Martin Shkreli Reveals How He Made His First $100 Million (#445)

1. 0:00 – 0:30

   Intro

   1. MSMartin Shkreli0:00

      Yep. PubMed is the government database of all scholastic biomedical literature, so 36 million papers. If you sit there long enough and you have the passion, you can become a billionaire. It's just a matter of sitting there and sifting and sifting and sifting, which most people do- don't have the patience, desire, or willpower to do. But every single biomedical innovation is, is logged in on PubMed and-

   2. SPShaan Puri0:21

      [upbeat music]

2. 0:30 – 2:12

   Intro to Martin Shkreli

   1. SPShaan Puri0:30

      What's up? We just had a conversation with Martin Shkreli. If you don't know who he is, you can just Google his name and you'll find that he is, quote-unquote, the most hated man in America, or he is the pharma bro. And he's, uh, you know, he touches kind of a bunch of different things. You know, the bingo card for My First Million. He's made hundreds of millions of dollars. He's super controversial, and some people love him, some people hate him. He went to prison for something that he did with his, his hedge fund, and he comes on here and he tells us a bunch of things. He tells us how he made his first million. He gave his side of the story on why he bought that drug and raised the price, and why maybe it wasn't so evil as, uh, as it was portrayed. Um, why he hates sort of vanilla CEOs that, that, uh, just only speak in corporate speak, and why he refuses to do that. Uh, [laughs] why he thinks Mark Cuban is full of shit. Uh, he also unveils his new startup in the AI space for the first time ever. So, uh, pretty interesting conversation with Martin. He is, uh, he's one thing. He's not boring. [laughs] You'll, you'll... I think we can all agree on that. Uh, some people love him, some people hate him. I think you see in this episode, you can see a couple different sides of him. And so I'm curious to hear what you guys think. I would love for you to put in the comments whether you, uh, you loved this episode, you hated this episode, or somewhere in between. And, um, you know, we always commit that o- on this pod, you know, when we bring people on, we're not saying this is the best person ever or the worst. We just wanna have interesting conversations with interesting people. I wanna get into their mind and find out why they are the way they are, uh, how they think, how they operate, and then you can decide for yourself whether this is somebody you, um, you're into or not. So, uh, that's this episode, Martin Shkreli. It's about a two-hour interview, and, uh, enjoy. [whooshing] Sam, where do you wanna start? Uh, we could either go more on the AI stuff, or there's, there's some interesting stuff in your, your kinda start of your career that I think is kinda fun. Like,

3. 2:12 – 20:31

   When Martin worked with Jim Cramer

   1. SPShaan Puri2:12

      you worked, you worked with Jim Cramer, is that right? [laughs] When you were 16 years old, you worked for Cramer, the guy who's always yelling on, on CNBC. Uh, what was that like? What's Cramer like?

   2. MSMartin Shkreli2:23

      Cramer's great. You know, uh, hedge funds were a different world back then. It was a very, very small asset class, maybe 50 billion, 100 billion total. Um, you know, any private partnership is, is technically kind of a hedge fund, right? If you have outside investors and you're charging them one and 20 or two and 20, and you're shorting stocks and doing exotic stuff, you know, that's a hedge fund, uh, whether you call it that or not. So Warren Buffett had a hedge fund. Other folks had a hedge fund. But at the time, the biggest hedge funds were Galleon Group, SAC Capital, you know, a handful of kind of like Tiger, Soros. You know, it was sort of the wild time for the hedge fund industry, kind of, you know, very, very small industry. Maybe 30 or 40 or 50 firms of s- of, uh, any significance. Uh, and that means, like, you know, $100 million or more. And so Cramer was one of those firms. I got to work there. I was very lucky. Um-

   3. SPShaan Puri3:16

      You, you were in high school at the time?

   4. MSMartin Shkreli3:18

      I, I was sort of in this, like, weird state of both being a high school dropout, a high school graduate, [laughs] and a high school, you know, continuing, you know, kind of education. It was very weird. I had... I went to this very special school called Hunter where I fulfilled all my degree requirements pretty early, so I was already sort of graduated in the state's eyes. But I continued to sort of, like, go to the school and, um, pick up credits and, like, go to college at the same time. So it was just a weird, like, mishmash of education, and, um, sorta hard to explain, but I, uh-

   5. SPShaan Puri3:52

      Were, were you kind of... Like, you're almost like a class clown of society now. Were you like that in high school, or were you just, like, a straight-laced kid at that time?

   6. MSMartin Shkreli4:01

      Yeah, absolutely. I was, like, just like this in high school. You know, I was, uh-

   7. SPShaan Puri4:05

      [laughs] Whoa

   8. MSMartin Shkreli4:05

      ... if, if there was somebody that needed sort of dressing down or including, you know, a teacher or principal, whatever. I remember my first day of school, I actually dressed down the principal a, a bit. That was sort of a funny, you know, thing to do. You know, I, I guess I have the, like, fearlessness of, you know-

   9. SPShaan Puri4:21

      But did your parents, like, discipline you? Were they like, "Dude, what the fuck? Show some respect"?

   10. MSMartin Shkreli4:25

       Yeah. You know, I, I think-

   11. SPShaan Puri4:28

       But not really. [laughs]

   12. MSMartin Shkreli4:30

       Yes. You know, I don't know. You know, I think there's, like, this, you know... I've always had this, uh, you know, opinion that people take themselves too seriously and, and take authority too seriously, and of course, you know, I, I landed myself in prison. But yeah, [laughs] I think that, you know, there's, uh-

   13. SPShaan Puri4:45

       [laughs] And, and, and you are right. They do take themselves seriously. Yeah.

   14. MSMartin Shkreli4:49

       Yeah. Thanks.

   15. SPShaan Puri4:50

       Another person that you've gotten correct. I, I remember one [laughs] one time, uh, Martin was on Blab, and again, the numbers were going crazy. I, I was like, "Oh, I gotta see what happened. He, he must be acting a fool or something. I don't know what's going on." And, uh, I go in and there, a CNN reporter was demanding, like, an interview with him. He was like... She was like, "You should... Martin, uh, I've been watching this. It's really interesting. I would love to have a conversation with you on CNN." And he's like, [laughs] "No, no, you come on my show. This is my show. You wanna interview me? We can do it right here." And she's like, "Okay, I'm not gonna do that, but if you come on CNN..." He's like, "No, no, come on the show." And then she's, like, refusing or whatever, and he's like... [laughs] Then she s- she starts, like, trying to, like, have a moment to, like, tell him how bad he is, and then he asked her, [laughs] he's like, "I'm going to the gala tonight. You wanna be my plus one?" [laughs] And then he, like, bought her a plane ticket. Yeah, didn't you end up going out? Didn't you go out with her?

   16. MSMartin Shkreli5:44

       No, not this one. But, uh, I just thought, wow, what a, like... You know, they don't teach that in PR school. Just ask them on a date [laughs] if it's not going, if the interview's not going well. Break- breaking down the fourth wall is, like, my specialty, right? Like, you know, I, I... And what Elon sort of did that to that BBC guy the other day, like I-

   17. SPShaan Puri6:02

       Yep

   18. MSMartin Shkreli6:02

       ... I would always ask, um, I remember one of my analysts, uh, who was on the sell side before joining me on the buy side They brought a management team to come over to... This is sort of skipping ahead in my career a little bit to, to having my own funds. Uh, they brought a management team over to, you know, pitch some stock or pitch a pipe or something, and I, I asked the C- CEO why he didn't, he didn't own any stock in his company. And he, you know, he's sort of like hemming and hawing, like, you know, [laughs] this, the temperature's kind of getting hot. And I said, "You know, 'cause I, I have your proxy right here," and I, I put it down on the table and s- I said, "It looks like you make $550,000 a year. That's, that's a good amount of money. Can you promise me today that you'll buy like 10,000 or $20,000 of your stock at least?" And, and the guy's just sort of like, you know, the most uncomfortable meeting i- in the history of Wall Street, you know, 'cause I kept like hammering on it. I was like, "No, but just tell me, like, why can't you afford [laughs] to spend $10,000 and buy your own stock? The stock price will go up. Everyone wins. You'll show confidence that..." You know, and I just wouldn't, like, for 20 minutes, let it go. Uh, and it was just, you know, one of these, like, you know, breaking down that fourth wall. You're not, like, I'm not supposed to do that. You know, his personal finances are up, up to him, is what most pr- portfolio managers would say. You know, he, he's allowed to not own his stock. It's, it's really his call. But, you know, being able to sort of like, you know, cut to the chase on half these things and like, you know, address the elephant in the room is kind of the thing that I like to do, even if it's really uncomfortable or, or difficult or embarrassing or, you know, faux pas. You know, it's, it's something that, you know, I'll, I'll just sort of, you know, cut to the chase with.

   19. SPSam Parr7:36

       Well, I remember when you got arrested, or the h- the headline was like, uh, you had to put up like your Fidelity account or something like that that had like $60 million in it. And at the time you were, I don't know how old. You were 32 or something? I mean, early 30s, very young. And you... I mean, that was a, it was a significant amount of money, and that didn't, that was just your Fidelity account, let alone like your, uh, you know, the touring fi, uh, you, you know, the, the, the pharm- the pharma companies that you'd founded. Was... Did you make your first bit of money when you started the hedge funds, and how did that come to be? Or were you already doing well just being at the hedge funds where you worked?

   20. MSMartin Shkreli8:13

       Oh, it's a great question. So I never made money at hedge funds. I ne- never really made a dollar, um-

   21. SPSam Parr8:19

       Working at or owning?

