The American businessman and philanthropist talks about growing up in Boston as a fifth-generation builder, starting his first business collecting garbage at the age of 13, and the mission he’s on to create a new internet by arguing in his new book, Our Biggest Fight, that we the people’s data should belong to we the people.
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[MUSIC] Hey guys, it's the way I heard it, episode number 396. Love this one, it's called "Selected Garbage from Families of Distinction." >> [LAUGH] >> And while it's not necessarily the most bang on literal title we've ever had, it was such a great turn of phrase from my guest, who is, I was gonna say the one and only Frank McCourt, but he ain't the one and only, he's not the one and only Frank McCourt, the one you might remember, wrote Angela's Ashes a few decades ago and totally changed the literary world. This guy has written a book called Our Biggest Fight, and it might very well change the world as we know it. Reclaiming liberty, humanity, and dignity in the digital age. There are a lot of people out there Chuck, who are deeply, deeply, deeply, concerned about the impact of social media and the internet and the slow commoditization of the users into the products themselves. This guy Frank McCourt takes it a step further. He's suggesting that we are fast, losing our citizenship, headed back toward a time when we were subjects. If that's all that was going on, that would be worth having a conversation about, it's a big idea, what makes Frank sort of interesting is that he's a billionaire. Frank McCourt has built a chunk of Boston. He owned the Los Angeles Dodgers for a time, and way, way back, as you'll see. >> Which by the way was just the consolation prize because his bid didn't win for the socks, the red socks, he's a Boston boy, that's barely one of the red socks, but he settled for the Dodgers and under his tutelage, watch them become a winning team, then he sold them for a whole bunch more money. And now he's of a certain age, and possessed of a certain idea. And I do believe he's what you call determined. >> He's determined and very passionate. He believes that our data, our personal data, is our personhood. That's what he refers to it as, that this is something that's unique to us, that we should own, and he makes a great comparison with the mob elves, where it was just AT&T, and then they broke them up and people wanted to keep their phone numbers when they went to someplace else, but they weren't allowed to in the beginning. He's saying that our personal data should be like our phone number, it should be ours, and go where we want it to go. >> It sounds quixotic, it sounds doomed, it sounds grim, it sounds sycephean. But everything this guy does works out. He has a shocking pedigree. >> Bit of a track record. >> Yeah, bit of a track record that begins as you'll soon hear with a garbage route. But not just any garbage, selected garbage. From families of distinction, which makes me laugh because there's so much garbage on the World Wide Web, and there is so much crap that has been sold to us. In this bargain, we've traded our convenience for our privacy, and according to Frank for our identities, and while all of that is undeniably grim, he is very hopeful, and he's very optimistic. And he believes he has a relatively simple solution to this. And it's in the book you'll hear us talk about. It's called Our Biggest Fight by not the one and only Frank McCourt Jr. But one you're definitely going to get to meet, and I dare say like, right after this. As we learned on this podcast not so long ago, 70% of clothing worn by Americans was made by Americans. That was back in 1980. Today, just 2% of clothing worn by Americans is made by Americans. I know this isn't headline news. You probably know it too. The cost of labor overseas is dirt cheap, and many Americans today simply can't afford to pay any extra for clothes that are made here. But that doesn't change the fact that 2% of us are still choosing to buy our stuff from a small group of stubborn manufacturers who insist on making clothing in this country. And those companies deserve to be congratulated. I'm talking about companies like American Giant. American Giant controls every link in their own supply chain from the cotton they grow to the factories they own, to the equipment they buy, to the people they employ. All that matters because when you buy from American Giant, you create jobs for people in factory towns across the country. Look, I get it. Nobody wants a lecture and nobody wants to feel guilty about buying clothes that are made overseas. But look, if you want to see more companies making more things in this country, you got to support the companies who are already doing that very thing. You have a second, take a look at what's going on at american-giant.com/mike and while you're there, save 20% with promo code MIKE at american-giant.com/mike. Join the 2% of Americans who are still buying clothes made in America at american-giant.com/mike. American Giant, American Made, American Giant, American Made. Frank McCourt, man, once again Chuck, we've proven that it's a mistake to meet these people prior to the actual beginning of the podcast because it never fails. They're so damned interesting before we begin and now Frank, you've set the bar so high. What are we going to do for the next hour? We're going to talk. We're going to talk about life and we're going to talk about work and we're going to talk about all the good stuff. Excellent. Not to retread but I mean Frank McCourt wrote a book that changed my life. Angela's ashes inspired my mom to start writing again and renewed her dream of being published which she finally achieved at 80 and it just reminded me what a powerful thing it is to say what you mean and put it on the written. Put it into the world in that way and you've done this with your book but before we dive in tell me again how Frank McCourt met Frank McCourt because that's awesome. Yeah I was in, he was coming to Boston too, well first of all he had published his book called Angela's Ashes. This was before he won the Pulitzer Prize and so forth and he was making the rounds talking about his book and I had received a dozen copies from people who sent me a copy of the book with a note saying "Hey I didn't know you were an author too" and then I would go to a meeting with someone like you I'd grab a book off my desk I'd hand it to you and I'd say read my book. How many did you inscribe? Well I didn't go that far anyway we got a kick out of it right because of the name similarity and then he was making the rounds he was coming to Boston to do a reading of his book so I said geez I'm going to I'm going to go meet him you know and so I walk into the Boston Public Library he was reading in the Rab Auditorium and I went and I walked up to the fellow who was outside of the green room and I said hey I'd like to I'm here to meet Frank McCourt. He said oh good why are you here and he said oh I'm related and he looked at me patting me on the back and he said yeah he has a lot of relatives and he says we're full you can go into this other room where you know you're piping the closed circuit you know into it and then I said to myself geez he's popular right it's full house and and then I played with the guy and I said look really my name is Frank McCourt as well I'd really like to meet him and he kind of believed me and let me in the green room you know knock on the door and Mr. McCourt Mr. McCourt here to see you and I walk in his wife was there we sat for 20 minutes shooting the breeze really got along and it became fast friends and stayed in touch and then you know another knock on the door Mr. McCourt it's time and I'm like panicking time for what and then I realized it wasn't me and then so and I was going to I was ready to leave and he said you're not leaving are you going to and I said of course I'm not leaving and so went in listen to him speak he was just very charismatic beautiful man and and I'll tell you one last funny story I did learn that evening that the reason why the title of the book was Angela's Ashes was because he had intended the book to begin with the birth of his mom and that happened when the Angela's bells were ringing in the church where she was born so that's why his grandparents named his mom Angela and his intention was it to be the story of her life and his life and so the ashes part of it is was her death and so that was the trajectory of the story his editor said no no no the story is from the birth of your mom in your trip to America and your trip back home to Ireland and that story and your memories of that and so he said that's fine but I'm keeping the title and then he wrote a subsequent book called Tiz yeah which is the second half of the story right that's apostrophe TIS that's correct yeah because it's the very Irish that's how that's always peak Mike so so Irish he was from Limerick he's from Northern Ireland right came to New York they didn't make it as a family went back to Ireland and went back to Limerick and that's where he grew up in in quite trying circumstances you know they were dirt poor what about you I grew up in Boston Mass so I'm a Bostonian grew up in a suburb called by the name of Watertown sure great working-class town really a beautiful place to grow up and and yeah I grew up on Russell Avenue read much Robert Parker yeah yeah I read a little bit better for hire yeah exactly so good Chuck yeah you got to dig into those