Joe Rogan Experience #2234 - Marc Andreessen

Narrator 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Marc Andreessen 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music plays) All right. Hello, Mark.

Marc Andreessen 0:13 Hello.

Joe Rogan 0:13 Good to see you.

Marc Andreessen 0:14 (laughs) Thanks for having me back.

Joe Rogan 0:16 My pleasure. Good to see you. Well, the world's still, uh, functional.

Marc Andreessen 0:19 It's amazing.

Joe Rogan 0:20 Yeah, amazing. Um, we, we wanted to talk, you wanted to talk about the post-election, sort of a wrap-up-

Marc Andreessen 0:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:25 ... and sort of where we stand. Are you happy?

Marc Andreessen 0:28 Very happy. It is-

Joe Rogan 0:30 It was a weird one.

Marc Andreessen 0:31 ... morning in America.

Joe Rogan 0:32 That was, uh, one of the first times ever I felt hopeful-

Marc Andreessen 0:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:35 ... after an election. Like, you should've seen the green room at the comedy club.

Marc Andreessen 0:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:37 Everybody was like, "Yes."

Marc Andreessen 0:39 Yes.

Joe Rogan 0:39 Whew.

Marc Andreessen 0:40 So, my theory is the timeline, l- like in a science fiction movie, the timeline has split twice-

Joe Rogan 0:44 Ah.

Marc Andreessen 0:45 ... in the last, in the last, like, nine months.

Joe Rogan 0:47 What was the first split?

Marc Andreessen 0:48 It was when Trump got shot.

Joe Rogan 0:49 Oh. Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 0:51 And th- and there was that moment where the world was gonna head in two totally different directions.

Joe Rogan 0:54 Right. If he got hit ...

Marc Andreessen 0:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:56 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 0:56 And we saw the most conspicuous display of physical bravery I've ever seen-

Joe Rogan 1:01 Right, afterwards.

Marc Andreessen 1:01 ... at that moment. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:03 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 1:03 And it could've gone v- you know, horrifically badly for the entire world after that. So, that was timeline split number one. So, that other timeline is out there somewhere-

Joe Rogan 1:10 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 1:10 ... and I don't wanna visit it.

Joe Rogan 1:11 Boy, imagine being stuck there. What kind of horrible karma?

Marc Andreessen 1:15 No.

Joe Rogan 1:15 I mean, that's a totalitarian, dystopian nightmare.

Marc Andreessen 1:18 That's the bad place.

Joe Rogan 1:20 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 1:20 Um, and then, uh, timelines split again on Election Day.

Joe Rogan 1:23 I know you're a, you fancy a good conspiracy theory.

Marc Andreessen 1:25 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:26 And, uh, that, that gentleman being able to pull off what he did-

Marc Andreessen 1:31 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:31 ... and, you know, the way it happened, the way it all went down is, it's a Lee Harvey Oswald 2.0.

Marc Andreessen 1:38 Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:39 Clearly.

Marc Andreessen 1:40 Yeah, the shooter, and ...

Joe Rogan 1:41 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 1:41 That we still don't know anything.

Joe Rogan 1:44 There's no call for disclosure.

Marc Andreessen 1:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:46 There's no call for a press conference. There's no toxicology report. The toxicology report had to have been done.

Marc Andreessen 1:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:54 Wouldn't you wanna know, like, what kind of stuff this kid is on that made him want to do that, or if anything?

Marc Andreessen 1:59 Yeah. So, my theory is it's almost as if the people want us to think it's a conspiracy. Like, it- it's almost like the whole thing is almost orchestrated. Like, it's just, it's so strange to us, is like the rapid cremation. Like, the- the whole thing-

Joe Rogan 2:13 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 2:13 ... was just completely bizarre. And then you're exactly right. Like, no hearings, no- no- no nothing. Now, having said that, I expect that this will change, right? So, you know-

Joe Rogan 2:19 Do you think they're gonna do a dive into what happened?

Marc Andreessen 2:21 I mean, I would. I- I don't know if they will, but I, you know, I certainly would, if I was in a position to do that, so ...

Joe Rogan 2:25 I wonder what they can actually find. I mean, I don't know if they wanted it to be a conspiracy that people talked about, or if that's simply the best way to pull it off.

Marc Andreessen 2:35 Yeah. Or it's just, yeah. Or it's just a, you know, as we saw, I think, in the hearing afterwards, maybe just a systemic collapse of confidence.

Joe Rogan 2:41 There's also a confidence in the fact that the, uh, the news timeline today is so rapid.

Marc Andreessen 2:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 2:48 The, when things are relevant and people are paying attention to them is, you have a couple days.

Marc Andreessen 2:54 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:54 Even with an assassination attempt on a former president-

Marc Andreessen 2:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:57 ... where- wh- where people were murdered.

Marc Andreessen 2:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:59 And there's ... It's in and out.

Marc Andreessen 3:02 Yeah, that's right. I think it's exactly ... I think the news cycle now is like a two to three day social media firestorm, and we just cycle from one to the next.

Joe Rogan 3:08 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 3:08 And we have the memory of goldfish and ... Right? They, you know, things, right, things that would've been era-defining just come and go with astonishing speed, uh, and shock. By the way, I- I should say, I don't think there was a cons- I- I- I doubt there was a conspiracy. I think anything's possible. I think we just, we have a confidence collapse, and I think we saw that on display when the- when the director at the time, you know, testified. Uh-

Joe Rogan 3:26 Well, there's all the elements that it could've been a conspiracy, right?

Marc Andreessen 3:29 It- it could've, but this is kind of the thing-

Joe Rogan 3:30 All of them.

Marc Andreessen 3:30 ... which is just like, it also could've been-

Joe Rogan 3:31 Right.

Marc Andreessen 3:32 ... systemic confidence collapse and then it's like, okay, would it be better off for the institute, you know, if it looks like a conspiracy, right?

Joe Rogan 3:37 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 3:38 Like, you know. Like, w- which world ... Okay, two timelines. Which world would you, would you rather live in, the one with the conspiracies, or the one with just, like, incompetence everywhere?

Joe Rogan 3:45 Well, I think you have both.

Marc Andreessen 3:46 Right.

Joe Rogan 3:46 Simultaneously.

Marc Andreessen 3:47 Right.

Joe Rogan 3:47 I don't think it's binary.

Marc Andreessen 3:48 Right.

Joe Rogan 3:49 I- I think there's incompetence everywhere and conspiracies are legitimate. They're real.

Marc Andreessen 3:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 3:53 And that one seems like conspiracy. The- the fact that his, uh, his house was professionally scrubbed. There's no social media record of this kid online. There's no nothing.

Marc Andreessen 4:03 He's the only kid of his generation who's that fired up about politics to have no online footprint.

Joe Rogan 4:07 Right.

Marc Andreessen 4:07 Like, it just doesn't make any sense. So ...

Joe Rogan 4:09 And he's a registered Republican.

Marc Andreessen 4:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:10 Like, the whole thing is like ...

Marc Andreessen 4:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:12 So weird.

Marc Andreessen 4:13 And he was, like, a bad shooter and then he became a great shooter and ...

Joe Rogan 4:15 Well, he definitely trained.

Marc Andreessen 4:16 (laughs) Yeah, right. But-

Joe Rogan 4:16 Like, you could train someone-

Marc Andreessen 4:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:18 ... to become a good shooter.

Marc Andreessen 4:18 But, like-

Joe Rogan 4:19 This is all you have to do. (fingers snap)

Marc Andreessen 4:20 But that's not-

Joe Rogan 4:20 Don't move, and do that.

Marc Andreessen 4:22 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:22 Get all your mechanics in place.

Marc Andreessen 4:24 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:24 Understand technique and positioning, breathing. It's not, like, the most complicated thing from a prone position.

Marc Andreessen 4:30 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:30 But the fact that he chose to use iron sights I thought was weird too.

Marc Andreessen 4:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:34 There's a lot of weirdness to it.

Marc Andreessen 4:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:36 You know, from 140 yards with a scope, that is an easy shot.

Marc Andreessen 4:41 Yeah. Well, and then he could just, like, wander up.

Joe Rogan 4:43 That's the different timeline. The different timeline is he has a scope.

Marc Andreessen 4:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:46 And that's it.

Marc Andreessen 4:46 Okay. All right. Right. That would've ... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:48 And Trump's dead.

Marc Andreessen 4:48 Yep.

Joe Rogan 4:49 And then boy ...

Marc Andreessen 4:51 Yep.

Joe Rogan 4:51 Boy, do we live in a crazy world then.

Marc Andreessen 4:54 Yeah. Yeah, completely bizarre.

Joe Rogan 4:55 I mean, what do the streets look like right now?

Marc Andreessen 4:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:57 What kind of, like, protests and riots and ...

Marc Andreessen 4:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:00 Whew. You think January 6th was nuts?

Marc Andreessen 5:02 (laughs) If they-

Joe Rogan 5:03 If they had killed Trump, there would be January 6th on steroids everywhere.

Marc Andreessen 5:06 Yeah. That's right. And we would, we would experience it. I mean, you know, I- I don't know. When I was a kid, my- my, uh, my high school (laughs) , high school history teacher got us a bootleg copy of the Zapruder film.

Joe Rogan 5:15 Really?

Marc Andreessen 5:15 Which, I mean, but you know, was like-

Joe Rogan 5:16 What a gangster high school history teacher.

Marc Andreessen 5:18 He was actually pretty focused on the ... He really loved the Kennedy assassination, so we- we spent-

Joe Rogan 5:21 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 5:21 ... spent a lot of time on that. And, and, you know, you know, you kinda watch it frame by frame and you can kinda see what's happening, but there's lots of questions. But, like, when things like that happen, you know, today, it's gonna be in high definition, 4K, ultra surround sound forever.

Joe Rogan 5:33 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 5:33 Right? Playing out in real time forever, and so, like, I, yeah. I- I very much don't wanna live in a world where those things happen.

Joe Rogan 5:38 Well, we are very fortunate.

Marc Andreessen 5:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:40 I mean, I, like I said, after the election, I was like, "Wow. Voting works." (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 5:45 Yeah. Yes. (laughs) Yes. Yeah, how about that? How about that?

Joe Rogan 5:48 Voting works. That's nice. Like, they don't have the system completely rigged.

Marc Andreessen 5:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:52 And then, but they kind of ...... tried to rig it, at least with the media. The, where the real rigging in the 2020 election's, I mean, you can cast all your conspiracies upon it, as in terms of like mail-in ballots and all this jazz. But the real rigging was the collusion-

Marc Andreessen 6:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 6:11 ... between social media companies and the government to suppress information that would have altered the effect of the election.

Marc Andreessen 6:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:18 That's legitimate.

Marc Andreessen 6:18 Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, that was like direct interference and it was, you know, aided and abetted by a lot of former, you know, intelligence officials, and-

Joe Rogan 6:23 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 6:24 ... by, and by the current administration. You know, tons of pressure on censorship coming from this, you know, the current administration and all their kind of arms of the censor- censorship apparatus. Um...

Joe Rogan 6:32 You have your hands in the tech community.

Marc Andreessen 6:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:34 You have your fingers in all that jazz.

Marc Andreessen 6:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:35 Like, what was the general attitude about all that stuff when it was revealed? How did, how did people, you know, how did your peers respond to that?

Marc Andreessen 6:45 I think anybody in social media, the internet companies knew it.

Joe Rogan 6:48 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 6:49 So I, I th- it was pretty widely understood. I mean, look, there's nothing that happened at Twitter, in the Twitter files that wasn't happening all the oth- uh, all the other companies, right?

Joe Rogan 6:54 Right.

Marc Andreessen 6:54 So it's a, it's a consistent pattern. If you got y- the YouTube files, they would look exactly the same. And of course, we should get the YouTube files, right?

Joe Rogan 7:00 Sure. Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 7:00 And now we probably, we probably will now with, you know, this new administration's probably gonna-

Joe Rogan 7:03 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 7:03 ... like carve all this stuff open, but... Yeah, no, look, it was a pattern. And then look, you know, the, the companies bear a lot of responsibility and the people in the companies, you know, made a lot of, I think, bad judgment calls. But the government, the, like, the, the Biden White House was directly exerting censorship pressure, uh, on American companies to censor American citizens.