   22. MSMartin Shkreli8:21

       Both. So when I started at hedge funds, I was young and, you know, didn't really earn money, uh, which was fine. You know, I wasn't optimizing for that. You know, I was optimizing for learning stuff, experience, uh, good relationships. Uh, I mostly succeeded in that, I think. You know, probably messed up some relationships. But regardless, you know, did the best I could as a young guy. Started my own fund. Um, pretty, pretty terrible at doing the fund management business. You know, investing, being a good investor and being a good fund manager are kind of like pretty different things, is what I think most hedge fund entrepreneurs kind of learn. You know, um, you know, there, you can be a really brilliant investor and not manage the actual business well, and the business is to grow your assets as much as possible, provide the best sort of adjusted returns possible, and satisfy your clients, and I didn't really wanna do any of that. You know, I just wanted to invest. And, um, I never took fees from any of my funds, which was very like, you know, sort of bizarre. Uh, and there were, there were sort of technical or legal reasons for that, but so I never really made any money, uh, in hedge funds. When I started my first drug company called Retrophin, which is now called Travere, this is about 10 years ago, uh, that's sort of where everything fir- sort of came together for me. I, I learned pharma by being a hedge fund person for 10 years in, in hedge funds studying pharma, starting with the early Jim Cramer days, where I was just figuring out what a stock and a bond was, and then moving on to, you know, trading these things and working at hedge funds and stuff like that, and then starting my own. I, I really mastered pharmaceuticals. I, I knew everything about pharma. And I impressed a lot of people in pharma who were working in the field or working in hedge funds and, you know, it was easy for me to sort of start a drug company and find some really good assets. The first asset I found actually received FDA approval just, just a couple months ago, so I'm really proud of that. And, um, when our company went public, uh, you know, I was a millionaire.

   23. SPShaan Puri10:18

       How, how, how old were you?

   24. MSMartin Shkreli10:20

       It was 2012. Um, you know, so I was born in '83, so I guess I was 29, and, um, I was a CEO of a publicly traded company and, um, the market cap of that company, like I said, now is, you know, 1.5 billion roughly, and, uh, the drug got FDA approved, so I'm really happy about that. Like, so often in biotech, people start companies, they kind of extract some equity value out of them as they go public, and then the company's drugs don't work, and they kind of move on. And there are people that have, like, coasted in biotech doing that, like, every three to five years. You know, I, I, I'd name some names, but it, it doesn't matter. You know, and getting a drug FDA approved, and for me, kind of on my first try, was, you know, sort of like a very, you know, a, a very, like, nice feather in my cap and I'm happy for the people that are now getting this prescription for this kidney disease. I'm really delighted by that. But the, you know, the, it was a lot of fun to, to see that. So when people ask me, like, "Where'd you make your first million?" I made my first, like, 25 million all in one, you know, on the same day. [laughs] You know, like, it, it wasn't like, okay, you make... You know, like one of my great friends started off making, um, you know, he's a great story, and one day maybe you'll have him on this podcast. Uh, he started off trading, uh, sneakers and, um, he was like 13 or something, and then he started trading cars, and he ended up trading stocks, and he, he sort of went from 1,000 bucks to 5,000 to 100,000 to a million to 5 million, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And you know that, that road isn't what everyone does, right? Like some people, I was like literally almost like starving, you know, and [laughs] like broke, you know, trying to get that big, big win, and it came through.

   25. SPShaan Puri11:59

       And so you, you said a couple things I wanna, uh, quickly clarify. You said you didn't make much money in investing 'cause you weren't really good at or interested in the fund management, but presumably if you're good at or interested in the investing side, you would still generate returns. So what ha- was it like didn't, didn't do so hot in the, on the investing side either or what, what happened there?

   26. MSMartin Shkreli12:19

       Yeah, I had a, sort of like a mix of, of issues. You know, like when you run a small fund, you have like costs and stuff like that. So, you know, you have startup costs.

   27. SPSam Parr12:27

       How big, how big was the fund?

   28. MSMartin Shkreli12:29

       I had about 8 million, um, you know, ever since I started.

   29. SPSam Parr12:32

       Yeah.

   30. MSMartin Shkreli12:32

       So like, you know, you just can't like, even with good investing, you just kinda can't do that well with respect to, to returns if you have other costs and things like that. And, you know, we had like all kinds of like issues happen along the way that, that led to that prosecution and stuff like that, that sort of limited our, our ability to, to do really well financially. Um, and again, we, we didn't take any fees either because, again, we had this sort of big issue that, that came about, and we just decided to not take fees at all. But in the end, our investors did fairly well. Um, you know, the record shows that our investors all made money in our funds, so was really happy to deliver that. But, you know, along the way there were a lot of twists and turns and hiccups that are, they're not worth going into. But hedge funds for me were kind of like a, just sort of like a rollercoaster of, of issues that were just over, you know, and over again, kind of like various like, you know, unexpected twists and turns that didn't really add up to profit. Some people at hedge funds, like if you get off to like a good start for your first like three or six months, often you can get this momentum of raising more capital and raising more capital and you get this like virtuous cycle. But you can also go in the other direction where, you know, if you, you know, many funds are started by good investors and they end up failing, and those investors sort of come back and take, take a few years off and start a fund again. Um, you know, hedge funds have like the shortest lifespan. You know, [laughs] if you look at the top hedge funds from the '90s, almost none of them exist today. Uh, and I think of those like top 10 hedge funds of all time, like five were shut down by regulatory intervention. [laughs] So like it's a very hazardous job.
4. 20:31 – 32:44

   How he turned $2M into $1B in pharma

   1. MSMartin Shkreli20:31

      So, you know, there's-

   2. SPSam Parr20:31

      Well, and, and, and that's what I was gonna ask you because you, you, you were like, "Well, I started a pharmaceutical company because I love the asset, and I learned through it through finance," which is way different than, like, for example, my friend Kara started this company Hint, which does, like, water because she was like, "My skin was bad and I didn't wanna drink Gatorade or Coke anymore, so I, like, went and form- I went and boiled fruit peels and made this fruit water that, like, tastes good, it's good for you. And we grew from there." Your founding story was like, "Oh, I found assets that were interesting." Like, it's like, that's, like, foreign to me, you know what I mean?

   3. MSMartin Shkreli21:00

      Yeah. So, like, if, if... There was a company, for example, uh, my first hedge fund, we bought 10% of this company, publicly traded company, and they had bought this asset from Bristol Myers, the major, major drug company in New Jersey. And Bristol Myers spent, like, 50 million bucks developing this drug and they quit. They basically said, "This doesn't fit our portfolio. We're not really going after..." The disease they were trying to go after was hypertension, which is very boring and not, does not need mo- another medicine. There's, like, 60 hypertension drugs, you know? There does not need this to be a 61st. And they, they just quit on the drug. Um, there are people who have, like, really bad resistant hypertension and so forth. So I really like this asset. I like the way it worked. And I, after Bristol Myers quit on it, the c- the publicly traded company, in the financial crisis, they merged with another publicly traded company. So I went to the publicly traded company, and again, I, only thing I have is a hedge fund at the moment. And I said, "Let me buy..." And nobody's told this story, by the way, so this is a good, good time to tell it, 'cause it's a really, you know, it's basically a story about how we went to this company with $2 million and turned it into over a billion. Um, you know, which is, is kind of remarkable. But people do this in pharma every day. And my friend, uh, and at the time it was actually my biggest investor, Vivek Ramaswamy, he's now running for president. He basically took our, our business model and supersized it. And again, um, you know, who, who we influenced too is, is a matter, well, left, really left to history. But the, the point is, we went to, uh, this company that had the license from Bristol and they, they weren't doing anything with it. And we said, "Listen, listen, we'll take this. We'll find investors. We'll build a company around it, and, uh, I'm gonna figure out how to, how to make this work." And they said, "Okay, sure. You know, we, we got this asset sitting here doing nothing. If you pay us 2 million bucks, we'll, we'll send you the 2 million bucks." Now, we sent them a million dollars, which was really catastrophic because you never wanna sort of go back on your word. Uh, but it was really, like, a dire circumstance where I forgot what happened exactly, but we just couldn't come up with the money. And it was like we sent them a million and they're like, "What the fuck?" You know, "You can't do this," [laughs] you know? And I, I was sort of like, you know, geez, this is a, you know, huge embarrassment and a huge problem, but you're just gonna have to give us, like, 30 days or 90 days. And, you know, we, we worked it out and we were able to give them the second million, but it was, like, this colossal embarrassment at, right at the start. And, um, you know, shit does happen, but, you know, it ideally shouldn't happen like that. Um, and again, really embarrassing and tough, but we got them the 2 million. And we decided, I, I sort of did all this research and said, "Instead of hypertension, we should go with this rare kidney disease called focal segmental glomerulosclerosis." And if you just go on PubMed and you have the willpower, you can learn a lot about medicine and you can dive in and really-

   4. SPSam Parr23:34

      Pub- PubMed, PubMed just being, like, a database of articles.

   5. MSMartin Shkreli23:38

      Yeah, PubMed is the-

   6. SPSam Parr23:39

      And patents, I guess.

   7. MSMartin Shkreli23:40

      Yep. PubMed is the government database of all scholastic biomedical literature. So 36 million papers. If you sit there long enough and you have the passion, you can become a billionaire. It's just a matter of sitting there and sifting, and sifting, and sifting. Which most people do- don't have the patience, desire, or willpower to do. But every single biomedical innovation is, is logged in on PubMed and-

   8. SPSam Parr24:01

      And y- you were sifting for what? What were you looking for when you went on PubMed?