man that and Travis McGee just amused me forever and I really felt you know Parker his knowledge of Boston was encyclopedic the streets the buildings I mean he had such a great sense of place I can still see him sipping his beer there in the bar at the ritz you know in the back it was just it's such a very graphic yeah yeah I mean but the common the town itself we grew up in Baltimore those towns rhyme in so many ways even architecturally to a degree which I imagine you can speak to being a builder of some renowned yeah so that you know Boston is a look in many ways it's where this whole great America project began right and it's a great story and you know that a waterfront town that you know that grew up around that harbor and prospered and then struggled a bit and then prospered and then struggled a bit Boston has a interesting history because it was the financial capital of the country until it wasn't New York became that it was the computer capital of the world you know many computers until it wasn't that went to Silicon Valley and then now I think which is why the city has it you know carries a little bit of a chip a little bit and which is a good thing because they're they have that underdog mentality and that's I think ingrained in me quite frankly and now Boston is actually really really in a good spot because of biotechnology kind of the merger of technology and science and medicine and and so forth so they have great hospitals great universities and because of the way the world is going where technology is such an important part of our lives now having the universities and the hospitals and kind of that foundational level and then connecting that now to the technology has created a biotech boom in Boston I'd like you to talk about your book in terms not just to the tech which is obvious but in terms of the internet as a tool it's really what it is right and the tools that build Silicon Valley the tools that you use as a builder to help shape the landscape in Boston and other places I've never met anybody in your line of work and I assume you still think of yourself fundamentally as a builder absolutely that's if I was a big one more that's what I am right which is really the other reason why you're here you're the living Frank McCourt which is awesome congratulations but I do think in so many ways and in so many instances it's been builders who have wandered outside of their lane to fix the thing or at least to talk about a thing in ways that surprise people now you're surprising because you've been there and done that you know you own the Dodgers for crying out loud as you might recall and you've done a lot of things why are you doing this you're picking a fight by the way with a book called Our Biggest Fight and you are now officially ended up to your neck yeah so we give you a couple reasons a couple ways to answer that question as we just talked about I grew up in Watertown I'm one of seven kids unbelievably awesome parents dad really a working guy that ran the family business construction business we are one of if not the oldest construction company in America third fourth fifth generation five 1893 so my great great grandfather began the company started the beginning right he came to America as a 13 year old you're with his parents and worked his way up the ranks he worked for the Boston Gas Company started as a labor became a foreman had a nice union job and when he was 50 years old he made his leap of faith his leap of faith in himself in in America he started a construction company by the name of the John McCourt company that's what's his name at 50 at 50 years old and he started building roads when Henry Ford started building cars and he believed in himself he believed in other people and he believed in possibilities it was interesting I we don't have it wasn't like we started building this company and kept records from the beginning you know we were building a company to put food on the table and take care of ourselves and other people and and build a life here in America but I have looked back a little bit at that era he took that leap of faith during a very very difficult time in America it was a virtual depression you know it was a very very difficult economic time but that belief in what's possible regardless of what's going on around that is the the lifeblood of this country that is the power and it's like connecting a dream to an economic incentive it creates unbelievable results so off he went and yeah five generations later here we are and we're builders and now I have the unbelievable privilege right of of running a company that works around the globe in many businesses but at the core we are builders we are contractors and a lot of what we build is infrastructure we understand how things work and have a deep respect for proper design proper construction and building things that will last a long long time and but before we get too too far into into what I'm doing today I took a little bit of my great grandfather's you know kind of spirit and when I was 13 I started my own first company and that was the beginning of of my own personal journey so well he waited till he was 50 so you're bored at 12 like okay all right enough with the paper boy route or whatever you were doing I'm gonna still well what was the company you started well remember he came here at 13 so that was a beginning of his journey so mine was also at 13 and I started a garbage company yeah we had a small summer camp you know a cottage up on a little lake in New Hampshire yeah I don't know maybe there was a hundred homes homes is is kind of an exaggeration these are camps these are cottages you know around the lake and in Deerfield New Hampshire a great place beautiful beautiful little lake and and but no municipal services you know you lived on a dirt road and you took your own trash to the dump right and so a buddy and I thought it would be a great idea to start a trash collection business and provide a service to these hundred hundred families who had to take their wait a second why I mean I'm asking because were you looking like were you affirmatively looking for a thing that needed to get done that wasn't happening or did you always have this garbage related wish fulfillment festering in your heart I didn't necessarily have a garbage related wishful um thinking in my heart I love work I mean you can ask anybody about me and they and they probably say I identify with my work quite frankly it's who I am and I love it to me it's not even work if you know what I mean it's um I enjoy it immensely and honestly I wanted to go to work for the family construction business when I was 13 but as a 13 year old I couldn't I had to wait till I was 16 and so I just wanted to start to do something you know that I could make sure make a buck not to belabor the point I've talked to a lot of builders and I met a bunch of people who tend to wear infrastructure and the common thing that I often hear is that the feedback that you get in that kind of vocation is undeniable you see the fruits of your labor you're not laboring in other words in the ether or wrestling with some kind of intangible you're building a thing or you're fixing a thing so one minute there's garbage now it's hauled away very satisfying one minute there's nothing and then there's a high rise wow yeah look what we did I'm just circling back to it because I find that that dynamic in the human condition is as addictive as any controlled substance I've ever seen it is there's nothing more satisfying than you know being productive and seeing the fruits of labor it's a great thing it's it's uh Mike I wish everybody could feel that what I feel when I work when I have an idea and suddenly it's a real thing it just gives you such a great feeling not just about yourself about what's possible you know and so you know trash wasn't the most fun thing in the world but 50 cents a barrel you know yeah 75 customers you know post people had three or four barrels so they give you if they're three barrels they're generous they give you two bucks it's math but the key thing that's you're kind of glazing over here Mike is that he's 13 years old and starts to do this it's like how you gonna haul a barrel on the back of your bike or whatever right no I know the answer to it because he grew up with the old man he just described and he watched that guy pull rabbits out of hats his whole life he watched that guy build things where there was nothing he watched that guy come up with answers to problems that nobody else was thinking about I'm guessing but you had a front row seat to an example that you could follow there was nothing that made me happier as a little kid then going off my dad on a Saturday morning to the construction site off we'd go you know I was still half asleep because they start early real early and he'd throw me up on a you know a bulldozer or backhoe or big big truck and say to the guy he knew all those guys fight yeah not only did you know his guy he knew their wives and their kids and sure what was up in their lives you know that's why my dad was a beloved figure in the industry and I would just be up on this gigantic machinery you know it was a 10 11 12 year old kid and just was it was exhilarating you know to see what and I learned how to operate it and you know for me that was that was also fun yeah so at 13 the only thing I was missing was a driver's license so I had to convince my neighbor and have him convince his dad who had an old pickup truck the dump you had to