Joe Rogan 7:18 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 7:18 Which I, which I think, by the way, is just flatly illegal. Like, I, I think it's actually subject to criminal charges. Like, I think there are people with criminal liability who were involved in this. So th- there was that, there were also members of Congress doing the same thing, which is also illegal. And then there was a lot of funding of outside third-party groups that were, that were bringing a lot of pressure down on censorship.

Joe Rogan 7:35 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 7:35 And, uh, just an example of that is there's a unit at Stanford, you know, right next door, um, you know, to us, that, um, you know, c- was the Internet censorship unit that was funded by the US government-

Joe Rogan 7:44 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 7:44 ... and exerted tremendous pressure on the companies to censor. And it was, and it was very effective at doing so.

Joe Rogan 7:48 Does it smell like sulfur when you walk those halls?

Marc Andreessen 7:50 It is very dark and grim. Um-

Joe Rogan 7:53 Ooh.

Marc Andreessen 7:53 Th- this whole thing is, is, is very bad. Um, and so, um-

Joe Rogan 7:56 Stanford?

Marc Andreessen 7:56 Oh, yeah. At Stan- yeah, Stanford. Stanford, by the way, another unit like that at Harvard. Y- you know, a bu- a bunch of universities got pulled into this, a lot of NGOs and nonprofits got pulled into this. And so the-

Joe Rogan 8:05 Whew.

Marc Andreessen 8:05 ... Twitter files showed us kind of the basic roadmap. Um, and then there's this thing called the Weaponization Committee that, uh, Congressman Jordan is running that has also revealed a lot of this. But I, I would imagine the new Trump administration is gonna come in and carve all that wide open, and I know that there are people in, you know, being a- appointed to senior positions who are very determined to do that.

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Joe Rogan 9:22 lose. So head to blinds.com now and grab those Black Friday deals all month long. Use the code ROGAN for $50 off when you spend $500 or more. Limited time offer, rules and restrictions apply. See blinds.com for details. One of the things that I found really kind of shocking was when they revealed how much money the Democrats had spent on the election and how much money was spent on activist groups.

Marc Andreessen 9:50 Yeah. Right.

Joe Rogan 9:52 It's like, more than $100 million, right?

Marc Andreessen 9:54 Yeah. The, there's just, there's extensive government funding of polit- of, of, of politically oriented NGOs. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:59 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 10:00 NGO's one of those great terms, right? Non-governmental organization. All right. Like, wh- wh- what, what, what the hell is that? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:06 Right. What is that? Tell me. I don't know.

Marc Andreessen 10:07 Well, it's, it's sort of a charity and, but what it real-

Joe Rogan 10:09 Sort of.

Marc Andreessen 10:10 Sort of. But most of the time it's, it's a, it's a political e- entity. I- it's an entity with a political agenda. But then it's funded by the government (laughs) in a very large percentage of cases, including the, the NGO, the NGOs and the censorship complex. Like, the government grants, National Science Foundation grants, like dir- d- State Department grants. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:27 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 10:27 Right? Direct money. And then it, okay, now you've got an NGO funded by the government. Well, that's not an NGO. Like... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:32 Right.

Marc Andreessen 10:32 That's a GO.

Joe Rogan 10:34 Right.

Marc Andreessen 10:34 Right? And then you've got a conspiracy, y- that, you know, like with censorship, then you have a conspiracy 'cause you've got government officials using government money to fund w- what are, what look like private m- organizations that aren't, d- And then what happens is the government outsources to these (laughs) NGOs the things that it's not legally allowed to do.

Joe Rogan 10:51 Like what?

Marc Andreessen 10:52 Like, like censorship. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:53 Oh, okay.

Marc Andreessen 10:54 Like violation of First Amendment rights.

Joe Rogan 10:56 Right.

Marc Andreessen 10:56 Right? The, the government... So the first, so, so what they always say is the First Amendment only applies to the government. The First Amendment says the government cannot, cannot censor American citizens. And so what they do is if you want to censor American citizens, you're in the government, y- y- if you're smart, you don't do that. What you do is you fund an outside organization and then you have them do it.

Joe Rogan 11:11 Boy.

Marc Andreessen 11:11 Right. A- and that's what's been happening, right? And, and, and, uh-

Joe Rogan 11:14 That's like hiring a hitman. Like, it's not okay to murder someone, but you can hire someone to murder someone and then you're clean.

Marc Andreessen 11:19 Yeah. And if you want to solve a murder, it's not enough to find out who the hitman was, you have to find out who paid the hitman, right?

Joe Rogan 11:24 Right. Of course.

Marc Andreessen 11:24 You wanna, you wanna work your way up, up the chain. And so a lot, a lot of this traces into the White House. The best defense the companies have is that a lot of this happened under coercion, right? Because wh- when the, when the government, when the government puts pressure on you, like, it, it might be a phone call, it might be a letter, it might be the threat of an investigation, it might be a subpoena. It, it could take many forms. But when the government does that, it carries ... you know, th- that's a very powerful message. I-... it's like-

Joe Rogan 11:45 Right.

Marc Andreessen 11:45 ... it's like a message from a mob boss, right?

Joe Rogan 11:47 Right.

Marc Andreessen 11:47 It's like, "Don't you wanna do me a favor?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:49 Right. (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 11:50 It's like, you know, "Yes, Mr. Gambino, I do." Right? Like ... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:53 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 11:53 I like my corner store. I'd like it to not catch on fire tonight, right?

Joe Rogan 11:55 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 11:56 And so, the- there's th- there's this overwhelming hammer blow of pressure that comes in. Um ... And, and by the way, even when the government doesn't talk to you directly, if they're funding the organization that is talking to you, then it's very clear what's happening, and so you, you come under incredible pressure. And so, the, the, the whole kinda chain, this whole chain of governments, activists, universities, and companies was corrupted. And then on top of that, people in the companies, in a lot of cases, made a lot of decisions that I think they're probably increasingly starting to regret.

Joe Rogan 12:18 What was confusing to me was that the government spent so much money on these activist groups during the election, and I didn't understand, like, what purpose that would serve. Like, what, what function would it serve to spend all this money on these activist groups that already support you, supposedly?

Marc Andreessen 12:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:39 Like, are you bribing them to support you? Are they ... what are they d- are they ... are you paying them to go on talk shows and consistently, uh, repeat the government's message, the current administration's message? Like, what, what would be the function of that?

Marc Andreessen 12:53 So, I think in some ca- uh, in some cases, it's just, it's just pay-to-play, right? So for, as an example, we know that Kamala's campaign paid certain (laughs) on-air personalities, you know, fou- ... and then they were, they were ... you know, which re- it's to your point, people were very supportive of, of Kamala, who then gave her, you know, interviews that, that went really well. And so I, I think in some cases, you just have straight pay-to-play. That's just how that system works. It's just expected. And then I think you have other organizations, like, like these NGOs and others, activist groups, where they're, they're actually, you know, they actually do field activities, right? And so there's, you know, maybe there's a get-out-the-vote component or there's, you know, a social media influence downstream component or some other, you know, kind of field activity that's happening in support of the election.

Joe Rogan 13:26 I just didn't think that they pa- like, when ... it's still unclear whether or not celebrities got paid to endorse her.

Marc Andreessen 13:33 Right.

Joe Rogan 13:34 Y- right? Have you-

Marc Andreessen 13:35 Th- they, they've mixed it up 'cause there's pre- there's, they ... like Oprah says, Oprah says, sh- the, it's the, her production company was paid to put on the production, but she was not paid for the interview.

Joe Rogan 13:42 Yeah, what happened-

Marc Andreessen 13:43 But it was, you know, two and f- whatever, $2 million-

Joe Rogan 13:45 $2.5 million.

Marc Andreessen 13:45 ... $2.5 million.

Joe Rogan 13:45 It was initially listed as one, and then it turned out it was 2.5.

Marc Andreessen 13:48 Right, and so it- she owns a-

Joe Rogan 13:49 But like, if I own a production company-

Marc Andreessen 13:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 13:51 ... and my production company gets paid $2.5 million to endorse Trump-

Marc Andreessen 13:55 Right.

Joe Rogan 13:55 ... and then I go, "I didn't get any of that money."

Marc Andreessen 13:57 Right.

Joe Rogan 13:57 People are like, "Shut the fuck up."

Marc Andreessen 13:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:59 "Of course you got-"

Marc Andreessen 14:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:00 "It's your company."

Marc Andreessen 14:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:01 "What are you talking about?"

Marc Andreessen 14:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:02 And also-

Marc Andreessen 14:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:03 ... how much does it cost to do an event?

Marc Andreessen 14:05 Yes.

Joe Rogan 14:06 How does it cost $2.5 million to put on an event? Like, are you feeding people gold sandwiches?

Marc Andreessen 14:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:11 Like, what are you doing?

Marc Andreessen 14:12 Yes.

Joe Rogan 14:12 Like, how is that possible?

Marc Andreessen 14:13 Yeah, exactly. So yeah, and then you're ... 'cause th- the fact that it's deliberately obfuscated, of course, is a, is a clue as to-

Joe Rogan 14:18 I just thought-

Marc Andreessen 14:19 ... what's happening.

Joe Rogan 14:19 ... the really bizarre one was the allegations. And I, I'd say unsubstantiated allegations. It's been alleged that Beyoncé got $10 million.

Marc Andreessen 14:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:30 And Lizzo got $3 million. Eminem got $1.8 million. Like, really?

Marc Andreessen 14:34 Yeah. I think if you had just like published all these numbers, these celebrities would all get so mad at each other, that you, you, you, y-

Joe Rogan 14:39 Oh, I'm sure they are.

Marc Andreessen 14:40 Th- th- then you would learn everything, but it's like-

Joe Rogan 14:41 Eminem got short-

Marc Andreessen 14:42 Right, right, right.

Joe Rogan 14:42 He got shorted. Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 14:43 Lizz- Lizzo's furious right now, right?

Joe Rogan 14:44 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 14:45 Lizzo's probably listening to this right now being like, "What?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:47 Well, I wonder if Lizzo's like, "I didn't get shit."

Marc Andreessen 14:50 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 14:50 I would say it, but why haven't they said it? Like, Beyoncé has been mum about the whole thing.

Marc Andreessen 14:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:55 I, I, I think I would probably say-

Marc Andreessen 14:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:57 ... like, "I didn't get any money to do that."

Marc Andreessen 14:59 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:59 But that was a weird one too, because a lot of people thought Beyoncé was gonna do a concert.

Marc Andreessen 15:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:03 And she just went out there and talked and everybody was like, "What the fuck?"

Marc Andreessen 15:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:06 'Cause they all came to see a free Beyoncé concert-

Marc Andreessen 15:08 Yes.

Joe Rogan 15:09 ... and then she just said, "I wanna support Kamala Harris," and everybody's like, "Good, good." Now, if you like it, then you should've put a ring on it, right?

Marc Andreessen 15:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:17 Uh, uh, oh. Oh, come on. (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 15:19 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 15:19 We love your songs.

Marc Andreessen 15:20 Yes.

Joe Rogan 15:21 That's what we're here for.

Marc Andreessen 15:22 Yes.

Joe Rogan 15:23 I just didn't think that it was even possible that a ... I, I didn't think a candidate would ever pay for an endorsement.

Marc Andreessen 15:31 Yeah. Oh-

Joe Rogan 15:31 I mean, the fact that it was-

Marc Andreessen 15:32 ... yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:32 ... even alleged.

Marc Andreessen 15:34 Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, and then there's, of course, there's, there's the, the even stinkier version arguably, which is all the d- all the social media influencer campaigns now. There's, you know, a tremendous amount of payola.

Joe Rogan 15:41 That's for sure.

Marc Andreessen 15:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 15:42 'Cause I know people personally who were approached multiple times-

Marc Andreessen 15:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:46 ... and offered a substantial amount of money to post things-

Marc Andreessen 15:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:50 ... in support of Harris.

Marc Andreessen 15:51 Yeah. And like, I'm, I'm pro capitalism and I'm happy for them-

Joe Rogan 15:54 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 15:54 ... that they get paid, but like, maybe we should know. Like-

Joe Rogan 15:56 Yeah, that seems like something you should absolutely have to disclose. It should, uh, be like, like say if I was gonna do an ad for, you know, whatever, uh, a certain coffee company, Black Rifle Coffee-

Marc Andreessen 16:06 Right.

