Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy Central.
Speaker 2: From the most trusted journalist at Comedy.
Speaker 3: Central's America's only source for new This is The Daily Show.
Speaker 2: With your host John Steward, part the Daily Show.
Speaker 4: Thank you, flame is John Stuart Man. Do we have
Speaker 4: a show for tonight? Later on I'm gonna be joined
Speaker 4: by our guest ruck Or Bregman.
Speaker 5: He is my all time and I mean this all
Speaker 5: time favorite Dutch historian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, you heard me.
Speaker 5: Suck on that Hermann Vondel Jones, who is another dutchy
Speaker 5: story and that we.
Speaker 4: Looked up backstage.
Speaker 5: But first, and I'm so glad you were with us today,
Speaker 5: Let's talk about our beloved president. He's in as a suspect.
Speaker 5: He's in a bit of a tough situation right now
Speaker 5: since he ran on fixing the economy, and fixing the
Speaker 5: economy is very complicated, it's very tricky.
Speaker 1: You need professionals.
Speaker 4: But Trump is one of those guys who's like, I
Speaker 4: can do it.
Speaker 2: I know what I'm doing.
Speaker 5: He watched the YouTube video and he opened up the
Speaker 5: hood and he was like, oh, it's the wire from
Speaker 5: the carburetor and the no let me get holds on
Speaker 5: fire and.
Speaker 1: Then his wife comes out.
Speaker 5: He's like, I told you to call somebody, and then he's.
Speaker 4: Like, you know, boy it Mary.
Speaker 1: And scene.
Speaker 4: Now you see why I'm not in many movies. The
Speaker 4: point being.
Speaker 5: Yesterday, Trump sat down for an interview with NBC's Meet
Speaker 5: the Press host Kristen Welker, and the challenge was clear.
Speaker 5: The President had to find a way to persuasively take
Speaker 5: credit for the remaining good parts of the economy while
Speaker 5: suddenly assigning blame to Joe Biden for the bad on
Speaker 5: fire parts. Let's see how Trump threaded this rhetorical needle.
Speaker 6: I think the good parts of the Trump economy and
Speaker 6: the bad parts of the Biden economy.
Speaker 1: Nail did he went?
Speaker 5: I ad it no attempt at persuasion or allegory or
Speaker 5: metaphor to Trump, good bye and bad.
Speaker 4: He's a regular Shakespeare.
Speaker 5: Maybe Shakespeare would have been better off with the Trump approach.
Speaker 5: Act one, Scene one, Romeo and Juliet. Hey, Juliet, it's Romeo.
Speaker 5: Let's and then kill ourselves.
Speaker 1: And I want to thank my family.
Speaker 4: Look, I'm trying very hard in this new Trump.
Speaker 5: Flood the zone media ecosystem strategy to not get too
Speaker 5: high or low, to not take the bait to find
Speaker 5: things in my life that give me pleasure or peace.
Speaker 5: For instance, a quick story, I'm a niece eleven years
Speaker 5: old loves dolls. I was going to get her twenty
Speaker 5: or thirty of them for her birthday, just to see
Speaker 5: the joy of a child. You can't put a price
Speaker 5: tag on that. It gives me great solace anyway. Like
Speaker 5: I said, I'm not trying to take these interviews personal.
Speaker 6: I don't think a beautiful baby girl needs that's eleven
Speaker 6: years old, needs to have thirty dollars.
Speaker 5: First of all, I don't think we consider eleven year
Speaker 5: old's baby girls.
Speaker 4: Second of all, you don't know what she needs. She'd
Speaker 4: been through a lot this year. How many dolls would
Speaker 4: you get her?
Speaker 5: What is the appropriate number of dolls to get a
Speaker 5: beautiful baby eleven year old girl, Mister President.
Speaker 4: I think they can have three dolls or four dolls.
Speaker 5: It's just not that many dolls. I mean, she gonna
Speaker 5: have a small tea party with the dolls. But her
Speaker 5: dream had been a quasi realistic conclave re enactment with dolls.
Speaker 1: That's what she wanted.
Speaker 5: Fine, Fine, it's fine, it's fine. I'll just tell her
Speaker 5: the President of the United States said, no, you know
Speaker 5: what doesn't matter.
Speaker 4: Dolls are not her only happy place anyway. She also
Speaker 4: loves taking standardized tests.
Speaker 1: That's true, very erudite.
Speaker 5: So I was thinking of getting her this wonderful baby's
Speaker 5: first SAT kit. It has all the scantron sheets and
Speaker 5: around two hundred and.
Speaker 4: Fifty number two pencils. She's gonna go crazy. She is
Speaker 4: gonna love it.
Speaker 6: They don't need to have two hundred and fifty pencils,
Speaker 6: they can have five.
Speaker 4: Motherfucker, How dare you?
