride? How good? Because you were obviously fighting to earn it, right? Yeah. And then when you become a renegade, and that makes it sound cool, but it does, it's not cool in the beginning at all. You drop out of everything and become a starving talk show host. Well, that's when you find out, you know, where people's heads really are, right? So at first, my dad is totally unused to that idea. And it's just blown away by it and like media. What in the world, right? Well, but you'd also, you were on the path they'd set out for you. You were succeeding on that path. What are you doing?

15:20Are you crazy? Yeah. Absolutely. And so I got asked, I don't know, hundreds of times, am I crazy? And remember, Dan, there's one other factor. Since I went to those good schools, the culture in those schools is also a rule following. OK, you move up the corporate ladder. You do what you're supposed to do. You move up the law firm ladder. And you follow the rules. Those people, those kids who go to those schools are the best in the business at following rules. Here I come violating all the rules, breaking all the rules. And they're like, you're crazy. The Turkish immigrants are like, you're crazy. So I didn't realize how much that affected me till later that I had, I went through about 30 years of everyone I know saying, I'm crazy and wrong. And so what I explained to my dad was, no, dad, look, if you look at it just even from a strictly a business perspective, I'm a guy who's not going to be able to stop myself from setting up a business. So I'm not going in here like hoping

16:22that I become like an actor or a radio DJ or something. No, no, no, I'm trying to set up a media company, right? That's was my goal from day one. OK. And I said the most valuable thing in America, I said this one, I was 20 years old. OK, to my dad is a name. If you build a name that has value, Coca-Cola is a name, Nike's a name. The Dallas Cowboys are a name and Donald Trump is a name, right? And those things have value. And from a business perspective, you can see how we can create value here. And then I had the thesis back in 1998 that online video was going to beat television. And if you started an online video in the beginning, you would get to basically take billions of dollars of value away from television without having to spend that money because I've got to figure out a way. Well, but where'd that come from though? How did you know that in 1998? Because the next year, you're at Whammy in Miami, which isn't exactly an internet hotbed. It's just a starting radio station on Lincoln Road in Miami.

17:23Like, where does the thought come from in 1998? That that's something that I can see the future. Yeah, so I'll get to that in one second. But just to finish up the thought on my dad, so I go and tell him all this stuff. And he's super uncomfortable with it. But then he says, OK, this is what you want. So let's go do it. OK. And when I go start the young Turks, he's the first one to put money in. The first one to back me. Am I mom? My mom was wonderfully supportive, right? So at the end of the day, they rally around their kids. They do the right thing because they're wonderful people. And they wanted us to have an opportunity. And so he's like, if this is the thing you want the opportunity, and this is what I work my life for. So go do it. But is it because though they've already told you you're crazy a number of different times, and you're not letting go of the bone, right? No. They end it, yes, they and everyone else eventually gets a sense. This brother means that we're not going to be able to talk them out of it, right? And my sister told me later, which I didn't sink in until,

18:25like I was in my 50s. But she said, look, Jank, I thought you were super courageous. Like you took, you did all the things that you were supposed to do as the good child, right? And you were getting so much credit for it. And so much admiration from all the people that we knew. And you threw all that on the garbage to do the thing that you thought was the right thing to do. She's like, I don't know if I expressed it well. And if I think she did, I just didn't hear it right because everybody else was calling me crazy. That, hey, I believe in you. And so, and I think that it's brave what you're doing. And so my core family, sister, mom and dad, by the time they realized I'm not letting this go, we're told 100% supported. But to throw away everything, though, and to choose that, like, how uncomfortable was the costume that you were wearing before that? Yeah, yeah, it was, it was definitely uncomfortable. I mean, it was so uncomfortable I couldn't bear it for seven months, right? It's, you know, like in Miami, when it gets super humid, and it feels like not only is it hot,

19:26but they put this like really thick blanket over you, right? And that's what it felt like. And I couldn't get it off of me until I shook the whole thing up. But you didn't realize that before the seven months of experiencing it, before that, like, what, where was your intuition telling you before this? Hey, I'm just doing something someone else wants me to do. I'm doing what, I'm following my parents' version of my life, not my own. Yeah. So, I kind of knew that, I kind of knew that, so I knew I didn't want to be a corporate lawyer. And I went to law school because I didn't have a better idea. And my dad's like, why don't you just apply to the top 10 and apply to jobs? And if you get a job you like better, great, if you don't get into the top 10, who cares? And it's not worth going anyway, the total immigrant mentality, right? And so as it was a good trick, I got into a couple of good schools and I hated the jobs that I applied for because they were in finance since I went to a business school, right? And so I remember the last question at United Jersey Bank interview after six rounds.

20:26The guy asks, do you love finance? And I'm like, oh, and I took so long to answer, it was already over by the time I answered. I mean, five painful seconds of silence. Cause you didn't want to lie to him? Yeah, cause I can't, I've ton of trouble lying. I can't spit it out. I can't say I love finance, so I got to figure out a way to talk around it to the point where I realized, I don't love finance. I don't, I don't want to do that, right? And so law school seemed benign. Like, oh, constitutional law, criminal law, I'm a lot of debates. I kind of loved law school for the actual class debates. I didn't love all the reading about civil procedure and torts and contracts that I didn't care about. I remember I went to corporate law, everybody at Columbia studies corporate law, like bar none, right? First class halfway through, I'm like, no, I can't stand it. I walked out halfway through the first class and awarding everybody's studies finance, halfway through the first finance 101.

