#558: Educating A Free Society with Chad Thevenot
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I think this is very much part of the human cycle, like every fifty years or so we can to go to these moments. We saw that in the late sixties, people forget how to that was the president? Was asco ated a presidential canada? Was assiniboia the civil rights movement was asco. Ated students were shot on campus. I can't state all in the space of a few years.

Chat seven, not founding leader of the university of Austin, uncovers the dark truth behind today's college educations. Half the time.

the students don't even know that they're getting they think they're getting this with a broad truth about the world. And what they're really getting is just like a narrow version of what one group believes. If you're interested in forming universities, you have to ask yourself, what is the incentive of the university to change? And honestly, if you look at the incense universities change, they are not good. It's weird knowing that you're probably living through a moment of history, not just where things are just kind going along, but like we we're seeing this kind of categories may shift.

You've had a dynamic where money become freer than free. Let me talk about a fed just gone that all all the central banks going not so it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to do by their currency, bitcoin wins.

In the world of fiat currencies, bitcoin is the Victor. I mean, that's part of the bulcke for bitcoin. You're not paying attention. You probably should be, probably be, probably be. Ca.

thank you for coming over spending your friday afternoon with me.

This is perfect. It's right across the street.

as you know. Catty court, there's a lot of energy is going on. I think. I think we need to a Foster this relationship between the commons unchained pleb lab now and U, A, T, X. We're very excited to have you as neighbors.

Yes, you look, we're at six in congress right now, the center of the universe, literally, right, because you think about IT, united states of most important country in the world, right? Access the most important state in the union. Austin is the heart of texas. And we were dead center downright. Now, Austin IT does .

feel that way. Parker, as much, I think you may met dam before a zab orate. He, I am a refugee from the northeast, born and filled of a college in chicago, spent six years in new york postcode. The bitcoin industry shifted away from new york and sand force co. And a lot of its settle here on six and congress. And you can feel the energy Parker is an Austin night and made sure that when I move down here and to the history of texas, the history of Austin, in the gravity that exists where we were, we said today.

exactly this is a special place right now. And it's not just be a coin. Its ideas broadly and it's more specifically, they would call liberal ideas not liberal in the current sort of progressive sort of view of it's liberal in the sense of freedom, liberty, right? And so the ideas of liberty we might call them broadly, are they still all liberalism in high education? The epic of those ideas has shifted over time. Um you hundreds of years ago I was the enlightenment ment and been part of europe and then at different times in united states that might have been sympathy or other parts today it's Austin taxes where the ideas of freedom, the ideas of liberty have sort of taken root and are being renewed right here, literally on this corner and in the city.

Yes, I mean, speaking of your side of the corner at U A, let's let's jump into the history of how this can to be. We didn't even mentioned that before we hit record, but we were chit chatting about trump winning the election and the vibe shift that is certainly happening.

And we've been talking about IT in the bitcoin industry, the companies, the individuals that been working to bring their product to market or develop a bitcoin stash like the timing is perfect if you're building in the space. I think what you're doing across the street, the time I going to be more perfect either because this seems like you guys been lying ground work for a few years now and really about to take off. yes.

And just look this, no question. We've been laying ground work for little over three years. In fact, it's almost what's today, no member, seventh.

seven, thirty year.

yeah. So tomorrow is our third, the third university since we announce the university on november eight, twenty twenty one. So for three years, we three years ago, we talked about this idea of a new university committed to the fear pursuit of truth, which basically this means freedom of inquiry, the free and open exploration of ideas.

That's the kind of thing in university ought to do. But they weren't doing so. We sort of double down on that principle.

And so we've been building IT. Nobody thought you could build the university in three years. We've done IT.

We promise from the beginning, we would have students start in the fall twenty twenty four. They started in september twenty twenty four. We have our first class. So yes, there's so much energy in Austin. It's a kind of place where you can get things done.

And culturally, we're seeing a shift, and we've seen IT slowly over the last two years, but we're seeing that sort of accelerate separate from the politics of the moment. Beyond the politics, there is spent a slow sort of summering shift in the culture. And the culture is wanning, I think, to return to some common sense, return to evidence and reason, rather than just here, kind of hysteria. A and a lot of that orbits around the university.

The kind of things that we're doing early on, we were saying, look, but just get back to the core principles, just merit no um freedom, an inquiry, what we call in legal pluralism, which is basically just a diversity of ideas in the classroom because if you're gone to explore ideas, I can if you've already figured that out and you're not expLoring and it's it's just an orthodoxy is a kind of church. If you already know what the right ideas, but if you don't know what the right ideas you were honestly expLoring ideas, you need a diversity of thought. So anyways, those are the kinds of things that I I see out in the world.

I'm not interested in politics at all, never been interested in politics. So I not follow IT nearly closely, most people, but I follow, I follow culture basically, which is upstream of politics. And that's very much what I see with the university is being part of a cultural or shift. What I see with bitcoin, without a doubt, people rethinking yeah what I mean what currency means in bitcoin as an asset and so on. And it's happening like almost every space in my in my view in the country, whether that's education or find or higher education or whatever, there's a sort of shift that we can do things Better.

Yeah was telling you that understanding yesterday economics at the paul university in chicago and like a two pronged way to Better understand big coin one studying at omics at university of the typical university ah in the united states uh in the twenty first century he means you're input with kenyan new liberal doctrine right and it's it's taught as gospel is the way the economy works and luckily for me um I was able to find bitcoin which pushed me into the exploration of all rian economics in an alternative view of how the economy does probably should work.

And that highlighter is a why why not learning about any these these concepts in my economics major and IT that was a highlight number one. Number two, funny enough, had to write a paper about student, learned that, and really discovered how the introduction of easy money into the university system specifically created these perverse and sentence, where the universities know that the government and the culture more broadly are pushing people to go get your decoration, get a good job. The government is giving out loans to anybody needs to get them. So they're able to increase their cost in plant and administrative layer that just feeds off the the money speak at that that student learned debt creates and then IT leads to this situation where you're not actually forced to create environment where people are expLoring ideas and actually learning earnest sly. It's a so much like a factory good .

that yeah exactly. Look, I mean this this the ballooning cost of higher education is one of the problems that we're tackling. So we have three core principles we are founded on.