Speaker 5: What kind of a man would deny this poor girl
Speaker 5: her full compliment of pencils for her dream standardized testing
Speaker 5: toy kit? Is that man a Ebenezer Scrooge, b the Grinch,
Speaker 5: c an Evil step Monster, or d all of the above?
Speaker 4: Oh, that's right.
Speaker 5: She can't answer because she's already used her entire pencil quota.
Speaker 5: But I have to say, like when Trump is talking
Speaker 5: about what people should do and get, you like dolls
Speaker 5: and pencils, Trump has such a depression era of view
Speaker 5: of what kids play with in twenty twenty five. Kids
Speaker 5: don't need twenty sets of those hoops you hit with
Speaker 5: the stick as you go down the.
Speaker 4: Street, just one hoop is Jim Dandy.
Speaker 5: But look, to be fair to Donald Trump, his austerity
Speaker 5: pitch to the American people is in line with the
Speaker 5: modest way in which Trump conducts his life. Trump has
Speaker 5: a monastic view of simple living that says, hey, what
Speaker 5: if Saddam Hussein's palace had a view of Central Park?
Speaker 4: Were standing in my apartment of Trump Tower.
Speaker 6: Some people considered to be the greatest apartment in the world.
Speaker 5: And some people think it's what would look like inside
Speaker 5: Marie Antoinette's vagina.
Speaker 4: It was notoriously well appointed.
Speaker 5: I do want to hand it to Trump if you
Speaker 5: notice a very sparing use of pencils and dollars in
Speaker 5: that he.
Speaker 1: Does walk the walk. Well, look, here's the truth.
Speaker 5: If a Democrat had even hinted at toy rationing for
Speaker 5: American children, we'd have a full week of Fox special
Speaker 5: reports on the sobbing children of socialist America and a
Speaker 5: boom in gun toting patriots going.
Speaker 1: You could have Joe when you pry it from a
Speaker 1: kung fu grip.
Speaker 5: But at least we're finally getting to address in a
Speaker 5: substantive manner Trump's chaotic stewardship of what was the world's
Speaker 5: most stable economy, and how Americans are going to have
Speaker 5: to sacrifice financially and tamp down their consumerist impulse and
Speaker 5: that is what has driven so much of our economy,
Speaker 5: and I guess our waste. And I'm sure the President
Speaker 5: will use this interview with Welker to cheer lead the
Speaker 5: effort to a more finance actually responsible future for all
Speaker 5: of us.
Speaker 6: We're gonna have a big, beautiful parade, military parade. We're
Speaker 6: going to celebrate over we have the greatest military tri
Speaker 6: people peanuts compared to the value of doing it.
Speaker 4: We can't afford not to do it. Why don't you
Speaker 4: believe in me?
Speaker 2: If you hadn't spent so much on.
Speaker 5: Dollars in pencils, we weren't even talking about this. And see,
Speaker 5: but this is the brilliance of Trump. In the same
Speaker 5: interview where he says to Americans, sorry about your Christmas,
Speaker 5: suck it up, he talks about a ninety million dollars
Speaker 5: parade that just so happens to fall on his birthday
Speaker 5: and is totally worth it.
Speaker 6: We have the greatest missiles in the world. We have
Speaker 6: the greatest submarines in the world. We have the greatest
Speaker 6: army tanks in the world. We have the greatest weapons
Speaker 6: in the world, and we're going to celebrate it.
Speaker 5: I don't know, mister President, if do you know how
Speaker 5: submarines work.
Speaker 4: But.
Speaker 5: Dragging them down Pennsylvania Avenue will.
Speaker 4: Most likely void the warranty.
Speaker 5: But this is why it's so hard to pin Trump
Speaker 5: down on everything, because to get to substantive policy questions,
Speaker 5: you have to face down the fire hose of his
Speaker 5: nonsense and bullshit that moves you off track, his frenetic nature.
Speaker 5: That means we all end up suffering from a kind
Speaker 5: of second hand ADHD, a viral cloud of his unfocused
Speaker 5: weaving that gives all of us brain fog.
Speaker 1: Well, no more.
Speaker 4: High sharks.
Speaker 5: When I saw the President of the United States starting
Speaker 5: out on tariffs and ending up on dolls and parades
Speaker 5: and pencils, I thought, there's got to be a better
Speaker 5: way to help Americans figure out which of the things
Speaker 5: it's okay to get upset about and which things are
Speaker 5: just him fucking off. So I invented this chart. Let
Speaker 5: me show you how it works. First, we take something
Speaker 5: the president said.
Speaker 7: Donald Trump says that he is directing the Bureau of
Speaker 7: Prisons to reopen Alcatraz?
Speaker 5: And then we figure out is that okay?
Speaker 4: Sure, it's okay.
Speaker 5: It's the kind of thing that's okay to just let go.
Speaker 5: It's just a stupid thing to keep us occupied, to
Speaker 5: lose focus on his actual policies. It's okay not to
Speaker 5: take the bait, to not get sucked into it.