Joe Rogan 16:06 ... and I did it on my Instagram, I'd have to say "ad." I'd have to say, "This is an ad."

Marc Andreessen 16:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:10 It's a paid ad.

Marc Andreessen 16:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:12 I mean, that's part of the thing.

Marc Andreessen 16:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:14 You know?

Marc Andreessen 16:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:15 Unless it's your company.

Marc Andreessen 16:16 Yep.

Joe Rogan 16:17 Like, you're supposed to say, "They're paying me to do this."

Marc Andreessen 16:19 Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, look, I- the good news with these is we learn- e- each cycle we learn a lot about how politics works. We learn about, a lot about how fake it is. We learn a lot about the things we put up with for a very long time. I mean, everybody's always, like, freaked out by, like, whatever the new guy does, but, like, the s- real scandal in most cases, I think, is the, just the way the system already works.

Joe Rogan 16:35 It's a sneaky system.

Marc Andreessen 16:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:37 Well, w- another fascinating aspect of this system that we learned out this time around is the uncontrolled aspect of it, like what, uh, Trump called earned media-

Marc Andreessen 16:48 Right.

Joe Rogan 16:49 ... was much more powerful than anything else.

Marc Andreessen 16:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:51 The uncontrolled version of it. Like, one of the things that, unfortunately for them, m- mass media or corporate media has done is they've diminished their credibility so much, so much so, that like, Joy Reid was on TV today talking about s- saying that Trump was gonna shoot protestors and all ... just wild, unsubstantiated, crazy shit.

Marc Andreessen 17:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:16 And the more they do stuff like that, the more that they say things like that, the more it diminishes their impact and the more it drives people-

Marc Andreessen 17:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:24 ... to independent media sources.

Marc Andreessen 17:26 Yeah. I'm sure you've seen the ratings collapse that they, that they've, they've been ex- you know, they're down to like, they're down to like ... MSNBC's down to like 50,000 people in the 18 to 20, 18 to 49 demo.

Joe Rogan 17:35 That is so wild.

Marc Andreessen 17:36 Which is-... tiny. (laughs) Right?

Joe Rogan 17:37 It's so crazy.

Marc Andreessen 17:38 It's, it's really tiny. So, I think that's happening. Um, the Gallup organization has done polls on trust in institutions including, you know, media for the last 60 years. It's been a steady slide down, um, and in the last, you know, four years, it's fallen off a cliff. I, I think it's real ... Oh, there's another study that came out, um, g- uh, the kids are now watching a lot less TV. Kids are just giving up on TV. Um-

Joe Rogan 17:57 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 17:58 ... and they're just, you know, they're on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram and other things. Um, and so, like, I, I, I think it's tipping. Uh, a question I've been asking myself is when, when will the actual ... You know, famously, 1960 was the first television election, right? The, you know, sort of legend has it-

Joe Rogan 18:11 Sure.

Marc Andreessen 18:11 ... because it was the one where the televised debate really mattered.

Joe Rogan 18:13 Mm-hmm.

Marc Andreessen 18:13 And if you saw the televised debate, you saw a confident Kennedy and nervous Nixon, and if you heard-

Joe Rogan 18:17 Right.

Marc Andreessen 18:18 ... it, you experienced something different.

Joe Rogan 18:19 And handsomeness-

Marc Andreessen 18:20 And handsom-

Joe Rogan 18:20 ... came into effect.

Marc Andreessen 18:21 And vitality-

Joe Rogan 18:22 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 18:22 ... and health and-

Joe Rogan 18:23 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 18:23 Right? And all, all these things. Um, sort of positive, positive spirit, positive energy. Um, I'm actually not ... This, this might be of, have been the first internet election, or maybe we actually haven't had it yet. Like, I feel like we're really close to the first internet election, but maybe it's not all the way there.

Joe Rogan 18:36 I think this is it.

Marc Andreessen 18:37 I think this ... There's an argument that this is it, right, and that, you know, the, all the, you know, all the stuff, especially in the last six months, all the P-

Joe Rogan 18:42 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 18:42 ... you know, podcasts, obviously, and your show played a big role. But, like, I think there's a real ... If you were gonna run in '28, like I think there's, like, a fully internet-native way to run these campaigns that might literally involve, like, zero television advertising, and maybe you don't even need to raise that money. And maybe, to your point, if you have the right message, maybe you just go straight direct.

Joe Rogan 19:00 Yeah, I think-

Marc Andreessen 19:00 There might be a completely different way to do this.

Joe Rogan 19:02 I think that's the only way now.

Marc Andreessen 19:04 Yep.

Joe Rogan 19:04 And I think if you do pay people, it's not gonna have the same impact.

Marc Andreessen 19:07 Yep.

Joe Rogan 19:08 You know, I think these Call Her Daddy shows and all these different shows that she went on, I mean, I'm sure they had an, an impact.

Marc Andreessen 19:14 Yep.

Joe Rogan 19:14 But I think that in the future, uh, uh, I'm sure they're, they're scrambling to try to create their own version of this show.

Marc Andreessen 19:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 19:23 This is one thing that keeps coming up, like, "We-

Marc Andreessen 19:25 Right.

Joe Rogan 19:25 ... need our own Joe Rogan."

Marc Andreessen 19:26 Right.

Joe Rogan 19:27 But they had me. (laughs) I was on their side.

Marc Andreessen 19:28 Well, number one, they had you. Number one, they had you.

Joe Rogan 19:30 I was on their side.

Marc Andreessen 19:31 They had you and they drove you away. Is that number one? Number ... But they also have, m- you know, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN.

Joe Rogan 19:36 Right. But that doesn't-

Marc Andreessen 19:37 They-

Joe Rogan 19:37 ... work anymore.

Marc Andreessen 19:38 I know, but-

Joe Rogan 19:38 Those a- that's like, you know, like you're using smoke signals-

Marc Andreessen 19:41 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:41 ... when everybody else has a cellphone.

Marc Andreessen 19:42 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 19:43 It doesn't work.

Marc Andreessen 19:44 Yeah. That's right, that's right.

Joe Rogan 19:45 It's just, it's, it's a bizarre time.

Marc Andreessen 19:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:47 It's really interesting, though.

Marc Andreessen 19:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:48 Like, as you said, like, we're in a great timeline, and I think, um, it's a fascinating timeline, too, because there's so much uncertainty, and there's so much ... Right? We are at the verge of AI, you know, uh, OpenAI, you know, Altman has said now that he thinks 2025 will be the year that AI becomes sentient-

Marc Andreessen 20:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 20:07 ... whatever that means. You know?

Marc Andreessen 20:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:09 Artificial general intelligence will be-

Marc Andreessen 20:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:11 ... will emerge. And who knows how that affects ... I've, I've said publicly, and I'm kind of half joking-

Marc Andreessen 20:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:17 ... that we need AI government.

Marc Andreessen 20:19 Yep.

Joe Rogan 20:19 You know? I mean, it sounds crazy to say-

Marc Andreessen 20:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:22 ... but instead of having this, like, alpha chimpanzee-

Marc Andreessen 20:24 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 20:24 ... that runs the tribe of humans-

Marc Andreessen 20:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:27 ... how about we have some, like, really logical, fact-based-

Marc Andreessen 20:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:31 ... you know, program-

Marc Andreessen 20:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 20:32 ... that, you know, makes it, like, really reasonable and equitable in a way that we can all agree to?

Marc Andreessen 20:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 20:37 And let's govern things in that manner.

Marc Andreessen 20:39 Right. So, you can actually simulate this today, 'cause you c- you can go on these systems, ChatGPT or Claude or these others, um, and you c- you can ask, you know, "How should we handle issue X? How should this be run?"

Joe Rogan 20:48 Yeah, we've done that.

Marc Andreessen 20:49 Right. "How should the, you know-

Joe Rogan 20:49 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 20:50 ... Department of Energy do whatever, nuclear policy or whatever?" And, and, uh, what I find when I do that is I discover two things. Number one, of course, these things are, these things have the same problem social media's had, which is they're tremendously politically biased. And-

Joe Rogan 20:59 Right.

Marc Andreessen 20:59 ... you know, that's on purpose, and they, they need to fix that. And that's gonna be a big topic in the next several years. But the other thing you learn is if you can get through the political, basically, bias and censorship, if you can actually get to a discussion of the actual issue, it's, you get very sophisticated answers.

Joe Rogan 21:11 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 21:12 Right? And very logical, very straightforward, and it will explain every aspect of the issue to you, and it'll take you through all the pros and cons.

Joe Rogan 21:17 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 21:18 And, you know ...

Joe Rogan 21:19 I mean, it might be the way to go.

Marc Andreessen 21:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:21 Which is so horrifying for people to think, 'cause everyone's worried about the Terminators taking over the world-

Marc Andreessen 21:26 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 21:26 ... and, like, if that's the first step, is we let them govern us.

Marc Andreessen 21:30 Well, look, the- there's nothing stopping a pol- a politician from using this. There's nothing stopping a policymaker from using it, you know, as a tool.

Joe Rogan 21:35 Right.

Marc Andreessen 21:35 You, you start out ... At, at very least-

Joe Rogan 21:36 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 21:36 ... you start out using it as a tool. There's nothing to prevent ... Uh, and like, for example, I think military commanders in the field are gonna have basically AI battlefield assistants that are gonna advise them on strategy, tactics-

Joe Rogan 21:45 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 21:45 ... right? How to win conflicts, and then it'll start to work its way up, and then they'll be doing, you know, war planning. Um, and, and then if you're a general, if you're a cr- you know, a sergeant or a colonel or a general, it's gonna just mean you perform better. Um-

Joe Rogan 21:55 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 21:55 And so, so maybe there's, like, you know, the human, th- the sort of man-machine kind of symbiotic relationship. And you, and you could imagine that happening more in the, in the policy process and in the, and in the political process.

Joe Rogan 22:03 And there's also AI-controlled jets, which are far superior.

Marc Andreessen 22:07 Yep.

Joe Rogan 22:07 They, they did, uh, Mike Baker was telling us about that. They did these simulated dogfights, and the AI-controlled jets won 100% of the time-

Marc Andreessen 22:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:15 ... over humans.

Marc Andreessen 22:15 Yeah. And there's a bunch of reasons for that, and, and part of it is just simply the speed of, of processing and, and, and so forth. But a-another big thing is if you don't have a human in the plane, you don't have the, uh, what does they say, the spam in the can. You don't have the, you know, you don't have the human body-

Joe Rogan 22:27 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 22:27 ... in the plane. You don't have to keep a human being alive, which means you can be a lot faster, and you can move a lot more quickly. And-

Joe Rogan 22:32 G-forces.

Marc Andreessen 22:33 ... keep much, much higher G-forces.

Joe Rogan 22:34 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 22:35 And that, yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:35 And then there's no option for someone to go crazy.

Marc Andreessen 22:39 Yeah. That's als-

Joe Rogan 22:40 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 22:40 Yeah, that's also right. Yes. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 22:42 There's no ... There's no-

Marc Andreessen 22:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:43 ... human element-

Marc Andreessen 22:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:44 ... you know, which is, uh, a real element.

Marc Andreessen 22:46 Yeah. No, look, I think we're gonna ... It's gonna be common to have, like, Mach 5 drone, you know, jet drones within a f-

Joe Rogan 22:51 Phew.

Marc Andreessen 22:51 ... within a few years. And, you know, they'll be a fraction of the size of the current, you know, manned planes, which means you can have, like, a lot more of them. And so you kind of want to imagine, you know, a thousand of these things, like, coming over the horizon right at you. Um, and it really changes ... Uh, is, uh, it- it's actually, I think, gonna be very interesting. It really changes the fundamental equation of war, uh, in the following sense. Fundamentally, in the past, the people who won wars are the, the o- the, the people who had the most men and the most material.

Joe Rogan 23:14 Right.

Marc Andreessen 23:14 And so you just needed the most soldiers and you needed the most equipment. Um, and in this drone world that we're talking about, it's gonna be the people with the most money and the best technology.

Joe Rogan 23:21 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 23:22 Right? And so for example, small states, you know, small advanced states, like Singapore, will be able to punch way above their weight, and then-

Joe Rogan 23:27 Mmm.

Marc Andreessen 23:28 ... kind of large, uh, sort of economically or technologically backward states that normally would have won will now lose.

Joe Rogan 23:34 Mmm.