One as the fields pursuit of truth, the idea of sort of freedom of the inquiry and and and national portal ism. The second is a new kind of curriculum, which we can talk about, but IT basically current for the for century. And the third is the the financial model.

So for example, our tuition is half of what other lead institutions are charging. And the core reason is half is because we don't have any of the kind of legacy nonsense that a lot of other universities to have. So for example, we don't have the bloated administration, which is the number one cause of this increase in cost, but at least the number and sort of symptom the cause is exactly what what you're saying.

It's these incense, right? If we create an incentive if if a third party comes in and says, well, i'm going to give you money to turn around to give the universities, the universities are like, great, we'll take more money. And so I know me, the student takes money from the government the form of loans.

And then I give IT to the university, and the university just ratched up the cost. So I go back and I say, any more loans then also surprised, surprised, right? The incentive were there for an increased, increased cost that are going to be basically subsidized by the government.

And then you, the student, get stuck in between with his dead. So one of things we're doing this semester, or rather this year as we have full academic tuition for all of our students, that means all of the students at least graduate without having dead from their tuition. They still have to play their housing and their food, but that's pretty affordable. But and so that's one of the ways like at least this year and this coming year, we've already committed to basically free tuition for the students.

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Not only you have the compounds into IT, you have the financial dep which obviously compounds over time is you get your degree and you get the workforce and find that the jobs you were promised or not um either there or as lucrative as as you thought they would be and to the intellectual debt compounds as well as that factory mindset of education and inductive ation, which is Frankly what many the universities of turn into these inductions ation camps like, really leaves individuals at a disservice in the long run because unless you have the cognitive ability to recognize you're being indoctrinated actively work to require your brain and seek out ideas outside of the walls of the university. Your you're probably running down A A path of uh intellectual dishonesty for longing than the otherwise should see this financial debt compounding with this intellectual debt that builds up over time and individually that it's problem. But if you others individuals into a grippit to a whole ation generation of people's, it's president. The adverse to the success of the nation yeah i'll .

look there's no question if you're not prepared for reality, if you're just prepared for some fantasy y version of the world that put you at an extreme, you odd, odd disposition, you're going out to the world and you've only heard one point of you right in one version of the world, the way the world ought to be under some particular vision as as suppose the way the world is. So you know, it's always struck me odd.

So like, let's say, I go to college and i'm protected from all of these ideas, right? That might hurt my feelings or my chAllenge, my my beliefs or my presumptions. Well, soon as I leave college, i'm in the grocery store ison and i'm seeing magazines and i'm talking to people and i'm going to restaurants and i'm working jobs and i'm having conversations.

None of that stuff is going to be cared to me. I'm not going to be shelter. I'm not going to be protected like that's the real world. I'm gonna ideas see people experience things that are completely at odds with this narrow version that have been given high read. You can immediately see how ill prepared i'm going to be.

And this is why I think a lot of people shut down and just they're not prepared for the fact that other people have different kinds of experiences, different kinds of ideas. The world doesn't exactly work exactly the way that people want to. So the one thing we ought to be teaching people is the one thing we're not is the opposite of what we're doing. We ought to be teaching people how to be uh anti fragile, how to be resilient, how to be um agile in terms of being able shift with different ideas, different trends, different changes, highly dynamics world instead were teaching him to basically be um orthodox so it's almost like this kind of secular orthodox of the world. And that's IT .

like teaching people how how you should know things, not how to think and develop. Yeah the ability to come to your own .

conclusions yeah and you're right. Look, you don't half time the students, they don't even know that they're getting they think they're getting some version of the truth, you know as and what they're really getting to what they think they're getting this we kind of brought truth about the world and what they are really getting is just like a narrow version of .

what one group believes yeah, I mean, obviously, infection of the world mind virus into the university system has been a topic of recent years. Quickly post B. L, M. But I mean, I graduated college in twenty thirteen, vividly remember having to take IT was an active IT was a Mandatory class on multi cultural ism, which basically taught people with my completion. Eye color and hair color were the reason that that everything is bad in the world and little ally to pass the class to acknowledge um acknowledges that that doctor on yeah there was this the pool universe chicago 嗯 and even back then this was before he became apparent um socially that this was a thing like weakness probably didn't accelerate until twenty seventeen forward for COVID yeah in the sense that I was front center in everyday life but the the seeds of that indoctrination where at least around when I was in college in what I was like um I was essentially like what the fact like getting in debates and class like trying to defend like i'm a good person like an individual and right it's look when when people know when people are .

called races or magnetic and self all the time and they they believe in they are on heart that they're not you know they're be at a hoods with that the sad thing is， is like IT as a nation, we spent decades trying to to have a sort of a reckoning, you know around civil rights and around women's rights and so on. And that was a good thing, right? And I saw a lot of that.

I'm i'm quite Better. So I saw that throughout the seventies in the eighties and um and we made some progress and we and we also learn to to Better understand each other and live with each other, right? And so we would experience each other's cultures and ideas and chAllenges.

And so what I saw personally was a lot of progress, even as a southerner from lizana. And I saw from some bad behavior to increasingly Better behavior um all the way up through college in the nineteen nineties. So in my view, we were making progress.

IT wasn't perfect, but we were being exposed, other people, other ideas. But I was part of an organic kind of evolutionary process of social evolution process. IT wasn't this idea that we're going to force you to take a course, and then in the processes that course were going to demonize you, that's going to be going to give you the opposite, right? People are going to they're going to reject that.

And just sort to say we'll hold on this whole things not about me and its not about and you don't even know me. Every person's experience was different, of course. And so in a sense, it's anti progress because it's it's it's a perversion of this idea of we're going going to get to know each other Better or we're going to be more tolerant by by being less tower.

And so I on the whole idea was that we are going integrate society, right, whether that raised class, gender, sexual identity whatever, and and have more this melting pot. But as soon as you start making IT sort of like um the ministry of culture is going to come down and and have exact dictate. Tes, and that's gonna cel you you don't go along with the agenda then you get this massive of backlash was of what we're seeing today ah and so it's it's good in the backlash is good in the sense that it's the backlash to some of the excesses of that.