   9. MSMartin Shkreli24:04

      Yeah. Y- you have to put the pieces together. So the, the, this drug was an endothelin receptor antagonist. Uh, and what does that mean? It, it, it inhibits a protein called endothelin and its function. Well, what will that do, right? You have to decide, well, you have to learn where is endothelin expressed in the body? How does it work? What does it do? If I stop endothelin from working What benefits will that have? What problems will that result in? And you have to look at the history of, okay, well, other companies have tried this. What have they seen? What have they discovered? And what's, what's interesting about pharma is that you think that these companies cover the waterfront, but they really just prod and poke a little bit. There's actually probably 10 diseases that this drug could be beneficial for, and, uh, I made a list of those, and I said, "Okay, well, which one of these is gonna work for sure?" And there are companies that, like, got half the answer and stuff like that, and you just have to keep poking. And we found, like, these handful of diseases that really made a lot of sense. Now, the problem was nobody on Wall Street really liked it. Um, you know, it was very, you know, kind of early. You know, there was this sort of tough problem of if you reduce the amount of protein in the urine of a patient, does that really save their kidney? And I thought I convinced everyone that I could reduce the amount of protein in the urine, which was a, a very big endpoint to me, but not as conclusive as, okay, am I, am I saving their lives? Am I, am I preventing dialysis and kidney failure? Which is really the, the so-called hard endpoint. So I had the soft endpoint that, like, seemed like almost certain I was right, and I was starting to vent- convince companies like AbbVie and, and Vertex and other, like, big bio pharmas that, you know, I was onto something. But nobody wanted to write a check, you know. So I, I basically got one of the management teams that I, I used to deal with on, on, on Wall Street, uh, to invest, and I slowly kind of cobbled together some money, uh, met folks like Peter Thiel and others to, to try to sort of get some investors, did a reverse merger.

   10. SPShaan Puri25:54

       What, what's Peter Thiel like?

   11. MSMartin Shkreli25:56

       Peter's great. You know, it was, you know, 10, 10-plus years ago. He had never done pharma. Um, so we, we got to meet, and this was gonna be basically, like, his first pharma deal ever. Uh, we didn't end up doing the deal, but it was, uh, it was a very funny thing because, like, there was this East Coast versus West Coast mentality. Uh, you know, as a Wall Street guy, he was, you know... He's obviously, you know, one of the, the top VC-type guys, and this is a time where, like, he had Clarium, you know. Their, their founder's fund was just getting started and stuff like that. And, uh, you know, the wheeling, dealing, like, Wall Street sort of style of like, "Oh, we're gonna do a reverse merger," which is basically kind of like a SPAC with no money. Um, [laughs] you know, it's like even worse than a SPAC.

   12. SPShaan Puri26:35

       [laughs]

   13. MSMartin Shkreli26:35

       Um, [laughs] you know, you do the, you do the listing, and then you raise the money. Uh, but it's a way to go public, and, and we did it, and he was like, "Ah, you can't go public in a year or two." And, you know, the reality is you, you kind of can in, especially in biopharma, where the assets are, like, these very modular systems. They're not like a base business that has X dollars of revenue, and it's growing at X rate. These are like, okay, this asset's worth something dead or alive. In other words, if it's being developed or not being developed, it's worth something. Uh, you know, especially with the right business plan, uh, it could be worth a lot. So anyway, we, we, we decided to go public. We raised some money. We started doing clinical trials. The trials worked, uh, and the rest is history. But it took... You know, it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to, to develop a drug. Uh, again, the value of the company is, is 1.5. The value of that drug specifically is probably around 1 billion. Uh, again, whether it actually achieves the sales goals or beats them or disappoints, we'll, we'll see as the drug launches, and I'm rooting for the company. Uh, but, uh, we-

   14. SPSam Parr27:32

       So you, you, you didn't even, you didn't even get the drug, in this e- example, you didn't get the drug to the point where people were buying it or using it. It was y- you made money off just the, the fact that this will exist hopefully in 10 or whatever years.

   15. MSMartin Shkreli27:46

       Yeah, and th- this is where, well, a lot of people don't know my story about medicine. A lot of people think that I take medicines and raise prices. Well, this drug was barely in human beings. It had been in like 30 or 50 people, um, [laughs] up, up until that point. And, you know, I, I made most of my money, uh, in, in sort of developments in, in pharma on the research side. So, you know, this is a drug in clinical research, so no, it's not... It hadn't been FDA approved. It would take 10 years to get it FDA approved, so it was a long marathon of running studies, getting the evidence, running more studies, getting more evidence, and continuing that process. And, you know, uh, as we started to do that, the value of the company increased, and people said, "Okay, I think I get this." And then as the data came in, now it's FDA approved. It's called Filspari. Uh, I named the drug sparsentan. Um, you know, gave it its first chemical name and, um, you know, it's, it's, you know, it- I'm so happy it's, it's FDA approved. Now, I left the company halfway through this process, so I should acknowledge that, but, you know, all the same plans and, and so forth, you know, continued. Um-

   16. SPShaan Puri28:44

       Did, did you, did you own most of it at that time, or what was that? And did you have to divest when all the shit went down?

   17. MSMartin Shkreli28:50

       So I went from 90, you know, when we started it, to 50. Uh, when we were public, I think I had around 40 or 50%. After our first financing, down to 30. After our second financing, down to 20. You know, so at the time of our IPO, we re- when you do a reverse merger, you often don't get on, on Nasdaq, so we, we did an IPO on Nasdaq in 2014, and the company was worth like 3 or 400 million, and I owned about 15, 20% of it. And, uh, again, this is sort of like my first wealth ever. But the funny thing is, a- as you guys maybe know, you have a situation like that, you actually don't have any cash.

   18. SPShaan Puri29:21

       Yeah, you're not liquid.

   19. SPSam Parr29:23

       Yeah, you can't sell it.

   20. MSMartin Shkreli29:24

       Right? So, you know, I, I've got millions of shares of the stock, but, you know, I'm sitting there saying, "Okay, well, I want this-"

   21. SPShaan Puri29:28

       You're like, "How am I gonna buy the Wu-Tang album?" [laughs]

   22. MSMartin Shkreli29:31

       Yeah, well, you know, but well before that, you think about, like, how am I gonna buy this $5,000 a month apartment and go to the $7,000 a month apartment?

   23. SPShaan Puri29:39

       Yeah.

   24. MSMartin Shkreli29:39

       Which is, like, a very funny discussion for somebody that, you know, has 50 or $100 million, uh, of, of, of stock value. And I would go to these banks and say, "Listen, can I borrow 5%, you know, of my money, uh, of my stock value?" And they would say no. And, you know, I'd, I'd say, you know, uh, you know, "Why not?" You know, and they'd say, "Well, you're, it's a new stock, you know. It's, it's kind of, you know, still, you know, a little bit unseasoned. You're the big shareholder. You know, we're just not comfortable with it." And I'm, like, sitting there like, "Oh my God, you know, this is insane," 'cause I don't wanna sell my stock 'cause it sends a, like, kind of a bad signal to the market. Um, you know, but I don't wanna, you know, uh, also be starving. So it was a very, like, funny thing. Um, and I don't wanna be one of those greedy CEOs that has, you know, an insane salary, uh, where you don't need it. So it was very just sort of a funny circumstance. But eventually, uh, we had a big squabble at the company Uh, I ended up leaving. Uh, it was very t- tumultuous and, and, uh, traumatic story in a lot of ways, and it led to my prosecution. Uh, you know, there was this fight with, with the board, and it got very so nasty that the, the, the board, you know, kind of evil people here, but the board sort of went to law enforcement, uh, as kind of one of their ways to win this fight. And, you know, one of the things that a lot of people don't understand is that there's this big revolving door between corporate law and law enforcement. When I say law enforcement, I mean the attorney general, uh, or, sorry, AUSAs, the associate US attorneys that work in the Department of Justice. And it's not hard if you go to a law firm, you know, like a Cooley, Cleary, Gottlieb, Skadden, Arps, pick your... Paul, Weiss, pick your biggest law firm, and you say, "Hey, we got this guy. He did something bad. You know, look into this." You know, usually you'll get an indictment pretty fast. This happened with the Google guy that, uh, had the, uh, uh, intellectual-

   25. SPSam Parr31:29

       The Waymo?

   26. MSMartin Shkreli31:30

       Yeah, Andrew. Uh, this happened to a Goldman Sachs trader that stole some source code, like emailed, emailed it himself home, uh, to work on the source code. Then he went to another hedge fund, and they said, "See? He, he stole intellectual property." FBI got him in, in 48 hours. Goldman makes a phone call, uh, th- they'll act on it quickly. Google makes a phone call, they'll act on it quickly. You're a big enough law firm customer. You're paying a law firm 10 million bucks, and all those law firm partners worked in government, right? They worked literally in the job that could get you indicted, so they could pick up a phone and get it and make it happen. And I actually have, like, the person's name who picked up the phone. You know, and it's, it's, like, so ridiculous because a boardroom battle, a corporate squabble shouldn't turn into, you know, "Okay, let me just make a call and get, you know, get this guy arrested. Then we'll win the fight," right? [laughs] And it's like, you know, I, I was actually acquitted of those charges, and I'm so proud of that. Um, to this day it's, like, the, the most, the happiest thing that I have to look forward to or to talk about because, like, it was this clash of, like, these old hand, old, older incompetent sort of biotech people and this, these younger sort of, like, aggressive executives that, that I shepherded, and the older guys kind of won in terms of control of the company.

5. 32:44 – 52:38

   Why did you jack up the price of the drugs?