21:27I'm like, ah, okay, I can't bear it and I leave, right? So that's just not for me. As it turned out, at Penn, I did political science and entrepreneurial management. Hey, turns out that's what I wanted to do, right? I found the things that I wanted to do. But I, so I shook it, oh, but it was super hard to shake it, super hard, but I couldn't help but dance. So I get out of law school, don't really know what I want to do. My friends know that friend of mine, Cindy, suggests, hey, why don't you take a learning annex course in New York about how to start your own TV show? I'm like, that's mental. Like, I can, I can't start your own TV show. I don't have any money, right? I don't have any connections. My name is Jank Euger. I like, there's no way. She's like, look, just take it and see what happens. Cause you're kind of a colorful character. Maybe it makes sense. So that lady says, oh, go to your public access station. This is back in, you know, 95, right? And by law, they have to give you a TV show. You bought time, right? No, no, in public access back then, it was like YouTube before YouTube. You just go and you register.

22:29And if you want to show, they, by law, they have to give you a show. But you have to go through the training process. You have to learn how to run a camera, how to run the mics, it'd be a technical director, et cetera. And I left my first hand, the law firm early to go do orientation of the public access channel. Okay. So they say you got to do X, Y and Z to get a show, but then we'll give you one. I was like, what? I didn't expect that at all. In fact, they named me the young Turk back then singular. Was there like, I had in that form, I had to fill out what's the title of the show at. And I didn't expect that they were really going to give me a show so I had no idea. So in like one minute, I was like, I don't know, back then, I'm 25, I'm like, I'm young, I'm Turkish, you have economies, young rebel looking over through the system. I'll go young, turn, right? And that's how it started in that 30 seconds as I was filling out that form. So, but I do the first show eventually, I go through all the training, Halloween, or no, mischief night, I think before Halloween in 1995. We do an hour on air with my friends,

23:30half politics, half philosophy. They get off the air and they're like, I don't know, people probably thought that sucked, right? What do we know? We're not professionals. And I thought, no, I'm doing that the rest of my life. That's it. That's what's for me. I love that. So back to the law firm, I've got moral issues with it. I then once I did the public access show, I'm like, no, that's my calling. That's what I got to do. That's point number two. And point number three was, I gotta get out of here before I get used to the money. Because if I get used to the money, that's a morass you can't get out of. That's a swamp you can't get out of. So I gotta make sure that I stay poor so I can survive the next couple of decades as a starving talk show host. You knew that? Yeah, yeah, I definitely knew that. You knew already that the money was gonna be a contaminant and it would have been quick sand. Yeah, and I've seen people fall into that quick sand a thousand times. And you can't do it off the side of your table, right? If you're a side of your desk, if you're gonna do something, you gotta do it 100%.

24:33So I was like, look, if I'm gonna try to be a talk show host, it'll be incredibly hard if I do it 100% of the time. It'll be impossible if I do it 25% of the time or 50% of the time. Guys, you know all about me. I'm a skeptic. I'm always like, come on, really? If you tell me a product is better, you need to tell me why it's better. I won't just take your word for it. Show me the evidence. That matters even more with something like creatine because it's part of my everyday routine. That's why I take momentous signature spec creatine. It's manufactured in a pharmaceutical facility using reverse osmosis water purification. Then verified to a six stage testing process with four independent agencies. I knew it. What is it? Wait, what is it? Translation, they didn't just slap a new label on the same old creatine and call it premium. Creatine support strength, power, lean muscle growth,

25:35recovery, and even cognitive performance. And look, let me be honest with you guys. To working out, traveling, and explaining basketball to normies for a living, I'll take all the help I can get. So if you wanna try momentous signature spec creatine, head to livemomentus.com and use code beach for up to 35% off your entire first order. That's livemomentus.com promo code BEACH for up to 35% off. So when you jump, are you scared or excited or both? Or, sure, of course I'm both. And of course I'm scared not so much about the money and what's going to happen at the end. I'm more scared about the social criticism, to be honest, what we've been talking about. Everybody saying you're crazy, you're wrong. Have you lost your mind? Is there something wrong with you? So it's family, Turkish friends, right?

26:35It's not, it's just social criticism within the very, you're breaking free of the constructs of the shackles of what everyone expected for you. Exactly. And that right there is the hardest thing in the world. As hard as everything else was after that, it didn't get harder than that. Surprising that your parents would be supportive there. Yeah, no, they're wonderful people. They just wanted what's best for me and they had an idea of what's best. But I'm not sure that that's what's best for you. Like as I look back on it, right? My father didn't want me to do some of these things, wanted me to go to Georgia Tech for engineering because it was safer. And as I look back on it now, especially in the state of the media right now, the idea of writing for a living if a child comes to me and thinks that that's the way to go, it might be in his heart, but it ain't safe. No, it's definitely not safe. That's why they were against it in the beginning. But once they realized that was all in and they saw me working super hard at it. So I would take the public access shows.