It's bad in the sense that we still do have this fomented chAllenge of living in a pluralistic c society, right? And so IT breaks my hard little bit that that some of the progress we've been made that had been made, I think, for decade, it's certainly the sixties through maybe though two thousands were. Now, if we ve lost some in that ground.

something lost some in that ground with silver lining is IT highlighted. The humanity as a collective does still have this inherent immune system that they are sort of rejects at some point, like, obviously things have gotten bad, but IT has gone to appoint where people are thrown their hands up saying, this is insane.

something? No, exactly. I think I did reach a point of insanity. And so then everyday people, I mean, a lot of people believe that I wasn't saying, but they felt they couldn't say IT because they didn't want to lose your friends or they don't want to get cancelled or whatever.

And now people, I think, feel very comfortable just so saying, hey, look, this is, this is crazy. You know, the fact that, you know, I can't talk about the fact that i'm a hold their bit going because that somehow going to make me some conspiratorial or republic or something and that's crazy, right? right? Some hoping we can get back to like the thankes giving dinner.

We have thanksgiving coming up where you're sitting across from your family and friends and you have differences and you make one of each other little bit. You poke and you pride and you and then everybody gets along, right. You don't have to degree, you know? It's not that it's not about making each other agree with each other, just understanding, right? It's like, oh, I know my uncle believes this because he had this kind of experience. I don't get IT, but he does and I love him and that's fine.

I mean, coming from the north, there is a lot of that. My famous because I want my family every day, I prefer to talk about the time spent at the beach and the jokes and the practical jokes that we played on each other growing up.

But the, I hope, moving forward, get away from political divisiveness and the focus of if you're meeting with family and friends, particularly you're forced to talk about these political topics, which is not where society should be at all yeah should be talking about ideas that are outside the political landscape, which gets to like developing a curricular, creating a new university. And is they trying to form a curricle, an environment where you're actually battle testing these ideas? What is that process look like? How to look like? Three goes well for us.

We had a vision right out the game on the kind of richlun that we thought would be valuable for students. And so we have A A two side coin. Basically on one side of that coin is what they call the the liberal arts are the classical liberal arts.

And all the liberal arts is really is um it's, how do you learn to live in a free and open society, right? This is jefferSonian ideal of, if we're going to be self governing, we have to learn how be self governing. So it's philosophy in history and law and economics, where we learn about the world, particularly about the world in a liberal society of society, has a relative freedom in openness.

That's all IT meant so it's living in how to live in that kind of world. Um so we we believe in that right so going all way back to classics, no, going all way back to socrates in the bible, but not always forward to modern thinkers. How does that tell us about how about ourselves as people, as humans? What does that tell us about human institutions like banking or higher, or the criminal justice system? And what does that tell us about societies? What are these perennial questions in these disciplines that inform us about the human experience? Is that simple? So we think that's necessary.

If you don't have the grounding and the depth and breath about the human experience, then you you become like a technician. You like a automaton cargan machine, right? And so you have to have that grounding in in the humanity, literally call the humanity and social sciences.

That grounding on to pulls you into being human in the process that increases your empathy for other humans. You can see that other humans, either before I sorry, or even now arrestable, with the same kinds of questions, right? So that's half the quick, and the other half is oriented towards moving forward.

How do we take all this experience and all this learning about humanity and use IT to make the world even Better moving forward? right? So how do we solve problems? How do we develop new policies, new technologies, new nonprofits, new art, music that makes the world Better, more beautiful, more just? And so that's what we call that the player is project, the player is the north star to a half sort of liberal arts and half entrepreneurship and innovation like moving forward. And they're not like two two separate things where it's bifricated again there two sides of the same coin is very hard to be an ethical and principled entrepreneur leader if you not grounded in a firm understanding of what's come before.

Yeah, I completely agree with that. I was actually the minor or I didn't minor but all my electors are taken in philosopher reading like play to sacrifice ah nature even and that's one thing that's been completely lost and it's I mean not to go too hard into the work mine virus, but the the idea of it's pretty popular idea these days of the fact that like yet marxist individual sort of info trade the university system more broadly here in the united states and via concerted effort, tried to easily wash over that history that that important knowledge that came before us yeah and it's again going back when I said earlier, it's the intellectual debt that that IT crews from that um is pretty significant.

Think the works of literature and art um that have been produced throughout the years, uh particularly in philosophy, in physical. Her throughout time of said very similar things in different ways like these um first principle believes about how the world works and how logic works are pretty consistent throughout time for a reason um and being able to have that based knowledge of logic first principles IT allows you to continue progress and IT feels like a lot of that ancient knowledges been actively closed over in the university system and a lot of university. And you see there's yeah some that are Better than others.

exactly. Some are Better than others for sure. And some departments are Better than others even within the same university. So it's hard you can paint them with a broad brush for sure.

But I think you can say the look, the general trend line has been to move away from some of these these the liberal arts, right, some of these classical thinking and so on to just sort of practical your knowledge because we are preparing people for their career. I think that's true in part. You're preparing people some for some discipline to be an engineer, to be a doctor or to be a teacher. But you're not just preparing people to be technicians within a field.

We ought to be preparing people to be Better humans, right? So they for for their own purposes, their own transformation, but also their contributions to free, open society, right? Are they Better neighbors? Are they Better citizens of a free society? Are they Better bosses? That requires something much a difference in just figure out how to yang put put a widget in place um and that's where philosopher and historians have come in IT IT teaches us about this that all this rich understanding that people before us have come have developed.

It's like why wouldn't we want that? We're dropped into this world kind of you know, out of nowhere, and we're figuring our way out in the world and wanting to make good decisions. And there is all the history before us.

Is there really nothing to learn from that history? We're not Better off as an individual if we don't IT makes no sense. Of course, we want to do is to our personal advantage.

Just think, go, what did people learn before me? So I don't have to learn in myself, right? And so IT kind of discount all of that. And just to say, no, it's just about time. How you tight up screw title makes no sense.

In fact, that kind of knowledge, a techno knowledge, is easier than it's ever banned because we live in an information economy, right? We can go get that knowledge if I want to earn how to fix my this washing. I can now, like watch a youtube video for five minutes.