   1. MSMartin Shkreli32:44

      But the stock never went up again really, and, [laughs] you know, it, it, it just was sort of this company that they were able to sort of siphon millions of dollars out, uh, out of, uh, which is, like, for, for a lot of talentless executives, like, that's, that's really exciting. Like, getting a, uh, a fi- a $5 million paycheck a year plus a, you know, golden parachute, plus all the perks and the power of being a CEO. Like, eh, none of that stuff mattered to me. I just wanted to make really big money and really big advances. And for a lot of people, like, you know, getting that, the thing I just discussed was, like, that's their life goal. That's their career goal. There's no, no need to do anything else. They'd, they'd rather preside over a company that does nothing but pays them 5 million bucks a year than a company that makes a huge advance in, in a treatment or whatever. So it was this big fight, and, and it, it... I just basically said, "I'll, I'll start a new company. I don't need you guys," and I started, uh, Turing.

   2. SPShaan Puri33:38

      We should, uh, let you explain kind of the thing, 'cause if, if people listening to this have basically only heard, heard of you as the guy who jacked up the price of the drugs, and I've heard you explain this before many times where, again, uh, I said you were entertaining because somebody would come on and be like, "You're the worst. You're, like, you're evil. You did this." And then you would say, "So explain to me what I did exactly." And then they would immediately not know what the hell to say. They're like, "You, you raised the price-

   3. MSMartin Shkreli34:03

      Yeah

   4. SPShaan Puri34:03

      ... of the drug, and now people can't get it." You're like, "Tell me, who can't get it? Where are you getting that data from? Like, what, what..." And you would walk them through almost, like, the Socratic method of, um, what actually happened, why, what your perspective was on it. And so I want you to share that because I think a lot of people have heard the other perspective which is guy buys drug, raises price, he's evil. That's one perspective. I'd like you to share your perspective, and then people can decide for themselves which they feel to be more true. So-

   5. SPSam Parr34:29

      And you didn't even... And, and there was another funny part related to that is you didn't even go to prison for that reason.

   6. SPShaan Puri34:34

      Right, correct.

   7. SPSam Parr34:35

      You, you, if I remember correctly, you admitted you were wrong for a bunch of things, uh, but it wasn't even related.

   8. SPShaan Puri34:39

      Unrelated. Your persona was related.

   9. SPSam Parr34:41

      Your, your... Yeah, yeah, yeah, but your s- I think you being smug and being an asshole when maybe you should've just been like, "Yes, ma'am, I'm sorry," was maybe probably the more appropriate answer, but you were kind of, like, being smug, and you got a lot of shit for that, so I think that hurt your, your, your thing, but you didn't even get pros- you didn't get prosecuted for that.

   10. MSMartin Shkreli34:57

       No, yeah. It's not a, it's... I mean, and I think that's why I was so smug is it's not a crime to choose the price of your product. You know, if you guys wanted to charge for, for this podcast, right, you, you know, whether it's an advertiser or partner or, or, or the listener, yeah, you can pick whatever price you want. You know, that's your call. You know, it's your job to explore the frontier of that price and volume curve, and it... your job to sort of find the maximum revenue. Uh, you can choose to do that or not do that, and I think that's why American capitalism is so great is, like, it's, it's really the only person's call is the firm owner and the firm, like, management team's call, right? It's not a politician's call. It's not the media's call. It's not the guy in the, you know, in the sort of, uh, grandstand's call, you know, you know, hooting and hollering at you. It's, it's not even the patient's call, even though they're your core constituent and we care the most about them. It's, it's your call as management team, right? You set that price. When you email the distributor, that's the price that matters. It's the price that you picked, and nobody can tell you what pr- that price is. And any business owner-

   11. SPSam Parr36:00

       And, and, and what was that, what was that logic that you, that Shaan was referring to that you walked people through?

   12. SPShaan Puri36:03

       Well, well, the, the, the criticism would be you, you, yes, yes, you had the right to raise the price. That doesn't mean you're not a jerk or that people weren't hurt by that because they now couldn't afford it. So now address that part of it.

   13. MSMartin Shkreli36:14

       Yeah, so, so the reverse psychology is, is super important. I'll go through that in a second, but I think the most of, you know, what you said is, is really important because it's this, like, inviolable right, and I, I was really pissed off quite frankly that there was this effort by, by pol- wannabe, would-be politicians that didn't end up winning, uh, and, and others to try to sort of take that right away Uh, through, like, this regulation by embarrassment, right? Like, it was like this, like, "We'll shame you until you change your mind." It's like, no, you're not gonna shame me into changing my mind. [laughs] Like, you know, that, that's insane. You're trying to take my, my right away. It's my right to run my business how I see fit. Now, we'll go through all the logic of why I think it was a good idea and a tenable idea, and it's not something a jerk would do. It's not something an asshole would do. But just first and foremost, you know, how dare you try to tell me, you know, what my price should be? Because ultimately, every person in America is working for some business that sets their price, and you're basically saying, "Well, if you do it to me, well, are you gonna do it to Apple next? Are you gonna tell them that the iPhone's too expensive? Are you gonna do it to your podcast where an advertiser says, 'Oh my God, you want $50,000 to post a, an ad on my podcast? Well, that's not right. I want that for $25,000'?" No, it's... Well, you know, you're not getting the ad. And, you know, I think that there's this special difference when it comes to healthcare, and I, I've learned this and processed it slowly. And like I said, I'll tell you briefly about my new company in a minute. But people treat healthcare products and services in a different part of their mind. You know, a friend of mine worked at Amex and got to talk to Buffett about this, where he said Buffett likes businesses where consumers think about the brand with a different part of their mind. They don't think about it with the rational part. They think about it with the emotional part. And Amex is an emotional product. Coca-Cola is an emotional product. You don't think about it and say, "Well, this soda water costs, you know, sugar water costs 20 cents to make. I don't know if I want to buy this for a dollar." You know, you, you just buy the soda because you love Coca-Cola. And, and the more that you can make people think with that side of their, their brain, the better. In healthcare, you kind of get this, like, very visceral, like, entitlement of, like, "No, I need this drug. I don't care what it costs for the producer. I don't care any, like, this is my right to get this medicine." And obviously, you know, th- there, that's not quite right in my opinion. So getting back to, to sort of just, again, uh, getting past my just annoyance that there'd be people that sort of felt like, you know, they had a right to tell you what your prices should be i- without knowing anything about your business in the first place, uh, I think the biggest thing that worked, Shaan, with that Socratic method is just showing people how little they know about their in- this industry, right? Most people don't know much about the pharma industry. I don't blame them for that, right? This is the industry that I spent my life in. Uh, to know the insid- ins and out of pharma, you know, I wouldn't s- I wouldn't be, I'd be surprised if anybody did. So the first thing I tend to ask is, "Well, what price do you think product should be?" And this is sort of where, like, it all falls apart for, for the interlocutor because the average pharmaceutical price would shock most people. You know, there are rare disease drugs, uh, like Spinraza and the AveXis product for SMA. They're millions of dollars. You know, it's a million dollars for a drug a year. You know, so every year for the rest of your life you gotta pay a million bucks. You know, there are drugs like that.

   14. SPShaan Puri39:20

       But you, you don't pay that necessarily out of pocket, right? It's-

   15. MSMartin Shkreli39:23

       Nobody's paying out of pocket for anything. [laughs]

   16. SPShaan Puri39:24

       So that would, so that-

   17. MSMartin Shkreli39:25

       You know, like, that's, you know, they're, they're, you know-

   18. SPShaan Puri39:27

       It's the cost of the drug to the insurance company, not to the end patient.

   19. MSMartin Shkreli39:30

       Correct. You know, we have this convoluted, crazy system that generally needs to kind of be broken in half. Uh, but you know, and again, I'll show you my product in a minute that unlike Mark Cuban's garbage is, is, might actually help.

   20. SPShaan Puri39:42

       [laughs]

   21. MSMartin Shkreli39:43

       Uh, the, uh [laughs] the, um, you know, the, the first question I always ask people is like, "Well, what, what do you, where do you price a drug where you have..." I've, I had a drug at Retrophin, 60 people took it. Six zero, and they needed it to save their life. What, what price should that be? Should it be the price of Viagra? No. Y- Yeah, I b- I believe in this thing called utility theory of price, which I probably studied in, in economics a long time ago, but forgot. But this, this, this idea is that price has three or four different theories of, of price. There's theory of kind of value, there's theory of utility, and there's sort of other types of theories like it should cost... A lot of people sort of, like, would give me their theories in, in lay terms like, "Well, it should cost what you made it plus a comfortable margin." I was like, "Okay, that, that sounds interesting." And other people would say, "Well, it should cost what it's worth to the user." And, and that's kind of how most medicine is priced. If you can forego some terrible operation, you know, then, and that operation's really expensive, by taking this medicine it should sort of cost the price of you foregoing that operation. And it's like but for analysis, right? So for a lot of rare diseases, it's like, well, but for this drug, you would be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. So it's kind of a bargain at, say, $100,000 because otherwise the insurance is gonna spend half a million on you, you know, going to the hospital every week and so forth and so forth. If you price it on based on what it would cost, like, okay, well price it at a break even. Well, not a lot of incentive to make a medicine like that, right? You wanna kind of want this windfall profit if you're a drug company because you have this risk that this shit's not gonna work. And then [laughs] you know, you'll, you'll be, uh, you'll be on, uh, uh, applying to a job at Pfizer, you know, after your biotech startup fails. So if you do win, you can't just break even. You know, you have to overcome the risks and the risk-adjusted possibility that you would have failed. Otherwise, nobody would invest in companies like this if all the benefit was you would break even. So you have to have this extra return. And so when you do the pricing, I think that the best logical thing to do is pick a price that the alternative care, in other words, a world without this drug, you would forego all those costs for this drug. And so I think that price works. There are people who are, you know, just liter- legitimately out of their mind that say, "Oh, the drug should be just, should just be free." And of course, you know, we're, we're, who's gonna pay for the office? Who's gonna pay for lawyers? Who's gonna pay for the accountants? Who's gonna pay for-

   22. SPShaan Puri41:59

       Who's gonna pay for the next-

   23. MSMartin Shkreli41:59

       You know, research

   24. SPShaan Puri42:00

       ... who's gonna pay for the next drug, right? If, if every drug is free-

   25. MSMartin Shkreli42:02

       Yeah

   26. SPShaan Puri42:02

       ... then nobody's gonna wanna go make drugs.