Marc Andreessen 23:34 Um, and so it's gonna, it's gonna be a, a recalibration. And then-... it has the, the, the good news is you're not putting soldiers at risk, right? So-

Joe Rogan 23:39 Right.

Marc Andreessen 23:39 ... you'll have a lot less, a lot less dea- The, the, the bad news, arguably, is it'll be easier to get into conflicts because (laughs) you're not putting soldiers at risk. So there's gonna have to be a recalibration of, like, when you actually, like, lead an attack.

Joe Rogan 23:50 I'm sure you're aware of all this UA- UAP disclosure jazz that you see on television.

Marc Andreessen 23:55 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 23:56 Um, th- the more I look into it, the more I think at least a percentage of it, a healthy percentage of it, is bullshit. And there's probably some government projects where they've developed some very sophisticated propulsion systems that they've applied to drones.

Marc Andreessen 24:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 24:14 And that that's what these people are seeing, and this is one of the reasons why they continually have sightings over secured military spaces, like out in the Eastern seaboard. Like, there's, uh, areas over Virginia where they continually see them, in San Diego, they see them off the coast of San Diego-

Marc Andreessen 24:31 Right.

Joe Rogan 24:31 ... where there's a place where you would test stuff like that.

Marc Andreessen 24:34 Yeah. Well, so of cou- of course we know that that was the case for a very long time, for sure, from the '50s through the '80s, because we- the development of stealth, right?

Joe Rogan 24:41 Right.

Marc Andreessen 24:41 Was, was highly classified.

Joe Rogan 24:42 Mm-hmm.

Marc Andreessen 24:42 And the SR-71 was brand new at one point, and so you had these-

Joe Rogan 24:45 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 24:45 ... like, you know, alien, (laughs) you know-

Joe Rogan 24:47 Do you pay attention to any of that stuff at all?

Marc Andreessen 24:48 Of course, of course, 100%. Yeah. And then, and then, and then by the way, we're not the only ones, and so I- I- I, you know, my speculation would be that a lo- some of the military base stuff is, is, is, you know, the Chinese doing something similar.

Joe Rogan 24:57 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 24:58 Um, and, you know, we got a glimpse into that with the balloon. Y- y- y-

Joe Rogan 25:01 Well, that one was goofy, though.

Marc Andreessen 25:02 It got shut down, but still-

Joe Rogan 25:03 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 25:03 ... the fact that the Chinese are flying surveillance balloons over American territory-

Joe Rogan 25:07 Mm-hmm.

Marc Andreessen 25:07 ... and they were able to slip through our early warning systems and just, like, you know, loiter above military bases and, like, you know, take lots of, you know, imagery and do whatever scans they do.

Joe Rogan 25:15 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 25:15 And, like nu- literally nothing was happening, and we didn't even know they were there most of the time. And so, like, you know, that is que- that's like a tip of the ice- it feels like a tip of the iceberg kind of thing, where if, if they were doing that, there, there are probably other things going on.

Joe Rogan 25:25 Well, I've read that someone had commented that similar things had happened during the Trump administration-

Marc Andreessen 25:29 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 25:29 ... but they didn't tell Trump 'cause they didn't want him to sh- him to shoot them down.

Marc Andreessen 25:33 Hmm, interesting. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:34 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 25:34 Interesting. I, for the record, I'm pro shooting them down.

Joe Rogan 25:37 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 25:37 Yes.

Joe Rogan 25:37 I think you should totally shoot them down. They're taking pictures and shit they're not sup- there's not even people up there, fucking shoot them down.

Marc Andreessen 25:43 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:43 What's the problem?

Marc Andreessen 25:44 Yes, exactly.

Joe Rogan 25:45 You know?

Marc Andreessen 25:45 Yes.

Joe Rogan 25:45 Um, do you think there are any of those that are not of this world?

Marc Andreessen 25:50 I- I it's- I, I don't think there's any way to know from the outside.

Joe Rogan 25:53 Have you ever, like, pondered it late at night, sitting on your porch?

Marc Andreessen 25:56 Yeah, sure, of course, of course.

Joe Rogan 25:56 Staring up at the sky?

Marc Andreessen 25:57 Of course, of course, of course. Well, it, it ra- you know, it raises, you know, it raises, you know, number one is, is there not? And then if- if- if it is, you know, did- did it recently get here? Have they been here for a long time? You know, did they arrive 5,000 years ago?

Joe Rogan 26:08 Tucker thinks they're demons and angels.

Marc Andreessen 26:10 You know, I mean, demons and angels is ... (laughs) Are demons and angels real? It's like, you know, literally, you know, probably not, but like certainly they're metaphorically real, and are there kind of shades of gray between literal and metaphorical? You know?

Joe Rogan 26:20 Well, the actions are certainly demonic and angelic.

Marc Andreessen 26:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:24 Right? Actions of human beings-

Marc Andreessen 26:25 Yeah, of course.

Joe Rogan 26:25 ... mass-

Marc Andreessen 26:26 Of course.

Joe Rogan 26:26 Things that happen in the world-

Marc Andreessen 26:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:28 ... are uplifting or horrific.

Marc Andreessen 26:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:30 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 26:31 Evi- evil people doing evil things are possessed. I mean, they're- they're possessed by something.

Joe Rogan 26:34 Right.

Marc Andreessen 26:34 R- like something is going on.

Joe Rogan 26:35 Right.

Marc Andreessen 26:36 And, like, you know, what's the-

Joe Rogan 26:37 Right.

Marc Andreessen 26:37 ... what's the dividing line between, you know, an actual supernatural force and a- and some sort of psychological, sociological thing that's so overwhelming that it just takes control of people and drives them crazy? Like, you might- might as well call that a demon.

Joe Rogan 26:47 Yeah, it's fascinating because, like, when you think about from theological term, like when you think of it from a religious perspective, you know, people would apply what would a demon do, what would angels do, what is, uh- what is a, uh- uh, what is the will of God and what is, like, the evils of the- the worst aspects of humanity? You would, you know, you could apply them to so many things in the world, but we're very reluctant to say that something is demonic.

Marc Andreessen 27:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:18 Like th- even though it's clearly demonic, like clearly in action.

Marc Andreessen 27:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:22 Like this is what a demon would do.

Marc Andreessen 27:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:24 A demon would possess people to gun down children.

Marc Andreessen 27:27 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 27:28 You know, and g- you know, use drones to shoot down a wedding party.

Marc Andreessen 27:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:32 A demon would do that.

Marc Andreessen 27:33 Right, exactly. So a friend of mine is a religious scholar, uh, he's a- teaches at Catho- Catholic University and he's a religious history scholar, and he says that, um, medieval people would have had a- medieval people were psych- psychologically better prepared for the era ahead of us, with AI and robots and drones everywhere, than we are. Um, because medieval people took it for granted that they lived in a world with higher powers, higher spirits, angels, demons.

Joe Rogan 27:55 Oh.

Marc Andreessen 27:56 All kinds of supernatural entities. And they just- it was just assumed, uh, to be true, and in the world we're heading into, eh, you know, that we're arguably already in, you know, there are going to be these, you know, new forces, these new entities running around doing things. Um, and, you know, we're gonna just- i- we're gonna struggle, and we're gonna, you know, we're gonna catastrophize, we're gonna conclude, you know, like AI is the end of the world.

Joe Rogan 28:14 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 28:14 The medievals would have said, "Oh, it's just another spirit." Like, you know, "It's just another kind of entity." Yeah, it's better, it's- it's better than humans at some things, but so are angels. Um, and so we're gonna have to like change our mentality. We're almost gonna have to become a little bit more medieval, we're gonna have to open up our minds to the kinds of entities that we're dealing with.

Joe Rogan 28:28 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 28:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:29 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 28:29 Which al- which also could help us actually deal with people, like it- it may- maybe- maybe the- maybe there's an explanatory way to think about human behavior here that seems less rational but might actually be more rational.

Joe Rogan 28:39 Well, you express yourself, uh, v- very brilliantly in describing the current state of woke ideology as religion.

Marc Andreessen 28:48 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 28:49 And that- the- the way you described it was brilliant, 'cause you were- you were saying that it has all the elements. Excommunication, adherence to a very strict doctrine-

Marc Andreessen 28:56 Right.

Joe Rogan 28:56 ... all these different aspects of it, th- saying things that you n- everyone knows to be illogical and nonsensical but you must repeat it.

Marc Andreessen 29:04 Right.

Joe Rogan 29:04 You know, that these things are indicative of people that are in cults or people that are a part of, like, a very, uh, like a serious fundamental religion.

Marc Andreessen 29:12 Yeah. Well, I mean, of course, the big difference between woke and those traditional religions is woke has no concept of redemption.

Joe Rogan 29:17 Right.

Marc Andreessen 29:18 And no concept of forgiveness.

Joe Rogan 29:19 Right.

Marc Andreessen 29:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 29:19 Which is a very evil religion.

Marc Andreessen 29:21 You do not want that- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 29:22 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 29:22 ... to be a part of your religion, right?

Joe Rogan 29:23 Yeah, it's- it's also, it's- well, it's an ill-conceived, right?

Marc Andreessen 29:27 Yes.

Joe Rogan 29:27 'Cause it's like immature.

Marc Andreessen 29:28 Yes.

Joe Rogan 29:28 It's an immature religion.

Marc Andreessen 29:30 Yes. It's absolutist. It's inherently totalitarian. It has to be 'cause it can permanently destroy people.

Joe Rogan 29:35 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 29:35 Um, woke also understands something that the Greeks understood, which is that, uh, being, um, ostracized and being put to death are the same thing.

Joe Rogan 29:41 Hmm.

Marc Andreessen 29:42 Um, and so when the Greeks sentenced somebody like Socrates to death, they gave them the option of just leaving.But the problem was-

Joe Rogan 29:47 Really?

Marc Andreessen 29:48 Yes. Socrates could have just walked out and left. The-

Joe Rogan 29:50 No kidding?

Marc Andreessen 29:51 The, the, the reason that was considered equivalent sentences is because a- at that time, if you were not a citizen of a particular city, you would get killed in the next city. You'd be identified as the enemy, presumptively, and killed. And so there was no way to survive without being part of your community.

Joe Rogan 30:03 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 30:04 Um, and I, and I, that's what the wokes figured out is you can do the same thing. If you're able to like, you know, nail somebody, um, on, you know, on, on charges of having done something, you know, unacceptably horrible, then you make them toxic and all of a sudden they can't, you know, they can't have ... I'm sure you know people who, you know, they lose friends, they lose family-

Joe Rogan 30:17 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 30:17 They, they lose ... they can't get work. You know, before you know it, like they're, you know, living, you know, severely diminished, damaged lives. Some people then go on to kill themselves.

Joe Rogan 30:25 I don't know if you've been paying attention at all to Blue Sky-

Marc Andreessen 30:28 I have.

Joe Rogan 30:28 But I have multiple friends that have accounts on Blue Sky that, uh, are very sophisticated trolls-

Marc Andreessen 30:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:37 And are pushing like the woke agenda to a satirical point.

Marc Andreessen 30:43 There we go.

Joe Rogan 30:44 Like to ... or like parody.

Marc Andreessen 30:45 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:45 But on the edge where you're not quite sure.

Marc Andreessen 30:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:48 Or they'll say enough real things that make sense and talk about their own anxieties and personal issues with stuff and then say fucking ridiculous shit and it's fascinating.

Marc Andreessen 30:58 I bet it works.

Joe Rogan 30:59 It does work.

Marc Andreessen 31:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:00 That's what's so terrifying.

Marc Andreessen 31:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:01 It's like all the outcasts of Twitter-

Marc Andreessen 31:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 31:04 All the people that were like, "I can't take this." A few of them come back, which is wonderful. I love when they come back. "I'm gone. I'm gonna go to Blue Sky. Fuck you people." Like a bunch of them went to Threads for a while, like Stephen King, he went to Threads, came right back. They all come right back. They can't ... The marketplace of ideas, like, okay, you could go to like a fruit stand in the middle of the fucking desert and that's a marketplace or you can go to the farmer's market where everybody's there.

Marc Andreessen 31:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:28 Like where are you gonna go?

Marc Andreessen 31:29 That's right.

Joe Rogan 31:29 You're gonna go to the farmer's market.

Marc Andreessen 31:30 That's right.

Joe Rogan 31:30 There's tons of people-

Marc Andreessen 31:31 That's right.