And I can solve a problem that might have taken me an engineering degree to get before, right? So that's not the problem. The problem is figure out how do we live you productive, healthy lives in a free society with other people who are trying to do the same thing, who have differences.

And we have conflicting interest. And saw on the biggest chAllenge we face is literally just the day to day communications and personal interactions and our own emotions and our own, you know, stresses. It's not we've got plenty of access to technical knowledge. So it's just regifting the emphasis back to sort of say, look, we don't want to lose everything that's come before.

And with this in mind, how are you guys engaging success of the new university that you've created?

What's important member we just have? We just had our first trimester starting in two months ago. Um so to this point, no success has been hitting these milestones of launching university, most importantly, having a first classes students started in september, which we did and that alone on save is a bit of a miracle.

The logic university is an insane, insane thing. Um you the regulatory burdens are almost prohibitive. The financial burden interview of the resource is necessary just shorting ary.

So all for all of these reasons, like it's very, very difficult. So hitting these miles sounds particularly starting with students this far was this success. Now of course, we're very much focused on how do we get Better, how do we grow. Some of that is, of course, continuing to recruit students, being able to lower the acceptance rate, meaning we're basically getting the best students. Um we certainly have an excEllent class this this year, but I think we're going to have even stronger class is moving forward as we gain a reputation for being a strong institution.

Ah it's fine raising, of course, because we have to have the resources to to do this at this point in you know in our embassy, we're one hundred percent for land to be you know we don't have a revenue model yet. We will on next five years or so, but we don't today. So we have to raise money and that money courses a signal whether we're doing a good job um or whether people think we're doing a good job um and so on accreditation is that who we have to jump through and that would represent certain level of success in terms of you being able to meet the standards that are set before us from regulators.

And we're we're really well position for all of that on this institution. Even though it's only three years old is incredibly strong. I mean, we have just we have put on so much muscle in three years, it's just incredible.

Yeah and diving into the regulatory landscape as we were talking about IT before, with trump coming the office and many, many people surprising that he's going to implement this high terrorist, low income tax regime is going to need to cut spending. And he is spoken publicly or people around the campaign of spoken spoken publicly about a cutting departments like the department of education and have the department of education been enterance. So what you're trying to do?

No, but I think it's a enterance in part to innovation with the higher education as well as k through twelve like education broadly. Um so I think they're real problems there, and I think it's getting in the way of bringing about the kind of choice and innovation that people really want. Um it's a one size fits all approach.

When you have the federal government or dictating terms, do we need to both the apartment fiction have no idea. Do we need some serious reform, maybe all the way up to the boss? sure. You know I think there needs to be a really radical look at what we're doing.

Um so yeah, we're in certainly we're in favor in having an environment that just allows more upstarts, right, makes a lazier for new universities to be started, new schools to be started, new kinds of curriculum news, kinds of technologies around education, all of that a good thing. Competitions are good thing IT IT raises everyone up to a higher standard. So i'd like to see that certainly don't only see more regulation, right? We don't want more requirements that in most some ways are just either political. So they're just that is not good, these kind of political witness test that you are talking about with your class or they're just unnecessary bureaucracy that just stifled the process of innovation. And that's true of almost any department but a certain ly, the department of education has its own problems .

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But here, just as you discussing this, so you've thought about this a lot. Like how like watch your background before U A, T X. Like what was the the impetus? Sure of you to say, all right.

we're onna do this yeah I mean it's funny because you don't ah my experience has been is very, very hard to sort of plan out your career right and then end up where you are like there's no way when I was thirty years ago, when I was starting my career, that I thought that would be where I I am today, just radically different. I went to business school, university taxes. I went to Georgetown university for graduates, school and cultural studies.

So I actually studied a lot of this critical theories on not so much as a sympathiser. I was actually just interested in ideas and particularly interested in society and in culture. I mentioned this early, earlier, cultures up string from politics, in my view.

And that's really important because we're having these fights around politics. But in some ways, we're having him ten years or twenty years too late at that point. By the time you have to fight in politics is already done the cake bake um and so if you want to go upstream of politics, you you have to think about culture and more of the cultural institutions. Well, its entertainment is higher education right now is things like blogs and so on. That's upstream um and so that's what I spent my career doing is thinking about culture, thinking about they all social change and in particular sort of how these societies change, how to cultures change, how do they change for the best because of course there is bad social change, right when all the student you have no not these or come minister something and then there's good social change where people there's more piece is more prosperity and so on.

But where does that come from? Where does positive social change come from um to and looking at those questions I got obsessed with the idea of of liberalism again properly understood the way to understand liberalism as a in in this proper cent is to look at the enlightenment ment right in the values that came out of the enticement, which are things like pluralism, the rule of law, democracy, the scientific method, very basic things, things that we almost take for granted now, private property, private property, absolutely uh, free enterprise, the uh constitutional protections, these are all things that came out of the enlightenment. These are all of what we would call liberal values in higher education in united states is supposed to be a liberal institution about living in the society that has its values, right?

If you look at institutions and you look at societies that have embraced these classical will come classical. Liberal values of people aren't confused. IT is absolutely clear that those societies across time and across geography have done Better.

Classical societies that IT hear liberal values. They are not just doing a little bit Better. They're doing ten x one hundred x Better. And and now, of course, is all these means around this where you can see like you can see satellite footage of north korea versus south korea that tells you everything. This is also true.

I travelled a cyprus about twenty years ago cyprus divided to have um and there is a more liberal, again, classical liberal and lightning in form sort of south. I've less so in the including this the capital city, which is divided in half. You can climb these latter ers.

You can look over the wall. I forget the name of the capital city and you're standing in the same city, in the same country with the same people, in the same geography and is radical, different. And it's clearly Better in the south than IT is in the north. That is not. So you can say its resources or its people or IT has to do with what values were were realized out in that society.

Why I saw a picture on the other week of the the border, I believe, is monico in france. And the that right? That's alright.

Yeah, right yeah. And that was stark difference. Like mono, like way Better than france. Likewise, I mean, you see here in the united states, driving through the northeast quarter had a wedding in new hampshire. Ce, you dry through massachuset to get to new hampshire.

