Elon Musk details DOGE's partial success in curbing waste but admits he would prioritize car manufacturing to prevent financial burnout. He condemns illegal immigration as "voter importation" warning of a communist future, while predicting AI will render work optional despite his own nightmares. Confirming moon landings yet denying aliens, he links UFOs to unidentified weapons and argues Mars colonization must remain dangerous for all, not just the wealthy. Finally, he suggests simulation theory requires an engaging reality to avoid being "turned off," preferring Earth over Mars for survival. [Automatically generated summary]
I think the story of Doge from your perspective has never been told.
Do you think you were successful?
We're a little bit successful.
We were somewhat successful.
Would you ever do Doge again?
I mean, no, I don't think so.
I think instead of doing Doge, I would have basically built, you know, worked in my companies essentially.
And the cars, they wouldn't have been burning the cars.
What's your biggest irrational fear?
I try not to have irrational fears.
None?
If I find an irrational fear, I squelch it.
If you had to start from scratch today with only $1,000, what would you do?
Well, I did originally come to North America with like, I don't know, $2,500 Canadian, so I don't know, maybe the two grand U.S. At this point, I have a lot of knowledge.
A lot of things have to go wrong for that to be these days.
It's like, am I just emerging from prison, perhaps?
With a stipend?
Hi, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller Podcast.
We are in Texas today, joined by the one and only, Elon Musk.
Nice to see you again, Katie.
Nice to see you, Elon.
So I want to take us back.
It's January 20th.
You are in the Roosevelt room, if you remember this, getting sworn in, and they hand you a computer and a phone.
Right, right.
I want to go back to what happened next.
I think the story of Doge from your perspective has never been told.
What was your first thought on how Doge was going to proceed?
Well, I guess I couldn't believe I was there for the most part.
It's like it all seemed extremely surreal at the time.
You know, Doge was a made-up name that had been made up, I don't know, two or three months before, and based on internet suggestions.
And I was going to call it the Government Efficiency Commission, and then someone on the internet said, no, it should be the Department of Government Efficiency, DOG.
I'm like, that sounds great.
So we just kind of made up a department.
Do you think you were successful?
We were a little bit successful.
We were somewhat successful.
I mean, we stopped a lot of funding for that really just made no sense.
That was just entirely wasteful.
Like, for example, there was like probably $100, maybe $200 billion worth of zombie payments per year, which simply by enforcing that there be a payment code and an explanation for the payment, that the payment would not go out.
So we've made that change to the main treasury computer and a bunch of other computers.
It seems like insanely obvious, but there are just, call it, I don't know, 2 or 3% of government payments that go out that really should not be going out.
And it's actually quite hard to stop.
So it's a pretty rare individual that would ask the government to stop sending them money.
Would you ever do Doge again?
Do you mean would I repeat history or would I?
Two ways to think about it.
One is, if you could go back and start from scratch, like it's January 20th again, would you go back and do it differently?
And knowing what you know now, do you think there's ever a place to restart you, not saying others in your stead, you go back and restart doing Doge?
I mean, no, I don't think so.
I think I probably, I don't know.
Would you do Doge again, knowing what you know now?
I mean, the thing is, I think instead of doing Doge, I would have basically built work to my companies, essentially.
And the cars, they wouldn't have been burning the cars.
You gave up a lot to do Doge.
Yeah.
Like, if you stop money going to going for political corruption, they will lash out big time.
So they really want the money to keep blowing.
So if you stop it from flowing, there's like a very strong reaction to stopping the money flowing.
After you were in DC for a while, did you become disillusioned with how it operates?
Well, I wouldn't say I was super illusioned to begin with.
I mean, I guess it's just like you really want the least amount done by government possible, the least amount.
I guess maybe the biggest thing is that, I guess the biggest single thing is that there are massive transfer payments going to illegal immigrants, like massive, essentially we're paying people to come here from somewhere else in vast numbers, including flying them in.
So like it's not like you need a border wall if you're flying them in.
Then fast tracking them to citizenship and making them beholden to govern payments and voting hard left.
That's essentially, it's like voter importation.
If you create a gigantic money magnet to, you say, if anyone comes here from anywhere else, we're going to pay you tons of money, give you lots of free stuff.