put the garbage in and rake it out because it didn't have a lift you know so it was uh that wasn't the most fun part of the job but you know collecting those two dollars five dollars from different people and then you know that's a you know we did twice a week by the way so do the math on that and it was pretty good for way back then and and then we started our jobs and people said hey do you you paint and we said sure we paint you know do you do landscape yeah of course we do landscaping yeah do you take down buildings well of course we were specialists at that you know and then we figure out how to take the building down and it was funny we had so many last but and we had a great model our truck is had low side walls so we had uh four by eight plywood we stuck in the side walls so that we could carry a lot of trash and uh painted it and then had a a guy in a tuxedo with a you know uh horses pulling a wagon with trash in the back and we had our model was uh selected garbage from families of distinction only the best yeah i love it why is everybody switching their wireless carrier to pure talk i don't know i can tell you why i did i switched from verizon to pure talk because i like the people who run the company and i like what the company stands for now do i also like the fact that they're on the largest 5g network available and that they're half the price of verizon at and t and t mobile yeah yeah i like that i also like the fact that they're a no contract wireless company with a money back guarantee but that's not why i switched i switched because i am trying whenever possible to do business with companies that share my values and pure talk does they run their customer service entirely out of the united states that's important to me they create american jobs and they also support america's warrior partnership this is a great organization that's working really hard to reduce the epidemic of veteran suicide i appreciate that i put it all together decision was easy a no contract wireless company on the best 5g network available and a money back guarantee who actually stands for something check them out at pure talk dot com slash ro get great discounts on the latest iphones and androids international roaming by the way in 50 countries and of 50 percent savings off your first month when you switch to pure talk today at pure talk dot com slash ro well look i mean when i was at age i was playing with tonka toys and lincoln logs maybe some lego you know you were playing with actual timbers actual building materials actual machines so that's good to know because i know we're getting to the point where you're about to enter the fight of your life and back to the tools back to the hands on stuff anyway gone with your story but i love the background because right you won't understand the future you better understand the past yeah we're all part of our bringing our experiences our choices and what we do in our lives you know so it's uh kind of makes us who we are you know going back to your original question in terms of like i think i yeah the builder thing is deeply ingrained but there's also a you know memory i have it at the uh you know dining room table uh as one of seven with my two parents there and my dad would leave really early yeah yeah he'd be out of the house to five and he tried to get home for dinner you know he was most nights and we sit down as have family dinner and normally did be a a friend or a guest or this so we had ten or twelve people at the table i mean that's a big dinner table every night and we had incredible conversations that were all all over the place and as kids me and my siblings were we were pretty good at identifying problems right i mean we can you can do that and say what's wrong with this of that and not a dinner would end without my mom saying hey kids you've done a great job identifying the problem now what are you gonna do about it and that is very ingrained in me and my siblings by the way and i think that is ingrained in a lot of people who have had the benefit of a dinner table and a mom and her dad that try to do the best they can you know delivering the messages no topic off limits at the table talk about whatever you want one ground rule listen respect the other people at the table and just and you'll get your turn but we can disagree listen respect the other person make your point and i learned that good ideas compelling ideas and vision actually carry the day you know once everybody's had their say and it was very interesting because i have siblings that are quite conservative i have siblings that are quite liberal and so you just have this incredible just in terms of their perspective it wasn't necessarily in political terms it was just in terms of how they viewed things and it was a great education to sit and and uh be part of and listen to those conversations i was fifth in line so i did a lot of listening and till i figured out how to get my well it's a great point of view in there you know people don't need to be right they like to be right but they don't need to be right they need to be heard that's exactly right they need to at least think they've been heard i'm not sure there's a difference really between being heard and thinking you've been heard but at least you you get to say your piece right so you've been saying your piece for a while now and whatever words you group together along the way got you from picking up garbage to building buildings to owning the dodgers for crying out loud we'll talk about whatever you want the problem with your life is that it's so jam-packed with stuff we can spin our wheels before you ever get to the fight of your life but i mean how does baseball impact the guy sitting across for me now i grew up playing baseball uh playing all sports it was a great management tool for my parents you know with seven kids to have them out there active playing sports we nearly have a team already and uh you know but it was a way to keep us hanging around with the generally speaking a good crowd and and uh you know being physical and active and quite frankly being tired you know at the end of the day which is a is i say a pretzel management tool and i i have seven kids now myself and i use some of those same tools and baseball was it was interesting and Boston you know with the red socks and so forth and Fenway Park a great place for families to go and what and i have great memories of being there as a kid and then of course with my children and when the chance to buy the red socks came forward that was like you know for kid growing up in Watertown Massachusetts to have a chance to buy his hometown baseball team so that was yeah it's just it was just a beautiful a beautiful thing and and so you know we put our hat in the ring and went through the process and we're one of the three finalists and and then you know went a different way at the very the tail end and uh because the the fellow that owned the Florida team the Marlins wanted to upgrade by the Red Sox and the fellow that owned the Montreal Expos was going to buy the Marlins and the baseball was going to buy the Expos from the guy in Montreal and they were going to move it to Washington and so it became a a decision that was above my pay grade you know what i mean it was a decision of MLB to to achieve some objectives and so at the 11th hour there was a shift yeah and so the end result was very different than it looked like it was going to be and it was yeah sure it was disappointing but i mean are you kidding i had the chance to to buy the Red Sox and i was one of the three finalists so i thought that was pretty good and i remember my mom calling me and saying hey Frankie are you you okay and i said yeah i'm great and uh you know chance it didn't get it yeah i said i'm great i mean what are the chances that growing up i'd have a chance to even bid on this never my own it and she said well just remember when one door closes another opens and i'll never forget that and then i went to New York to MLB's headquarters just to close the book on it because you know in Boston uh like there are only three things that matter in Boston right sports and politics and revenge and yeah and and and so um and so when sports and politics mix it can be dust-ups you know in the fur can fly so i just went there i said hey look i to the president of the i just want to make sure i didn't step on anybody's toes here inadvertently because it was a thrill of a lifetime to be in the process and he said uh no as a matter of fact we were wondering if you'd be interested in buying another team and i was like wow can i think about that he said sure wait would it have mattered what team to you at that point i just had to think about it because it wasn't focused on buying any baseball team at the time i was living in Boston focused on buying the red socks which were the team that i grew up supporting my grandfather by the way was one of the owners of the Boston Braves which was the nationally team in Boston at the time that then moved the year i was born they moved to Milwaukee and now they're of course in Atlanta another great franchise and yeah so it was kind of in the blood a little bit but i had no any memory i had in my grandfather owning the Braves was in a scrapbook as i said they moved the year i was born so so i thought about what baseball said and then you know just reflected on it and i happened to have a neighbor who was selling the Dodgers for Rupert Murdoch and he was in New York but he had he was from Boston