Joe Rogan 31:31 It's a lot of fun.

Marc Andreessen 31:32 Yes.

Joe Rogan 31:32 A lot of activity.

Marc Andreessen 31:34 Yes.

Joe Rogan 31:34 That fruit stand's fucking barren and deserted. There's no one there. There's very few choices.

Marc Andreessen 31:38 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:39 It's not fun.

Marc Andreessen 31:39 And it's win-win to have ... Well, it's win-wi- I, it's win-win to have them back on Twitter 'cause it's good for them 'cause they wanna proselytize and so they, they need an au-

Joe Rogan 31:44 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 31:45 They need an audience. So they, they-

Joe Rogan 31:46 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 31:46 They win. And then we win 'cause it's really, really fun to dunk on them.

Joe Rogan 31:50 But it's also weird for them to not want any pushback at all.

Marc Andreessen 31:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:55 Like don't ... I- isn't the whole thing supposed to be about an exchange of ideas? Like if you have a controversial idea and someone disagrees with it, w- d- don't you want to hear that position? I, I know I do.

Marc Andreessen 32:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:06 I want to hear it.

Marc Andreessen 32:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:07 Even if I vehemently disagree with it, I want to hear it. I want to know where ... How do you ... How does your brain work? How are you coming to these conclusions? What makes you think this way? Who are you? What are you like? I wanna go ... A- on Instagram, I wanna look at your pictures.

Marc Andreessen 32:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:19 I wanna see what you're up to. What are you doing? You know?

Marc Andreessen 32:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:22 What do you do with your free time? You know, what are you complaining about? (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 32:25 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:25 I wanna ... It's like ... It's a fascinating education on human psychology and to, to watch people express themselves publicly.

Marc Andreessen 32:34 Right.

Joe Rogan 32:34 And then also be attacked publicly by strangers, which never happens in the real world.

Marc Andreessen 32:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 32:39 Like at scale.

Marc Andreessen 32:40 Yes.

Joe Rogan 32:41 The way it happens on social media.

Marc Andreessen 32:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:42 And I think it's a, uh, an amazing time for people to examine ideas.

Marc Andreessen 32:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:47 If you can handle it.

Marc Andreessen 32:49 Yeah. My favorite term is marketplace of idea.

Joe Rogan 32:51 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 32:53 (laughs) You can have a marketplace of ideas; it's just gonna be one idea. Right? So Blue Sky is a marketplace of ideas.

Joe Rogan 32:57 Sure. Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 32:58 X is the marketplace of ideas. Th- that final S makes a lot of difference.

Joe Rogan 33:02 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 33:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:03 But the thing about X is, it really is diverse.

Marc Andreessen 33:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:07 There's ... I follow tons of like kooky leftist progressive nutbags-

Marc Andreessen 33:12 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:12 That like have bizarre takes on everything.

Marc Andreessen 33:15 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:16 And they were 100% convinced that Kamala Harris was gonna sweep all the swing states, including Iowa.

Marc Andreessen 33:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:21 They were all in and I was like, "This is wild."

Marc Andreessen 33:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:24 Like, is that gonna happen?

Marc Andreessen 33:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:25 Are they right? Like this is crazy, but it's ... They were 100% convinced and it's, it's fascinating to see all these different kinds of people. To see the Charlie Kirks and, you know, the, the full-on left wing kooks-

Marc Andreessen 33:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 33:39 And see them all together.

Marc Andreessen 33:40 Right. So we're-

Joe Rogan 33:41 You need that.

Marc Andreessen 33:42 Yeah. Well, look, so one, one of the ways I think to think about this is all new information is heretical (laughs) if ... by definition, right? So, so anytime anybody has a new idea, the ... it's, it's a, it's a threat to the existing power structure, so all new ideas start as heresies. And so if you don't have-

Joe Rogan 33:56 Hmm.

Marc Andreessen 33:56 An environment that can tolerate heresies, you're not gonna have new ideas and you're gonna end up with complete stagnation.

Joe Rogan 34:01 Right.

Marc Andreessen 34:01 And if you, if you have stagnation, you're gonna go straight into decl- into decline.

Joe Rogan 34:04 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 34:05 Right? And, and, and I think this is that, that, that aberrant nature ... This is the timeline split, I think the ... I think the last decade has just been like a really weird aberrant time where things have not been working like they should and, and, you know, in 2015, Twitter called itself the free speech wing of the Free Speech Party (laughs) right?

Joe Rogan 34:19 Hmm.

Marc Andreessen 34:19 And Elon, Elon has not like cha- ... Elon has restored it.

Joe Rogan 34:22 Right.

Marc Andreessen 34:23 Right? He brought it back. He brought it back to something that everybody thought was completely normal 10 years ago.

Joe Rogan 34:26 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 34:27 And I think, I hope, this last 10 years increasingly is just gonna feel like a bad dream. Like I can't believe we tolerated the level of repression, right, and anger and, you know, emotional incontinence and, you know, cancellation campaigns, and just-

Joe Rogan 34:38 Emotional incontinence is a great term. (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 34:40 Yes. There has been a lot- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:43 (laughs) That's really what it's like.

Marc Andreessen 34:44 ... of emotional incontinence.

Joe Rogan 34:45 You just diarrhea in your emotions.

Marc Andreessen 34:47 Yes. Just spraying rage in all directions and so I, I, you know, I, I'm very, at the moment at least, very optimistic that there's a cultural change happening here that's even more profound than the, than the, uh, than, than the political change.

Joe Rogan 34:56 I have a lot of respect and also sympathy for Jack Dorsey. I, I like him a lot as a human being. I think he's a brilliant guy and I think he had very good intentions.

Marc Andreessen 35:06 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 35:06 But he was a part of a very large corporation and he had an idea for a wild west Twitter. He wanted to have two versions of Twitter. He wanted to have the Twitter that was pre-Elon where there's moderation and you, you know, you can't dead name someone and all that jazz. And then he wanted to have an additional Twitter that was essentially what X is now.

Marc Andreessen 35:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:25 And he just didn't have the ability to push that through with the, the board and-... the executives and all the people that, you know, were fully on board with woke ideology.

Marc Andreessen 35:36 Yeah. So the experience that people like Jack have had running these companies in the last decade has been ... And I don't mean to, like, let them off the hook for their decisions, but just the l- the lived experiences, they say, of, of what these people's lives have been like is just daily pounding. Just every single day, it's like meteor strikes coming down from the sky, exploding around you, be- getting attacked from every conceivable direction, being called just incredibly horrible things, being attacked from many different directions.

Joe Rogan 35:57 Well, he's already left Blue Sky.

Marc Andreessen 35:59 Well, yeah, so, uh, the ... (laughs) So that says that ... The irony of Jack is that Jack then created Blue s- Blue Sky. (laughs) Which is kind of exactly the opposite of any way where he thought it ... You know, oh, by the way, you know, the new, the new name for it, of course, is, uh, Blue Cry.

Joe Rogan 36:11 Ah!

Marc Andreessen 36:12 Yes.

Joe Rogan 36:13 I didn't know that.

Marc Andreessen 36:13 Exactly. Um, yeah, but he's also got ... You know, look, to his credit, he's still trying. And so he's got Nostr, you know, which is another, another-

Joe Rogan 36:19 What is it?

Marc Andreessen 36:19 It's called Nostr, N-O-S-T-R.

Joe Rogan 36:20 Oh, okay.

Marc Andreessen 36:21 It's his kind of new ... This is, it's actually his third.

Joe Rogan 36:22 He's gonna keep swinging. (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 36:24 He's gonna ... Lookit, full credit, full credit. He's gonna, he's gonna keep swinging. And by the way, full credit, he supported Elon. You know, they've-

Joe Rogan 36:29 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 36:29 ... they've mixed up a little bit, but by and large, he's been very supportive and was very supportive at a key time. And-

Joe Rogan 36:33 Well, I-

Marc Andreessen 36:33 ... so it has-

Joe Rogan 36:33 I also found it fascinating that when there was any sort of a right-wing branch of that stuff, like Gab-

Marc Andreessen 36:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:40 ... or any of these, they would immediately be infiltrated by bots as well, like my friends that troll on Blue Sky.

Marc Andreessen 36:46 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 36:46 But these are Nazis.

Marc Andreessen 36:47 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:48 Like, these are Nazi bots.

Marc Andreessen 36:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:49 These are people that would just spew horrible hate, and then Gab would be labeled, "Oh, this is where the Nazis go."

Marc Andreessen 36:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:56 This is a, a, a right-wing psychopath-

Marc Andreessen 36:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:59 ... social media app.

Marc Andreessen 37:00 Yeah. And I think frankly, I think you get the same thing if you start out ... If ... I think if you start out overtly political on either side, I think that's what you end up with.

Joe Rogan 37:06 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 37:06 And so I, I just ... Like, that, that, that doesn't seem to be an effective route to market. Um, it seems like you have, you have to start from the beginning as a general-purpose service, but, but you need to have some sense of the actual guardrails you're gonna have around ... And, and by the way, every social media service, internet service that ever works, there's always some content filters-

Joe Rogan 37:23 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 37:23 ... and restrictions because you can't have child porn, you can't have incitement to-

Joe Rogan 37:25 Right.

Marc Andreessen 37:25 ... violence, you can't have terrorist recruitment.

Joe Rogan 37:27 Right.

Marc Andreessen 37:27 And even the First Amendment, there's like a dozen carve-outs that the so- Supreme Court has ruled on over time that are things like that-

Joe Rogan 37:32 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 37:32 ... that you can't just, like, say. Right. Uh, I can't say, "Let's go join ISIS and let-

Joe Rogan 37:36 Right.

Marc Andreessen 37:36 ... you know, let's go, let's go attack Washington." Like, it's just ... It's literally not, not allowed. So there, there's always some controls, but you need to have, like, a spine of steel if you're gonna hold back the, the, the, the censorship pressure. And, and, you know, there's basically, uh, Substack, um, the, you know, company I'm involv- you know, uh, uh, is doing very well, you know, smaller-

Joe Rogan 37:52 I love Substack.

Marc Andreessen 37:53 ... smaller than Twitter, but doing extremely well.

Joe Rogan 37:54 Fantastic.

Marc Andreessen 37:55 And they've done a great job, I think, of holding the line on this stuff.

Joe Rogan 37:57 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 37:57 And then obviously, uh-

Joe Rogan 37:59 And it's an amazing resource.

Marc Andreessen 38:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:00 There's so many brilliant people on Substack.

Marc Andreessen 38:02 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 38:02 I love Substack.

Marc Andreessen 38:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:03 I get a large percentage of my news from Substack.

Marc Andreessen 38:06 Right. That's right.

Joe Rogan 38:07 It's really good, and it's so valuable, and it's such a great place for people who are independent journalists and physicians and scientists to publish their ideas-

Marc Andreessen 38:16 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:16 ... and actually get paid for it-

Marc Andreessen 38:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:18 ... by the people who subscribe fo- to it.

Marc Andreessen 38:20 That's right.

Joe Rogan 38:20 I think it's fantastic.

Marc Andreessen 38:22 Yeah. And there's lots of people on the far left and the far right.

Joe Rogan 38:24 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 38:24 Right. So you actually have the full spray. Like, when, when a far-left person gets upset at wor- You know, somebody working at the New York Times got mad because they're not far-left enough, they quit, and then they start a Substack.

Joe Rogan 38:32 Right.

Marc Andreessen 38:32 And Substack welcomes them in.

Joe Rogan 38:33 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 38:34 Which is, which, which is why they don't devolve into a Gabber or something like that, 'cause it, it really is a plat- it really is a platform. You know, it really does welcome all comers.

Joe Rogan 38:41 Well, it's also very difficult to subvert in that same way because Substack is essays.

Marc Andreessen 38:47 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:47 Right? You're, you're reading people's essays and papers on things.

Marc Andreessen 38:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:51 And, like, these are long-form things that are very well, uh, in a lot of cases-

Marc Andreessen 38:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:55 ... very well-researched, and it's not-

Marc Andreessen 38:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:57 ... the kind of thing you can just shitpost on.

Marc Andreessen 38:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 39:00 You know, there are comments, but it's just like they don't hold the weight that the actual article holds.