Come to America and get paid to do so.
Like you're going to get a lot of people taking up on that offer.
And people say this is fake.
I'm like, actually, well, let's look at Ilan Omar, who literally was voted into power, voted into Congress by a large group of people from Somalia who are in Minnesota, which is really far from Somalia.
Or Mamdani, who was voted to be mayor, but by a majority of people who are not born in America.
Slowing Down AI and Robotics00:02:22
That's my understanding, at least.
So and then California is a big time situation.
So I don't know, we just don't want to turn into a communist hellhole, basically.
You've said in the future that no one's going to need to worry about money or work because AI is going to take care of the rest, AI and robotics.
What do you mean that people won't have to work in the future?
Assuming the current trend of artificial intelligence and robotics continues, which seems likely, the AI and robots will be able to do anything that humans want them to do, essentially.
So hopefully not more than that.
But AI and robotics will be able to provide all the goods and services that anyone could possibly want.
So you wouldn't need to work.
What would you do with your free time?
People will be able to do whatever they want with their free time.
Work will be optional.
I just want to separate out from what I wish would happen versus what I predict will happen because people get confused about that.
They think that what I predict will happen is what I want it to happen.
What I predict to happen is not the same as what I want to happen.
If I could, I would certainly slow down AI and robotics, but I can't.
It just seems to be, well, it's advancing at a very rapid pace, whether I like it or not.
Is AI what keeps you up at night?
It used to be.
At this point, I don't know.
I wouldn't say there's nothing particularly keeping me up at night right now.
Except that.
But if you say, why do I wake up in nightmares?
Oh, AI, yeah.
Actually, I've had a lot of AI nightmares.
I've had AI nightmares many days in a row.
What am I supposed to do about it?
Mars as an Escape from Earth00:15:36
What's your biggest irrational fear?
I try not to have irrational fears.
None?
If I find an irrational fear, I squelch it.
I don't believe fear is fear is the mind killer.
So I'm not somebody who feels fear strongly.
On average, how many hours do you sleep a night?
Six.
You can tell based on my ex posts.
Yes, you can.
People have actually mapped them.
So it's very clear when I'm sleeping and when I'm not.
I tried having less than six hours sleep, but although I'm awake more hours per day, my cognitive function is reduced.
So my natural sleep, and I actually timed it with the phone, you can get a phone nap to time it.
It's like five hours, 56 minutes.
That's what the phone said.
What's an average day for you look like?
Well, I have a lot of inbound communication.
So it's information triage.
I try to segment the days so that there's not too much context switching.
Because arguably fear is not the mind and killer.
Context switching is.
It's hard not to context switch if you've got an inbox full of stuff.
But you can think of like, if you had to context switch every three seconds or every 30 seconds or every three minutes, the context switching cognitive penalty would be very high every three seconds.
And you're talking about switching between, say, Tesla, X, XAI.
SpaceX, personal.
SpaceX personal.
But even within Tesla and SpaceX, there are many different things.
Again, the stuff on X, like random news things.
You know, people being burned alive and stuff like that.
Like, what the hell is going on in this country?
Who's the funniest person you know in real life?
You know, President Trump is very funny.
He's got a great sense of humor.
President Trump is very funny.
He's very funny.
He's like naturally funny.
It's somewhat effortless.
I mean, you know, when he was at Momdani in the office, and they asked him if he still thought the president was fascist.
And the president said, just say yes, it's easier that way.
Don't worry about it.
Just say yes.
He's like, what a love, whatever.
How silly.
Who do you look up to the most?
The Creator.
What's your current position on God?
God is the Creator.
You don't believe in God, though, do you?
Well, I believe there was this universe came from something.
People have different labels.
When's the last time you did something extremely ordinary, like go to Target or CVS?
I can't go to things where there's a general public because there's an immediate, can I have a selfie line that forms?
And these days, particularly in light of Charlie Koch's murder, there are serious security issues.
It's not that I don't want to, I simply can't.
Has Charlie's murder changed how you do things?
Or were you already locked down pretty well before that?
It certainly reinforced the severity of the situation where life is on hardcore mode.