   27. MSMartin Shkreli42:04

       And again, I, if the, if that's the system society dictated to me, I, I, you know, I'll follow those rules. But the soc- the, the, the system society dictated was it's your choice what to price your product at. It's the insurer's choice to pay for it. It's the doctor's choice to prescribe it. And there are countries, like, there's this miracle drug by Vertex, one of my favorite drug companies, for cystic fibrosis. Miracle product. Literally cure for cystic fibrosis. Amazing. Cystic is no longer a medical problem for 90% of people with cystic fibrosis. This company should have parades, parades every year for it, right? But instead, they get shit for it. And I have friends that have, their lives have been saved. One of my friends in high school died of cystic fibrosis at 19. And these guys have doing, I, I use this term very carefully, God's work by, by saving people with CF. There are countries that refuse to pay for the medicine, right? 'Cause it's $300,000 a year. And my drug, I ask people all the time, "Well, how much is my drug?" "Well," they say, "You know, you had 750 pills." That's not what I'm asking. In pharma, we don't worry about what the price per pill is. We worry about what does it cost for somebody to have to pay for this medicine, not out of pocket, what is the insurance paying for a full course or a full year, right? And they said, "Well, I don't know. How many pills do you, do you have to take when you take this drug that you raised the price of?" And I said, "Well, why are you ready to criticize me when you don't know what the total cost is?" You know, you're, you're already jumping gun

   28. SPSam Parr43:23

       Well

   29. MSMartin Shkreli43:23

       ... clearly

   30. SPSam Parr43:24

       ... but you know why they're criticizing you, which is like, as I'm listening to this, this, you talk, like you have this very classic, uh, issue, which is both an, uh, uh, it's, uh, an asset and a liability, which is you're quite, uh, logical. So you're like this one guy, I forget the guy's name, the, the guy who's running for president, he just did what I did and he did it times 10, but I did it early on, which is like you followed a very logical thing, which is we hear this all the time and we have friends like this where it's like, "Well, I thought it could work because of X, Y, and Z." And in most people's heads they would say to themselves, "Yeah, but no one else is doing it, therefore it's impossible." In your head, which is a very common thing in entrepreneurs like you, which is, "No, like if A, then B, then C." Like it's a very logical approach, but where you've have fucked up is you weren't... It's like, it's like you're so smart at studying the logic that you also kind of fucked up by studying like, "Okay, but if I do that, then people will hate me, therefore I should probably use these words or smile this way when they confront me." And like, that was like a, a, your... It's kind of like what Elon's doing. It's like, dude, you're so fucking smart, Elon. You're doing all this amazing shit. Don't call Twitter Titter.
6. 52:38 – 58:47

   What do you do with your money?

   1. SPSam Parr52:38

      But first, when you got out of prison, how much of that nut did you still have left, and what do you do with your money now? What are you investing in now? Or are you just doing, like... Are, are you even allowed to trade, and are you just doing, like, boring index funds? Are you doing more risky stuff? What are you doing?

   2. MSMartin Shkreli52:52

      Yeah, so I got into a very interesting litigation. So I was able to pay my court, my, my criminal fines very, very relatively easily. It was around eight million bucks. Um, in that process, I, I decided to sell the Wu-Tang album, uh, [laughs] which was a funny thing 'cause there's this NFT bubble. And I basically said, "Oh, like, if I turn this into an NFT or sell to a crypto bro, like, you know, I'll, I'll, I might even get my money back on this thing," 'cause it was basically just, you know, a lark, and I didn't think I'd, uh... I, I, I marked it as down, like, 75%, but I was able to actually turn a profit on it, so I was, I was happy to time that bubble well. Um, so I was able to pay my criminal fines off, but then I got into this litigation with the FTC. Uh, the Federal Trade Commission actually personally sued me for monopoly. I'm the first person in American history, the Sherman Act, which is 125 years old, the first person to personally be sued by the Federal Trade Commission, which is very odd because John D. Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, a couple of people who are accused of monopolies, their firms got sued. I was actually the first person to personally be sued as a monopolist, uh, which is very odd. Uh, and they won. So I'm appealing that, but they won a $60 million hit against me. So until I figure that out, I'm sort of not, not in the market. Um, it's very, like, bizarre ruling that I think will get overturned. But again, it shows you that kind of, like, animus, like this judge that made that ruling just hates me.

   3. SPSam Parr54:19

      Well, and w- will, will that make you broke?

   4. MSMartin Shkreli54:21

      If, if I had to pay the 60, I think I, I could pay the 60, but it's, it's just, like, a colossal fuck, you know, just a colossal, like-

   5. SPSam Parr54:29

      Right

   6. MSMartin Shkreli54:30

      ... you know, hit in the gears of, like, stopping, like, the production, basically. So, uh, the company, I also am indemnified, so the company will probably have to pay it. But it's, it's just a big, like, clusterfuck at the moment. So, you know, I'm, I'm sort of focused... Th- again, the nice thing about being an entrepreneur and, and having s- faith in your talent and things like that is that Even if you wipe me out and start at zero, I wouldn't have a problem, I think, you know, g- getting, making several hundred million dollars. I, I, I think that any business I start, you know, it may not be this one or the next one, but eventually with perseverance I'll, I'll have some great success. And I think that there's not, you know, a bone in my body that doesn't believe that. And I think when you can find great assets or great people and put capital together with that, that, you know, magic starts to happen. And, and it's, uh, it's infectious and contagious and, you know, as long as you have your sort of mooring straight, you should be able to do it. And I think that we- we've already started that process. So whether this litigation turns out that I'll have to pay, you know, six, some amount of that's been paid by the company, and if I don't have indemnification, something could be maybe I'll have to pay 30 or 40 million bucks, and it would suck. Sure. You know, I'd have to sell my farm assets. I'd have to, you know, make room. Would I c- be able to cover it or not? [laughs] I'm not even 100% sure, but, you know, it all depends on the sale price. Uh, but you know, even, even if you sort of took everything from me, y- you know, and, and added another 100 million, I'd, I'd sort of be, you know, you know, cheery about it and say, "All right, it's a big challenge, but I'll do it," you know? And I think that, you know, I don't, I don't view sort of wealth and, and, and success as, as symmetrical or the same thing. I sort of s- say that, you know, um, you know, it, it's sort of almost like, you know, a challenge to sort of, like, do it the other way. I know a lot of people, like, they make money to be comfortable. Like, I almost feel like I make money to be uncomfortable. [laughs] Like, I want, I want the, the bigger challenges, the harder things to do. Like, you look at Elon Musk and you got, you, you gotta ask yourself, like, "Why is this guy making his life so much harder?" New businesses, new ideas. [laughs] Like, what is going on in his head that he wants more pain? 'Cause it's very painful to deal with all the headaches of these companies. Oh, half your advertisers just left at Twitter. Oh, by the way, you still have to pay the interest on those bonds. [laughs] Like, I'd just be sitting there like, "Oh my God, you know, this is so much pain. Like, why add this on top of my Tesla issues?" 'Cause you know there's 100 issues at that company, you know, there's 100 issues at SpaceX. And again, business is going great at those companies, but there's still intense issues that you have to deal with every day, and you've got all their lawsuits in, you've got all these things going on in your personal life. You have eight kids. I mean, why add more shit to your, to your-

   7. SPShaan Puri57:00

      [laughs]

   8. MSMartin Shkreli57:00

      ... to your thing? And, and I think the answer for me is, like, I love it. You know, I, I, I love the game and, you know, whether or not, you know, my bank's account's got this many zeros, that many zeros-

   9. SPShaan Puri57:10

      Mm

   10. MSMartin Shkreli57:10

       ... I, you know, it's, it's not like you're gonna be spending it. You know, it's, it's, uh, it's just work. You know, I, I, I sit in a room with my, my team, and I, I work all day, and that's it. N- so for me it's, it's like-

   11. SPShaan Puri57:21

       Naval, do you, I don't know if you follow Naval, but he has this great quote. Uh, he has this, like, Twitter thread called, uh, How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky, and he says something in there that I love, which he goes, um, "I don't wanna just get rich, I wanna be a person who gets rich." Meaning, uh, if you could drop... If, if you took everything away from me and you dropped me, you know, sort of like butt naked in a third world country, in 10 years I wanna be wealthy again, and I think I have the s- I have built the skills in order to do that. And so that sort of reminds me of what you're talking about, which is like, look, you might lose everything that you've made in the last decade or have, have, uh, have this sort of like reset, but i- i- give you 10 years, you'll build back up. And, uh, I think most great entrepreneurs are, are built that way and wired that way, and almost in a sick way kinda relish that, that opportunity. When, when that misfortune strikes, there is some fortune in that misfortune, uh, when, when, when a situation like that hits.

   12. MSMartin Shkreli58:13

       I think so too. Yeah. It's, it's sort of fun, I mean, in some ways. Like, I think a lot of people, you know, like a comeback story too.