27:36I'd turn them into audio tapes and I sent it to 400 radio stations just to get two weekend jobs, one in WRKO and then one in WRC in Washington, right? So these are big radio stations in Boston and DC, but they were just weekend jobs and fill in jobs. But they saw me bust in my ass trying to get that. And then after that, I took those radio tapes and I sent them to WAMI in Miami. And that was a local television station. And at that point, I think the whole time starting from 98, I'm going online video. But the way to get to online video is that online video barely even exists at that point. So you are going to get there either through a new former radio like Cirrus Soundly Radio. We wind up becoming their first original talk show, okay, back in 2002, right? Or I'm going to get there through becoming a host

28:36and then waiting for online video to catch up. So I try to become a host, whether it's on radio or TV. I send my tapes down to Miami because they're doing this amazing, different television station because I studied, I studied all the broadcasting and cable, all the trade journals. And I'm like, how did Oprah make it? How did Phil Donney who make it? How did Howard Stern make it? So these are the big talk show hosts of the time. And so Howard started on radio and refused to listen to anyone and just did the show that he wanted. And I loved Howard's show growing up, right? So that was a role model in a sense. And then you look at Phil Donney, and Oprah, the two biggest television talk shows at the time, and they both came up through local television. And they had their own show. They did what they thought was right with that show and they grew to national fame. So when whammy comes around in Miami and they go, they're the only ones in the whole country doing local television. They're like, we're going to start a whole new slate of shows and their wild shows, there's trans people on,

29:38strippers on this and the other thing. The minute I read it in the trade journals, I literally packed my bags that night and told my parents, I'm going to Miami and I drove the next morning, 24 hours to Miami until I got to work. You are a little crazy. You are, like that's a bit impetuous. Like you're studying, yes, and you're trying to provide guardrails, but that's not, you're saying that night, you're packing your things and you tell your parents, I'm going to Miami and what are you saying over your shoulder? I'm chasing my dream. Like what are they, what's happening there? Yeah, because so Dan, it's crazy but not impetuous. So there was literally a night. Hacking your bags that night after seeing something and moving to another city is impetuous. Okay, so I should add one thing so you have a little bit more context. It's not that different, but I had been asking all my contacts, whatever tiny, tiny contacts I had,

30:39hey, what do you think is the best place to go? And a friend had recommended an agent and agent said, oh, I'm not going to represent you. You got nothing, right? But based on what you're saying, you should go down to Miami and Miami. So that's why I had already sent my tape. And then when I read all the details of the type of programming they were doing, I knew that it was literally the only television station in the whole country doing it. I know the guys doing traditional TV are not going to hire me. There's no chance of that, right? The only guys who could hire me are these crazy guys on Whammy. So for me, pushing all in on that was a little bit more rational than it looks from the outside. You see, like when you were playing poker and you're short stacked, right? I don't have any other options. So yeah, I don't have, I'm not flying in on American Airlines, but I got a Jack 10 suited. Let me give it my best shot. All right, you've already made 25 minutes in here. You've already made a couple of gambling references that suggest to me that you're a gambler at heart, though. So it might not be, it might be clinically leveraged,

31:40statistical probabilities that you're playing, but you're still gambling. Yes, that is definitely right. And also my agent who was an exceptional, is an exceptional sports agent, told me at the very beginning, I refused. I was CAA's worst client for a long time because I simply refused to leave Miami, refused to leave Miami, and he told me at every turn, you can't build media stuff in Miami. It's not possible, you can't get the people you need, there's just not the infrastructure that you need. Miami is not the place to start a media career. It just isn't. It's not a wise gamble, but you're saying you knew before that, that digital was going to explode. How? Why? Yeah, so I mean, I like to think of that I'm both the things that you described, like that I do a rational analysis, and then I'm a gambler. So what I look for is the best odds, but the best odds given your circumstance.

32:41So if I was the son of Rupert Murdock, I probably wouldn't have bothered with online video. I would have said, Papa, I'd like a television station or two, or an entire network, right? But I don't have a Papa like that. My Papa's dogging youger, right? So it's that we don't have the contacts or the money, we just can't do it. So when I looked at online video, I thought, oh, this is gonna work, and it's gonna work for a couple of reasons. Number one, the gatekeepers are miserable at their jobs. So having at that point already worked in radio and TV enough to know all the program directors and have experience with them, and knowing just the empirical data of reading the trade journals. So if you remember back then, they used to make 10 pilots, and of those nine wouldn't make it on air, only one would make it on air, and of the 10 shows they put on air, nine of them wouldn't make it only one would survive on air past 13 weeks, right? So if you do the math on that, that's a 1% hit ratio. The gatekeepers are terrible at their jobs. And I am a business major,

33:42and I believe in capitalism, and I believe in the wisdom of the crowd, and the invisible hand of the market. And I'm like, so let me get this right. In online video, there are no gatekeepers, and people are gonna flock to whichever shows they like, and elevate them out of the crowd. And then they're gonna have this dynamic fan base that elevated them and selected them. Well, that wisdom of the crowd, just from a purely capitalist perspective, is much more likely to be right than a gatekeeper, and eventually if you repeat that thousands of times, or millions of times, by the end, online video will be completely dominant, and television will be dead. Television is a small pool, whereas online video is an ocean, and the ocean will swarm the pool, and the pool will become irrelevant. So I sensed all that in 1998, and hence started on this track. Prediction markets before prediction markets. You are sensing in 1998, but it seems like that you were in other ways,

34:46politically, entirely different human being, the first 25 years of your life, then you have been since then. How does that not damage your credibility somewhere along the path that you have gone from one end of the political spectrum to the other? Yeah, so I started out as a Republican. Now I'm not only a Democrat, but I'm in the Bernie Sanders, Rob Connoing, right? So, you know, back in the day when we were probably the top media company, backing Bernie Sanders, almost certainly back in 2016 and 2020, we get known as the Bernie Bros, guys, right? So how did I go from Republican to Bernie Bro, let alone all the other transitions? So what you're sensing there is what, of course, everybody around me sense. So my friends used to joke around how I was a waffler, right? So now as a grown up looking back at it with the benefit of hindsight, I see what happened. So what happened is you start out with your software, what you've been taught, and you begin your journey there. And then if you're a thoughtful person,