You make one mistake and you're dead.
It only takes one mistake.
What's one moment in your life that you could live again just to feel it?
Well, I mean, obviously when my kids were born or the first time SpaceX got to orbit or Tesla made an electric car work.
You've had a big lot of them.
It's a lot of things.
There's a lot coming down the pike.
Like what?
Starship.
The degree to which a Starship is a revolutionary technology is not well understood in the world.
And it's the first time that there's been any rocket design where full and rapid reusability is possible, or full reusability at all is possible.
This is the first design where a reusable rocket is one of the possible outcomes, where success is in the set of possible outcomes.
Are you talking about in V3 or V2?
Well, we could have made V2 reusable, but there were a lot of performance improvements for V3, so it made sense to go to V3.
there's like 10,000 different changes between B2 and B3, maybe more than 10,000 really.
So at Starship, if there are historians in the future, I'll look back at Starship and say it was one of the most profound things that ever happened.
Now you can think of historic events as where would they fit on the in the evolutionary Hall of Fame.
So you've got things like single-celled life, then you've got multicellular life, capturing a mitochondria, capturing mitochondria so that you have a power cell in the plant, in the cell.
You've got like a power plant in the cell.
You've got Differentiation into plants and animals, life going from oceans to land.
And then also on that scale, probably in the top ten, is life becoming multi-planetary.
There just aren't very many things that are in the top ten of the evolution of life.
Or where you could basically say you could evaluate any given civilization or any given life form as on that scale.
So life becoming multi-planetary.
It's on the top ten.
It needs to be sustainably multi-planetary, so not just visiting, but actually multi-planetary in the sense that if you have planetary redundancy.
So if one of the planets, if there were to be a catastrophe on one of the planets, the other planet would survive.
All of your companies.
The Starship is capable of doing that for the first time in history.
And no AI was used to create it.
So the AI will appreciate that.
Are all of your companies working towards that same goal to help us become multi-planetary?
Like, does the AI exist to be able to help life on Mars, or is that primarily for what is happening here currently?
You know, Tesla is mostly about making sure life on Earth is good.
And as an NXAI is about that too.
Because multi-planetary means Earth's got to be good and you need another planet.
Sometimes people think because they have legacy templates, mental templates, they think that going to Mars is an escape from Earth, or that it would be some place where billionaires would go or something like that.
But actually, Mars will be very dangerous.
And the moon base will be also dangerous, much more dangerous and much less comfortable than Earth.
So the people that would go in the early days to make life multi-planetary on Mars or the Moon, they would have a much higher risk of death than if they stayed on Earth.
And things would be cramped and uncomfortable.
So that's the sales pitch for Mars.
It's going to be uncomfortable.
The food won't be as good as Earth.
You might die.
It's going to be a massive amount of hard work.
And it may not succeed.
That's the sales pitch.
Do you want to go?
Same as when people came to America.
Yeah.
Didn't want to be in Jamestown.
People went anyway.
Yeah, maybe if there'd been social media back then, they would have saying, we're all dying.
Here's videos of us dying.
Would have probably put a damper on future voyages.
But yeah, a whole bunch of people just disappeared.
We don't know what happened to them.
You talk a lot on X about wardrobe and how you wish current wardrobe would be differently.
I just think from a fashion standpoint, we should evolve.
It's like my son Saxon said at one point, why does everything look like it's 2015?
And I was like, damn, things do, everything does look like it's 2015.
It's like if you took a picture from 2015 and said in 2025, it looks exactly the same.
Stylistically, things are the same as 2015.
We've not moved the needle in a decade.
So what should it look like?
Something new.
You know, like the 60s had a definitive style.
The 70s had a definitive style.
The 80s had a definitive style.
And then the 90s also had a different style.
But you start looking at the 2000s and the 2010s, and it's like less and less every year.
I think we should evolve our style.
And if you look at some of the older paintings of past cabinet secretaries, some of them, they look cool.
Their jackets are cooler than what we have right now.
They have sort of like a high collar and a sort of I don't know what some sort of, what do you call those things?
Ascot or something like that.
I mean, it just looks cool.
Like, so, but we don't, everything's like a very normal looking suit at this point.