   13. SPShaan Puri58:18

       You, uh, you talked about the, like, you know, you didn't wanna be the Pfizer CEO. You didn't want... You, you kinda knew what you needed, you could've said, and you decided, like, F that. Like, I don't wanna, I don't wanna do business... Uh, I'm putting words in your mouth a little bit, but it's sorta like I don't wanna be a CEO, that type of CEO, and I don't wanna play the game of entrepreneurship, and I don't like the world when it's less interesting, when people don't actually say what's on their mind or, uh, can speak like a normal human being versus being like this, like, very tightly wound, you know, corporate, you know, uh, uh, duck.

7. 58:47 – 1:06:51

   The Fun Strikes Back Movement

   1. SPShaan Puri58:47

      And so I don't know if you've seen this, but h- have you seen, have you guys seen this movement that happened at Stanford, the Fun Strikes Back movement? Sam, have you heard about this?

   2. SPSam Parr58:56

      No.

   3. MSMartin Shkreli58:56

      Yeah.

   4. SPSam Parr58:56

      No, what is that?

   5. MSMartin Shkreli58:57

      Yeah, absolutely. It's awesome.

   6. SPShaan Puri58:58

      There's basically... So there was, like, the student body election, I guess, and, uh, [laughs] I don't know the full story 'cause I just read about this. I was reading about this this morning. I was supposed to be prepping for this, but the story fascinated me instead. And, um, basically there was a group of people that are, are at St- have a group of students that were running at Stanford, and they won the election on this movement that they're calling Fun Strikes Back. And they're basically like, "Dude, the uni- campus and the u- university has just drained us of our personality. It is trying to shut down all the fun things." So they're like, "We are pro athletics, we're pro fraternities, we are pro partying, and we are pro weirdness." And they basically talk about, like, the, the, the story... They, they do a great job telling this story. They're like, you know, back in 1981, um, the st- you know, there's this frat party where, that they threw every year where there was sand all over the house. Uh, like a beach party or whatever. And at the end of the night, like the, the party was over, people left, but the sand was still there. They're like, "Shit, what are we gonna do with all this sand? We still have so much," and saying they're like, "What if we built an island with the sand?" And they're like, "There's this little lake. What if we took all the sand to the middle of the lake and we made an island, and that could be our island." And they, like, rallied at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, and they go there, and then the groundskeeper's like, "Guys, you can't bring a bulldozer here, like, an excavator to, like, dump this here." And they're like, "Sir, we wanna do this for this reason. This is our moment. This is our legacy. Like, w- think about this, years from now, people will wonder how the hell this island was built, and tonight is that night." And the guy's like, "All right, go ahead."

   7. MSMartin Shkreli1:00:22

      Right.

   8. SPShaan Puri1:00:22

      And he, like, lets them in, they build the island, and it's this epic party or whatever. It's the epic finish. And then, like, fast-forward to today, like, uh, the island got [laughs] the island is gone, the lake is gone. They shut everything down. Nobody can visit that, that little pond or that lake anymore because there was, like, an endangered salamander there. So they're like, "No, no, no. Shut it down, guys." And then, like, one by one they've kicked off all the fraternities from, from the, from the campus for, like, whatever violation. They hit a violation, they removed them from campus. They, like, scraped all the, like, each, each neighborhood used to have its own name and its own, like, weird- ... weirdness. They like scraped it all off and now it's just like numbered cells. It's like you are on D- D block 657. [laughs]

   9. MSMartin Shkreli1:01:02

      [laughs] So it's jail

   10. SPShaan Puri1:01:02

       [laughs] They're like, "Dude, we used to have like the biggest party of the year was this anything but clothes party," and they decided that that's too risky and it's not fair to everybody, and they're like-

   11. MSMartin Shkreli1:01:11

       It's, I- I always wonder, Shaan, like who are the pro... Like, what did my prosecutors and like judges and like regulators and people like Elizabeth Warren, what did they do in college? This is what they did in college. They- they shut down the party and they're like, "Nope, this is offensive."

   12. SPShaan Puri1:01:24

       [laughs]

   13. MSMartin Shkreli1:01:24

       "We gotta shut this party down."

   14. SPShaan Puri1:01:25

       Right.

   15. MSMartin Shkreli1:01:26

       You know, and it's, it's just like who are these people and why, why do we ever let any of them have any power? And it, it's frustrating to me that like, you know, schools like Stanford and many others have had to like go through this like identity crisis of like I'm scared to say what I want because, you know, uh, what if somebody's gonna be offended? And it again becomes this meta game where like y- we were talking about like, yeah, could I like do the party line and say, "You know, I'm really sorry my actions have caused, you know, uh, some misunderstanding," and blah, blah, blah, and have this non-apology apology. But then in like Japan, the way you say no can be found to be insulting. So you just move the meta to like the next-

   16. SPShaan Puri1:01:59

       Right

   17. MSMartin Shkreli1:02:00

       ... you know, level where it's like, "Oh, y- you saw the way he said no, he didn't really mean it. You know, when, when he said I'm sorry, he wasn't really apologetic. There's a real way to say I'm sorry. You gotta bow a little bit deeper."

   18. SPShaan Puri1:02:10

       [laughs]

   19. MSMartin Shkreli1:02:10

       And it's like, okay, well, [laughs] so it's, it's, it's an insane meta where you're constantly just like getting to the next point of, of like inhibiting your personality and, and what are you really saying? And just come out and say it, you know? And I think that that's a really freeing, you know, thing to do.

   20. SPSam Parr1:02:26

       Yeah, I don't know if it's on Substack, but I'm on your newsletter and like you made some wild predictions. I don't remember all the predictions, but like you ma- you, you actually had a really good post where you said like, "This is gonna happen I think in 2023. This will happen in 2030. I think in 50 years this will happen." And, uh, I, I, it would be actually be fun to look back if some of your predictions so far are turning out to be true, but it's very interesting and you are, you're pretty good at writing actually. You're, you're quite good actually.

   21. MSMartin Shkreli1:02:51

       Thanks a lot. You know, it's, it's hard to write, um, you know, uh, professionally. Like you guys, uh, I know Sam, um, well, I, I know Shaan does for sure. Y- when you're an entrepreneur, doing anything other than working on your business seems like a waste of time and, and like a, a really, a painful thing to do, uh, because you have to provide for your investors, your coworkers, your own family, the business you love, you know. It's, it's, uh, it's hard to, to do a lot of writing. Uh, in prison it was a lot easier, you know. It was, it was, uh, you know, I had more time to think, but even then I was, I was actually really busy. People will ask me if I was, you know, uh, you know, bored in prison and like it was the furthest thing from it. A lot of people ask me, "Why didn't you get jacked up, you know, in, in, in prison?" I just didn't have the time, you know. Uh, I was, I was working the whole time. So, you know, it's, it's always hard to write. I love writing, but, but to, to do anything... A lot of people ask me if I don't, why don't, why don't I do a podcast, and it's the same reason. And, you know, the predictions about AI are, are, you know, some of them echo kind of like other people's predictions, you know, in a lot of ways. We have large language models now. They're really interesting. Uh, they certainly provide for more eye-opening potential predictions. You know, probably some of the craziest ones I've, I've made, including, include things like there'll, there'll be kind of interspecies marriage between AI and humans. There'll be AI fundamental rights for, for, for voting and things like that that'll kind of reshape society. So they're, they're pretty wild predictions, but I do think they'll happen years from now, and I do think we're starting to see some of those things pull in and get accelerated. Uh, one of my favorite people, John Carmack, recently upgraded his estimate of AGI, so-called artificial general intelligence, from 50% by 2030 to 60%. You know, John is like this very precise, [laughs] you know, calculating nerd who's, you know, get, you know, created the first person shooter. He, you know, is a brilliant guy, and he's working on his own company, which nobody's talking about, uh, called Keen Technologies. Uh, and I think he's the only employee, if I'm not mistaken, so he's just sitting there like trying [laughs] to create like this, this brain. Uh, and, you know, who knows? Uh, I think he's a good dark horse for this race. But no, AGI is like ca- is super captivating to everyone, right? Like it's, it's, to me, if you look at the history of humanity, next to maybe relativity or, you know, a couple of other... like magnetism, electricity, like this is like probably more important, and it's the first time humans will have created a mind from, from nothing that's stronger than a human, and it's really like just so profound that, you know, I don't think anybody can afford to, to ignore it. It's more profound than the internet. You know, it's, it's really, you know, something wild. Now, we don't know when we'll get it, we'll get a partial version of it, or we're already seeing a partial version of it. You know, it's, it's sort of early days, but while I was in prison I was able to think, sort of zoom out and think about that a little bit more than maybe the average person. And it's funny, if you look at sort of OpenAI and some of the other startups that are coming out, uh, vis-a-vis sort of companies like Google and Facebook, y- you see that they kind of did that zooming out many years ago, and the companies that are sort of missing this and messing it up are kind of like too close to the, to, to sort of reality and, and the day-to-day product management to even see it and really understand it, that people wanted this. You know, Microsoft, both, both Facebook and Google had eq- sort of equivalent technology to OpenAI, in my opinion, years ago, and they just still just haven't sort of seen the, the actual product, you know, making sense and, and launching. And, um, anyway, you know, it's, it's a really interesting time obviously.

   22. SPSam Parr1:06:28

       What's your, uh, what's the new thing?

   23. MSMartin Shkreli1:06:30

       So I'm, I'm releasing in the next, uh, uh, day or two, maybe even today, an AI physician. So this is-

   24. SPSam Parr1:06:36

       This, this will go live tomorrow. This will go live tomorrow.

   25. MSMartin Shkreli1:06:39

       Great.

   26. SPSam Parr1:06:39

       So it might be up. So what, what, is there a URL?