Speaker 4: But why would you want to reopen Alcatraz? What the
Speaker 4: fuck is that? Why would you want to do that?
Speaker 7: The president says, who wants to use the island to
Speaker 7: quote house America's most ruthless and violent offenders in this
Speaker 7: notorious federal prison had closed in nineteen sixty three because
Speaker 7: it was too expensive to run and repair.
Speaker 4: It's now been a museum. What did Trump think? We're
Speaker 4: low on prisons?
Speaker 1: What do you although?
Speaker 5: I guess any opportunity for Trump to open a prison
Speaker 5: and simultaneously close.
Speaker 4: A museum is too good to pass up.
Speaker 5: But it'll take hundreds of millions of dollars or I
Speaker 5: don't know how many dollarsand pencils, but it's a lot.
Speaker 4: Does does Doosee know about this? Does Alcatraz?
Speaker 7: Alcatraz officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Speaker 4: Because they run a museum. They're a museum.
Speaker 2: They're not.
Speaker 4: That's what they're they're not. They're not like tough talking wardens.
Speaker 4: They're docents with art history degrees.
Speaker 5: The only person working there is busy fixing those machines
Speaker 5: that flatten pennies.
Speaker 4: That the only person that wolds. And here's the crazy
Speaker 4: part about Trump.
Speaker 5: He throws out these crazy ideas and then those crazy
Speaker 5: ideas have days of shelf life.
Speaker 4: This is a press.
Speaker 5: Conference today announcing a partnership with the NFL draft. But
Speaker 5: now the NFL guys have to just sit there and
Speaker 5: nod through all this Alcatraz nonsense.
Speaker 8: Our country needs law and order. Alcatraz is, I would say,
Speaker 8: the ultimate right. Alcatraz sing, sing, and Alcatraz. Nobody's ever
Speaker 8: escaped from Alcatraz and just represented some person almost got there,
Speaker 8: but they, as you know the story, they found his clothing,
Speaker 8: a lot of shark bites at a lot of problems.
Speaker 8: It's a big hulk that's sitting there, rusting and rotting.
Speaker 8: It sort of represents something that's both horrible and beautiful
Speaker 8: and strong and miserable, weak, got a lot of qualities
Speaker 8: that are interesting, and I think they make a point.
Speaker 1: What point.
Speaker 2: There is a point that's done.
Speaker 1: It's fine. I'm sorry.
Speaker 5: The chart was supposed to prevent this kind of over
Speaker 5: emotional digression. This one's on me. I am not leading
Speaker 5: a chart based life right now. I apologize.
Speaker 4: I can do better. I can do better.
Speaker 2: Let's go again and.
Speaker 5: Judge whether or not this is an important pronouncement or
Speaker 5: a brain fogging digression.
Speaker 9: President Trump shared an AI generated image of himself depicted
Speaker 9: as the Pope on social media yesterday.
Speaker 5: It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's fine.
Speaker 4: It's not the most presidential thing.
Speaker 5: But Trump and the Pope do share the same taste
Speaker 5: in interior design.
Speaker 4: So it was not the Worths hit and it's just
Speaker 4: the troll. It's not hurting anybody. I mean, Trump wasn't
Speaker 4: going to have it anyway, so it sounds like it's kinda.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna get distracted by it.
Speaker 4: I'm not going But he can't really be the pope?
Speaker 1: Can he can he be the Pope?
Speaker 10: The last time a non cardinal was pope was back
Speaker 10: in thirteen seventy eight, when the Italian archbishop Bartolomeo Prignano,
Speaker 10: who had been a monk, was controversially chosen from outside
Speaker 10: of the College of Cardinals, and he became Pope urban
Speaker 10: the sixth. So will Donald Trump following the six hundred
Speaker 10: and forty seven year old footsteps of Bartolomeo Pregnano.
Speaker 4: No, he won't. You see what you're doing with people?
Speaker 5: Trump, MSNBC's gotawate valuable airtime fact checking your fucking nonsense
Speaker 5: time they could have spent frowning, sighing, and rolling the rush.
Speaker 5: Is there anything during this chaotic news cycle that maybe
Speaker 5: we should keep our eyes on.
Speaker 3: Don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United
Speaker 3: States as president?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Holy shit, that's not okay. But by
Speaker 1: the way, I don't know.
Speaker 4: That wasn't a gotcha question. Should the president of all
Speaker 4: the Constitution am.
Speaker 1: On millionaire?
Speaker 5: That'd be the warm up question, like what color is
Speaker 5: an orange? Or name a planet with people on it.
Speaker 5: I mean, if you can't answer that the president's supposed
Speaker 5: to uphold the Constitution, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't even
Speaker 5: let you become a citizen. And before you might say,
Speaker 5: well they never told me, let me refer you back
Speaker 5: to a cold day in January. Preserve, Protect, and defend deserve,
Speaker 5: protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, the
Speaker 5: Constitution of the United States.
Speaker 4: Were you even awake, preserve, de prectant defend.