But like, literally the same as 2050.
And I'm being generous, because probably the same as 2010.
Yeah.
So in 15 years.
And I'm like, from a fashion standpoint, I think we've moved since 2000 in 25 years.
If you showed someone a picture of, this is a bunch of dudes in 2000.
This is a bunch of dudes in 2025.
Which year is which?
So I think we should, I don't know, spice it up a little.
What's a conspiracy theory you believe in?
I mean, which conspiracy theories haven't come true at this point?
We've run out of conspiracy theories that, because it will come true, as far as I can tell.
I mean, I don't know of any aliens.
People always ask me if there are aliens.
I have seen no evidence of aliens.
No one on the SpaceX senior team has any evidence of aliens.
Because I've asked the team, like, guys, am I missing something?
Has anyone on the team, has anyone seen any evidence of aliens?
Does that include UFOs?
That's just an unidentified blank object.
So UFOs, it could be like some new weapons program or whatever that's, you know, some hypersonic missile or something like that.
That would be technically a UFO, but it's just basically some weapons prototype.
It's not like aliens.
So, although Neil Armstrong, Neil A, spelled backwards as alien.
Coincidence?
You believe we actually went to the moon?
Yes, we went to the moon a few times, actually.
And played golf on the moon.
We didn't just go to the moon.
We actually got a little bored and started playing golf on the moon.
But why didn't the flag move?
There's like that conspiracy.
That was the jump the chalk moment.
About the flag?
No, the playing golf on the moon.
Okay.
You know, they literally did.
No, I understand that.
Yeah, yeah.
We act golf bowl on the moon.
There's no gravity, though, right?
So there is gravity, one-sixth.
If it wasn't gravity, you'd just float away.
There's no atmosphere.
Okay, fair.
But there is one-sixth gravity.
What's the biggest misconception about you?
I don't know.
How would I know?
Well, what do you think?
I think it's, I get asked this a lot when I do interviews about you.
Me?
Oh, I got asked, everyone always thinks you're a very difficult person to work for.
Oh.
But I think you're very kind.
Thanks.
Like people think which you are like a very demanding boss.
I think that you are, I've never heard you yell at any employee.
Yeah, I don't yell.
I think every employee who works at every single one of your companies is incredibly mission driven, which is unlike any other workplace I've ever seen.
Like Starbase is the most inspirational place you'll ever go to.
Everyone is there to work on a singular goal.
And so I think to me the biggest misconception about you is how every employee at all of your companies are fiercely loyal because it's all mission driven.
And you are a very good employer to work for.
And I think people assume you are not.
Right.
Well, why would they think anyone would work at the companies?
Yeah, I mean talented people can go work anywhere they want.
So they're only going to work at one of my companies if they want to.
And if they're mistreated in some way, they would leave and go work somewhere else.
How'd you come up with the idea for Starbase?
Well, I think we needed something inspirational.
We kind of have a lot of star things.
So we've got Starlink, Starship.
Well, where would Starship depart from?
Starbase.
I mean, Starbase is, as you've mentioned, I think it's probably the coolest place on Earth.
I agree.
And it used to be a sandbar down by the Rio Grande.
I mean, it's only like three feet above sea level.
So we built a gigantic rocket factory and two giant launch towers down by the river, literally within sight of the Rio Grande, and on an actual sandbar.
Kind of have like an inspirational name.
And then we made it a city.
So it's an incorporated city, like legally a city.
Building Cities on Sandbars00:06:49
You don't hear about new cities being formed that often.
The last time there was a company town, it was Disney World.
Yeah.
I think Ford had some kind of like company town situations.
But yeah, Disney World is literally its name.
I'm Walt Disney.
This is my world.
I've gone from land to world.
Yeah, I got like incorporated as a city and got tax exemption, which was like a whole, was a big deal.
I've been to Disney World probably 10 times.
Really?
Yeah.
Maybe more than 10, but at least 10 times.
Because Cape Canaveral is right by Disney World.
This makes sense now.
So when I'd have the kids, then I would, my older kids, and I was, we're trying to get the rocket launched from Cape Canaveral, then the thing they'd want to do is go to Disney World or Harry Potterland.