   27. MSMartin Shkreli1:06:41

       So you're, you're breaking the news. Uh, and it's so funny and happenstance 'cause we were talking to like TechCrunch and like all these places. We never, we didn't really find like the perfect reporter

8. 1:06:51 – 1:31:58

   Introducing Martin's New Company: Dr. Gupta AI

   1. MSMartin Shkreli1:06:51

      who could report on this, so here we go. Uh, it's called DrGupta.ai. Uh, it's a, the first of its kind, AI physician. Um, it's basically going to be, uh, what I hope something that could re- drastically reduce healthcare costs and drast- drastically improve healthcare quality, uh, by providing an AI, uh, physician mimic, basically. Sort of a synthetic AI doctor that, that will, can give you medical information. And I think that, you know, most, um-

   2. SPSam Parr1:07:19

      Is there a, is there a site?

   3. MSMartin Shkreli1:07:20

      If ChatGPT was your doctor, or what? Dr. Gupta, like G-U-P-T-A, .ai.

   4. SPSam Parr1:07:27

      So the site's not up yet.

   5. MSMartin Shkreli1:07:27

      Um-

   6. SPSam Parr1:07:28

      Oh, .ai, all right.

   7. MSMartin Shkreli1:07:29

      He happens to be Indian, but it's also GPT, so Gupta. Um, so anyway, Dr. Gupta will give you medical information and, uh, you can talk to him. It's free. Um, it's, uh, to me, what a lot of people didn't understand about my price increase and stuff like that, one of the other reasons I was optimistic, there are like 50 of them, is that 90% of healthcare costs come from physicians, 10% come from pharma.

   8. SPSam Parr1:07:53

      What, what do you mean come from?

   9. MSMartin Shkreli1:07:54

      And that's something-

   10. SPSam Parr1:07:54

       What does that mean?

   11. MSMartin Shkreli1:07:56

       We spend $4 trillion on healthcare in this country. Most of that money goes to physicians and healthcare workers, and a lot of that, I love doctors, I love nurses, I don't have anything against them. A lot of those decisions can be done by machines. A lot of those decisions, thanks to OpenAI and, and deep learning and LLM models, can be done by AI. So can we take that $4 trillion and make it $2 trillion? That would be a big deal. You know, the, whatever Cuban's doing is not gonna save anybody any money, and it's not gonna make Mark any money either. But [laughs] this-

   12. SPSam Parr1:08:29

       It-

   13. MSMartin Shkreli1:08:29

       ... could actually change the curve on healthcare.

   14. SPSam Parr1:08:32

       Give us a 30 seconds on, give us a 30 seconds on why Cuban's thing, y- y- you've referenced a couple times how it might be dumb or, or, or not that critical.

   15. MSMartin Shkreli1:08:38

       It's such a shit show. Like, so, so he's basically running a pharmacy, right? So he's trying to source drugs for cheaper, that mind you, every other pharmacy's pretty good at sourcing medicine, and I don't know how he's gonna get a deal on, you know, say Teva or Sun's generics any better than, than CVS or Walgreens. That seem kinda hard to do that, right? He's, they, they, he doesn't have the volume they have. Get that deal and then somehow get a margin. Pharmacy margins are razor, razor freaking thin, right? You cannot take a $3 drug and charge 100 bucks for it at a pharmacy. They're razor. Just look at the 10-Q for Walgreens and CVS. Like, they're not like making a fortune here. And so he's gonna somehow get a margin out of that. There, there's just, it's just hocus pocus. There's no actual way to do that. You know, it's, it's a bunch of lies, basically. He's being dishonest.

   16. SPSam Parr1:09:28

       So I'm on Dr. Oopa- Dr. Gupta AI. Uh, so I see the thing, so it, I, I tell it my age, how tall I am, my weight, some of my vitals. If I have lab results, I enter it in, and then what's gonna happen next? It's gonna say, like-

   17. MSMartin Shkreli1:09:40

       No

   18. SPSam Parr1:09:40

       ... "You should check out, you should work on this, this, and this"?

   19. MSMartin Shkreli1:09:43

       No, you don't actually even have to enter any of your vitals. You can just have a conversation. And we've programmed it using these, like, very, you know, intricate techniques. I was actually, you know, a lot of people are talking about Auto GPT and, and Baby GPT, and I talked to Yohi, and I talked to all of the people that invented that stuff. You never know what people are doing privately, but we started doing the re- auto reflective GPT stuff six months ago, and we were able to discover that depending on the technique you use, you can get better chat results than ChatGPT. And I don't think OpenAI disputes this. We've screened thousands of messages that we've tried with the system, and we get better res- better performance than ChatGPT by making it kind of like auto reflect and do other kind of methods that, again, are our secret sauce that get the chat bot to succeed. So it's not so much about that medical view, it's you can get physician quality advice for free at any time, any hour. So you and I may be able to call a doctor friend, but most people cannot just decide at midnight that if they have a medical question, that they can get an answer. You have to go on Google, you gotta go ask WebMD, and you're, you don't know what you're reading half the time if, if you're the average Joe. You know, you're not trained in medicine. If you say, "Well, what about my chest pains? What should I do?" You wanna talk to somebody. You wanna actually have a conversation. LLMs do that amazingly. This is a, is a, is an attraction of GPT-4 that'll actually let you have a natural dialogue with something that, as you guys know, GPT-4 scores 90% on the USMLE. It's a 90% performing... Most doctors don't score 90% on the boards. GPT is a ace doctor, uh, when it comes to medical knowledge. So being able to ask an ace doctor at any time for free about medical information, medical advice, you know, it's a pretty profound product I think, because again, we spend trillions of dollars on physicians. A lot of the physician's work can be done by AI, and it's an uncomfortable truth that, you know, again, it doesn't mean that we don't need doctors ever again. In my world, in my vision, 50 years from now, there's no such thing as a medical doctor. There's no such thing as a physician.

   20. SPSam Parr1:11:43

       Wow.

   21. MSMartin Shkreli1:11:44

       That's my future.

   22. SPSam Parr1:11:44

       So I'm on the site. I, I can, I can get 50 messages for free, or I pay 20 bucks a month. What, what's the end game here? Do you think this is gonna be a massive company, or is this, like, a, a thing where you're like, "I don't know what's gonna happen. Let's, let's figure it out," or are you trying to get after it? What, what are you trying to do in the next five or 10 years with this business?

   23. MSMartin Shkreli1:12:00

       Yeah, I'm trying to make it a massive company. Um, I think that, you know, it, you know, it will be a massive company. You, you never say never in business, but you know, we're, we're certainly gonna try our hardest, because I do think that you can auto... This is why technology has never really bent the curve for healthcare. The cost of sending a megabyte, the cost of sending, uh, you know, storing data, the cost of compute, all that has dropped by not just like 90%, it's dropped by like 99 and, and six more nines percent. Healthcare has not moved a bit. Why? It's because of this lobby that exists. The AMA restricts the amount of people who can become doctors. The supply is constrained. You cannot just graduate a million more doctors tomorrow. If we could do that, what would happen? The price of medical services would drop like a rock. We, our country would be saved. Medicare and Medicaid wouldn't be going bankrupt. We have a hu- wouldn't be bankrupt, bankrupting us. If we had a million more doctors tomorrow, healthcare wouldn't be a problem in America. The problem is, we don't have a million more doctors in America. One of the reasons is there's just not gonna be a million people who pass med school. The other problem is the AMA specifically says there's only this many med schools There's only this many, uh, uh, doctors graduating from med school. We're gonna make it really hard to become a doctor. Even though AI can do all these things very easily, and you're gonna see a lot of industries collapse because of GPT, I think, whether it's law, medicine, accounting. There's gonna be a huge change in society, thanks to AI and, and GPT, I think.

   24. SPShaan Puri1:13:24

       Yeah. So how is this not like, uh, self-driving cars, where even though self-driving is almost, like, better than a human in, in, in a bunch of different circumstances, maybe not certain weather conditions. Uh, but if it gets one thing wrong, it's, you know, all the news and all the lawsuits. And so they need to be not just better, they need to be so much better that they can s- kind of overcome that. Like, how do you not just get sued out of existence for the, you know, the, the, the h- you know, one mistaken medical diagnosis or, or, um, you know, treatment plan or w- or whatever it is here? How do you, how do you avoid that problem?

   25. MSMartin Shkreli1:13:57

       Sure. I, I think it's a lot like, like self-driving cars, where if you gave me the story where there's 50,000 auto fatalities a year, right, in America, and I can press this button right here and there's gonna be 20,000. There's two types of people in the world. There's the first type of person who says, "That's amazing. 30,000 lives saved, 30,000 less funerals, 30,000 less torn families destroyed by needless, you know, terrible, you know, uh, automobile fatality. What a horrible, you know, thing. I'm so happy, I can't wait to push that button. You know, anything stopping me from pushing that button is, is insane," right? Why would you delay that for half a second? And then you've got the kind of person, uh, similar to the Stanford party, who says, "Well, wait a second. Are there gonna be 20,000 deaths from, from this? That's an outrage. I can't believe it. Don't push that button." And obviously, one side is right and one side's wrong, you know? But the, the, the technical progress of, of the world cannot be stopped. I'm part of this e/acc group, Effective Accelerationism, which is this, like, new movement that's counter-effective altruism. So if you see the E/ACC, we've got a lot of really exciting members, some of the biggest people in technology. Uh, and it's this sort of like underground movement of people who don't wanna slow down AI, for people who don't wanna slow down, uh, technology. And I think that, um, you know, the idea that we're here to stop progress because the technology might make one mistake, and remember, that's sort of like stopping the automobile because the automobile itself was an improvement over the horse. We have to move forward in the world. We can't look back and, and nitpick on every single mistake in life. And I think that's, that's sort of... I know that's not how you feel, Shaan, but that kind of criticism and that kind of, like, attitude is such a terrible, pernicious threat to, to our wellbeing, that, like, we have to look at that glass not just half full, 'cause it's 90% full. We can't look at the 10% that's empty.

