Can Andrew Yang Fix Our Two-Party Dumpster Fire?
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I'm Barry Weiss, and this is Honestly. Race is just the most palpable tool in the toolkit. It used to be of the Democratic Party back in the day when there were Dixiecrats, and now of the Republican Party. And...

White voters do have anxiety about a changing America. If you watched the cable news hellscape last week, you'd think that the fact that Republicans did so well in states like Virginia and New Jersey. This wasn't about those pocketbook issues. This was about how white kids feel talking about what black kids go through. And that voters rejected the defund the police measures in Minneapolis. The subtext of all this was we can't let these black and brown people run the country.

and that moderate candidates beat out the far-left candidates all over the place, even in Seattle. This is about the fact that a good chunk of voters out there are okay with white supremacy. Let's call a thing a thing. Actually, scratch that. They are more than okay. Well, you'd think that all of this was about

They don't like the way whiteness is being portrayed in these new, more inclusive lessons. Some Republican candidates are perfectly willing to use race as a motivating factor for their base education, which is code for white parents don't like the idea of teaching about race. You've got the Republicans yelling like, hey, look, the black and brown folks are coming for us. But there is so much evidence to the contrary. Like,

Like, even if you just look at the data coming out of Virginia, you can see signs that the Democrats lost support from voters across almost every demographic. In the suburbs, in the small towns, with white voters, with Black voters, with Latino voters, and of course, with the working class.

Right now, America faces serious problems. Now hiring. We're hiring. Help wanted. Signs are posted everywhere. Everywhere you turn, prices are up and they're going higher. There's new concern tonight about China's military capabilities amid a report the country recently tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile. The UN climate summit has entered its final days with warnings that

New pledges to cut carbon emissions are not enough. You're being subtly manipulated by algorithms that are watching everything you do constantly. Murder rates across the U.S. are rising. A recent report shows major cities saw a 33 percent jump in homicides, and that trend is expected to continue. New Pew Research Center study of 10,000 American adults finds us more divided than ever, with personal and political polarization at a 20-year high.

And instead of trying to solve those problems, we have an elite class in Washington and in the press who are playing out this reality TV show where they seem more interested in dunking on one another than actually solving the issues that we face.

One of the few people who is actually cutting through the noise and proposing solutions to fix the problems is my guest today, Andrew Yang. All politics is tribal at this point, and media organizations are inflaming that tribalism to the nth degree. So if you use a particular term, they will shut down. And unfortunately, you know one term that will shut down a lot of Americans? Democrats.

Whether you agree with the one-time presidential candidate on his core ideas like universal basic income or you don't, personally, I'm not the biggest fan, Andrew Yang has earned our attention and earned our respect. And that's because he's actually and earnestly putting forward real, innovative, and provocative ideas, including on how to fix things like our broken two-party system.

Recently, he left the Democratic Party to start a third party, which he's calling Forward. And the two of us sat down to talk about what the Democrats are getting wrong and why in the world he thinks a third party can be anything but a spoiler.

This was one of the most fun conversations I've had since we started recording this podcast. And the reason for that is that Andrew doesn't speak at all like a politician. He's forthright, he's self-deprecating, and he doesn't mince words. We go deep. We talk about what's broken, how to fix it. But we also cover Dave Chappelle, space aliens, and Elon Musk. Stay with us.

Hey guys, Josh Hammer here, the host of America on Trial with Josh Hammer, a podcast for the First Podcast Network. Look, there are a lot of shows out there that are explaining the political news cycle, what's happening on the Hill, the this, the that.

There are no other shows that are cutting straight to the point when it comes to the unprecedented lawfare debilitating and affecting the 2024 presidential election. We do all of that every single day right here on America on Trial with Josh Hammer. Subscribe and download your episodes wherever you get your podcasts. It's America on Trial with Josh Hammer.

President Mayor Andrew Yang, thank you for joining me. Oh, it's great to be here, Barry. Congratulations on Barry Corp. I love your branding for me. Yes, you can take it. It's free of charge. Thank you so much. Hopefully it'll take off like Yang Gang. So I wanted to start with...

The moment that I remember most clearly, not just of you, but really of the entire presidential campaign. You know what the talking heads couldn't stop talking about after the last debate? It's not the fact that I'm somehow number four on the stage in national polling.

It was the fact that I wasn't wearing a tie. You had this moment from the debate stage where you said... Instead of talking about automation and our future, including the fact that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs, hundreds of thousands right here in Michigan, we're up here with makeup on our faces,

and our rehearsed attack lines playing roles in this reality TV show. We're up here with our makeup on our faces and our rehearsed attack lines playing roles in this reality TV show. It's one reason why we elected a reality TV star as our president.

We need to be laser focused on solving the real challenges of today, like the fact that the most common jobs in America may not exist in a decade or that most Americans cannot pay their bills. And the reason I loved when you said that is I had never seen a politician break the fourth wall in that way. And the line resonated. And of course it did with everyone because we all see the charade of it.