also Stan Schuman he said you know Frank you should buy this team the Dodgers and i said but Stan everybody tells me it's a losing a ton of money 50 60 million a year and Rupert Murdoch is a pretty smart guy and he has a lot more money than me so i'm a little nervous about that you know and it was that kind of money for a few years it's um it's hard pretty soon it adds up to real money yeah exactly along way from uh you know my trash garbage my trash business yeah so i it was like the third time he asked or suggested i take a look at it that i said okay you send me the book because he had to go through a process and the bankers had pulled together all the information send me the book i'll take a look at it have my guys take a look at it and so um we did and and we talked about it thought about it you know what there is a path here if we can do a couple of things so we we said okay let we'll take a hard look we're gonna have to fix two or three things here in order to remove that deficit it's worth stressing this was a losing team this team was losing games they were losing money and they were for sale yeah it was a team in distress yeah and there was the opportunity you know there was the opportunity right there the fact that it was a team that was in distress and and so forth so we developed a game plan uh strategy for how we could renegotiate the the media contract with fox if we could get some of the expenses under control and quite frankly if we can invest actually invest more money in the stadium and the club to increase the revenues because the stadium hadn't been invested in for a long long time what year were you know we were in 2003 at that time about it 2003 was funny i mean i propose nothing you know larry king was a big fan of yours and i was on his show i guess it was in 2006 and he mentioned your name and i mentioned Earl weaver's name and we literally screwed up the whole commercial break because larry king's a freak for baseball just a freak yeah we're talking about mike quay orange impalmer and boog pal and albombrian and he at you baron and merve ratman and paul blare and uh yeah yeah he got he and and then he's crazy for the dodgers like we were for the orials and just funny now that you're sitting there i got to know really well because of that and yeah i met a lot of great people in and la and just enjoyed that period well you gave them a gift man i mean you gave them a great gift because eight nine ten years later that's different team um dodgers now or have a chance to win the world series every year because you we fixed what was broken you know and and started from the ground up with uh uh everything from renovating dodgers stadium to a new spring training facility in uh in phoenix camelback ranch fixed you know the scouting and player development you know brought in great young talent Clayton kersha you know drafted him out of high school and in return the winning attitude to the club and get you know real leadership in place and we had a really good thing going it was a privilege believe me that that period of my life and but it shows you you can take something broken and fix it and make it great well permission to make an obvious uh metaphor and juxtaposition which you did there frank was you fixed the infrastructure of baseball team after working in infrastructure in every other way that's how your brain works right what's the problem where is the solution i'm five a seven i'll wait my turn i'll speak my piece i'll fix the busted pipe i'll fix the crooked building i'll fix the ailing baseball team it is a metaphor i hadn't ever thought about it exactly that way but that's exactly right and you know i've had the also the great you know joy really it's gonna say privilege but it's a joy to not only fix things that are broken but actually envision things that were never there you know like the seaport in boston you know it's one of the projects that i'm most proud of that you know we took an old abandoned railroad yards and turned it into a third of the city now you know in terms it looks like the inner harbor in baltimore again you know what rouse did for the inner harbor and for canton and for all that area i mean you're so right towns that are surviving today are there in my view because individuals bet on the city i'm thinking of my greek buddies you know oh yeah the smith brothers right they got like i don't know 30 restaurants in baltimore now often in places where you just didn't go and now you go out of your way to go there so taking a bet on a thing that isn't there you're right that's adjacent to fixing a problem that nobody else wants to talk about but it's still all part and parcel of a builder's blueprint totally and uh i think it was Einstein who said you know imagination is more important than knowledge right so if you can in that's also a great part of the american project is and i think builders you bring this perspective forward is just it's about reimagining things and then going ahead and making it happen right and it's uh and there's all different levels of reimagination you know it's let's reimagine you know how the the kids playroom is going to you know going to work or the little edition on a house or let's reimagine a country that's what our forefathers did they reimagined a country here that was you know where people were even before we were the united states of america you know we were we were subjects to monarchs right and thomas pain stepped forward and said you know we could continue to be subjects of of monarchs or we could be citizens and you know people said like what's a citizen well as a citizen you actually are born with the same rights as that king you're a human being born with what became known as unalienable rights and so you're an equal and you have the same shot as everyone else no guarantee of the same result but you have the same the same shot and you're in charge of you you have choice you have autonomy you have freedom you have liberty you are worthy and by the way for those rights to mean anything you need to respect them in other people and that's the so-called social contract that was reimagining how a country could work and how a people could work and you know and he wrote a since 1775 and here we are almost 250 years later having the benefits of all that for the last 250 years and now we're struggling a little bit again because something's happened and we're becoming sadly subjects again in losing that citizenship and those rights in this digital era we live in and it's why I wrote the book because this and why I started Project Liberty because this is a very very key moment in my opinion where we need to once again reimagine the future and really have this technology and I'm talking about internet technology respect us give us ownership of ourselves return choice and to each of us autonomy look if I were to ask you might to give me three or four words or phrases that would describe democracy I you probably wouldn't come up with autocratic centralized surveillance-based exploitive predatory wouldn't be at the top of the list now and sadly that's what our internet technology has become right it's technology that scrapes our data and accumulates it aggregates it and it applies algorithms to it and to manipulate us essentially to do things and it's a it really is a subject or citizen question again and do we want I mean obviously we're not talking about kings with crowns and roves we're talking about you know CEOs of big tech that have a ton of power and influence over us and our lives and some of those got to give here look I don't disagree with any of it but I think there's a difference in having all of those virtues that come with being a citizen the thomas pain espoused I think there's a difference in having them taken from us versus us giving them away and I feel like that's what we've done I don't feel like anybody has taken these things from me I feel like I gave them away now caveat umptour right you can say buyer beware in a lot of different ways and in light of a lot of different types of transactions but there is something I used the word addiction earlier and I'll circle back to it because an addiction can be you can be addicted to a very positive thing where you can be addicted to what's clearly a negative thing and the problem is this is not clearly negative it's insidiously negative the consequences are unintended I think they're unintended but maybe they're not maybe they're not it's starting to feel like somebody wrote a pamphlet called uncommon sense so the American battlefield trust is the only national organization that's dedicated to protecting the places where our freedom was won in the last 40 years these guys have saved nearly 60,000 acres of hallowed ground across 160 battlefields in 25 states and it is my privilege to encourage you to help them in their continuing efforts if not for the American battlefield trust the places where Americans fought and bled and died for you and me would now be home to a litany of housing subdivisions and big box stores and casinos and formula one race tracks and solar farms and data centers and god knows what else instead those places today are protected forever as parkland that we can all visit and that's really really important because you get so much more out of standing where history actually happened than you do from learning it from a book in fact it's the difference between learning history and experiencing history this summer the American battlefield trust is working to purchase