Speaker 1: I e uphold it's not optional.
Speaker 5: It is not an opportunity for you to lawyer shop
Speaker 5: loopholes to our nation's founding document. You took an oath
Speaker 5: in front of God and those who are fighting against God.
Speaker 5: But the important thing is that here's the problem. The
Speaker 5: volatility of nonsense from consequential to truly disorienting is unfathomable.
Speaker 5: While we're chasing Pope and Alcatraz stories, the Trump administration
Speaker 5: has gutted funding for America's food banks. They've hollowed out
Speaker 5: the FAA to the point where Newark Airport is basically
Speaker 5: inoperable and not in its usual way.
Speaker 9: And then there's this Health and Human Services Secretary RFK
Speaker 9: Junior laid off nearly all workers at the National Institute
Speaker 9: of Occupational Safety and Health.
Speaker 10: The program offers monitoring and treatment for first responders and
Speaker 10: survivors diagnosed with nine to eleven related health conditions.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 5: Do you know how bad you have to be to
Speaker 5: make the lives of sick nine to eleven responders worse.
Speaker 5: The Trump administration is now number two on the nine
Speaker 5: to eleven Evil Power rankings.
Speaker 4: O Kind is still number one.
Speaker 5: But you're closing the gaph, and trust me, there is
Speaker 5: nothing that you can do to distract me from making
Speaker 5: sure that those folks are gonna get what they've earned
Speaker 5: from the government.
Speaker 3: The White House hosting this ai image of a buff
Speaker 3: Jedi Trump to Mark Star Wars Day on May fourth,
Speaker 3: while touting his immigration crackdown.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
Speaker 5: I know, I'm not supposed to get distracted, but he's
Speaker 5: not a Jedi in that picture.
Speaker 4: Do you understand?
Speaker 5: Trump is presenting himself as a Jedi, but his lightsaber
Speaker 5: is read And the only way you can have a
Speaker 5: red lightsaber is by infusing it's kyper crystal with the
Speaker 5: power of your agent hate, thereby corrupting it into.
Speaker 4: A vessel for the dark side.
Speaker 5: Therefore, Therefore, every one of those photos that Trump is
Speaker 5: putting out there, he is admitting. He is admitting he's
Speaker 5: not a Jedi, but in fact a Sith Lord.
Speaker 1: And there are always two.
Speaker 5: So the question is this, who is he working with?
Speaker 5: Why do I know all this well? I happen to
Speaker 5: have an extensive collection of Star Wars Action figures thirty
Speaker 5: to thirty seven of them.
Speaker 4: Actually, some call them dolls.
Speaker 2: I call them friends.
Speaker 11: When we come back. Rucktor Bregman, don't go away. Hold
Speaker 11: on the talent show my guests tonight, fabulous kus. He
Speaker 11: is a historian, best selling author is a book. It's
Speaker 11: called Moral Ambition.
Speaker 5: Stop wasting your talent and start making a difference.
Speaker 1: Please welcome to the program.
Speaker 4: Rucker Bregman, Sir, they go crazy for the Dutchess story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, well I have a lot of competition there,
Speaker 3: all the other famous dutchy story.
Speaker 4: That's exactly vander Duncan had it coming for a long time.
Speaker 5: Listen, a moral ambition is in this country obviously has
Speaker 5: been somewhat outlawed. But what do you how do you
Speaker 5: define moral ambition as something that people should be pursuing.
Speaker 3: So it's pretty simple. It's a combination of two things.
Speaker 3: It's the idealism of an activist on the one hand,
Speaker 3: and the ambition of an entrepreneur. So it's the desire
Speaker 3: to stand on the right side of history before it
Speaker 3: is fashionable, and to really devote your career, your precious
Speaker 3: time on this earth, to make this world a much
Speaker 3: better place. You're trying to step into the footsteps of
Speaker 3: the great moral pioneers who came before you, the abolitionist
Speaker 3: to suffragettes, the civil rights campaigners, but.
Speaker 4: Not as a hobby, as a vocation, yea, yeah, and.
Speaker 5: You have very interesting The opening forward is so interesting.
Speaker 5: It's a story of a monk the happiest person in
Speaker 5: the world because brain waves tell us this. And you
Speaker 5: tell this story, and I think you're going to a
Speaker 5: place where.
Speaker 1: You say, be the monk.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you basically go, this monk is wasting his life.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, look, I mean he meditated for sixty thousand
Speaker 3: hours and then researchers put him in a brain scanner
Speaker 3: and declared him the happiest man alive, you know, because
Speaker 3: he had so much positive things going on there. And
Speaker 3: I read about that story and I was really angry,
Speaker 3: and it was like, sixty thousand hours in your own
Speaker 3: head and the world is burning. I mean, come on,
Speaker 3: there are problems to solve here. And look, I mean
Speaker 3: my favorite card that's the Buddhist monk's name. He's actually
Speaker 3: a fantastic guy, pretty morally ambitious. So people got to
Speaker 3: read the epiloge as well.