And as soon as across the border into the freestone, the roads are materially Better. Yeah, you're driving on. And literally, once you cross the border, the road is well maintained and much Better. It's insane to see exactly.

And that's not that's not people's geography. That's that's policy. And that policy, again, is informed by the kind of culture, that of the kinds of things that we support, the kinds of things that we value, right?

Texas is, look, texas is great at this text is not perfect, just like the us. Is not perfect. But as a as a state, texas, I think, has the right values and is doing a good job of seeing a lot of that through in the terms of the kinds of policies that has.

But the culture is what really matters, right? And one, one amazing thing about Austin is held diverse and heard dox IT is it's a place where people come to do new things, whether that's art or technology or education or politics. There's where this is kind of creative conflict, the good kind of conflict that you want, where, you know, these ideas are converging and the sort of conflicting, and then the new stuff is born out of IT.

And so it's an unbelievably creative environment. You know, people kind of characterize awesome in the is the blue city in the red day kinda. But you know, if you walk around us and you see all kinds of different people go to a restaurant, and you going to be setting next the person who is a crazy so progressive with blue hair, right? Next, the really uptight republican guy.

And they're getting along. They have a lunch together. You know, like what's gone on here? Well, it's because it's that's the sort of creative energy that allowed to actually interactive culturally and learn from each other, right, and kind of bounce ideas off each other.

You don't see when everybody in other parts of in other states kind of go after their corner. Um and so it's one really is and that's true in my view, that's true about every aspect to us and that there's there these differences, but the differences are allowed to to come together and just you don't see that another stage. You see people so of separating, moving in a different neighborhoods, different friend groups and .

on yeah I somebody who's lived in three of the glue cities in the country and filled off in chicago, in new york whenever ready scope, because they live in aston in texas, gods lips capital, compared to the other cities I live. This is basic, superior.

and yes, without a count. But I had in dc for many years, and that was a city that was more uniform and its views. And you had to kind of watch IT what you would say.

I don't never feel that way. And Austin, I feel like I could talk to my conservative friends or my progressive friends and haven't be honest. And i'm not going to get i'm not going to get shut down or cancelled from IT.

I mean, we might have passionate discussion and that's fine. I mean, that's how we chAllenge each other and that's growth. Yeah, yeah. You know, I did in the dc area, I got to a point where you couldn't even have a real conversation and was really .

a bummer that similar arly in new york, chicago really wasn't having this conversation as much at a Younger age. But as I get older, three have kids these conversations with their heads I mean, yeah, it's much easier to happens down here.

So that's the microcosm for those kind of conversations of microcosm for the situation and higher ad, right? And a sense the research of teaching the menorah can't really happen because it's stifled. People self censor.

People can each other. And and so the the very thing that higher ad exists to do, which is the so Foster conversation, Foster aspiration, is the very thing that is fAiling to do. And that's that's what was so frustrating, so depressing.

And that's that's what fed energy into a starting the university of Austin people we get characterised. The wall street journal recently had an article bat us where they they use anti woke in the title. And i'm like, now you're not understanding this is about woke e or anti woke. This is literally about whether the core purpose of higher education, this is about expLoring ideas or having an an orthodox view of ideas.

How has the faculty? how? How, how would the viable? Because I was mentioning, as we are taking the elevator right up, john constable, yeah, brought him over from the U. K. Pretty prolific in the world of of energy and in physics, and supposed to meet up with him at some point here in the next couple of weeks and just really interested to get his perspective on Y, U, A, T, X. And like what are you feeling there a sense of well, I I might actually able to go and have the relationship with students that i've been looking for yeah ever like the faculty in some ways .

for what you exactly what you hope they're all over the place right different disciplines, different so of political sense, different personalities um I mean, look, the first thing we hired for with faculty was there their merit, their abilities right um particularly right at this day is their ability to teach because that's we're starting with wear for Bonnie versy teaching and research.

But we're starting with these students come in in his undergrad and so we need great teachers. So their great teachers, they have that in common. Um we also look for for a faculty who ideally demonstrate some level of courage, right because it's the fearless pursuit of truth, pursuing truth in this environment like openly expLoring ideas.

I am really doing IT require some courage and particularly an environment where if you say things, you get shut down and so on. So we needed to know that they had the courage kind to live out the principle of the fuel pressured trade. So they have that they have some of those stories um about how they felt in the classroom and people think is just conservatives is not I mean your your mainstream sort of left to center professor was feeling shut down from people even further left than that they are.

We saw this in australia with the oceanographer who at one point said climate change is killing the great berrier reef. Then he went back to research a decade later, risk becoming revived, and came just brought the thing, I think I was wrong, yeah, uh, the great Perry reef is recovering. And he got fired.

right? exactly. Every one of those Anthony sis of that happening is a chilling effect. For for scientists, for researchers, for teachers. And that's why it's so important.

It's look, even if it's not completely prolific in one area, if people know about IT, right, it's kind of like going down the highway and you know that there's you've heard that there's like one or two cops on the next stretch of fifty miles. That's all you need now, right? Just just the possibility that you're going to get the ticket is enough to sort of quash what you're doing.

So IT doesn't even have to exist everywhere, just has to exist enough to make you afraid. And so then that's why the professor start to self sensor. That's why the students start to self sensor.

So that's why there has to be this really kind, radical commitment to the fears. Pursue truth. Because you can even have one instance where you shutting somebody down .

for political reasons because that has a ripple effect and that man of us U U A T X outside the classroom as well as I know you guys are working on curating talks and discussions forms as well.

Yeah and we've already done a lot of that. We still do a lot of that. So there's a lot of public sort of facing stuff, both advanced speakers and what not, but also content that we put online. We were fairly prolific .

and has the work that you've done going out with the ambitious goal of starting university, getting to the red tape, getting in across the line, has IT inspired others. Is that your hope?

Yeah, that was always our hope to do two things. One was the started new university in committed the feels, pressure the truth, and have students start by the fall twenty four. And we did that.

The parallel goal was by doing that, that they would inspire other institutions and people around those institutions to um you have to think about things differently, think about what the possibilities are basically to inspire them towards a Better way for d to be a light in the darkness, right? And we we see this so much, but some of its also very private when we have university presents reaching out to us consistently. And like this is great, I want can say publicly, but it's great.