   26. SPShaan Puri1:15:50

       Right. Yeah. I mean, I get it philosophically. It's like the trolley problem. It's like 10 people, the train's gonna run over 10 people. If I pull this lever, it'll run over those other two. And, uh, you know, there's a, uh, whatever. People have, people feel different ways about that. I guess what I mean is, like, practically speaking, th- for this company, like, how does this company not die because something like that's gonna happen? What, what are you gonna do? Like, what, what do you think is gonna play out there?

   27. MSMartin Shkreli1:16:12

       We, we, we make sure... Our terms and policies make sure that you understand that this is medical advice. Dr. Gupta's not a real doctor, that if you, uh, use our website for medical information, it's simply for informational purposes only, and you have to... I mean, I could read you the whole disclaimer, but the reality of the matter is that do you want somebody who's 75 years old, okay, who has, uh, pneumonia but doesn't know that they have pneumonia? Uh, they have a cough, but they're gonna die of pneumonia if they don't go to the hospital next three days. Do you want that person running around Google trying to figure out if they have pneumonia or not? Or do you want them to, to go to an LLM? What's better? If you don't have the LLM, they're gonna go to Google, they're gonna go to WebMD, they're gonna try to read it on their own. They're gonna mess it up. There's a decent chance. Whereas if you go to the LLM, you might actually get the superior technology that may save their life. So you're net improving it, and if you don't want a net improvement, then you're Elizabeth Warren, you're a Luddite, you're etc., etc. And if you want the improvement, you're on the side, right side of history, and I think that if you look at the way technology informs regulation, not the other way around, right? Regulation has to serve the people. If the people are getting the benefit, the people will demand the right side. If you have people that wanna stand in the way of, of improvement, that's up to them. Listen, if, if, if we're told you gotta block Dr. Gupta in this state or this country, okay. The Philippines will have it. Remember, GPT is, is, is, um, knows every single language.

   28. SPShaan Puri1:17:39

       Right.

   29. MSMartin Shkreli1:17:39

       It's, it's lingual in every single language in the world. So Japan will have this for free tomorrow.

   30. SPShaan Puri1:17:43

       It's like Pitbull. It's Mr. Worldwide, right?
9. 1:31:58 – 1:42:16

   Who are your heroes?

   1. SPShaan Puri1:31:58

      he's done about his life. You know, I don't like all of these people. I just like certain things. I took inspiration from certain things at certain periods of certain people's lives. Who were, kind of, who were some people that you were inspired by, either in the business world or the non-business world, uh, that, that you think are... you sort of have admired or you've gone down the YouTube rabbit hole and just, you know, uh, binged a bunch of their content or whatever?

   2. MSMartin Shkreli1:32:19

      I'll start with Vince McMahon. Um, you know-

   3. SPShaan Puri1:32:21

      [laughs]

   4. MSMartin Shkreli1:32:22

      ... so when, when I s- when I started to be this, like, bad guy and I realized that there was nothing I could do to change that narrative. Like, I could do-

   5. SPShaan Puri1:32:31

      You're the heel

   6. MSMartin Shkreli1:32:31

      ... a two-hour interview with ABC-

   7. SPShaan Puri1:32:32

      You're the heel

   8. MSMartin Shkreli1:32:33

      ... and they would take the thir- the 30 seconds that fucked me and, and make the 30 seconds loop, and, like, forget the other, you know, 119 minutes. Those 30 seconds are, are the ones that are gonna be on TV. I realized, like, there's no way out of this, and I'm gonna have to embrace being the bad guy, and some people will get the joke and, and some people won't. Uh, but, you know, fuck it. If, if, if, if that's what people want, then I'll be the bad guy, and I sort of embraced kind of being this jerk and trying to dress down, you know, the so-called authority, uh, figures, um, by, by sort of pointing, you know, pointing the, the mirror back at them. Um, so Vince, Vince sort of, like, had that, like, kafabe wrestling, you know, they call it a heel in wrestling, uh, where, you know, he's, he, he's the owner of the company, but he's also kind of, like, breaking down that fourth wall of, like, some of the stuff he's talking about on the show is, like, related to actual boardroom battles. And, like, some of the [laughs] you know, stuff on the show is, is completely contrived and, you know, it's just a fantastic product and I, I like the company and what they've done with it over the years. So, you know, I'm a big fan of Vince's. Um, you know, I, I, I like a lot of d- like, different scientists and stuff like that. Um, you know, so business people themselves, you know, there, there aren't a whole lot that I, like, point to and say, "Oh, that's somebody I'd, I'd like to be like," or something like that. But growing up, I always liked Bill Gates, who was kind of this, you know, smug, hated by the way. In '94, Bill Gates was, was sued for monopoly, but his company was, not him. And people wanted to tear this guy apart, and I was just sort of coming up. I was like 11 years old. I loved computers. I started programming. And I was like, "Well, everyone hates Bill Gates." And the hacker community hated Bill Gates, and, and it's because he wanted to make money, and he was not apologetic about it, and I kinda liked this guy. I liked the contrarianism of being like, "You know what? I like Microsoft. I like Bill Gates." No one's willing to say that. And, like, we wouldn't have these things, so we're all using Microsoft products right now. [laughs] Like, what would we be doing without it? And, you know, the Linux nerds would be like, "Well, you know, we can, we don't have to use them." And it's like, look, the whole world's using them for a reason. They're pretty good products. And I, I just sort of liked taking that bad guy, and at the time he was so, really hated, and sort of saying, you know, "I, I'm on his side." You know, the media was on his case because he was the richest guy in the world, but couldn't afford a good haircut. You know, they would always just dog him for no reason.

   9. SPShaan Puri1:34:46

      [laughs]

   10. MSMartin Shkreli1:34:46

       And he spent the rest of his life, like, trying to walk back on that. And, like, how cool would it have been if he sort of embraced the narrative? And like, yeah, you know, 'cause privately he does embrace the narrative, right? It's just a, it's just sort of this public image of like, "No, no, I'm, I'm this benevolent philanthropist. You don't understand." You know, privately, the guy's still just as ruthless, still just as vicious and, and just as energetic and intense as he was when he was a kid. So, you know, it's, it's all this like, you know, imagery for, for nothing. Um, and you know, there's a number of other folks like, uh, Henry Nicholas, who started Broadcom. You know, I, I mean, I, there's just so many people that, you know, I've studied in business over the years that I, I like. Tom Peterffy from Interactive Brokers. Um, so many people I admire that, that did, did things their way, um, and, and made it work. Uh, people especially who, who sort of have come from nothing or came from like, with very little on their back. A lot of people dog George Soros, uh, you know, who's, you know, uh, a, a true American success story, and people sort of forget that, you know, or don't understand that, like, all the stuff in politics and, like, Soros-funded prosecutor and stuff like that, the guy barely pays attention to that [laughs] shit. You know? I think that, like, the idea that he's spending his day, like, plotting with, you know, the, uh, you know, the world economic forums, like, run the world is this like right-wing meme that's just not, not based in reality. And, you know, the guy's work in hedge funds and investing is, is, like, truly remarkable how he came from, like, sort of the, you know, World War II basically to, to America to become truly successful. So people like that I, I admire. You know, anyone who's sort of had this against-all-odds type of success. Um, you know, even people like, uh, Robert Smith, you know, who run Vista. Um, you know, people who have, like, really bucked, you know, any conventions and expectations of them to, to be really successful. So there's so many people that I have up there on that wall. Uh, and again, it's not, you know, every, like you said, it's not every piece of their life, but little pieces have, have sort of made me who I am.

   11. SPShaan Puri1:36:38

       I have Bill Gates on mine because of the, the interview where [laughs] about the chair, jumping over the chair.

   12. MSMartin Shkreli1:36:43

       Where he jumps above the chair?

   13. SPShaan Puri1:36:44

       Have you seen this one, Martin? [laughs] One of the-

   14. MSMartin Shkreli1:36:46

       Yeah

   15. SPShaan Puri1:36:46

       ... the, I still think that's the most gangster, like, CEO interview moment. I don't even know how this came up, and then he, he's [laughs]

   16. SPSam Parr1:36:54

       She, I think the interviewer was like-

   17. SPShaan Puri1:36:55

       She's like, "Is it true?"

   18. SPSam Parr1:36:55

       ... "I heard a rumor that you could j-

   19. SPShaan Puri1:36:57

       [laughs]

   20. SPSam Parr1:36:57

       ... you know how to jump over a chair." He goes, "Yeah." And she goes-

   21. SPShaan Puri1:37:00

       No, no, he goes-

   22. SPSam Parr1:37:00

       ... "Do it."

   23. SPShaan Puri1:37:01

       He goes, "Well, it depends on the height of the chair." And then it cuts to a chair-

   24. SPSam Parr1:37:05

       Oh

   25. SPShaan Puri1:37:05

       ... and him clearing it like Tony Hawk. [laughs] And I have no explanation why this was like... Is this what TV interviews were like back then? Like, I, I can't imagine some- Like, that's like being like Donald Trump, like- Is it true you could win an arm wrestling match against anyone? He's like, "Well," rolls up his sleeve [laughs] and just like punks the, punks Tucker Carlson.

   26. SPSam Parr1:37:23

       Dude, I'm watching this video by the way.

   27. SPShaan Puri1:37:24

       Like, that would be amazing.

   28. SPSam Parr1:37:25

       The, it's not that impressive.

   29. SPShaan Puri1:37:27

       Dude.

   30. SPSam Parr1:37:27

       It's not a big chair. You don't think you could jump over a chair?

Episode duration: 1:42:16