restore and interpret pieces of land from some of the most important battles of the revolutionary war in the war of 1812 and of course the civil war and they could use your help visit battlefields.org/mike it's a great site and see how the American battlefield trust is using augmented and virtual reality to bring history to life and while you're there don't forget to claim your free copy of their award-winning history magazine hallowed ground it's excellent that's battlefields.org/mike well this is interesting so roll the clock backward when our forebears you know those who came here early to create this great country they didn't know anything other than being a subject they and their families were subjects for 800 years so when you don't know anything else it's not like someone took it away from them it's that that's all they knew right until they reimagine something else or they imagined something different then you have to create that alternative and build it you know you envision it and then you build it and that's what we did you know declaration of independence constitution bill of rights very very thin documents these are not long you know a document thin that are embedded with values and principles and the stuff that never changes those are our founding documents and then you go build on those all kinds of a whole institutional framework and a whole country that gets built on top of that embracing those values you know how many times have you heard people say you know we need now a digital bill of rights and i say no we don't need a digital bill of rights we need technology that respects the bill of rights we have and that's what i'm getting at here we this technology is not only are we losing trust in our institutions and in one another and is is it really really amplifying disrespectful behavior this technology is dehumanizing us because it's sucking all of our information out of us who are we other than our choices who are we other than our behaviors who are we other than our lived experience our lived life all of that now is being taken away by these big platforms look one of the examples i use in the book if i was the postmaster general and i said to you hey i have a deal for you i'm going to deliver your mail from now on for free no more stamps you say okay tell me what's the deal well i'm going to put a camera and a listening device in every room of your house in your car your workplace basically fall you around and i'm going to read your lives yeah yeah well the first thing is i'm going to creep you out okay you say well that's kind of creepy and i said well but now you're getting it for free and saying out of much well one of the thing everything i read you know because i'm going to open those letters and everything i read now about you is mine so it's not just your relationships or where you shop or this or this everything about you so i'm going to read about your thoughts your ideas your emotions your behaviors how you're going to react to something in other words i'm assessing you i'm grabbing hundreds of thousands of data points about you and i'm making an assessment about who you are your persona let's call it and now i have all that information so you'd say wait a second this is creepy and unfair and then you'd say oh one other thing i'm going to read your 13-year-old daughter's diary and when i find out she's been insecure about her weight i'm going to send her stuff to make her feel worse and maybe send her stuff to that she can buy so i'm going to profit on that insecurity oh and by the way show her how to hurt herself harm herself cut herself kill herself we're seeing an epidemic now in this country right of harm to young children because this is very very manipulative technology so creepy unfair and harmful that's that's not American it's also not how it was sold right i mean there's a frog in the boiling water element everything you've said but i wonder as a builder was there a time when this technology first reared its head where it didn't look so ugly to you was there a time when you heard the information super highway and thought that sounds like a pretty grand thoroughfare right and then all of a sudden we start thinking of it in terms of wait a second cars are going too fast on this super highway and no one's using their signals and there's a lot of wrecks it seems and some of these turnoffs just leads straight off a cliff maybe this highway is not so super but we already paid our toll now we're on it were you ever optimistic about the tool that these guys built 10 15 20 years ago well first of all i am hugely optimistic about what can be done to fix this and the benefits once fixed that will all have so i don't want to sit here and have my mom say yeah okay you have to find the problem now what are you going to do about it okay so i don't want to get stuck and i just want to set the groundwork here you know just like here's the problem right and i was really wanted to address your point about whose choice was it do we give it away or did they take it exactly and in my point is when it's all you know and all you have it's really a difference without a distinction we need to build an alternative and then people can decide whether they give it away or not and that's that gets back to agency but if we bring it back to addiction as well one more complexity right so now we're just not oh you know what i read the research turns out maybe i shouldn't drink half a bottle of bourbon a day i'll just stop except i'm addicted that's hard yep you know and that's hard and i i really wonder it's ironic you know i'm sitting here with this thing next to me right now i imagine you know your team is here look at your guy max over there checking his facebook status right now or whatever he's doing this is what we do and we're grown-ups i was joking with you the other day man god help me i sat down on the toilet you know the private is moment it's like and i'm on reels i don't even know what i'm watching frank but i'm laughing and i get funnier as i go you know i i'm just sitting there what i'm a grown man i'm 62 years old by the time i stood up there was no blood in my legs damn near fell flat on my face i need to get you on this image first of it before i get to the but glad you're happy that's all i can tell you i sat there so long i have to go again look this oh boy let's go back to your question so yes when the internet was started it was i think designed with the best of intentions and to actually empower people actually connect us make us smarter and really be that proverbial tie that lifts all boats so that's it is and was an exercise and optimism right it was imagined it was created back in most people think it was 1983 when the internet really started and that was a you know a great thing where devices were connected and you know because we all agreed again just like our founding documents of this country you know very thin layer verticals were adopted and one in 1983 connected devices i think it's important to note that 41 years later was still a device on the internet you and i are not on the internet our devices on the internet so i'm sure we'll talk in a moment about is this for humans or machines that what's relevant is it it was built for machines and we need to fix it in now prioritize human beings but back to the point i've talked to the people that created the internet they didn't expect it or wanted to be used the way it's being used now this was a tool to make us smarter not make us dumber right and then 89 you know burners Lee comes around and now he says we can connect the data not just the device okay so now all of our all the data we're creating is is out there and again i've talked to Tim temporarily who created the world wide web and what's this last name a burner's Lee i feel like more people should know that that's the guy who's most singularly credited for creating the world wide web yeah with a protocol that we all adopted that you know connected our our data again wanted to do it for all the best reasons to make people empower people connect people the internet is awesome technology that can make us smarter can help us solve problems can make people richer but then what happened around the turn of the century was something that got us off track a few people realized that if they could be the first movers in collecting all of our data particularly our personal information then they would figure out how to monetize it and boy have they monetized it so you have now four or five giant trillion dollar companies okay i think the top five or something like last time i checked 12 trillion and i'm not talking about billion i'm talking 12 trillion dollars okay this is nobody can say now that our data our information personal information doesn't have value it's created the most valuable enterprises in the history of humankind we are the product exactly right it is a you know what i say in the book and i i really want we love your listeners to just reflect on is you know when we talk about data data is you know like what's data who cares right it's like you said when you put a building up you look at it and say i put that building up when you talk about data it's it's in the ether it's abstract think of data as you think of your data as your personhood this is who we are in this digital age right so this is all of this information that is gathered up by these platforms is basically a very intimate profile of each of us and this is now the do we really want these big companies