35:48and really this is a gift that you get as a person who's introspective, it has nothing new with your intelligence. It's just a question of how much do you think about your own life and your own path? And I got blessed there, I'm very introspective. So as I looked at it, I'm like, wait, I got taught that the Republicans were cared a lot about budgets, but now here we are, you know, in the year 2000 when I make the switch, right? I'm like, they've never balanced the budget in my life. They've never even come close. The last Republican president to balance the budget was Dwight Eisenhower, right? So I'm like, I think these guys, can I curse here? Yes. I think these guys might be full of shit, right? And then I look at, they said, you know, peace through strength, but all we got was wars. So I'm like, wait, that was Orwellian, that turned out not to be true. And I'm like, welfare, they make fun of like people who are poor who are getting welfare, but then they give endless corporate welfare and subsidy after subsidy to the richest companies

36:50in the world. And I'm like, oh, okay, I get it. Why weren't you noticing this before that though? So a couple of reasons, number one, your kid and mainstream media brainwashed me. So like there's this idea that mainstream media, corporate media is liberal media? No, no, no, no, no. They're liberal on social issues. That's true, right? But on economic issues and on everything else, they are massively corporate. They are for the status quo, they're for the establishment. So when I was growing up in New Jersey, all we heard was that Reagan was a cowboy and America was a shining city on a hill and Reagan had brought morning to America. I mean, they fluffed them better than any fluffer on a porn set. Okay, I mean, they were out there. And that extended all the way through. Chris Matthews is late as the Iraq war is talking about how George W. Bush is an amazing guy who landed like a fighter pilot on top of the aircraft carrier and declared mission accomplished. And he was a hero and Rudy Giuliani was a cop and Fred Thompson smelled like Aqua Velva.

37:51And I'm like, what? What is, or old leather or whatever the whole English game like? And he's like, the women are attracted to these guys. I'm like, how would you know Chris? You're just making that up. You're all of this is made up. So realizing that mainstream media was lying to us and doing propaganda was, it's not an easy thing. There's still tons of people above the age of 50 that haven't realized to this day. So you're bombastic, you're a gambler, you're a rebel. I was given a sports column too soon. I was not yet an adult. I had not found my voice, but I was good at the theatrics of writing a column. And so I look back with great regret at some of the things that I wrote in my 20s. I imagine that you do too. The person you were in your 20s, how do you forgive yourself for some of the things that you believed back then and told people about because you have this instinct to want to tell everybody what you know. Yeah, you're super easy for me to be honest. And I'm curious about your experience that I want to ask you about in a sec.

38:53But just to answer your question, you know, like my kids, my friends joke around about how I'm a wathler and I go, so you think the better position is to not consider if you're right or wrong, not analyze the what you have been taught and just blindly follow the thing you've been taught your whole life. Okay, that's an interesting position, but I don't agree with that. Yeah, but they can be skeptical about the, but you had so much conviction back then, the same conviction you have now about being open-minded and you've had your eyes open, you had that conviction back then too and now you know you're wrong. Yes, so that's right, okay, but conviction is, like a passion is a little bit separate from an open mind, right? So you could be passionate about things and even when you have an open mind and you start out wrong, you're passionate about that, then when you come to a position that you hope is correct, you're also passionate about that. So I get it especially because yeah, you're right, I'm so loud and passionate about so many things

39:55and my friends are right, but you just said this very passion, I used to defend the contreses like in Nicaragua who were like terrible, like vigilantes and committal, but I didn't know that back then and I used to compare them to freedom fighters in my political science class in high school. Now do I regret that? No, that's what I was taught. What I hope my magically supposed to know things that I never got taught and I, you know, software I never received, right? So but by the way, my teacher was liberal and but never enforces point of view on us, never debated us, just counseled us to have an open mind and John Calamano, terrific teacher in New Jersey in public school and Cal was right. Eventually that open mind made all the difference. There's one thing I've never wavered on and that's having an open mind and an open mind lets you get to the right answers eventually and I think that's more important than anything else.

40:55So but when you did it, like what was your parents' reaction and how much did they push back on you and how did you get past it? Which part are you talking about just the choosing of the profession or some of the things that I wrote that I regret? It was my mother, one of the few arguments I grew up in sort of a traditionally, you know, old-fashioned household, Cuban principles, the man runs the house but the woman is the actual strength of the house and one of the few times that my mother actually fought with my father was over the idea of I was going to be successful whatever I chose to do. You have to let the boy do what he wants. My father didn't talk to me for a while because I was throwing away everything that he was working for on, you know, I might as well have been, you know, saying I wanted to join a rock band because the idea and for both me and my brother to come from a Cuban family

41:55where there wasn't freedom and actually make careers out of the arts. My brother did it the harder way, he was just an artist so there wasn't like any of the protections. She just won and she knew something that my father didn't that I needed for nourishment because my father was unhappy in his work and you can't help but bring that home if you're identifying so much with your work and so I was very fortunate to have half of the support that I needed. My father wasn't the same kind of supportive like he just, he didn't buy in on that. So when you say that both of your parents were like, go, they must have really believed in your go-getum. Even in a culture that is maximum go-getum. Yeah, no, no, they were terrific. So that's another thing I'm super lucky about and I'm really appreciative of those things that I had. They might not have been money or connections but you know that work ethic and the support that they gave me were invaluable and worth more than any money or connections like that.