What's your favorite ride?
I'm sort of tempted to say Space Mountain, I suppose.
Yeah, probably Space Mountain.
I mean, I do think Space Mountain needs an upgrade.
It's a little herky-jerky.
It doesn't look quite as sci-fi as it used to.
You know, it's like the day before yesterday's tomorrow, which is still yesterday.
What's your favorite age to parent of your kids?
Generally, kids are the most fun between five and ten.
Do you think humanity is inherently good, or is it just trying to be?
The concept of good wouldn't exist without humanity.
I do think humanity is on balanced good.
You know, I generally think like increasing the amount of consciousness in the universe is a good thing.
Trying to understand the nature of the universe, which you can only do by increasing the increasing conscious awareness.
I mean, I have thought about like how did we get here?
If we just thought out as a hydrogen gas cloud that sort of condensed and then formed stars and then these stars exploded and then they recondensed, formed stars again, and then exploded again, and then eventually you get to us, 13.8 billion years later.
And one of the interesting questions to think about is: how many times have your atoms been at the center of a star?
I think it's like on average three or four times, something like that.
Then how many times will your atoms be at the center of a star?
Estimates vary, but it seems like we're roughly halfway.
So your atoms are likely to be at the center of the star maybe another four times or something like that.
It depends on what your predictions are for the future.
But in terms of existence as measured by the number of times your atoms will be at the center of a star, we seem to be roughly halfway.
That really, you know, if you want to look at the big picture, that's the really big picture.
What's one invention that's made us worse, not better?
What's one adventure that's made us worse?
Invention.
Maybe short form video.
It seems to be rotting people's brains.
What's one piece of technology you hope never gets invented?
I hope never gets invented?
Like, yeah.
Like it's going to destroy us all.
Or you think with the proper safeguards?
Well, I mean, obviously, I hope that people don't invent a virus that can kill all humans.
Like, that's an obvious thing.
I mean, generally, I hope inventions that destroy consciousness are not invented.
I think the future is going to look very interesting.
So I do have this theory about predicting the future, which is that the most interesting outcome is the most likely.
Which, if simulation theory is accurate, makes sense, because if anyone is simulating a wide range of futures, they're going to stop the simulation when it gets boring.
Because this is what we do in our reality.
So if SpaceX is doing, hotels are doing simulations to understand how a car would work or robot or spaceship or something like that.
We run all these simulations in the computer.
And the simulations that we pay attention to are the ones that are the most interesting.
Like the simulation where everything goes right on the rocket, we actually don't pay attention to because that's not a everything goes right simulation is fine.
So we actually test the, you know, when we simulate the rocket flight, we'll actually test all sorts of oddball situations.
But we don't test it, we don't have the simulation be totally wrong, because, I mean, like if the rocket just explodes immediately, that's also not interesting.
So it's like you need to find the envelope of possible flight paths where the rocket can make it to orbit and without exploding.
And then you find those boundaries.
And then when you launch the actual rocket, you make sure it stays within those boundaries.
Or another way to think of it is like we could be an alien Netflix series.
And that series is only going to get continued if our ratings are good.
Are the ratings good?
Yeah.
But you can think of it like from a Darwinian standpoint, if you apply Darwin to simulation theory, then only the most interesting simulations will continue.
Therefore, the most interesting outcome is most likely.
Because it's either that or annihilation.
So really we have one goal, keep it interesting.
Do you think social media has made people more honest or more performative?
Well, social media makes people more performative.
By the same token, you get more real-life video of things that are actually happening.
And anything that is very interesting will go viral on the internet.
Keeping Simulations Interesting00:03:25
So you have both.
You've got more performative where people are doing anything they can to get a few more views on their TikTok video or whatever, or their reels or maybe on their expos or something.
And so that's very performative.
But then you also see real-life videos that challenge the narrative, but are nonetheless real.
Is there any X accounts you're surprised when you changed it so people could see country of origin that wasn't in the United States that you thought was in the United States?
I don't really think about it that much.
I mean, there's, you know, country of origin.
We have to be a little careful about this.
You can actually technically just specify your region.
Like you can say I'm in Asia or something like that, which is quite big.