having all this information on every human being that's on a platform there's three billion people on metaproducts there's four and a half billion people on google products this is a trove of information on each of us and then that information gets used in a way sell us ads yeah push news and information that these algorithms have assessed that we will be interested in you are more likely to consume the information that you are shoveled based on all of the data that has been what's the word you used scraped yeah stolen scraped from us you know and so the fundamental point in the book is that our information that we create should be our own to decide who gets to to use it for what purpose i see this as fundamental is what Thomas Payne was saying in common sense we need to own us again we need to own ourselves and our data is our personhood it is us in a digital world i've heard people say well whoa Frank i'm not on social media i'm okay and i say hmm do you search oh yeah of course yeah i'm doing it all the time oh do you shop oh yeah it's fantastic yeah i'm all the time do you have a smart tv yeah i love it it's you know how about a smart refrigerator dishwasher how about your car when did you buy your car it's a smartphone on wheels do you walk outside there's cameras on the streets do you have a nest camera do you watch your you know when you're young children do you have a ring doorbell do you we're all connected to the internet all information about us is being gathered up by these big platforms or sold to them because there's a whole series of intermediaries that broker the data and this is our information and i simply think we should flip this on its head people individuals should own themselves again they should decide how their information gets shared not a ceo of a big company or a government or a chinese communist party i want to make decisions about myself how do you get americans less complacent there are plenty people listening right now who are going damn straight this guy who didn't write angeles ashes has written an even more important book and he's on to something and then other people who are thinking you know what i love hey serie what's 2048 divided by six and getting an immediate answer or directions to nearest Starbucks we're addicted to that that level of convenience and that level of connectivity with my mom sent me a funny little meme as i was walking over here i sent her a funnier one back we had a good laugh we're addicted to those connections right so talk to people who are like look i'm okay with the trade do they really understand to your post office analogy what those stakes were and is this an oversimplification are you saying that the whole thing is just a big bait and switch that they made us this offer will connect you you'll get this but they just out and out lied regarding the thing they wanted most of all yeah you know i'm pretty much more interested in talking about how to fix it in the future then putting fingers and blame and all that stuff but you got to know it's busted first it cares about the trash right like somebody had to look out and see a bunch of uncollected trash look mike i'm pretty sure when your mom sent that funny meme to you and that when you sent one back that part was awesome but you didn't really your mom well you didn't really think that that was also a way for information to be gathered up on you sure that somebody the big you know big brother the big tech was watching right and collecting information this country has been built on people having freedom deciding for themselves what their definition of privacy is deciding for themselves what their definition of free speech is deciding for themselves what they're comfortable with it's called agency individual choice liberty that's what liberty is and my point about thomas pain and and the inspiration for the book is we rejected centralized control where somebody is in charge of us and is born better than us right and just because of that birthright they own us we rejected that we rejected a feudal system where we my ancestors got to work a little plot of land give most of it away keep enough for sustenance have no rights own nothing right we've rejected that and built the greatest country on earth why would we be giving all of that up for the mere right to use the internet it's a crappy deal so answer to your question like what do we do is we build a better version we build an alternative because until there's an alternative to being a subject to a monarchy you're going to be a subject to a monarchy until there's an alternative to the current internet technology we have we're going to be subjects in this digital world we're going to be owned by these big platforms i would suggest because it doesn't have to be this way it's just technology okay it's it's just a piece of infrastructure let's redesign it let's put people in charge of their all of their personal information there let's put them in charge of their personhood let's think of it as personhood not data and let them decide what to do with it and so they're in charge they own themselves again they benefit from the value of that data they get a piece of that 12 trillion and growing i'm so i'm look i'm sold i love it i'm going to ask you how we're going to do that obviously but i mean you sold the dodges for a couple billion dollars these guys have 12 trillion you're not going to do us alone of course not yeah so i've committed a big chunk of my wealth to project liberty to get the ball rolling and and i'm not like a do-gooder i want our business to continue for another five generations right and i am worried that our business will not continue to thrive if our democracy fails right tell me one other than maybe singapore one thriving market capitalism in the world without democracy hard to pick one isn't it so i'm a businessman and you know that's my skill and that's what i if i have one and without democracy we're not going to have capitalism as least as i've known it and i worry about that so i want to fix this and i realize it's there's a lot of people that love this country like i'm not yeah you know i'm one of millions who are very unhappy with the direction of things and i'm not talking about left right here i'm just on the direction right because this technology it amplifies we're talking to mary earlier right this technology amplifies extreme behavior on both sides right it's not how common sense you know normal working people of america you know feel it's like we want the best that can be offered here we want to be kind of left alone where we can be we all have a dream let me pursue it connect it to an economic incentive right because then i'll work really hard and build it and so this technology can be redesigned in a way to empower everyone i think the wealth that's going to be created for people who are on the outside looking in right now is going to be astronomical how are you going to recreate this thing okay so the first issue is to really dig into the how the thing works and fix it from the ground up that's how you fix you know thing you don't build more on a bad foundation right you fix the foundation and then you build something great so uh four and a half years ago december of nineteen i i green lit a project with a brilliant tech team that we have and the guy by the name of Braxton would him and another by the name of harry evins came forward with an idea once i charge them with the problem to create another thin layer protocol for the internet much like the one that burners Lee created you know Tim burners Lee and the one created before him the first one remember connected devices the second one connected data let's have a third one that connects us now we're in charge we own our information and imagine an internet where we're not clicking mindlessly on the terms and conditions of use of five big platforms none of us read them we don't care we just want the answer to our question right or we just want to order the good or or do whatever imagine an internet where the new apps are clicking on our terms of use for our data where we're respected where we own us again and we can happily give away a piece of information if we're going to help cure a disease or if someone's going to make a trillion dollars what are you giving me this value in our information we've learned that and by the way nobody's saying let's go to an internet that's you know taking people from eating candy to eat you know eat their vegetables and it's something they don't want or the one it has to be an alternative that gets you that quick answer to your question gets that thing you order to your doorstep the next day sure i'll press that button i just don't know you got 12 trillion reasons or 12 trillion opposers who are affirmatively it's kind of like with guns in a way i think about it like you can teach a responsible decent american how to handle a firearm responsibly but we're not talking about doing that we're talking about redesigning the firearm in a way that will completely transform that tool i love it i think it's a great idea i just it's so far beyond my pay grade okay so let me give you a reason to be optimistic about this i greenlit this project in december of 19 with this awesome tech team off they went to create the protocol and then everything up the line to the app layer to make sure it works and then last year we made a deal with the first current web social media platform to migrate to this new platform they have 20 million users they started that