42:55But you're being easier on yourself about the things that you didn't know back there and that you were bombastic about. For me, the writing of things, I have a nobility about writing that's more, it's more meaningful to me than some of the other cotton candies in expression because I don't actually agree with you in some of the places where you say that you hate the fake neutrality of the press because I really was aspiring to empathy and impartiality and fairness and vetting. I was trying to live journalism's principles that can get absolutely distorted by corporate money and a thousand different things but I think that the idealism at the center of what journalism aspires to be is worth chasing in a free country and I don't necessarily agree with what you say there when you hate it even though I don't think you're wrong. Yeah, no, Dan, I think we actually agree. So I love the idea of being objective. I just don't think they are objective, right?

43:57But no humans can be, it's not a human trait. You can only aspire to it. No, but Dan, when you get to text associated press, Reuters, some of the independent media like Guardian, Leather, Dropsite news, they're doing great job. I can't clip and sign, Johnson Washington. I can name a bunch of people who are amazing journalists, right? And I love that they're trying to be as objective as possible and getting as facts because how we're gonna do our shows without facts? We can't do it without facts. But for mainstream media, I don't think they're trying to be objective at all. And when they say that they're being objective, I don't think they realize that they're lying, but they are. It's a massive, massive lie. So they are always in favor of the status quo. They're always in favor of the corporate position. And then they privilege their own bias by declaring, we are the only objective ones. And everyone who doesn't agree with us is a radical. Well, I already know you're wrong. Based on that statement, I know you're wrong, right? How do you know what idea is going to work ahead of time?

44:58And you're telling me you're objective and you've already prejudged all the ideas that don't agree with you. They're so massively biased. And they don't even see their bias. So it's infuriating. So in terms of the stuff we wrote in our 20s, like people make a giant deal out of that, I just came out of Pears Morgan earlier today. We had like an hour and a half debate over what my nephew has said or written, right? Has somebody here? That sound pike girl. And I'm like, guys, okay, so what's not important is what the Democratic candidates actually think. What's not important is who we're going to elect. But what's important is what some streamer or blogger or vlogger said in his 20s, he immediately took back. But now we're all gonna obsess over that. No, that's absurd. We all say stupid stuff. And especially if you talk for a living, Dan, me, you, Haas, we all have tens of thousands of hours of talking on tape. The fact that they found a couple of stupid things I said

46:00or you said or Ha said, only a couple, we must have been amazing, right? And in my 20s, was I trying to get more attention? Yes, was I more right wing? Yes, right? So did I say some things that I look back and I go, ah, that sucks, I wouldn't have said that today and wouldn't have come close to saying that. Yeah, of course, but that's life. If you're in this business, so, oh, they're like, oh, we need you to go back and apologize for your former self from 30 years ago. But bro, I, for example, the ones that I got in trouble for when I formed Justice Democrats and that helped AOC and the others win. So that's when they started attacking me and then I was supporting Bernie and they were doing the same thing they're doing to Abdul Al-Sahid through Hasan now. Establish a media that objective ones love to smear any outsider candidates and they do smear by proxy. So they're like Bernie, Jank wrote in the 1990s, these comments about XYZ, right? So now are you guilty?

47:01So that was the disgusting, dirty trick that the New York Times, LA Times, CNN, all of mainstream media played. And the way they attacked me was disgusting and totally counterfactual. They lied eight is the about me. If they should be humiliated for what they did, okay? So now you're telling me that the problem isn't that you attack every outsider on the left and the right. You overwhelmingly support the corrupt politicians that are not in the middle, but that have radical pro-corpor positions. And that's not the problem. The endless wars are not the problem. The corruption's not the problem. But what a streamer said in his 20s is the problem. My ass it is. Well, he's a threat. Obviously James Carville says he'll leave the Democratic party if Hassan becomes a leading voice. What is your assessment of the left at the moment, the state of the American left? Yeah. So look, when the establishment Democrats like Carville say things like that, I think, see you wouldn't want to be you.

48:02By Felicia, okay. Make my day. Oh, I'm going to have a pro-corporate guy leave the Democratic party so that we have a better image. Oh, don't threaten me with a good time. Okay. So to be fair to Carville, he's starting to walk that back. And in that same peers Morgan this morning, he walked back most of it, right? Because it was dumb. He knows it was dumb. What do you? So I don't agree with Carville on everything. Am I going to do I have to leave the party? I didn't agree with Kamala Harris on like 50% of the stuff that she was saying. Oh, I love Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney. Oh, I'm going to support Israel's endless genocide. You know, there was a billion, so what I was supposed to leave the party. And by the way, whenever it's a corporate Democrat, they're like, oh, you progressives better vote for them. Otherwise, you're traitors. But blue no matter who. And then you go, oh, okay, good. I'll do a little side one. So you're going to support him, right? No, I'm never going to support him. And I'm going to leave the party. Well, okay. Well, then who's the liar? Who's the douchebag? Okay, let's be honest. Let's be honest.