Marc Andreessen 39:04 Right. So my partners, my partners at work, um, uh, they've observed that I tend to be able to inflame situations from time to time. I, I can tend to be provocative and get people really upset. And so the, the, the rule they've asked me to comply with is I'm allowed to write essays, for example, on Substack, and I'm allowed to go on long-form podcasts. But I'm not allowed to post.

Joe Rogan 39:21 Really?

Marc Andreessen 39:22 Right. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 39:23 (laughs) You have rules. (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 39:24 It's, it's the rule, it's the rule. Now, by the way, I struggle ag-

Joe Rogan 39:26 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 39:26 I struggle against the rules 'cause I can't, I can't help myself from time to time.

Joe Rogan 39:29 Why do they want you to have rules?

Marc Andreessen 39:31 Because otherwise I, I, I inflame people too much. I drive, I, I, I drive people too crazy.

Joe Rogan 39:34 Do you do it on purpose?

Marc Andreessen 39:35 Uh, sometimes.

Joe Rogan 39:36 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 39:36 I mean-

Joe Rogan 39:37 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 39:38 ... sometimes you have to. Sometimes it's unintentional. Did you ever hear about when, when the entire continent, th- when the entire country of India was mad at me?

Joe Rogan 39:45 No.

Marc Andreessen 39:45 Oh, I, I spent one night with the entire country of India basically wanting to kill me.

Joe Rogan 39:49 Oh.

Marc Andreessen 39:49 It was like ... It was, it was incredible. I-

Joe Rogan 39:51 Oh my goodness. What happened?

Marc Andreessen 39:52 I mean, I was in a Twitter debate with somebody back when I was just posting freely on Twitter, and it was a debate about economics, and the, the to- topic of colonialism came up. And I, I made a, a comment in a, in a, in a long thread about, you know, co- colonialism, and it, and it turns out the, the Indians are still extremely sensitive, uh, about the topic of, uh, colonialism. Um, and I-

Joe Rogan 40:09 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 40:09 ... I did not understand, um, the mindset and the, uh-

Joe Rogan 40:13 Ah.

Marc Andreessen 40:13 ... historical orientation, and I tripped a line.

Joe Rogan 40:15 Ooh.

Marc Andreessen 40:16 And I stayed up all night, and I went hyper-viral in every timezone in India. Every hour, there would be, like, an entirely new activation.

Joe Rogan 40:23 Whoa.

Marc Andreessen 40:23 And I, and I was like, I was like front page headline news, t- top-of-the-hour TV news, like, all the way across India. Uh-

Joe Rogan 40:29 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 40:29 Yes, it was like a ... I, I do not recommend this as an experience. I, I ... By the way, I learned how many incredible Indian-American friends I have, um, because they all rallied to my-

Joe Rogan 40:37 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 40:37 ... you know, to my side, you know, said he's, he's not ... You know, Mark's not literally calling for the recolonization of India like that-

Joe Rogan 40:42 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 40:43 That was not actually-

Joe Rogan 40:44 Well, it's probably the language barrier as well, right?

Marc Andreessen 40:45 Oh, uh, language and then just ... I ... What I ... My big la- is just historical context. A- Americans have a different ... We Americans experience history differently than almost everybody else. History for us is just, like, stuff that happened in the past that doesn't matter anymore, but a lot of other people around the world experience history as something that really still matter, like, really matters to their lives today.

Joe Rogan 41:02 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 41:03 They, they just, they, they, they live in history more than we ... They have a deeper understanding of kind of how they got to where they were and the things that happened to their parents and grandparents and-

Joe Rogan 41:10 Right.

Marc Andreessen 41:10 ... and ancestors.

Joe Rogan 41:11 Right, right.

Marc Andreessen 41:11 And so there, there's just a ... It's just, it's just a ... You know, I don't know if it's, you know, better or worse. It's just a different way of experiencing reality.

Joe Rogan 41:16 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 41:16 Anyway, I, I recommend learning that lesson not by enraging a billion people.

Joe Rogan 41:21 I experienced this-

Marc Andreessen 41:22 Um-

Joe Rogan 41:22 ... small version of that recently because I said we shouldn't be using long-range missiles on Russia.

Marc Andreessen 41:27 Hmm. Okay.

Joe Rogan 41:27 And the Ukrainians, like-

Marc Andreessen 41:29 Ah.

Joe Rogan 41:29 And Ukrainian bots, a bunch of people came after me.

Marc Andreessen 41:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:32 'Cause I was saying, like, the Biden administration, I was like, "Fuck these people." And then I think some people misconstrued that as, "Fuck the Ukrainian people," which I absolutely was not saying.

Marc Andreessen 41:41 I see.

Joe Rogan 41:41 I was saying, "Fuck whoever, in the last days of the presidencies decide to escalate this war," 'cause it appears that that's what they've done. It appears that they're leaving Trump a giant mess.

Marc Andreessen 41:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:53 At the very least.

Marc Andreessen 41:54 Right.So, good news is I am allowed to go on podcasts. I, I, I'm allow-

Joe Rogan 41:58 That's good news.

Marc Andreessen 41:59 And, and, and the theory, it's, it's your, so I bring it up though 'cause it's your Substack thing. It's, it's because it's basically, uh, uh, "Marc, you, you need, you need to explain yourself in long form."

Joe Rogan 42:05 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 42:06 You, you can't just say a thing, e- exactly, to your, your example. You can't just say a thing and have people extrapolate from it-

Joe Rogan 42:10 Right.

Marc Andreessen 42:11 ... 'cause they'll extrapolate. I- i- i- it's not their fault 'cause you haven't ex- i- it's your fault 'cause you haven't explained it.

Joe Rogan 42:15 Right.

Marc Andreessen 42:15 Right? And so if you write something in long form or if you go talk for three hours, at least you'll, the, the context will be there. And then if they wanna get mad at you, that's fine, but you can point everybody to the transcript and it's clear that that's not what you meant.

Joe Rogan 42:25 Do you also think while you're writing how things could be misconstrued, so let me, like, do a really good job of being very clear about this?

Marc Andreessen 42:33 100%

Joe Rogan 42:34 Yeah. You kinda have to.

Marc Andreessen 42:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 42:36 Yeah. Like, I had Jimmy Corsetti on the other day and he is an expert in, uh, ancient history and ancient civilizations and we had these fascinating subjects and one of them that came up was the Nazis and their fascination with the occult. And so you had to, like, clearly say, "Listen, fuck Hitler, okay?"

Marc Andreessen 42:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 42:53 "Can I be really clear? Fuck Hitler and fuck the Nazis, okay? I am not (laughs) in any way... Okay, now that we're clear, let's talk about where the swastika came from. Fuck Hitler. Did I say 'fuck Hitler'? Let me say it again. Fuck Hitler. But the swastika is this ancient symbol." And he's, like, talking about, like, why did the Nazis have this fascination with the occult and with ancient civilizations and so we got into it, but it was, like, one of those things where it's like, all right, we're hitting the third rail. Everybody get your rubber boots on.

Marc Andreessen 43:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:20 You know, let's, let's, uh, save everybody here.

Marc Andreessen 43:23 Yeah. I've got a friend in the entertainment business who, uh, is quite left wing but really likes World War II documentaries.

Joe Rogan 43:28 Ooh.

Marc Andreessen 43:29 And so he'll be like, "Yeah, I saw this great documentary last night about Hitler." And I'm like, "I bet you did."

Joe Rogan 43:37 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 43:37 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:38 You can't even have-

Marc Andreessen 43:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:39 ... a copy of Mein Kampf in your house.

Marc Andreessen 43:41 Oh, a student at, this is actually one of the Stanford crazy stories. A student at Stanford was reported to the disciplinary board, the de- uh, the, the, the civil whatever discipline, disciplinary board, for reading a copy of Mein Kampf in the, in the-

Joe Rogan 43:50 Oh, my God.

Marc Andreessen 43:50 ... in, in the quad.

Joe Rogan 43:51 Oh, my God, that's so crazy.

Marc Andreessen 43:53 Which is a book that's been, you know, a sign for-

Joe Rogan 43:55 You could buy it right now on Amazon.

Marc Andreessen 43:56 ... 80 years-

Joe Rogan 43:57 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 43:57 ... r- to, to college kids to, like, understand (laughs) who these people were-

Joe Rogan 44:00 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 44:00 ... and, like, how to not do that again. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:02 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 44:02 That, that, that kid was, like, nearly brought up on charges and nearly expelled. So, like-

Joe Rogan 44:05 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 44:05 Yeah. That's, that's, yes, this, this is the world that I, that I, that I hope that we're leaving.

Joe Rogan 44:10 Well, uh, it's just an awful way to look at things. It's, it's so awful to think that if you read about someone horrible, you support them.

Marc Andreessen 44:18 Yeah, that's right.

Joe Rogan 44:19 It's just so crazy. Like, what, how are we gonna study history?

Marc Andreessen 44:22 Yeah, right. And how are we gonna pre- well, how, and how are we gonna prevent bad things from happening again if we-

Joe Rogan 44:25 Right. Right.

Marc Andreessen 44:26 ... if we can't, if we can't wrap our heads around why they happened the first time, and-

Joe Rogan 44:28 Especially something like the Nazis.

Marc Andreessen 44:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:30 Like how are y- uh, how are we gonna learn, like, what happened?

Marc Andreessen 44:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:34 The, clearly 1920s Germany was very different than 1945 Germany.

Marc Andreessen 44:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:40 What the fuck happened-

Marc Andreessen 44:41 (laughs) Right, right.

Joe Rogan 44:41 ... in 25 years? So what we're essentially talking about is the year 1999 America-

Marc Andreessen 44:47 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:47 ... versus 2024 America.

Marc Andreessen 44:49 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:49 Imagine a shift of that magnitude, so crazy-

Marc Andreessen 44:53 Yep.

Joe Rogan 44:53 ... they, there's a holocaust in 2024 and in 1999 everybody was just hanging out.

Marc Andreessen 44:58 Yep. That's right.

Joe Rogan 44:58 Well, you should probably study that.

Marc Andreessen 45:00 You should know, yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:01 And you should probably not reprimand someone for reading a book on this.

Marc Andreessen 45:03 Yeah. That's right. Yeah, exactly. And look, the German people went along with it, right? And so, like-

Joe Rogan 45:06 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 45:06 ... how, you know, how did that happen?

Joe Rogan 45:07 How did that happen?

Marc Andreessen 45:08 Right. And how many, you know, did they, was there active agreement, was there passive agreement?

Joe Rogan 45:11 Right.

Marc Andreessen 45:11 Was there, you know, what, what...

Joe Rogan 45:13 What are the steps-

Marc Andreessen 45:14 Yeah. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 45:14 ... where things go horribly wrong?

Marc Andreessen 45:15 Yeah. No, that's right.

Joe Rogan 45:16 And how can we recognize those? Because those steps have taken place multiple times in history-

Marc Andreessen 45:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:20 ... recorded history.

Marc Andreessen 45:21 Right.

Joe Rogan 45:21 We know about them.

Marc Andreessen 45:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:22 So, like, if we see them happening today, maybe we should stop it and nip it at the bud.

Marc Andreessen 45:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:27 What better way than to read about when it already happened?

Marc Andreessen 45:29 Yeah. One of, one of my observations about, uh, people talking about current events is i- uh, we know conclusively the prior eras all had horr- horrible moral problems, disasters, you know, catastrophes, wars, and all kinds... they made all kinds of horrible mistakes. But we are completely certain that in our time we figured it all out.

Joe Rogan 45:44 Right.

Marc Andreessen 45:44 Right? We're 100% convinced that we have it all dialed in. And the one thing I know for sure is people 50 years from now are gonna look back on this and they're gonna say, "Oh my God, those people were awful."

Joe Rogan 45:52 100%.

Marc Andreessen 45:52 Right. It just, it's, but like, in what way?

Joe Rogan 45:55 Right. In what way are we horrible?

Marc Andreessen 45:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:57 I mean, certainly a lot of the way we treat each other is horrible, especially with the amount of information that we have available. But it is fascinating also that if you, you know, I, I visited, uh, Athens last years, last year, and I got to tour the ruins and I was like, "Oh, I wonder when it all went south." Like, when did they, when did they know this had fallen apart?

Marc Andreessen 46:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:17 Like, when, when was it l- uh, in the peak of everything?

Marc Andreessen 46:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:20 They probably thought, "Hey, we have the most amazing sophisticated civilization that's available on Earth and we will maintain this."