migration in earnest in the fourth quarter of last year now nearly a million people are on this new improved internet what's it called the protocol is dsmp it's enabled by something called frequency and the app that's migrated over is called miwi miwi is a social media app 20 million users they're the proof of concept they're the first use case to prove that this works i can go there right now you can get on miwi right now miwi dot com it's just go go to the app store and download the miwi app m-i-w-e m-e-w-e okay now you're on another protocol right that nearly a million people are on now you're in charge of you okay so we know the tech works three four five years ago people said to me oh this is too big never work you can't do it it's not solvable the genies out of the bottle blah blah blah bs the tech works we've got that box checked now what's needed scale adoption right because you got hundreds of millions of people on the current internet billions of people a million people it's not the money mic it's not the you know little money versus 12 trillion that's not the issue here the issue is small community versus large community because we need adoption of this new internet which is why we're bidding for tick talk okay yeah so i've put forward a bid on behalf of project liberty right which is this project that we're saying we need to reclaim ownership of ourselves a people's bid for tick talk which you've you know i'm sure read or heard recently that the legislation president biden sign the legislation that both houses of congress passed very quickly to force by dance which is a chinese company to either sell the u.s tiktok or shut it down and so now right at the moment you know bite dance is is trying to litigate and say you can't do that and then our bet is that the u.s government will prevail this is a national security risk nobody wants a hundred information on 170 million people going to china you're talking about selling access onto the tiktok platform in the u.s you're not talking about buying tiktok with a capital t yeah buying the u.s platform okay sorry if that was unclear so buying the u.s platform which is what the government has legislated and dictated either sold by bike dance or they they can shut it all down shut it down so i mean but still talk a couple hundred billion dollars no no no no no so first of all we don't want them to shut it down there's 170 million people that love being on tiktok that enjoy it so i see this as a fantastic opportunity to buy the platform the u.s platform we don't want or need the algorithm right which is what makes tiktok in many people's minds very valuable there's some people that might want to buy it with the algorithm china has said they're not going to allow that to happen under any circumstances so most people who i've you know heard about who said they want to buy they want to just reengineer the algorithm and again collect everybody's data scrape it steal it call it what you will aggregate it and then manipulate it right we're saying the opposite we don't want the algorithm we don't need the algorithm what we want to do is bring the 170 million people over to this new alternative internet because with 170 million people plus the 20 million from me we have an alternative internet it's no longer any question it is catalyzed it's happening it's a real thing and then let people choose do they want to be on an internet where their information is stolen they get nothing for it going back to my post office they give up everything about themselves yeah for you know because it's quote free or do they want to be on a a free internet where they're in charge of themselves sounds like a no-brainer but isn't it curious i mean i would think the majority of people online understand that google is google and when you search they know and they anticipate and so forth and so forth duck duck go is another way to go free spoke is another way to go how many people have gone that way what kind of success or what kind of roadblocks of those initiatives run into that might be a corollary with what you're trying to do those initiatives are learning that it's a kind of a dead end because they don't have the scale of these other platforms and they're built on the same internet we have now so what we're saying is something entirely different we're saying move people to a new version the new protocol empower people and build from there this is deja vu for me when people say this is wow this is so big and it sounds great but you know in 1993 my family started a telecommunications company my younger brother david ran the show it's called rcn and because we build the infrastructure because we saw where all this was going said hmm the country had at the time seven big oligarchs the baby bells you remember that sure okay when 18 t was broken up so it was like seven mafia families right they had they controlled the different geographies of the country you had to use their service they owned you they owned your phone number and you wanted to talk to somebody they had to be in the same serve right they the same character so that's how it worked most young people you tell them the story they think this is only by the way 1990s just then they think it's like you're kidding right so you know if you lived in boston you used the carrier the cover of boston you moved to l.a. get a new phone with a new number right sounds stupid but that's the way it was so we saw the internet the worldwide web right 89 so 93 so this is all going to change these baby bells are all on copper wire yeah high-speed internet his thumb you need fiber optic cable not just you know copper wire so why don't we raise money take a risk roll up our sleeves and envision a new inter a new telecom company with fiber optics and build in the big cities in america where all the customers are the bulk of them we can deal with the other you know the suburbs and then the rural areas after we get going and while the baby bells are all trying to figure out how to do high-speed internet on copper wire right which is like they'll fumble and bumble so off we went we were the first ever to bundle to give someone high-speed internet access and cable tv and their phone from one provider right people liked it it was nice a great idea and off we went so people would come in and say i like this i'll sign up give me the contract you know they come they sign the contract and say and here's my phone number and we'd have to say well sorry we can't give you your phone number because the oligarch in your area says they own your phone number and many people said well when i can have my number let me know and i'll sign up that was 9345 in 1996 the telecom act was passed and guess what the US congress said to people into the oligarch here the baby bells hey look people should own their phone number it's it's their number they know their number their friends know what their mom and dad know that you know the kids people own their number and oh and by the way carries you got to start to be interoperable so if somebody owns their number and they're in boston and they make a phone call you know to somebody in LA come on yeah or if they moved LA their number still works and they have the same phone number it's part of who they were right it's so basically the moral of that story is congress passed an act that gave the consumers personal information back to them you reckon it can happen again yeah they gave people agency then the consumers could go to all the different carriers and say what are you going to offer me somebody may say i'm going to give you high-speed internet and say okay i'm going to use you i'm going to give you a less expensive bill every month i'm going to give you a better signal i'm going to give you a free phone i'm going to competition and guess what since 1996 this has been i've heard different numbers but somewhere between two and two and a half trillion dollars of private capital invested in telecom is our telecom system pretty good today you know it is that by the way what people don't see that powers this entire internet is our telecom 5g you know it's amazing all that private capital was invested because people like us step forward and says you know it doesn't have to be this way fiber optics high-speed internet you can have your cable and your phone as long as people can own them they can own their number and do what they want with it the carriers are interoperable the reason i tell the story it was the same talk track from the seven baby bells oh we can't change this they were rich too by the way sure okay can't change this it will stifle innovation it will do this now it's nonsense give people power they'll decide what to do with what's theirs right and now let's roll the clock forward think of your personal data as your modern day phone number okay should you be able to move it wherever you want to move it of course think of these apps as modern day carriers right that's what they are they're they carry information shouldn't they be interoperable so imagine an internet where you're not actually signing on to facebook and then they own everything about you you're signing on to the internet capital our internet our internet not been colonized by five companies let's decolonize it let's decentralize it let's democratize small d give the power to people get the toll booths off the information super highway absolutely and by the way this is a super highway to use that analogy that think of it as our real highways the interest state highway