49:03So they never meant it. And by the way, the mainstream media, and this is why I despise them, hide all the facts. They are, that would give you a much better context. So for example, back in 2008, Hillary Clinton supporters were called Puma's. You might remember that. And what did Puma stand for? Party unity, my ass. When she lost Obama, she refused to endorse him for a while. Her voters hated Obama. And did you know that 6% of Bernie Sanders voters switched over in 2016? And they go, look at that. 6% is so important. 12% of Hillary Clinton's voters switched over and voted for John McCain instead of Barack Obama. She's the one that started him in the Muslim garb and the Barack Hussein Obama. So no, their side is like, no, if we don't get corruption, we're out of this party. And I can't help but say, please leave, clean up, go home. As Deniro said in heat, clean up, go home.

50:04Clean up, go home. Is there anywhere in your righteous indignation there and answer, I didn't see to your assessment of the state of the American left at the moment? So the American left is in great shape. Okay, finally, it's been a disaster for a long time. So as the entire establishment media is attacking us, how could we be in great shape? We're out of power and the Democratic Party is hated. That's because in Pandora's box, all the demons and ghouls and goblins fly on and at the very bottom, the last thing left is hope. Okay. And we're so at the bottom of the barrel, we've reached hope. So the Democratic leadership is so awful that finally, they're universally recognized as awful. So I've been banging my head against the wall for at least a decade now going, they don't know how to win. What part of losing the Donald Trump is complicated? If you lose the Donald Trump, whose IQ can't be above 70, that means you suck at this. Don't tell me you know how to win elections better

51:05and then you got clowned by Donald Trump, who you, the Clintons, invited in to politics. Bill Clinton, a golfing with Trump was like, oh yeah, you should run. Oh yeah, because he thinks, oh, it's so easy to beat him. Then what happened, brother? You didn't beat him. And then Joe Biden, I said, a year before the debate, we had a petition on the young turfs to get Joe Biden out of the race. And the old knucklehead Democratic establishment is like, no, we do propaganda, we just lied to everyone, say that he is not senile, he does not have dementia. He's the greatest Democrat and he's going to beat Donald Trump. Jank, why aren't you lying for us? You're helping Donald Trump. And I'm like, guys, his brain is falling out of his ear. He said, I want to beat Trump. You're not going to beat Trump with a guy who can't complete a sentence. What's wrong with you people? So now the great news is the jury's in. Everybody gets Chuck Schumer and Akim Jeffery, suck. They're terrible at their jobs. They don't represent the Democratic voters. And the first opportunity we get, we should topple them

52:06and put in real Democrats in those positions. And now even old like the Hillary Clinton voters, the moms who are so against the Bernie bros, they've now flipped. And they're like, you guys are right. No, Schumer's not doing a goddamn thing. What are they ever going to pass our bills? Okay. So now, okay, we've won over that side in a lot of ways. But here's a part, Dan, that a lot of people are missing. They do this on purpose in the media. They buy for Kate. And they say you only have two choices. The corporate corrupt wing of the Democratic party, represented by Hillary Clinton, et cetera, or the DSA wing of the party. And you have to be a socialist if you're not Hillary Clinton and you have to be for abolishing prisons and the Senate and all this stuff. Like, no, I don't. There's a whole nother wing, the economically populous wing of the Democratic party, the populist left. So that's Bernie 2016, before all he got intertwined in the identity politics and the culture wars of 2020 campaign, right?

53:08In 2016, he's just saying things that are supernova popular. Okay, why don't we get higher minimum wage? So all the wages go up. Why don't we get Medicare for all? Poles us 65 to 70%. Public option, paid family leave, get money out of politics. And the wars, these are all super popular. Why don't we just run on our popular issues? Leave the cultural wars aside, don't get into that crap, right? Don't get into the establishment crap. Just give the voters what they want. And right now, probably the best representative of that is Rokana. So if you go into Rokana wing of the Democratic party, I think that's gold. I think we win elections super easy if we go in that direction. Like politics is, they make it much more complicated because they want you to support unpopular positions. Actually politics is very simple. Give the people what they want. Run unpopular positions. And when you win, actually do them. Pass them, get them into law.

54:10I worry about your nephew. Do you worry about him and what to sense? Why do you think I worry about your nephew? Just you want to take a guess as to what, because I don't think it's the common reason to worry about your nephew. I'm worried about his safety. That's what I'm worried about. Because I think that's what most people are worried about. And that's a reasonable thing to worry about. I worry about the fact that the way his generation has grown up and the way his mind works, the addiction to the online need to express yourself that he can feed as much as he does is a vice that you can escape. We can become a prison if you don't know how to sort of get out of it. I think he's a wildly talented human being who has a giant future ahead of him. And I think he's addicted to something that can be poisonous if not governed. Yeah, and so we can't get into his mind. So I love how his nephew and I'm super proud of the success he's had. And by the way, the candidate sees back the one. And people don't talk about his popular positions.