Speaker 5: But wait, is this guy now like getting shit talked
Speaker 5: all over there?
Speaker 3: Anyway, The point is, I mean there are a huge
Speaker 3: amount of self help books out there that will teach
Speaker 3: you how to be more mindful, more relaxed, you know,
Speaker 3: be more happy. My previous book, Humankind was an attempt
Speaker 3: to restore people's faith in humanity, and at some point
Speaker 3: I saw these pictures on Instagram of people reading the
Speaker 3: book saying, you know, life is wonderful, don't worry, you know,
Speaker 3: stop following the news and just relax, And I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I've created a monster, right, this is not so. If
Speaker 3: my previous book was like a warm hug, then this
Speaker 3: is a cold shower, refreshing cold shower, a plunge.
Speaker 5: That's apparently, that's the thing now you're supposed to do.
Speaker 5: You go to the warm thing and then you go
Speaker 5: to the cold thing exactly when you what is the
Speaker 5: piece of advice that was missing from you from from
Speaker 5: the hug? How do you restore faith in humanity? And
Speaker 5: then get mad at them?
Speaker 3: So look a couple of.
Speaker 4: I want to restore facing humanity. Oh you people are.
Speaker 3: Just going to life okay. So a lot of people
Speaker 3: will know me for saying some nasty things about billionaires.
Speaker 3: You know, I went to Dolphus, you went.
Speaker 5: To dogs, Yeah, yeah, tell them what you said at Doubles,
Speaker 5: which I thought was a really interesting Well it was
Speaker 5: really short.
Speaker 3: Basically, you know, stop talking about your BA philanthropy and
Speaker 3: pay your taxes instead.
Speaker 4: Right over body, you get invited back every year, now, right?
Speaker 3: Is that not really? Not really? But that was obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, nice to experience. But you got to ask yourself,
Speaker 3: like does this make a difference? In the book, I
Speaker 3: come to the conclusion that awareness is vastly overrated. Right.
Speaker 3: It's easy to go viral shouting text to rich or
Speaker 3: you know, destroy capitalism, kill the patrarchy. But the point
Speaker 3: is to actually do something about it, right, to really
Speaker 3: translate your ideas into actual action and then results. And
Speaker 3: I think too often on the left side of the
Speaker 3: political spectrum we see this obsession with moral purity and
Speaker 3: then also a certain kind of political irrelevance. Right, But
Speaker 3: it really takes to change the world is to build
Speaker 3: a coalition. Right, all these great movements, the abolitionists, the
Speaker 3: civil right campaigners, they wore coalitions of people who very
Speaker 3: often didn't agree with one another. So I guess That's
Speaker 3: one of the pieces of advice I fair is if
Speaker 3: if people agree with you for eighty percent of their time, right,
Speaker 3: they're not your enemy but your ally, your ally.
Speaker 5: What do you say to you? Because when I view
Speaker 5: the world of moral ambition or activism, I actually see
Speaker 5: it as pretty vibrant. That we may not know their names,
Speaker 5: but there are so many people that don't get the attention,
Speaker 5: that are doing what you're suggesting, but maybe without the
Speaker 5: access to the people that matter, like that don't get
Speaker 5: invited to Davos, but are doing the grunt work, like
Speaker 5: working in the trenches, trying to get their representatives to notice,
Speaker 5: or trying to make a difference. What do you say
Speaker 5: to people who are saying, like I have moral ambition,
Speaker 5: I'm busting my ass out here. It's very hard to
Speaker 5: get a foothold.
Speaker 3: So I believe we live in a sort of inverse
Speaker 3: welfare society. So we've got the people in the so
Speaker 3: called essential jobs. We discover that during the pandemic if
Speaker 3: they go and strike, and then that's it is awesome
Speaker 3: for all of us. The other hand, we have huge
Speaker 3: amounts of people educated elites, you know, who went to
Speaker 3: nice universities, who have fancy resumes. If they don't strike
Speaker 3: very often, not all that much happens.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: I've got one study in the book from two Dutch economists.
Speaker 3: Actually they studied forty countries and found that around twenty
Speaker 3: five percent of people in the modern workforce think that
Speaker 3: their own job is socially meaningless. These are, by the way,
Speaker 3: mostly people waiting.
Speaker 1: How many twenty five percent?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like I would actually think that'd be higher.
Speaker 3: Well, it's quite a lot, John, It's five times the
Speaker 3: unemployment rate.
Speaker 1: Is it really, Yeah, yeah, one out of four jobs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. And these people, I mean, last week I
Speaker 3: was at Harvard.
Speaker 1: Well look at you.