system one of the great engineering feats it may be more built by tax money with gasoline tax primarily right built by people by us by citizens who built it and we own it what would happen if five companies just came in and said no we own it now that's a great point the freedom to go from state to state would not exist as a practical matter without the arteries without our circulatory system which are rivers and highways the other thing i like about your story metaphorically is that we gave the baby bells our telephone number we loved that deal back in the 40s and 50s we loved that deal because to your earlier point all we'd ever known was that which we knew this is a bold when you're telling me i have my own number in anybody with their own number can call me yeah i'll eat a little crap along the way all of the inconveniences that became inconveniences were infinitesimal at the time because what was put before us was a new level of connectivity that nobody had ever experienced that's the corollary that i think the internet was writ large on on steroids and that's why we made the deal we didn't fully understand this whole data scraping thing yeah that's right and look here's what i think your big challenge is going to be we still don't not enough people saw the social network they should not enough people have read your book i hope they do but there's going to be a curve right do you think that the speed with which we get to the place where we have to get is going to be the results of people enlightening themselves or do you think something truly has to craft the bed first something has to go splat for people to sit up and say wait and before you answer that question i just need to tell you that you're like 15 minutes past when you were supposed to go oh man now you've got to choose you have to choose will you shove it up our listeners but and simply leave to keep your appointment or will you call an audible as your entire communication department over here just shakes their head look now they're they're both on the internet right now your eyes are both on the internet sending out apology notes to wherever you're going but you know what they're worried i'm not because you don't have to deal with whatever's got to happen next to Frank McCourt your question is kind of interesting because um i hope so man it's really kind i ask i think we're crapping it up pretty good right now and so here's the thing i'm an optimist i'm a huge believer in people and i think that the light bulbs are going off if we were having this conversation a year ago maybe even six or eight months ago it's a bit of a different conversation i think we see the wheels falling off the wagon right it's getting wobbly it's getting wobbly and Americans are concerned right they're concerned about this great country and making sure we keep the wheels on the wagon and actually we deliver something great to the next generation you can talk about any talk about GDP CPI inflation wages you know what let's talk about one metric ask kids whether their life is going to be better or worse than their parents ask parents the same question when the poll comes back and the answer comes back where parents and kids agree right now they're concerned they don't think their lives you know kids lives are going to be as good as their parents slice in other words the next generation is going to be worse off that's the only metric we need to look at our job here is to make things better yeah for ourselves and our for you know and so forth but also for the next generation right and when you look and ask kids is your life going to be better than your parents that's what my parents wanted for me sure okay that's what they lived for right that's why my dad worked so hard and my mom worked so hard is they created a life that was better for us me and my siblings just as their parents did for them and their parents did for them and their parents did for them we need when every kid is asked is your life going to be better than your parents we want them to say are you kidding my life is going to be so much better i'm going to live till i'm 150 years old and i'm going to live a healthy life because of of what the good technology can do right but right now people aren't seeing it that way they're seeing it as the wheels are wobbly a lot of bickering a lot of fighting a lot of disagreement a lot of argument and we're seeing kids literally taking their own lives horror story after horror story of what's going on with you know with social media and so on and so forth this is not right and the point i try to make in our biggest fight is let's peel the onion back let's peel the layers back what is it that has changed in the last 20 years what is it that feels different that when we it's use common sense because we all see it we all feel it why what is it that suddenly has happened well let's look at technology let's look at how it's being used and let's look at how we're being taken advantage of and how the algorithms are designed to polarize this the technology is has no do you know there's no identity you've got billions of people connected and you don't even have to be a person you can be a machine bought spewing crap into the internet you can be a fake person you can it look at misinformation the technology mike is advancing really fast that's great society is regressing really fast that's bad and something's going to give here and we need to fix this technology to optimize for american values right those values that were built and when we decided to go from subjects to citizens it was to respect human beings give people agency and choice and power over their own lives right the technology is stripping that away from us and that's why we see now a society being ripped apart miss disinformation who knows what's true and what isn't right all this stuff can be fixed but we have to move quickly because you know as we see what's going on now when the wheels get wobbly at some point they fall off right so let's fix the wheels and get going and then start accelerating it really fast he sees the garbage he wants to clean it up he's only been doing that his whole life the book is called our biggest fight the author is that other frank mccourt me we is an app you might want to check out and project liberty dot IO very good this is a place you might want to sniff around last question the 12 trillion and the modern day oligarchs is there a plan somewhere in your book or in your big brain to enlist their help do you see them as the enemies or do you think you can get a zucker bird do you think you can get some of these people to come around and say you know something yeah it'll cost us a fortune but you're right TBD certainly welcome them we'd love I think they're the ones in the best position to fix this problem that they've created and write the ship they'll still benefit they'll still be big rich companies and so forth we'll have to see since you asked me about those three things who are the three people you'd most like to have assuming you even have a cell phone anymore maybe max over here your communication guys who do you get he's got one in each hand man poor max he's he's been demoted to communication like oh two what is his actual title max what's your title what's your title max yeah whatever break yells at me it's a fluid situation no seriously this is what I want to leave our listeners with what three people currently you know bipeds walking around fogging a mirror could have the most impact and do the most good if they partnered with you right now oh that's a great question I think it's kind of ask right I think it's three people representing three massive numbers of people so I think it's a someone like a Tim Berners-Lee or Dave Clark who have stepped forward and endorsed the work we're doing and said you know they support the bid for TikTok they support this new vision for the internet so they've done that I think it's a person like Jonathan Hight who just wrote just wrote anxious generation who stepped forward support his part of project liberty and he stepped forward supporting our bid for TikTok and sees this as a huge a huge way Greg Luciano often he have done a lot of good work to you absolutely and you know I would add with Jonathan moms stepping up and connecting to this work I think their voice is extremely important we see how parents can change things and moms in particular when you start messing with their kids yeah moms change the world right and so and then I think our political I think someone needs to have the courage in the political apparatus to step up and say you know what I know these are American companies and I know they're very wealthy but we have bigger things at stake here and urge urge these companies to fix what the president for his is I would love to hear more discussion we are in a presidential season election season I would love to hear more discussion about how to fix a problem than what I'm hearing now which is one side blaming the other for the problems I love it the solution in part anyway or maybe in total our biggest fight check it out wherever you buy books thanks for your time I'm sorry to make you late max apologies for whatever vitriol is coming in your direction brother all right good luck thanks Mike thanks Chuck thank you bye bye if you like what you heard and even if you don't won't you please please please please subscribe well I hate to beg and I hate to plead but please pretty freaking please please uh please subscribe [BLANK_AUDIO]