55:12How do you get to be this popular in the first place? All the things that I just mentioned, he also agrees with. And the country's super hungry for. In terms of some of the outrageous things that he said, most of them he's taken back pretty instantly. Like the 9-11 comment, he took back two days later on the on Turks, I had him on for an interview. And he's like, no, no, I didn't mean it that way. I just meant that our foreign policy is getting us involved in these messes we shouldn't be involved in, which now by the way, 80% of the country agrees with. You just couldn't have mangled that message anymore in saying it that way. OK, fine. But there's still things that he says that I think is pretty out there. And I don't agree with. And good news, I can debate him on it. And so I don't know if you know, but everything's giving. We go over to his house for dinner, the family does. And before dinner, we do like a three, four hour debate. When he was at the young Turks, we had a members only show called the Agit Prop, where we would take the socialist position,

56:13I'd take the capitalist position. We're both on the left. And we'd fight for like an hour. And people lost the art of fighting without hating, right? Of debating without saying, I want to eliminate you. And you shouldn't be allowed to speak. We should cancel you altogether. And we should cancel any candidate who talks to you or campaigns with you. I mean, I've campaigned with candidates who backed Israel. And some of those guys now have not denounced the genocide. That is a billion times worse. By the way, how come established from candidates never get asked, do you denounce Benjamin Netanyahu, the butcher of Jerusalem that killed 23,000 kids? That is a million times worse than anything in John's story. Just ask, Federman, that didn't John Stewart just do that? Yeah, finally. And that's part of why I love John Stewart. And it was a great question by John. And of course, Federman had no answer for it. So and John is a guy who is also a rebel, right?

57:15And he didn't quite fit in mainstream media. And that's why he stood out so much because he was a truth teller. And we were at a point where when we were on the air, which is, you know, we're ancient. We're literally the oldest show in online history. We're the first YouTube partner channel. So we were on air before the rack war. And us and Amy Goodman and democracy now were the only national shows saying, don't go into a rack. It's a disaster waiting to happen. Don't do it. It's going to be terrible for America. And everybody yelled at us and everybody said, you got to support the troops and you guys are traders and all that crap that we dealt with. So the Ron Wars sequel for me, right? I've already seen this movie. I already know how it ends. But at that time, John Stewart, it's a hero. And since none of the journalists are saying it, the journalist totally the journalist totally lied us into this war. But there's John Stewart, a brave voice on Daily Show going, no, it ain't true. And so I love that brother. But the exception proves the rule.

58:17And so like that's another point, which is like, if I can debate him for four hours on the air and still stay in the same party, what is everybody getting so animated about? So okay, disagree with him. So what? And by the way, all the candidates he supports also disagree with him on things as when like when he says that he supports Mao Zedong. There's not a single democratic politician in the country who believes that. So they disagree with Hassan on that, but they agree with him on Israel. They agree with him on getting money out of politics, right? So this whole thing of like if I disagree with someone, especially if I really disagree with them, my mind has to melt. No, it doesn't. They or I have to leave the party. No, you don't, right? And I have to cancel them. No, you don't. So here's another good example. The anti-war coalition now is super broad. And I'm allies with all of them, ranging from Hassan on the left to Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene on the right. They've all been on the young Turks. They've all guest hosted on the young Turks, right? And so I've gotten ton of shit for that.

59:19You can't have Tucker Carlson. You can't talk to Marjorie Taylor Greene. So yeah, I can. Well that means you agree with their stance on LGBTQ issues. No, it doesn't. Well, what it means is you're your own boss now. That's what it means. It means you can make your own choices because you don't have any fear of the consequences. Yeah. And so we've already been canceled by everyone. We got canceled by the establishment. We got canceled by the right wing. We even got canceled by the left wing, right? And so like we were having debates two years ago about you haven't been canceled. You're flourishing. What are you talking about? You haven't been canceled by anybody. You own your independent media property and you do things your own way. You have not been canceled. So Dan, that's actually a little bit more complicated than that. So of course you're right because I'm right here and we have a huge media network. And so in fact in digital media we're number one. And that's the opposite of cancel. Exactly. So on that you're absolutely right. But what form does cancellation take? So the first form is no one should associate with him.

1:00:19So I'm in 2020 Bernie Sanders, you are bad and evil if you associate with Jank. That is a form of cancel culture. Then Bernie takes his endorsement of me when I was running back. Well the endorsement got canceled. It did, right? And establishment puts a lot of pressure on companies not to do deals with us. And investors not to invest in us. So now that my money is getting canceled, my contracts are getting canceled because I survived that doesn't mean that it didn't happen and it didn't have a major effect. And I'll tell you when we court and court got canceled from someone on the left, that hurt the most to be honest, okay? And I'll mean emotionally, although of course that is always a problem. Like you're trying to help this side and there are people inside the tent firing at you and saying you're the bad guy, right? And but what it did was it took away some percentage of our subscribers and it sent us into an algorithmic tailspin for some time. And so we were on the ropes there. We got out of it and we're back on top.

1:01:20But all of this could have easily literally canceled us. So all those different attacks have significant downsides and they're real. So it's not just like, haha, somebody doesn't agree with you. What I'm saying to my friends on the left that I have debates with and that attack us, guys, I'm allowed to disagree with you and still be on the left. You're not the mayor of left town, right? And but I say that to the establishment as well. You guys are trying to cancel the guys I've been debating this whole time. I told them abolish prisons was a crazy idea and they got all over me, right? And they were so mad, some of the online left hosts, so mad. I don't dare you not want to abolish prisons, right? I'm like, guys, that polls at 0.02%. You're a la la land. No Democratic voter wants to abolish prisons. You guys are not so, but I love you. I'm not saying go leave the party. I'm saying stay right here, but let us disagree. Now I'm saying it to the people that are on the right of me on the Democratic party. Don't cancel those guys. Don't cancel me. Don't cancel anyone.