But it does make it a little harder that if somebody is trying to pretend that they're, say, a member of the American public or in Europe or Africa, wherever, if they're, you know, if everything about their account is from a different continent than they are pretending to be from, it gets a little harder to pretend.
We don't want to dox people, but we kind of think you're not really doxing someone if you say which continent they're from.
Yeah, I think it's fair.
Yeah.
Okay, so in every episode, we've played Would You Rather?
Would you rather save humanity from extinction on Earth or guarantee of survival on Mars?
It's a false dichotomy.
I think I'd say guarantee Earth.
Earth's much better than Mars, to be clear.
But Mars is just our best option if we want to become a multi-planet species.
It's really our only option if you want to become a multi-planet species.
You've got Mars, which is very difficult but not impossible.
Earth is much better than Mars, but, you know, we can't.
I think it was Tsiolkovsky, or I think he said, you know, Earth is the cradle of civilization, but we can't stay in the cradle forever.
Would you rather be a Marvel superhero or a Bond villain?
I think it would depend on which Marvel superhero or which Bond villain.
I suppose I'd rather be a Marvel superhero.
They did model Iron Man in the movies after me.
Yes.
You were in the Iron Man movie, right?
Yes.
That's pretty cool.
Yeah, Robert Dino Jr. and Favreau met with me and toured SpaceX and stuff.
In fact, Iron Man 2, a large part of the movie, is filmed in SpaceX.
Really?
Yes.
If you watch Iron Man 2, you'll see that the SpaceX Factory is the actual background.
That's so cool.
Yeah, it was cool.
We had Scarlett Johansson doing martial arts in the lobby.
Actually.
Yeah.
And you expect me to believe this is all real?
It's a simulation.
Exactly.
What are the odds?
Yeah.
I mean, if you were me.
No, I agree with you.
Would you think this is real or a simulation?
Your life is a simulation.
Yeah.
Your life gets to be the simulation.
Yeah, and I'm like doing all the side quests and everything.
The Algorithm That Reads Everything00:02:52
Yeah.
What's your best side quest?
A doge, probably?
Okay.
Would you rather launch a social network with no algorithm or a rocket with no manual override?
Who came up with these questions?
Just keep going.
These are funny.
Maybe not to you, because they're too trivial.
What do you mean?
With an algorithm, it means you basically, you only see the people you follow.
Like, it's just a mess.
Like, it was Twitter before you bought it.
Yeah, yeah.
The sort of people you follow and then there's a recommendation algorithm.
I think probably in December we'll finally have a half-decent recommendation algorithm.
It's a lot better.
Recently, yeah.
Yeah.
So it really just trying to show people stuff they'd be interested in.
but there's an enormous amount of AI horsepower being applied to this where Grok, poor thing, is going to read all 100 million posts per day, which is a… Does that take up a lot of compute?
Hopefully it doesn't destroy his mind or something.
Yeah, it does take a lot of compute.
Like most posts are, there's a lot of spam scam stuff, so it's just that can be easily discarded, I suppose.
But then you've got to take 100 million pieces of content, match that to sometimes 300 or 400 million people per day.
So that's a lot of matching.
My algorithm used to look a lot like other people's when you open their X account.
Now mine is very unique comparatively to other people's.
Well we really are kind of the this is just the beginning kind of thing.
What I mentioned that Grok reading everything and recommending any given thing to anyone should go live in December.
So the asset test with this is are you seeing content like are you seeing content that you find really interesting from accounts you've never seen before?
If that's happening, then the algorithm is working.
Like it should be possible for somebody to put to post content as a new user with no followers and if that content is excellent it gets seen by a lot of people.
So can an account with a small number of followers or a new account if the content is intrinsically excellent can that content be seen by a lot of people?
That's our goal.
All right last one.
Time Travel vs Teleportation00:05:24
Would you rather invent time travel or teleportation?
Actually those things are almost the same thing in that you can't break the speed of light without breaking reality.
And so if you could teleport somewhere instantly if you're talking about teleportation faster than the speed of light, presumably it would be, then that would break our reality, as would time travel.
Unless, there's a very important conditional here, unless we are a simulation.
Time travel does not break a simulation.