Keep going here. It's helping the kinds of conversations i'm having with with our faculty or with our board or whatever. We get that from board trustees.

We get that from major donors of other institutions. They're all, I mean one hundred percent calling us up and saying this is great. We encourage IT.

This is helping change the conversation of higher ed. Some don't feel like they can be public about that, but they definitely wanted to succeed. And and they've asked us about starting new institutions. We've been offered institutions and other cities that are on their way out, the vast can we save their institution?

After a Justin moon out there, he he was screaming at me as we were running into the studio, we've had this conversation zer. Um there's a part of the public group, not the public, but there's a group of people who want to tear down institutions like the ivy leagues. And I think it's gone. We ever blown way to crate and we fed this back and forth like he tired down or do you try and they can remix orate the institution are these institutions were saving, I guess, is another way to frame IT and do they need something like U A T, X is an external signal um of competition yes we are forced to to reinvigorate and preserve this institution in the .

longer on yes look higher education is absolutely worth saving um but it's also must be renewed right? And since it's it's a renewal of coming back to its original purpose and with a new sort of relevance, a new commitment, a new vibrancy.

So it's not about throwing IT out, burning IT down um but IT is about look taking a sober look at what is its core purpose recommitting to that and then making that real through your policies, your practice, that kind of culture, your building, the people you hire, all of that. So there needs to be a very robust ort of neal and an institution like U A, T, X. Can and I think should be part of that.

You providing some some guidance, providing some lessons learn, providing some inspired ration. It's very much part of what we want to do. We'd love to see dozens of not hundreds of other institutions out there competing with us and a sends to try to to try to do things Better.

I think that's how you get there. I think you need competition. I think you need some mountain forces. I don't think the answer is, is this sort of marginal reforms that you've been trying with universities like let's start off this, have the little project after the side yeah these projects after the side that they can of bolt on to universities don't succeed because they're overwhelmed by the the incense within the university, right, to completely overwhelmed by IT.

I mean, if you're interested in reforming universities, you have to ask yourself a single question to start, which is what is the incentive of the university to change? And honestly, if you look at the incense university to change, they're not good. There's not a lot of incentive for, right? So you have a big problem.

If if you're somebody who wants to sort of see higher be reform, you have to answer that question about what are the incentives. And if you don't have a good answer to that question, you know you've got a problem. And that's very much, again, I think where we were three years ago, that doesn't mean burn in down. That just means like we need a more radical sort fix. We need a more um fundamental kind of the answer.

Yeah actually the one I think I can think of is taking away the student learns where it's OK you don't free money, speak any action, compete exactly.

I mean, at least those kinds of things should look cause when IT comes that when IT comes to sort of a more radical shift and and you want things like accountability, you want transparently, I mean things like account and transparency, put the light of day on institutions, whatever they are, businesses higher.

And that's the kind of thing that that gives people view under what's happening and saying, wow, wow, what you're doing, what i'm not going to give you my money or i'm gonna have my kids go to the score or you know, whatever. So in some ways, there needs to be much stronger governance is the governance within hye ducaine kind of oversight that we've had. It's been appalling.

And the thing is these are really good people. So i'm i'm not trying to knock these people individually. A lot of the people that are in these kind of governing board type roles are a very successful business people, very smart and so on.

But they've let the the administrators and so just run a muck if got the first thing I would like to see is, is the boards of trustees and the major donors, and sort of know the people that are basically of governing oversight of these institutions, start to hold people accountable to their own values, to their own. What they're saying that they stand for if they stand for more than they stand for mary, what does that look like? If they stand for institutional neutrality, what does that look like? Let's make a real let's don't just talk about IT. Uh, we've got to move past this kind of I I don't know what they fair almost sort of governance of hired when keep pretending like it's going to be OK to like a much more elon msg sk kind of aggressive go in and and clean things out a bit and holds some people countable and like we are not going to do the job maintaining the institutions values, its core values, then you can be the president yet.

This is our ultimate are you working to achieve that? Hear some K, P, S. And benchMarks to want to see you hit if you don't hit them exactly.

And I mean, that's true for any institution. So that's not some radical departure. That's true for businesses or whatever. We don't see that much in her red you saw a little bit accountability last winter when hard flooding gay you know um so this kind of cowardize during her um her testiment before congress and so he got held accountable and so did the woman from columbia area pen camera and that sent a signal again, that's a good signal to other institutions that like, oh, we got ta start paying attention so that was helpful um but again, like something like four thousand institutions of higher ad and some of these instruction have these enormous endowments in the huge base of alumni and huge base of of local, state and federal support. All of those things create incentive for the state, quote, not for change.

I mean, speaking and dance is a good, safe way. Terms of me, it's matching a work at a fun ten thirty one.

We interact with a lot of endowment to raise money in to help store their capital that having done that for the last three years now, getting to understand the ultimate of these endeavors and how they can achieve their ability to fund what they want to go do, whether that's subsidies, schooling for individuals, build new facilities, whatever you've gotta get, create of of hell, you actually establish and then grow and maintain that endowment into the future. And very happy to see that U, A, T, X. launch. And you guys happen a element with bitcoin at the core of IT. Ah so were the the thought what was the the thought process and decision process that went into make that ultimate decision?

Well, so some level of and damon is good, right? You you need and I think want to as university to create um in doubt funds for things like scholarships, right so you have that money in perpetually unity to be able to offer scholarships to students need or or for merit. Um you want things like and double chairs if you want to be able to attract top notch and electoral and scholars.

It's very helpful if there is money in the bank where you're drawing violent roughly a year to pay for that chair. And so they that individual the university knows their stability, right? So that's a good version of the endowment.

Um so the idea was was just that would like any kind of you know investment strategy, we want to diversify our reas. We want to diversify our product portfolio. Why aren't people doing that with bitcoin, right? As a long term asset?

If you look at help that going is performed there over the last five years, you could at least to have a plausible hope that is gonna perform well moving forward. Maybe IT doesn't, but yeah, you could have any have some reasonably that I will so you put in your portfolio. And so that's what we're doing.