Speaker 3: Well it's an interesting example where you meet a lot
Speaker 3: of bright young students, right who were generally idealistic, but
Speaker 3: then at the same time you know that about half
Speaker 3: of them will end up in what a friend of
Speaker 3: mine calls the Bermuda triangle of talent. So you've got consultancy,
Speaker 3: you've got corporate law, you've got finance, this gaping black
Speaker 3: hole that sucks up so many talents of people who
Speaker 3: should actually work on these big problems. So look, I
Speaker 3: am not here to preach people already in those essential jobs.
Speaker 3: I am actually preaching at my own people on it,
Speaker 3: because I'm quite angry at them.
Speaker 1: You're talking about Dutch historians.
Speaker 3: People you know who went to university, who had some education,
Speaker 3: you know, who shot Field his responsibility to use their
Speaker 3: skill set to make a difference.
Speaker 5: Do you consider them no, I say about what percentage?
Speaker 5: Do you consider our system then of education and economics
Speaker 5: a moral failure in that regard?
Speaker 1: And is it?
Speaker 5: Are there places where what you're talking about works? Is
Speaker 5: there an analogous situation?
Speaker 3: There are places in history? I mean, is that the president?
Speaker 3: This actually gives me out. This is what's so great
Speaker 3: about job.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 3: In the book, I talk a lot about the British evolutions.
Speaker 3: They were the most successful abolitions. They built this huge
Speaker 3: movement in the late eighteenth century and they can sited
Speaker 3: their project to be part of a bit of a
Speaker 3: cultural revolution. They wanted to make doing good fashionable once again.
Speaker 3: What really fascinated me about them is that they were
Speaker 3: mostly entrepreneurs. So nine or ten out of twelve of
Speaker 3: the British the founders of the British scientific debilition of
Speaker 3: the slave trade, they were entrepreneurs. You know, people who
Speaker 3: have built their own companies who had skilled them. They
Speaker 3: knew how to get things done right. I mean in
Speaker 3: the Netherlands at the time. Yeah, it's pretty sad. There
Speaker 3: was a bunch of Calvinists social justice warriors who were
Speaker 3: mainly interested in their own moral purity. They didn't get
Speaker 3: much done, right if.
Speaker 5: They were the ones who on their Instagram pages kept
Speaker 5: putting up the black squares exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: I remember that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and we've seen the same thing in the
Speaker 3: US actually, the move from the guilded age that the
Speaker 3: progressive era right and.
Speaker 4: Now back again.
Speaker 3: Well, but we could then go back against perhaps another right.
Speaker 5: I what is going wrong because to my mind, the
Speaker 5: sticking point, and maybe this is semantics, but the sticking
Speaker 5: point doesn't appear to be people who are morally ambitious,
Speaker 5: but a system that is impervious to that, that is
Speaker 5: agnostic about moral ambition. It feels like there's enough people
Speaker 5: in this country working their asses off for change and
Speaker 5: a political system that finds a way to ignore them
Speaker 5: in favor of insurance company lobbyists or drug company Like,
Speaker 5: they don't have access to this st how do they
Speaker 5: get access?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Sure, Look, I'm a guy who comes from the
Speaker 3: political left. So I'm all about systemic analysis. You know,
Speaker 3: I'm the guy who loves to shout like change the system.
Speaker 3: But then writing in this book, at some point I
Speaker 3: got this feeling that perhaps, you know, this can become
Speaker 3: a kind of excuse as well. Right, you can keep
Speaker 3: shouting like everything's wrong with the system, But systems they
Speaker 3: consist of people.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: There's this beautiful quote from Margaret Meat who once that
Speaker 3: that we should never doubt the power of small groups
Speaker 3: of thoughtful, committed citizens change the world. And actually, people
Speaker 3: on the right wing side of the political spectrum they
Speaker 3: understand that very well. You know, Trump didn't come out
Speaker 3: of nowhere. This was a fifty year project. It started
Speaker 3: in the early seventies, probably with the Powell Memo for example.
Speaker 3: You know, this corporate lawyer from you know that was
Speaker 3: on the board of Philip Morris and it was like,
Speaker 3: you know, let's build this whole movement to take over America.
Speaker 3: And then they created the Federalist Society and American like,
Speaker 3: you need some perseverance.
Speaker 5: You need the moral ambition to be fused with because
Speaker 5: on the right they fused it very well with their
Speaker 5: billionaires and their media ecosystem. Whereas on the right. It
Speaker 5: perhaps because it's not as homogeneous. It's been a more
Speaker 5: it's more difficult. Is the idea for these networks of
Speaker 5: morally ambitious activists to connect with the entrepreneurs and funders
Speaker 5: and move in that direction together? Absolutely, And that's what
Speaker 5: you're not seeing.
Speaker 3: How Yeah, So I co founded an organization as well,
Speaker 3: called the School for More Ambition. Everything I earned.