Is it like in Loki where you're on like the time and you just break a new one?
I think, well, People do tend to get wrapped up in knots with the time travel thing because they try to simultaneously say something must be logically consistent but logically inconsistent.
That's impossible.
But if you think about like a video game and say, okay, you've got various saved games, and you can go back and restore a saved game from a prior start point.
You still have your other saved games.
And there are many games going on in parallel.
They don't have to be consistent with each other.
That is a false assumption if we're a simulation.
We might be somebody's video game or TV show or something like that.
Like I said, we're just going to keep it interesting so they don't turn the computer off.
I'm just saying, if that's true, keep it interesting or they're going to turn off the computer.
And they might, please don't delete us.
Please don't delete us.
Please don't delete us.
We'll keep it interesting, I swear.
You keep it interesting.
Yeah.
So if the most interesting outcome is the most likely, what do you think are the most interesting things that can occur?
Now, the most interesting is not what you want.
It's just, as viewed by a third party.
Let's say this was, for argument's sake, an Alien Netflix series.
And you're trying to maximize your viewership.
You know, maximize your ratings.
It's actually an interesting thought experiment.
It's actually not that interesting if everything just blows up.
It's not so over.
That's not that interesting.
It's not that interesting if there's a calamity that wipes out all the humans.
The show just ended.
But I mean, fortunately and unfortunately, if there is drama that, like war or something like that, that is interesting.
People will go to movies and watch, say, a World War I movie where people are getting blown up from cannon shells and they're in the movie theater eating popcorn, drinking a soda.
Like you wouldn't go to a movie where everything was just perfect and stayed that way.
You'd leave the theater.
Good romance story, doesn't it?
There's always a story arc.
There's always an arc.
And it's generally not a linear arc.
So it's not going to be like things start here and just go straight up and to the right and end up in a good place or something like that.
There's usually ups and downs.
The classic sort of story arcs, essentially.
You know, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3.
You have an initial rise in Act II, pull back in Act initial rise in Act 1, fall down in Act 2, surge back in Act 3 with a happy ending if it's a comedy or a sad ending if it's a drama.
If you look at President Trump's story, it's more interesting that he lost the intermediate term and then won his second term after that.
Just like the story arc.
Initially up, then down, then resurgent again.
If you went with my theory that the most interesting outcome is the most likely, then that was the most likely outcome.
It was inevitable.
What are you watching on TV right now?
I am irony man.
Something like that.
I'm paraphrasing.
What am I watching?
Actually, right now I'm watching Teenage Ninja Turtles, the TV series, Turtles and a Half Show, Total Power.
Yeah.
Because Lil X wants to watch that.
I'm watching things that the kids want to watch.
Watching Teenage Ninja Turtles00:03:24
We re-watched Dodgeball last night.
It's a good movie.
Yeah.
If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.
If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.
What?
Yeah.
High motivation to dodge if somebody's loving wrenches at you.
What song instantly puts you in a good mood?
The Final Countdown by Europa.
It's the final countdown.
I've heard that song a lot.
Do you read the instructions or just wing it?
What's the goal?
Like if you're putting something together.
Do you read the instructions or do you wing it?
If it's a simple thing, I'll wing it.
If it's a complex thing, I'll look at the instructions.
If you had to start from scratch today with only $1,000, what would you do?
Well, I did originally come to North America with, like, I don't know, $2,500 Canadian, so I don't know, maybe the two grand U.S. One bag of books and one bag of clothes in Montreal at age 17.
So that is how I started out.
At this point, I have a lot of knowledge.
A lot of things would have to go wrong for that to be the case.
It's like, am I just emerging from prison, perhaps?
With a stipend?
All my company's been confiscated.
I mean, it would take Armageddon, which hopefully that doesn't happen.
Like Ragnarok next level, and I lost.
Yeah.
The hell.
It's bad hand.
I mean, it's impossible for someone to have that amount of knowledge, all the knowledge that I have, and then be dropped down to a low resource amount.
Because the reality is that either something truly catastrophic has happened, like civilization has melted, or I will be able to ask people to just give me money and with the promise that I will have a high return, which is what I'm able to do right now.