1:02:21Let's talk it out instead of constantly saying you should be pushed out of the party. You should be pushed out of the party. I'm telling both of them, don't leave the party. Stay right here and learn how to work together like adults, like grownups. There's a reason I'm asking this question. How many employees do you have? So we're at 60 now. Is the time you're talking about where you thought you were going to get canceled? Is it by you viewed as the most fearful, turbulent time in the doing of this or was the beginning of it the time that you had the most doubt? What was the most uncomfortable time in all of the building of this? I ask about the employees because the responsibility for the people you care about sort of makes it different than when you're just on your own. Yeah, 100%. You nailed it there, Dan. Let me give you the context for it. When we first start, we know we signed up for a super difficult mission. We, Ben and our co-founder Dave Kohler, we didn't take a salary for a couple of years.

1:03:26So we're starving out there. We're living on hot pockets and fruity pebbles. Then, I remember when we got the first contract with Syrias, we were ecstatic because we could pay ourselves $50,000 a year. We thought we made it. But I signed up for that and we all did. That didn't really shake me. The right wing has been at my throat the entire time. That didn't shake me. I signed up for that. Then the establishment, I've been battling those guys for over a decade. They have the most power. They inflict the most damage and pain. But again, that's the war we signed up for. My number one enemy is not the right wing. It's definitely not the people to the left of me in my party. I disagree with them from time to time, but so what? Our main enemy is the establishment. The establishment that is in favor of the corrupt status quo.

1:04:27That's the war that I'm in. That doesn't bother us very much. Our friends on the left attacked me and attacked Anna, my co-hosts and attacked a show. That was tougher to deal with because I was like, guys, so we're populists. We agree with you on 98% of stuff. You're going to cancel us because Anna said she'd prefer to be called a woman. The most benign post you could ever make in human history. She's like, I'm super happy to call you whatever you want. I believe in trans rights. The first show to defend trans rights. Before anyone did it. We fought for a game marriage a decade before Obama and Biden turned and agreed to it, etc. Now I say I think trans kids should be able to compete in high school sports because I don't want you checking kids genitalia and leave them alone.

1:05:27If it turns out my daughter comes in second in the swing and meet, it's not the end of the world. There's only 13 of them in the country. Bring it down. At the professional level and at the Olympic level and the college level, you got to let the leagues decide on their own. That day think is fair, etc. That's it. You're canceled. You're a Nazi. No, that's crazy. No, that's crazy, man. That can't be. You're neither canceled nor a Nazi. These things are not true. It's not what's happening here. People are disagreeing with you because we're all taking sides at this time in America and around the world. But Dan, of course, you're not a Nazi for that. That's the most obvious thing in the world. But people do call you that. And so unfortunately, some people work in vines. It's not the Nazi part. But oh, Jank and Anna have turned right wing and they loved Donald Trump and people lied about that. And then people believed them. And so now we got a rear guard action. Now we're getting hit from the back and we're losing subscribers and they're telling

1:06:29all the other hosts are in a feeding frenzy and they're telling everybody, oh my god, they're right wingers. Now they don't even want to abolish prisons. Oh, forget it. They don't even let all the criminals run free. They're disgusting right wingers. I'm like, guys, and some of them, by the way, we're still supporting Biden. I'm like, you guys want to be Trump and you're supporting Biden. Are you out of your mind? You want to be Trump and you're talking 20 times, 200 times about trans sports and the NFL or whatever the hell with WNBA. What are we talking about? Like nobody's going to pass that bill that let's talk about the things that are popular that we actually can pass. Paid family at least at 84% please concentrate. We're running out of breath. Thank you for the time. Jank TYT on Twitch and all their social channels, the young Turks on YouTube. Thank you. Appreciate what it is you've built. Thank you, Dan. I appreciate the conversation. I love what you've built and I love your show and it's that same ethos of, hey, listen, I don't know if I'm right or not, but this is what I believe and I'm going to say it.

1:07:33And if people like it, great. And I'm doing a thing that I love and I got a collection of people who agree with me and we all keep an open mind and do the best we can. But you and I don't give off. I don't know if I'm right or not. It sounds like we know we're right. Like I think I think that gets us into trouble. I know it does with me. I know with my tone, I can often be right and the way that I'm delivering it is wrong and therefore I end up being wrong because it's not the correct way to communicate. That's not the way to get your message across. Passion is wonderful. It's nice. Like it, your audience absolutely likes it. But it's where it is that we also get in trouble with people not listening enough because we're not doing some of the things that we have to do in communication to soften some of that. In my case, anyways, I'm not, I shouldn't say for you. Yeah, I hear you, but would you have gotten to where you are if you're softer about your opinions, you're quieter about your opinions? I don't think so. I think people liked that you're confident about your opinions. But yeah, it's a meta point that we're making and it's not easy to digest, but you could

1:08:37be passionate about your opinions and still be open-minded. But I've softened some of that later in my career like the rewards are in having the more extreme take. The way that you get the attention economy paying you is by saying the bombastic and outlandish things. I don't really have to do that anymore because like you, I've gotten into a place where I've built a thing that can protect me from whatever it is the damage it can be or most of them anyway. Yeah, and so sports is an easy one to be open-minded on. I think I hope, which is that you'd be surprised. Well, that's true. So I thought the spurs were definitely going to beat the next, but guess what? They didn't. So if you are like, no, I think the spurs are the champions. That won't cost you money. You bet the favor there. You bet the favor there. No, you're not. You're not the brother. The boss do a lot of money. That, Janke, appreciate what it is you've built, sir. Thank you for spending this time with us. Thank you so much, Dan.