Marc Andreessen 46:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:28 "This is h- we will be the center of intellectual discourse and the, the home of democracy. This is us."

Marc Andreessen 46:34 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:34 And then no.

Marc Andreessen 46:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:35 Now there's, like, shitty apartment buildings next to the Parthenon. You're like, "What happened?"

Marc Andreessen 46:39 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:40 Something horribly happened-

Marc Andreessen 46:42 Yes.

Joe Rogan 46:42 ... and we don't want to think that could ever happen to us today.

Marc Andreessen 46:45 Right.

Joe Rogan 46:45 We want to think, "We're American, motherfucker."

Marc Andreessen 46:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 46:48 "We're gonna keep this bitch rolling forever." Lynyrd Skynyrd, Free Bird, let's go.

Marc Andreessen 46:52 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:52 Second Amendment, come on. And we're gonna, we think that i- it's just, this is, this is the future. We, America is the shining star of the world and we're gonna carry this on. But probably not. Like, historically, I mean, the, what is the longest running dominant civilization ever? The Romans existed for, what, a couple thousand years? Like, how long did the Greeks run, how long did the Egyptian, the Egyptians might be the longest running, especially if you-

Marc Andreessen 47:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:20 ... like, take into account the possibility of alternative history timelines-

Marc Andreessen 47:23 Right.

Joe Rogan 47:24 ... where they'll, you know, like, Egyptian hieroglyphs, they have kings that go back 30,000 years.

Marc Andreessen 47:29 Right.

Joe Rogan 47:29 Here it is.Egypt and Mesopotamia, there it is.

Marc Andreessen 47:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:33 One estimate measuring the time of the first pharaohs, the use of hieroglyph writing, to the date of religion was replaced by Christianity, ancient Egyptian civilization endured for about 3,500 years.

Marc Andreessen 47:43 No-

Joe Rogan 47:44 I bet it was more than that.

Marc Andreessen 47:44 Well, the ar- the ar- the argument is just things just really- didn't really change.

Joe Rogan 47:49 Right.

Marc Andreessen 47:49 Like, changes we under- historical change of the kind that we understand where things actually change-

Joe Rogan 47:54 Right.

Marc Andreessen 47:54 ... the way people live changes, really kicked off with the Greeks, and so th- that was sort of the default status quo-

Joe Rogan 47:58 Right.

Marc Andreessen 47:59 ... civilization for a long time. The Gre- the Greeks kicked off change, as we understand it, and then- and then- and then- and then the Romans. Do you know about the fish ponds?

Joe Rogan 48:06 Fish ponds?

Marc Andreessen 48:06 The fish ponds. The fish- Cicero's fish ponds.

Joe Rogan 48:08 No.

Marc Andreessen 48:09 So, uh, the Roman Empire, you know, ran for, you know, i- in a sort of- Roman Republican Empire in its sort of hea- what you consider its dynamic phase, s- s- sort of vital phase, ran for a few, you know, few hundred years, maybe 400 years total, something like that. And, um, uh, towards the end as it was sort of falling or stagnating and- and increasingly starting to fall apart, (laughs) a friend of mine says, "When the roads got dangerous and nobody could quite explain why," um, right? Um, (laughs) which sounds familiar by the way.

Joe Rogan 48:33 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 48:34 Um, Cis- Cicero was, you know, one of the great- one of the great Roman statesmen, and he- he wrote these letters that we have, and- and in the letters, he sends these letters to all of his aristocratic friends, and it- the re- the theme in the letters is, e- b- basically all of the actual competent, capable citizens of Rome are at- are out in the countryside at their villas, uh, perfecting their fish ponds.

Joe Rogan 48:51 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 48:52 Right? They've pulling into themselves. They've built their- themselves their own protected environments-

Joe Rogan 48:56 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 48:57 ... right? Um-

Joe Rogan 48:57 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 48:57 ... right? Where they control everything.

Joe Rogan 48:58 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 48:58 And they're completely focused on ornamentation. They're completely focused on their clothes and- and on their, you know, lifestyles, right?

Joe Rogan 49:05 Kardashians. They were Kardashians. (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 49:08 (laughs) I'm sure. I don't know if the Kardashians have fish ponds, but if they did, they would be spectacular fish ponds.

Joe Rogan 49:11 They would be amazing fish ponds.

Marc Andreessen 49:13 I have no doubt they would be the most amazing fish ponds we have ever seen. Um, and he- so he kept railing, he's like, "Stop with the fish ponds. Like, stop working on the fish." Like-

Joe Rogan 49:21 Ah.

Marc Andreessen 49:21 ... get- get back out here, rejoin the Senate. Like, get back involved in the system.

Joe Rogan 49:25 Mm.

Marc Andreessen 49:25 Let's keep this thing from caving in.

Joe Rogan 49:26 Yeah. Yes.

Marc Andreessen 49:27 And I think... You know, look, as- as- as I- you know, the significance I think of, you know... Trump actually talked about this on the campaign, you know, his version of this talking on the camp- campaign trail is just like, "Look, I could be off on a resort. I own all these golf club, golf club, golf club."

Joe Rogan 49:37 Right.

Marc Andreessen 49:37 "I own many things I could be doing with my life."

Joe Rogan 49:38 Yeah, of course. And he's 78 years old. He probably would like to do that.

Marc Andreessen 49:41 Exactly, right? And he's, you know, surrounded, his family loves him and like, you know, grandkids and like the whole thing.

Joe Rogan 49:45 Mm-hmm.

Marc Andreessen 49:45 And he's like, "Look, I- I'm not doing it 'cause like I need- I need- I need to do this." And- a- a- and it's interesting 'cause, you know, he doesn't use, you know, he's not referencing Cicero when he says that, but it's- it's that spirit, right?

Joe Rogan 49:54 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 49:54 That Cicero talked about where, you know, when times get tough, do the people who are in a position to actually make positive change actually step up or not?

Joe Rogan 50:01 Right.

Marc Andreessen 50:01 And I think we've had a pretty long stretch here where that hasn't been the case, and I think maybe with Trump and then I think also with Elon, I think... (sighs)

Joe Rogan 50:08 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 50:08 'Cause Elon's the other guy, right? He (laughs) he for sure could be-

Joe Rogan 50:11 Well, it's a coalition, right?

Marc Andreessen 50:12 Yes.

Joe Rogan 50:12 It's not just him, it's Vivek, Ramaswamy.

Marc Andreessen 50:14 That's right. Another guy, by the way, who-

Joe Rogan 50:16 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 50:16 ... could be kicking it on a beach somewhere.

Joe Rogan 50:17 100%. Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 50:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:18 Rich as shit.

Marc Andreessen 50:19 Very successful guy.

Joe Rogan 50:19 And young and handsome.

Marc Andreessen 50:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:20 He could do whatever he wants.

Marc Andreessen 50:21 Could be doing anything. Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 50:22 Instead, he's decided to go all in.

Marc Andreessen 50:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:24 And then y- of course you have Tulsi Gabbard-

Marc Andreessen 50:26 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 50:26 ... and, you know, you have JD Vance, who I think is brilliant.

Marc Andreessen 50:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:29 You have all these brilliant people that are together.

Marc Andreessen 50:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:32 Which is very hopeful.

Marc Andreessen 50:34 Yeah. That's right.

Joe Rogan 50:34 This is what we didn't see out of the Biden-Harris campaign.

Marc Andreessen 50:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 50:38 You know, what we saw from Harris and Walz, you have Walz, this guy who's... it seems like he's a compulsive liar. At the very least, he's lied multiple times about fairly insignificant things.

Marc Andreessen 50:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:50 You know, like whether or not he was a head coach or, uh, an assistant coach. And the lies have always elevated him socially.

Marc Andreessen 50:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:57 Right? All- the- the lies about his military service or at least implying that he served in a different perspec- in a different aspect, and then there was Tiananmen Square, there's... Everything enhances his virtue. This is not what anybody wants. You want the opposite. You know, you want a guy like JD Vance who served in the Marines and, you know, went to Yale, comes from a single mother with addiction problems, rose th- from hard work and dedication to become who he is now. Like, that's the kind of guy that I like.

Marc Andreessen 51:25 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:25 That's what we all would like. Like, okay, that looks like a leader to me.

Marc Andreessen 51:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:28 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 51:28 Well, the Romans had this conc- they have a concept they took very seriously they called virtue, right? And like, did you- did you... There's a whole ranking, by the way, of the Roman virtues, and if you read them today, you just like want to burst out crying 'cause you're just like, "Oh my God, I can't believe what we're missing." But like-

Joe Rogan 51:40 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 51:41 ... people with virtue, people with virtue, it's not just that they think that they're good people or that they tell everybody they're good people, they actually act on it and they actually step up.

Joe Rogan 51:47 Well, this is what's missing from today's secular society, right?

Marc Andreessen 51:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 51:51 Like, we- we don't have, like, a doctrine that en- encourages that sort of thinking and behavior and rewards it publicly.

Marc Andreessen 52:00 Right.

Joe Rogan 52:00 Which religion does.

Marc Andreessen 52:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:02 You know? True Christianity. You know, not subverted, fucking giant arena Christianity where the guy's flying private jets and has Rolls-Royces and shit.

Marc Andreessen 52:12 Right.

Joe Rogan 52:12 But actual, like, real Christian people.

Marc Andreessen 52:14 Right. Well, and the Roma- the Romans had gods. I mean, their- their virtues had gods.

Joe Rogan 52:17 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 52:17 And so- and so, they like... it was actually wrapped... it was... to your point, it was like encoded into their religion, it was wrapped up in their religion. They knew exactly what was expected of them.

Joe Rogan 52:24 Yes.

Marc Andreessen 52:24 They knew exactly what their ancestors expected of them. They knew exactly what their gods expected of them.

Joe Rogan 52:28 I recently read Meditations again, uh, a couple of months ago.

Marc Andreessen 52:32 Yep.

Joe Rogan 52:32 Well, I listened to it in the sauna, but it's- it's brilliant and it's- it's amazing that this guy, Marcus Aurelius, was thinking like this so many years ago.

Marc Andreessen 52:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:42 And it's so... it's so valid today, and it applies so well to modern life. It's so, so strange.

Marc Andreessen 52:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:51 You know, how brilliant this person was while he was running this incredible empire.

Marc Andreessen 52:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 52:57 That he could write about human psychology and the value of forgiveness and-

Marc Andreessen 53:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:02 ... you know, being true to yourself and constantly being truthful everywhere in everything you do, and all these virtues and all these... the- the stoicism that he- that he espoused. It's- it's so valuable today.

Marc Andreessen 53:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:14 It's really remarkable that this person who was a leader, what was it, 2,000 years ago?

Marc Andreessen 53:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:20 That his words still ring true today.

Marc Andreessen 53:23 Yeah. Y- you probably know, he didn't write it for public consumption.

Joe Rogan 53:25 Right, yeah.

Marc Andreessen 53:26 Right? It was-

Joe Rogan 53:26 Which is even more amazing.

Marc Andreessen 53:27 ... his private notebook.

Joe Rogan 53:29 Which is why it's so good, probably.

Marc Andreessen 53:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:30 'Cause he probably wrote it for a Substack, he'd be like, "Well, people are going to hate on this, let me..." (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 53:34 (laughs) yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:35 Let me f- let me... (laughs) ... you know, let me preemptively attack the people in the comments or-

Marc Andreessen 53:41 Right.

Joe Rogan 53:41 ... subdue them.

Marc Andreessen 53:42 But he's like, he's like, he's, he's lecturing himself. Like he's telling himself how to act, right?

Joe Rogan 53:45 Mm-hmm.

Marc Andreessen 53:45 Like, you know, he's very ... this is very deep, deep ... these are very deep, important-

Joe Rogan 53:49 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 53:49 My favorite, my favorite part of the, of the, of the meditations is th- there's this section where it's something like, "Yeah, you're gonna wake up this morning and everybody's gonna hate you and everybody's gonna lie to you and everybody's gonna make dumb decisions, and you're gonna be incredibly frustrated and you're not gonna get any credit for anything. And you have to get up anyway." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 54:03 (laughs) Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 54:05 Like, that's all-

Joe Rogan 54:05 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 54:06 Yes, yes, yes, that's all true.

Joe Rogan 54:07 Right.

Marc Andreessen 54:08 And you still have to get up and do your job.