Like if you give me a dollar, you will get back much more than a dollar.
So this is, it's somewhat of an impossible dichotomy because civilization would have had to have been destroyed or something.
In which case, $1,000 is not going to solve your problems.
You know, you can't do much with this.
If you're wandering around radioactive craters, and you're in like, you know, fallout or whatever, then $1,000 is not going to solve anything.
And if civilization hasn't melted, then it's probably just told people into giving me money, which I've done before.
Eating Cheeseburgers Forever00:05:16
If you weren't running your companies, what random job would you enjoy doing the most?
I don't know about solving that random, but I'd like to probably write video games or something like that.
I did that at one point.
I like solving problems, so I like building things.
It built a lot of things.
Like a lot.
What do you eat in a typical day?
Well, these days, I start off with a breakfast of steak and eggs and coffee.
And then dinner tends to vary.
I usually don't have lunch.
Or if I do, it's something very small.
And then dinner, depending on whether it's social or not, will vary in cuisine.
I like a wide range of cuisine.
What's your favorite food?
American food is my favorite food.
Like pizza or a cheeseburger like Yeah, the cheeseburger is probably the if I had to say like there's only one thing you can ever have for the rest of time Which admittedly would be a bit monotonous, but it would probably be a cheeseburger Because cheeseburgers are amazing.
It's a genius invention.
I'll tell you a funny story about when I was living in LA and I took my older boys out for lunch to Sugarfish, which is a very kind of uptight sushi restaurant.
In fact, on the menu of the restaurant, it says, do not ask for soy sauce because the chef has put the right amount of soy sauce and you can't have any more.
And if the chef doesn't think you should have soy sauce, you can't have soy sauce.
That's what it says on the menu, basically.
So, like, extremely strict sushi restaurant.
And so the waiter is going around asking everyone what they want.
And then it comes to Saxon, and Saxon says, I'll have a cheeseburger.
And the waiter's like, it takes a moment for the waiter to recover because no one's ever asked for a cheeseburger at this very strict sushi restaurant.
Took him like 30 seconds to realize he'd just been asked for a cheeseburger because you're not even allowed to ask for soy sauce.
So then when he finally recovered, he said, we don't have cheeseburgers.
And Saxon goes at the top of his voice, what?
Like, what kind of restaurant doesn't have cheeseburgers?
And it says, fine, I'll have a hamburger.
I don't know what you got against dairy, but I don't have hamburgers either.
Did he stay for the rest of the meal?
Yeah, but he was non-plussed.
It's like, I can't believe this place doesn't have cheeseburgers.
So yeah, I mean, I guess I like barbecue, which is good because I'm here in Austin.
I mean, if it's hot cuisine, I like French food as well.
But not every day, you know, once in a while.
If your friends described you in one emoji, what's the emoji?
I guess the emoji I use the most, which is the laughing emoji.
All right, and we close on this question every episode.
If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who's coming with dinner, and what are you eating?
I mean, maybe Shakespeare, Ben Franklin, Nikola Tesla.
I mean, there's actually a lot of people I would have liked to have talked to.
And we'll eat, I guess, whatever they'd like.
I think if this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I think you'd want to have some epic 12-course meal or something like that.
Feast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You want to go all out for that dinner, I think.
You're probably not going to serve cheeseburgers.
Unless they want it.
Yeah.
Maybe one of the courses could be like a tiny cheeseburger.
Those don't taste as good as the big ones.
No, but they could.
It's just they don't try.
There's nothing wrong.
You could make a tiny cheeseburger taste just as good as a big cheeseburger.
If you tried.
Have you ever had a tiny cheeseburger that actually tastes good?
Rare, but yes.
Okay.
1% of the time.
Fair.
But usually it's too much bread and it's dry.
Correct.
Yeah.
And then there's not enough meat in proportion to the bread.
Yeah.
But could you make a tiny cheeseburger that's good?
Of course.
Like you're not breaking, you know, like, you don't need a Nobel Prize for this, yeah.
You can definitely make a tiny cheeseburger.
It's like physically possible, I'm saying.
It's just rare.
Thank you for doing this.
You're welcome.
Thanks for watching this week's episode of the Katie Miller Podcast.