We view IT as well as a long term asset that we think is going to do well. We want that in the portfolio. We want to.

So that's the practical part. The more audio logical part, if you will, or philosopher part, is that we believe what he stands for. You know in our mind that stands for free free speech, you know free expression. Well, that's what we're all about. You know that's our DNA. So you like like spiritually, you're like we're this closed to the big win, right in the big in community we get IT, we get what that means that kind of um want um a way out of the madness of an institution and towards some freedom and control. And so um yeah is there's that kind of community connection and and where we're seen as like so many of our supporters, our students, they're all that in big yeah well.

IT, is this your personal during the back when where you did you understand that when before you made the decision was something you came to understand?

As I am, I have some bitcoin and pad up for a number of years but I was more like, you know that was a wild whatever few years ago and that was the end of IT um I never got into a personal terms of really understanding IT until more recently. And I blame joe Kelly for this. He was telling me you more about and I was listening and JoNathan was talking with me as well and then and then I was like, well, this really is important.

I need to pay more attention um because it's i'm a really curious person so everything interest me which is kind of a problem in the sense that I could obviously I can deep dive and to you know literature or music or whatever and just go deep for year too. So I hadn't been paying attention really honestly to bitcoin, at least not that much but I have a lot of friends, and the university, of course, has a lot of friends that registed always constantly tly of getting, at least being immersed in that community, and then makes somebody like joe, you know, had IT basic explain IT to me. And then I was like, oh right, wow, this is so much more powerful, so much more diverse and its impact just being currency or just being an asset.

And I think it's very, very deputised. Maybe that's the way maybe there's another way for two IT per cat corner to each other because I think, yeah, what's happening in this office.

the same height to you, you can literally see into our offices from here.

practically IT is IT an incredible feeling, knowing that, like everybody out in this room right next was stand the halt and shared in the middle flor, a pleb lab, like all working on these, because that's the other thing too. Like, because is so no, still even sixteen years. And there are many things that need to get built, many ideas of what can be built. And it's truly an exploration of ideas in this building. And I think IT is a bit poetic that we are catty quarter to each other as you guys are embarking on expLoring A A new realm of fire education.

Yeah well, all I can do agree. Yeah, I feel that too. It's come full sort up to the beginning the conversation about sort of the magic of what's happening in Austin, particularly on this corner at six in congress these days.

Like, you know, I walked down the sidewalk and almost a bump into people doing these amazing things. And then I wonder about the people i'm not I don't even know, that are walking past me. I like, is this person can be the next person that cure is blind ness, or is this going to be the next person that, you know figures out some some new way to do the federal reserve? You know, like you don't know, you don't know who you're walking by.

And right down the street we have the mothership of basis in a free speech in the world economy, the street from us. It's no.

it's great. Well, and you and then you got the full spectrum of not just innovators, but electrons, everything from academics at U T. As well as university of Austin and elsewhere but you've also got um you know the pod casters and know so the joe rogan and then you've got the elon mask and you've got mean yeah so you think about the amount of firepower and aston I mean aston punching so far about its weight lexical at least um that is extraordinary and it's hard to even kind of put IT into to really quantify IT.

But you can feel like you can feel like how how are so many of the most important people in the country in terms of changing the direction of the country, pushing things forward of a lot of murine Austin, why know what is that is they're not in saying, Lewis, right? They're not in. I mean, i'm sure there are fine cities, but like why is IT Austin.

Silver lining of covin trying to figure that phrase I mean, to driver a lot of people and drove me here and that was like texas generally putting the flag down, saying we're going to be relatively free to the .

rest of the yeah I agree. I look I think he was a transformative moment for for the country. I mean, if you look at the internal migration is the largest internal migration as as I understand, IT in the his united states succeed for what they can call the great migration in the early part of the two eth century with african americans going out of the south to the north because of gym co and so on.

So that was a huge period international migration, but the largest since then um has been this migration during immediately after coffee. Well again, if the first question you like that, that economists I ask, you know why? Why is this happening? okay.

Well, where they migrating to, for example, they're migrating to taxes, florida, tennessee. What are those three states have in common? Yeah, no income tax.

That's not the only reason of the same. They don't they don't, right. What was your pop copy policy? All relatively free, right? The same thing with you talk, for example. And so IT doesn't take you don't have to dig too hard to start seeing and know if there's something different happening in the places where people are moving to relatively where they're moving from.

And you can start to say, oh, common sense, you know tells us that this probably matters is probably matters that they have more favorable tax policy, more favour regulation, more sane approach to cope IT and so on. Sorry about that so that I turned them on. Um so yeah no, it's has been this incredible this incredible shift because of cover. I mean, it's tragic in the stance that is kind so disruptive. But of course, like any kind of disruption, IT can reshuffle deck in some good ways.

I think a lot of good ways have you see what's going on earn, Austin? I think it's working on a fractal. Um we have reversion of autonomous state rights, which really shine through a doring copy, which I think is incredibly beneficial to long term health and quality life of americans overall because I really reignited the interstate competition that the founders basically set out yeah when they found the country and craft to the constitution.

And I think that's only an accelerate from here. And yeah like what you're doing U U A T X is um like just like a fractal move of that like you're doing at the university level. And it's obviously near dear to our heart in the bitcoin community is the bitcoin is a distributed system in our one of our core belief is from one of my core belief is a bit is that this distributed robust system is is what we should be building on top of.

And you need, whether it's a robust monetary system, are robust republic of states with their own individual ways of doing things, or robust distributed university system with the pleasure of different models and ideas. This is how system should organize distributed fashion exactly. And that's been .

the magic of the constitution for examples, that distribution power across the branches and so on between the states in the federal government. I mean, the the first thing that somebody who cares about a free and open and prosperity, the the first thing you should really have, that I think is a general intellectual kind of habit, is skepticism, not not sync ism.

But skepticism, right, is in particularly skepticism about centralization of power, wherever IT might be, whether that's corporate power, the federal reserve, the federal government, whatever is the nature of power is as IT gets more centralized, IT gets more corrupt. So when you distribute IT out, you maintain that kind of competition of ideas, of businesses of you are doing things Better. And so we always want some level that distribution.