Joe Rogan 54:09 And, of course, he's saying that to himself as the leader of Rome.

Marc Andreessen 54:11 T- to himself, exactly.

Joe Rogan 54:12 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 54:13 And, you know, and what's in there is just like, wow, his life was not ... You know, he's just like ... Again, it's, it's actually, you know, like the CEO of some ... It, it's just like you're gonna get pounded. Like-

Joe Rogan 54:20 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 54:20 If, if you're in these positions, you're gonna get pounded every day.

Joe Rogan 54:22 It's in- it's just incredible.

Marc Andreessen 54:23 And, and, and if you're operating out of a, out of a, out of a tr- out of a true sense of virtue, if you're operating out of a true sense of like if ... yeah, exercising your responsibilities, you, you, you get up and do it anyway.

Joe Rogan 54:31 It's amazing how much it resonates.

Marc Andreessen 54:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:33 It really is.

Marc Andreessen 54:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:34 Well, it's amazing how much so many, uh, ancient writings resonate. You know, there's so much valuable information, just like in Sun Tzu's The Art of War-

Marc Andreessen 54:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:44 ... or in, uh, y- The Book of Five Rings.

Marc Andreessen 54:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 54:46 You know, there's so many ancient books that you read and you go ... First, first of all, I love reading them 'cause I, I try to imagine what ... you know, what is this life like in, like if you wanna take like Miyamoto Musashi, 1400? When did he li- live?

Marc Andreessen 55:02 Right.

Joe Rogan 55:02 Miyamoto Musashi was like 1420s or something like that.

Marc Andreessen 55:05 That's right.

Joe Rogan 55:05 Like, what's that like?

Marc Andreessen 55:07 Right.

Joe Rogan 55:07 Like, what is, what is your life like?

Marc Andreessen 55:09 Right.

Joe Rogan 55:09 What is, what is the, uh, what is the view of the world when you, you don't really have detailed maps or you don't have any photographs-

Marc Andreessen 55:17 Right.

Joe Rogan 55:17 ... you don't have any idea what the fuck is going on in Europe unless you go there.

Marc Andreessen 55:21 Right.

Joe Rogan 55:21 Like, what is, what is your version of w- the world like?

Marc Andreessen 55:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:25 And then to see someone's words written down and you read them and try to just imagine yourself in their perspective and their mindset.

Marc Andreessen 55:33 Right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And look, I, I think if you're somebody like that or somebody like Marcus Aurelius, you just have this incredible sense of responsibility.

Joe Rogan 55:40 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 55:40 Like you ... The, the one thing you do have is a sense of purpose. Like, you know exactly why you're here, you know exactly what your role is, you know exactly how you're supposed to behave, you know exactly how you're supposed to basically gain glory, how you're supposed to honor your ancestors. Like it's, it's just all ... You know exactly where you are in the community, right?

Joe Rogan 55:53 Right.

Marc Andreessen 55:54 Right. You know ex- right? You, you have this, like, incredible sense of groundedness and rootedness. And, of course, there's huge downsides to that, which is it really cuts off your ability to, you know, run off and, you know, you know, go on American Idol, right? Like (laughs) there's-

Joe Rogan 56:05 (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 56:05 There's like a lot of things you can't do, right? But like-

Joe Rogan 56:08 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 56:08 ... y- y- you know. You know what you're supposed to do, and you either-

Joe Rogan 56:10 Right.

Marc Andreessen 56:11 ... you either do it or you don't do it.

Joe Rogan 56:12 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 56:12 A- a- and these days, to, to have people like that, we need people who choose to be that way, right? Which is a, which is a, you know ... which is arguably harder, right? Given, given all the choices that they actually choose to, to live that way.

Joe Rogan 56:22 Well, not only that. Giving all the distractions-

Marc Andreessen 56:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:24 ... that people face-

Marc Andreessen 56:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:25 ... every day that keeps them from sitting down and writing a journal like that.

Marc Andreessen 56:29 Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:30 You know, I mean, back then, there's not a lot of different things to entertain you with.

Marc Andreessen 56:35 Correct. Yes.

Joe Rogan 56:36 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 56:36 You had to be maybe a little bit more serious 'cause you couldn't, you couldn't have as much fun. My, my favorite ... No, my other, my other favorite, um, uh, meditations Marcus Aurelius thing is, uh, is something like, "Be the rocks on the shore, uh, at which the, at which the waves beat."

Joe Rogan 56:47 Mm.

Marc Andreessen 56:48 Right? Like, yes. Like, yes. Your job is to stand there like the rocks do and just the surf just like keeps coming and keeps coming-

Joe Rogan 56:54 Oh.

Marc Andreessen 56:54 ... and keeps coming, and your job is to just, like, stand there and take it.

Joe Rogan 56:57 Imagine what it was like, like addressing the people back then too.

Marc Andreessen 57:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:00 Just yelling out to these groups, or speaking in front of all the leaders, like ...

Marc Andreessen 57:06 Yep.

Joe Rogan 57:07 And all ... everyone's plotting to kill you.

Marc Andreessen 57:08 There, there's also a lot of that going on, yes, yes.

Joe Rogan 57:10 Yeah. Everyone's- (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 57:11 Like you, you may well-

Joe Rogan 57:12 I mean, how many times did they try to kill Hitler?

Marc Andreessen 57:14 Yes.

Joe Rogan 57:14 Like, everybody's trying to kill you.

Marc Andreessen 57:15 Yes.

Joe Rogan 57:15 If you're, if you're running things-

Marc Andreessen 57:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:17 ... all your generals are probably secretly wanting to become the king.

Marc Andreessen 57:20 Yep, yep. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 57:21 Yeah. All the usurpers are waiting in the wings.

Marc Andreessen 57:23 Not easy lives. You know, today, today most of the killings happen metaphorically.

Joe Rogan 57:27 Most.

Marc Andreessen 57:27 Although every now and then-

Joe Rogan 57:29 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 57:29 ... somebody takes a shot.

Joe Rogan 57:30 In the alternative timeline, yeah.

Marc Andreessen 57:32 Yes. Yes, exactly. That's right, that's right.

Joe Rogan 57:33 Yeah. Um, how fearful were you, uh, leading up to the election that it wouldn't go into the new timeline?

Marc Andreessen 57:41 It was so weird because all the experts said it was 50/50, razor, you know, razor sharp.

Joe Rogan 57:46 Mm.

Marc Andreessen 57:46 You know, it's this tiny little, you know, thing, 80,000 votes in eight counties. Um-

Joe Rogan 57:49 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 57:50 And, you know, um ... And then, then number one, then it wasn't, which means we can take all those experts and just dismiss them forever going forward 'cause they clearly-

Joe Rogan 57:57 Phew.

Marc Andreessen 57:57 ... they clearly have, clearly have, clearly have no clue, so it's another set of people we don't have to listen to. Um, but I had this really interesting conversation that kept nagging at me with a, um, a senior Democrat who's on his way out of, of, uh, uh, of, of politics, um, and he, he said ... uh, in summer, I said, uh, "How, how certain is ... or what, what's your view?" And, and, and this person said, "Trump's gonna win with 100% certainty."

Joe Rogan 58:17 Really?

Marc Andreessen 58:18 Um, this is a Democrat, um, and from a sort of purple state. Um, right, so, uh, you know, not New York or California, but like a state with, you know-

Joe Rogan 58:24 Mm-hmm.

Marc Andreessen 58:25 ... sort of maybe-

Joe Rogan 58:26 Arizona.

Marc Andreessen 58:27 ... broader cross-section of people. And this person basically said ... Yeah, look, he said, said, "Look, all you have to do is fly anywhere in the country into any purple envir- uh, place and go into a second or third tier, you know, size city and take an Uber for 30 minutes." You know, land at the airport, take an Uber, drive around for 30 minutes, come back, and just ask the driver like, "How's it going," and, "Who are they voting for?" And basically 100% of the time, the answer is gonna be Trump.

Joe Rogan 58:47 Wow.

Marc Andreessen 58:47 Uh, 'cause people are just ... were ... people were just like completely fed up. They were just completely fed up. And then there was the, you know, Kamala enthusiasm, which th- this person said, you know, the Kamala enthusiasm is like highly focused in New York and California, which don't matter from an electoral standpoint, right? So they're not gonna decide anything.

Joe Rogan 59:03 But matters huge when it comes to media.

Marc Andreessen 59:07 Oh, sure, of course, but that's, that's the thing, uh, this ... the self-reinforcing nature of the bubble. And this is what's actually-

Joe Rogan 59:11 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 59:11 ... so interesting with these media bubbles is like the, the people in these media bubbles are not breaking out. Like, uh, they, they, they're, it's like they're getting deeper into the sort of collective psychosis that they indulge in, and part of it was getting excited about a candidate for which there was very little popular support for once you got outside of these, you know, heavily blue states.

Joe Rogan 59:25 Yeah.

Marc Andreessen 59:26 And so it ... and it's ... in a lot of ways, it's the most, you know, o- obvious explanation in the world, which is just people just fundamentally did not like the direction of the country was going in and they were just fed up with it. And so-

Joe Rogan 59:34 There's also this very bizarre arrogance of people that were certain that Kamala Harris was gonna win.

Marc Andreessen 59:40 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 59:40 Like I'm, I'm sure you've seen the viral video of this lady who's a political analyst who talks about going to the liquor store and buying a bottle of champagne. Have you seen this?

Marc Andreessen 59:48 Mm-hmm. Oh, right, I saw that. Yeah, right, right.

Joe Rogan 59:49 Yeah. I don't wanna show it 'cause the poor lady-

Marc Andreessen 59:51 Getting ready to-

Joe Rogan 59:51 ... she's probably living in hell right now. But-

Marc Andreessen 59:54 I'm, I'm a booze guy.... on BlueSky. She's-

Joe Rogan 59:56 Yeah. (laughs) She's probably on BlueSky.

Marc Andreessen 59:57 She's, she's on BlueSky.

Joe Rogan 59:57 She might be on X. Well, she was on X. I think she deleted her profile.

Marc Andreessen 1:00:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:00 But, uh, the poor lady. I mean, she... But she was being very arrogant and she laughed and mocked this man and said, uh, "You do realize you wasted your vote, right?" (laughs)

Marc Andreessen 1:00:09 Oh. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:11 And she laugh-... Which makes her hard to feel sorry for.

Marc Andreessen 1:00:13 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:14 It's like you were, you were ready to mock this man.

Marc Andreessen 1:00:16 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:00:17 But in her eyes, it was all about reproductive freedom.

Marc Andreessen 1:00:20 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:00:20 And she thought that that was under attack under the Trump administration, and that women were gonna stand up and they're gonna stop that. Because in her echo chamber, that was the case.

Marc Andreessen 1:00:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:29 Everybody was universally, uh, they all agreed, were universally on board with this idea that Trump is evil and we gotta get rid of him and women are gonna vote and this is gonna be fun.

Marc Andreessen 1:00:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:37 But, like, who you hanging out with, lady?

Marc Andreessen 1:00:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:39 You know? You could hang out with a bunch of people that think baseball's awesome-

Marc Andreessen 1:00:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:43 ... and then, you know, you run into someone from another country and like, "What the fuck is baseball?"

Marc Andreessen 1:00:46 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:00:46 Like, you gotta realize, there's a lot of people out there.

Marc Andreessen 1:00:48 Yeah. And people really don't like being talked down to.

Joe Rogan 1:00:50 They really don't.

Marc Andreessen 1:00:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:51 And they don't like you mocking the fact that-

Marc Andreessen 1:00:53 Yes.

Joe Rogan 1:00:53 First of all, nobody wasted their vote.

Marc Andreessen 1:00:55 Right. Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 Like, that's not how it goes.

Marc Andreessen 1:00:57 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:57 Like, you don't waste your vote-

Marc Andreessen 1:00:59 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:00:59 ... if you vote different and the other side wins.

Marc Andreessen 1:01:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:01 It's not how it... The other side won. That's just how it is.

Marc Andreessen 1:01:03 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:01:04 Like, you... Wasting the vote is a crazy way to look at it.

Marc Andreessen 1:01:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:07 Like, because, I think, also, people look at things like tribal games. You know, like, uh, you know, and Texas is a huge football state and people love football and it's always, "We this, we that." When UT plays South Carolina, "We this, we that." It's like, people love to be a part of a team that's winning.