Speaker 1: With the books going into the moral ambition.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. We like to see ourselves sort of the
Speaker 3: robin Hoods of talent. So Robin Hood famously took away
Speaker 3: the money. I know who they Well there for those
Speaker 3: who did that, I mean, that's a worthwhile on ever, right,
Speaker 3: but you also need to take the talent. What we've
Speaker 3: seen in this country since the sixties into seventies is
Speaker 3: that a lot of people who used to go and
Speaker 3: work in those socially meaningful jobs in academia, for example,
Speaker 3: or in government, they went to Wall Street creating, creating
Speaker 3: bs financial products, or you know, Silicon Valley creating these
Speaker 3: apps that make us all addicted. We need a talent
Speaker 3: shift as well as a as a wealth distribution.
Speaker 5: So what then is the incentive other than moral satisfaction?
Speaker 5: Is that do we need to teach kids that because
Speaker 5: that was Look the hippies and the hippies of the
Speaker 5: sixties and they were very idealistic, and then they all,
Speaker 5: you know, Reagan came along and they were all like, wait,
Speaker 5: I can work at a hedge fund, okay, And so
Speaker 5: what is then do you have to create then an
Speaker 5: incentive process for those folks?
Speaker 4: How do you how do you get that talent?
Speaker 3: So people are really cynical. We'd say, like, look, it's
Speaker 3: all about the money, right, These people are just setting
Speaker 3: out And I think that's probably true for some of them,
Speaker 3: but for you know, back to those Harvard kids, for
Speaker 3: a lot of them, it's also the status, you know,
Speaker 3: doing something that is actually cool that is interesting, because
Speaker 3: let's be honest, working at McKinsey is really boring, you know,
Speaker 3: creating the same PowerPoint every day.
Speaker 4: Right, So I don't work there, so I don't know
Speaker 4: what they're Okay.
Speaker 3: Well I've heard so, yeah, I think it's not just
Speaker 3: about the money. People are mixed bags, right, So status
Speaker 3: and what society values, like the kind of people we
Speaker 3: put in the spotlight, who can invite it to shows
Speaker 3: like this, that all that matters obviously.
Speaker 5: Right, right, and is it what about sort of the
Speaker 5: everyday sort of quiet activism of living pleasantly, Like I
Speaker 5: think we shouldn't diminish though, for whatever your status is
Speaker 5: or station is that you can, within your own life
Speaker 5: make the changes that create at least a better local atmosphere.
Speaker 5: Because I think what you're talking about is, yeah, you
Speaker 5: know when you point to history, you're really talking about
Speaker 5: inflection points. Yeah, And you don't know when those will occur,
Speaker 5: and oftentimes momentum bills to them and there's a tipping
Speaker 5: point in it, it moves over. I don't know how
Speaker 5: conscious it is.
Speaker 3: Can I push back on that? So again, talk.
Speaker 4: To this people push back so nice?
Speaker 3: Well, maybe different as well. I mean there is this
Speaker 3: tendency to say things like less is more and smallest beautiful.
Speaker 3: I mean, in environmental circles, they have all these moment
Speaker 3: comme motments like don't eat meat, don't fly, don't have kids,
Speaker 3: don't use plastic straws. But then if you really focus
Speaker 3: on that individualist aspect of improving your life, like in
Speaker 3: the best possible scenario, well have reduced your environmental footprints
Speaker 3: to zero, You've basically turned yourself into a compost. Heap,
Speaker 3: it's not very ambitious. And if I look at some
Speaker 3: of these great pioneers, like also like people like Parks,
Speaker 3: like they didn't think small, they thought big. They were ambitious.
Speaker 3: So I've looked into the research and it turns out
Speaker 3: that more is actually more. So if you help one person,
Speaker 3: that's great, If you help two, that's site as much mathematics.
Speaker 5: But are we like I wasn't even talking about like
Speaker 5: let's use less because I do think human progress is
Speaker 5: generally like people will do what's more convenient or more.
Speaker 5: That's just kind of how how they operate. I'm just
Speaker 5: I guess I'm just trying to wrap my head around
Speaker 5: what this means. Like it feels like saying to like
Speaker 5: college kids at a graduation, like you bastards, like you
Speaker 5: think you're going to go into these other jobs. No,
Speaker 5: go soft climate change?
Speaker 4: Is that what this is?
Speaker 3: That's basically it. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 5: This would be the greatest, the greatest graduation speech ever.
Speaker 4: You just get up there and go listen. By the fuckers.
Speaker 3: One of the things we're doing is we're starting a
Speaker 3: tax fairness Fellowship, So right, I mean, it was nice
Speaker 3: to shout to the billionaires, you know, Taxas Texas, Texas.
Speaker 3: Now we're actually trying to recruit you know, some of
Speaker 3: the best wealth managers, the best bankers, the best fiscal
Speaker 3: lawyers that.
Speaker 4: They try this with, like the ESG, the and the
Speaker 4: investing or better. Was that just nonsense?
Speaker 3: I mean that is like it's not like a thin
Speaker 3: layer of corporate responsibility right right, a corrupt, broken business model.
Speaker 3: I mean, come on, we've got to be much more
Speaker 3: ambitious here. We're not living in twenty fifteen anymore, where
Speaker 3: you can say, oh, I'm doing good by doing well.