Once we lose that distribution, that's the problem, right? When the federal government gets too much power or the federal reserve is too much power, or the late the local schools get too much power, things start to go out. And so if you care, if you look whatever your politics are, if you care, if you genuinely care about, you know, peace and prosperity and justice and moving that you have at least say, oh, we have to be careful, right? And it's not just whether it's concentrated under drop.

We don't want to concentrate under anyone. I don't want to concentrated under mother resa. You know it's it's not so much whose in office it's like how much power does that person have once they are in office, right? If you're worried about power, don't just worry about whether you know trump has the power versus obama or vice first. So worry about whether the office of the president has too much power, worry about whether congress has too much power um and so as we see and get redistributed to the states or decentralized through things like bitcoin, those are positive movements that creates more competition, more accountability, more transparency. Those are the things that that this the sAnitation of daylight onto all of these kinds of institutions.

Completely great. And i'm extremely optimistic. I was, I mean, not a child of nine levin, great financial crisis covin on a child of IT, but lived through IT. And that is that for most of my life, helper worried and pessimistic about the centralizing power that is existed through most of my life. Maybe i'm naive, ve maybe a bit hobble, but IT does seem like if you squint, you look what big wins doing, what U A, T, X is doing, what the trump administration is promising. You can squint and see late at the end of the tunnel that maybe we are moving back towards Sandy and distributed systems that that lead to competition and overall quality like piece of prosperity yeah.

I think we're starting to see the pinch on swing back towards sanity rather than this kind of analisa in in gas lighting and so on. But I think people just had enough. And so drink is not to have a swing too far. The other direction where all the sun, it's like IT, gets corrupted in a different way. And so no friends of freedom, friends of of sanity, have to maintain their principles in terms of, I can't this why i'm not a big friend of politics, because politics ultimately becomes about tribal ism.

And what tribe are belong to and what tribe are loyal to, where what we really need to do is be committed to certain set of ideas in decentralizing one of those ideas um and so IT doesn't really matter who's in in my view, who's in control. What the party is, is like that matters. What ideas are going to be implemented? I'm optimistic right now.

I think we are swing in the right direction. And I think we have some people who can do some really positive things. But we also have to maintain the giants and sort of say, do those things, don't do a bunch other .

stupid things that is poetics that you said that was literally upset we just recorded. That was the whole topic. Because as a trump administration comes in, how do we stay vigilant and hold the administration accountable?

I can't just be hope. I mean hopes a great thing. And and again, I have some I definitely have some hope coming out of this.

I think there's there's the possibility, so many positive things, but there has to be the visuals to say, no, you know, we have to do those things and we also have to not do the dumb things that that humans are are incline to do right? Um retribution. I'm not time of justice, but the actual retributions a terrible idea, terrible that that would spoil the entire thing.

So there are things like that that we just have to be vigil about. If you care about ideas, and you care about society and how ideas manius out, rather than your political tribal ism, then you have to sort of hold yourself accountable in your own party, in your own people, in a sense, accountable. And that's the, that's the downside, right? The downside is people get too comfortable and then they start to make the same mistakes that they are.

Opponent were making you to have the intellectual bigger in component to put yourself .

accountable. yeah. So I kind of welcome there. I welcome for the university.

I welcome people holding us accountable to our own commitments, to our own constitution, to our own ideals. I welcome that for the trump administration. I welcome IT for any kind of before the big coiners. You know that there's a always sort of transparency and accountants and so want to keep IT true to its principle because otherwise IT runs the risk of getting corrupted over time.

Ah I think we're gonna win optimistic yeah the optimism in the potential I think the potential I think there's many people opening their eyes with the where's big coin A I or seeing with space x um all the booming companies here in Austin like the potential is palpable and and IT makes me truly optimistic. He feels like for the first time in a while, there's this concerted effort to go realized that potential. And I think what you're doing, what we're doing, we're going to look back in the decade, but I am glad we were doing this because there's the right time.

I was told my wife, like last night, I was like you, it's weird knowing that you're probably living through a moment of history, not just where things we're just kind of going along, but like we we're seeing this kind of categories mate shift, right? Or this transformative kind of shift.

And and again, that's not that's not the election on talk about it's it's really it's the culture and it's entrepreneurship and it's but is shifting a lot, of course, is shifted during covet because of what we talked about earlier. But IT now is shifting back in this in some other directions in the way is shifting culturally. I think he is largely positive.

I think this is a time where people really can be more hopeful, more optimistic if they can move past the tribal ism of politics and literally just look at what's happening the world in terms of what's possible. I think there is some good reasons to be optimistic. Like you said, you know the bitcoin kind of phenomenon, the university in some other reforms and innovations there, um technology, you know, despite all the problems in the world, there's so much opportunity to do things Better.

And we have people actually going out there and trying to do this things Better. With all of the capital m of the last few years, people were losing hope. But people are have acting to get in the world and I just don't think that's true.

Um and I think I think this very much part of the human cycle, like every fifty years or so, we can go to these moments um and we saw that we saw that in the late sixty of people forget how til that was I mean, presidential candidate the president was associated, the presidential candidate was associated the head of the leader the civil rights movement was as a students were shot on campus. I can state all in the space of a few years is unbelievable um dynamic and dangerous polis. And yet we made IT through right we can make IT to the current moment.

I think we started to see that we are making IT to the current moment and that people are stepping up in different ways, whether that's education, finance, politics, whatever to try to start doing, kind of emerge out of this maras into sanity and to hope into something positive. So like I so agree with you. Like for the first time, i'm starting to feel more hopeful about what the another kind of the kind of country we can have in the kind of community we can have yeah people .

keep work and keep building, keep doing. After we like to say a lot, the show we're gona win. I think I think we're gona win.

Yeah um again, i'm an optimist. Yeah cat, this has been incredible. Thank you to get over there. I and visit .

you a to see you for yourself. I get once the next event a ight and I have a huge event tonight and open house, mostly for students and parents. I don't think you probably have Young kids over eighteen years old, but but it's open everyone to come drop by and just see what we're building, right? Talk to the faculty, you talk to the staff, see the campers. S you know, kick the .

tires well, i'm sure you have to go prepare for that. I want. Thank you piece love freak.