Speaker 1: Twenty fifteen and let's do it.
Speaker 3: That's all the day. Yeah, No, that's not I mean,
Speaker 3: this is twenty twenty five. We have one side of
Speaker 3: the political spectrums, a total moral collapse. I mean democratic
Speaker 3: black sliding happening everywhere, especially people who have some privilege,
Speaker 3: you know, whether it's talent, whether it's you know, wealth,
Speaker 3: whether it's your network, use it. I mean people on
Speaker 3: the left except for so long, things like check your privilege, yes,
Speaker 3: check it and then use it. You know, have some
Speaker 3: skin in the game.
Speaker 1: Right right?
Speaker 4: And how is that working out?
Speaker 1: Yeah it is?
Speaker 4: Yeah, So Howard tell me.
Speaker 5: About and just before we go, then so if people
Speaker 5: want to exercise this moral ambition. What is how do
Speaker 5: they get their foot on that ladder? Do they have
Speaker 5: to come to your institute or is there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're building a movement now.
Speaker 5: Of you could be running the greatest scam in the issue.
Speaker 4: Now to do this you have to come to the now.
Speaker 3: Tuition is no, no, no, no, no no no, there's no
Speaker 3: two issue all right. We pay people to quit their job.
Speaker 3: That's how it works for real.
Speaker 4: Yes, how much does that pay?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 3: I mean currently we're paying like an averts Dutch salary.
Speaker 3: It's it's enough to live on for a couple of months.
Speaker 3: And then obviously, I mean we help people to.
Speaker 4: You're really selling this, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3: Now it's honestly quite exciting. Right, we have now twenty
Speaker 3: four people in Europe who quit their job to fight
Speaker 3: big tobacco. For example, it's the most evil legal industry
Speaker 3: out there. They've created the deadliest product in the history
Speaker 3: of humanity. I mean, today we have this moral outrage
Speaker 3: about smartphones, right, smartphones that make you addicted TikTok on it.
Speaker 3: Imagine a smartphone that is so addictive and also kills you.
Speaker 3: That's a cigarette. So anyway, we've recruited. Yeah, it's terrible,
Speaker 3: isn't it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, note to self smartphone that kills you.
Speaker 4: Awesome product launch.
Speaker 3: So the point is like we have actually one of
Speaker 3: our fellows in our coord is someone who used to
Speaker 3: work for Big Tobacco, right sweet sides, and she knows
Speaker 3: everything about effective marketing is now using that skills to
Speaker 3: fight the industry.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: Well, that's fantastic and it starts off there. And have
Speaker 5: you done it in the United States as well? Where
Speaker 5: this is right now purely European product?
Speaker 3: No, No, we're starting here.
Speaker 1: So we're starting here. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I came to New York and September. We're building out here.
Speaker 3: It's really getting started now. We're launching our first fellowships.
Speaker 3: As I said, the fairness.
Speaker 4: Fell and do you have some people that are that
Speaker 4: are lined up?
Speaker 3: Well, people can apply, So go to Moral Ambition belt
Speaker 3: or do you want to quit your job and do
Speaker 3: something useful work?
Speaker 4: The book is Moral Ambition. Get your application now.
Speaker 5: Look, good workmen, We're gonna take a good book, fantastic
Speaker 5: do you take them? That is our show, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 5: very night before we go, We're gonna take him with
Speaker 5: your ros for the rest of the week.
Speaker 4: Jesey lied to Jazzy. Come on, what what's.
Speaker 1: Happening this week?
Speaker 12: Well, it's conclave week, John, They're electing a new pope
Speaker 12: and I'll be in the room every day to find
Speaker 12: out what's.
Speaker 4: Going on in the conclave room. That's I think the
Speaker 4: only let cardinals in that room.
Speaker 12: Uh yeah, I know, dumb, dumb. That's why I spent
Speaker 12: weeks pre pairing to go undercover as Cardinal Cappuccino Pizzeria.
Speaker 12: I know this cardinal ship backwards and forwards. Go ahead,
Speaker 12: ask me anything.
Speaker 5: Anything, okay, Cardinal Pizzeria. Who do you want to be Pope?
Speaker 12: No, comprendo, I only speak of the Latin.
Speaker 1: Nailed it?
Speaker 4: Uh? Jesus would be proud? And who is he? All right?
Speaker 1: Never mind? Does he like it?
Speaker 5: All?
Speaker 1: This week?
Speaker 4: Here?
Speaker 1: It is your moment?
Speaker 2: Is that?
Speaker 1: Actually? My wife thought it was cute, She said, isn't
Speaker 1: that nice?
Speaker 6: Question about it? Actually I would not be able to
Speaker 6: be married, though that would be a lot I'd have
Speaker 6: to to the best.
Speaker 8: So my knowledge, popes aren't big going getting married, are
Speaker 8: they not? That we know of?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 6: No.
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