And all of a sudden you were calling that out in a public way, not just the makeup and that moment and the rehearsed attack lines, but the broader charade, I think, that is partisan politics in the United States. What did you experience on the campaign trail that led you to that moment?

Trying to make those debate stages was a bit of a journey, a bit of an ordeal. And when I made the first debate stage, I was struck by how little interest there

certain moderators or certain media figures had in hearing from candidates that weren't part of their intended narrative and Marianne certainly fell victim to this like they they pummeled and marginalized Marianne mercilessly And during my preparation for the second debate I said something to my team like wow that this is such nonsense We just wear makeup and rehearse these lines and it's so unproductive and

for the body politic. And then people said to me like, Ooh, Ooh, like say that again, say that again. I was like, you mean I'm going to rehearse an attack line about the makeup of the rehearsed attack line? Um,

Very meta. Yes. But the gauntlet one runs in trying to make the presidential debate stage is very much media driven. And I say in my book that people imagine that running for president is somehow ego rewarding, where it's really very ego punishing. Demolishing. Yeah, it's ego demolishing. I mean, you show up.

And you are, you think like a fairly, you know, cool person or whatever. And, and, and then, um, and then MSNBC calls you John Yang and refuses to put you in the chyron of all of the candidates, something like 12 times until you finally called it out. I mean,

The media treatment of you and I was at the New York Times, obviously, at the time we met on the campaign trail. I spent New Year's Eve with you writing about you. I remember. And I found you so fascinating. And yet so many of my colleagues in the mainstream press at the time either thought your campaign was a punchline or refused to acknowledge it. It felt like there was.

a message that the Democratic candidate was supposed to say, and anyone that deviated from that message was sort of laughed at or undermined or just pushed to the side. What was your understanding of what was driving that? Why were they leaving you off the image of the candidates, including, you know, many candidates who were trailing behind where you were?

So I tend to be generous in nature. And so my first thought was, well, I don't know who I am. I need to spend time introducing myself. But over time, it became such a consistent dynamic that I was like, OK, there's something actually afoot here.

And after the fact, an MSNBC producer, Ariana Picari, actually said publicly that I was on a list of candidates she was told not to interview. So there is clearly someone setting an agenda at certain media organizations where saying, look, some candidates we're going to cover, some candidates we're going to cover less or not at all. Some candidates, I had the sense that they put Bernie in a category where they're going to cover him, but they're going to try and

kneecap him or marginalize him in various ways. I'd be curious what your experience was like at the times. I don't think...

Some of it is top-down. I think some of it is just cultural, where people who work at certain organizations are either trained a certain way or there's like a certain collective mindset. Well, yeah, and I think a lot of people on the right sort of understandably reach for the conspiracy, right, where it's like there's got to be some kind of collaboration between the DNC and the editors of The New York Times. But then, as you'll recall, during the 2016 campaign, there was actually some evidence of that.

Well, we begin with some breaking news, a stunning confession from former DNC chair Donna Brazile. When Donna Brazile admitted that she leaked CNN town hall questions to Hillary Clinton during the campaign while she, Donna Brazile, was a contributor to the network. That she leaked the debate questions to Hillary Clinton and.

Recently in an interview, she was asked about that and far from denying it, she said her only regret was being caught. She said, if I had to do it all over again, I would know a hell of a lot more about cybersecurity. So I think little pieces of evidence like that stokes the notion that there's some kind of almost like a machine that churns out the right message that

people that are in the same circuit hear and repeat. I don't know. I, I, I wonder like you were on the other side of it. Yes. So we have different perspectives on the whole thing. And I personally believe that is the case. You do. Yeah, sure. So,

Say more, please. I think that there are certain major media organizations that have very powerful corporate vested interests that have relationships with certain candidates and figures. And they will say, look, we're going to augment, amplify this candidate and their message and

And let's try and see to it that if this candidate doesn't win, then it'll be one of this two or three candidates and not one of these other two or three candidates. I think that is going on at various media organizations. Like it's a concerted effort to, as you said, kneecap Bernie Sanders and maybe put wind in the sails of someone like Joe Biden. Yeah, I believe that is happening. I think most people would acknowledge that at this point.

I don't know if they would. I just assume at this point that it's like, well, we've kind of seen it happen to Bernie twice. You know, if you're paying attention, you know, you have to say that there's something up. I think that Joe Biden's first fundraiser was with the family that controls Comcast, which I think is the parent company of MSNBC. So I don't know if this is all conspiracy theorist sounding, but I kind of imagine that most people had added two and two at some point.

Is that true or no? Have people added this up? I don't know. I mean, from my vantage point, like there wasn't some like meeting where people sat down and were like, we are going to cover this person in this way and we are going to cover that person in another way. It's much more subtle. Like I remember hearing from colleagues in the newsroom who were covering the election and worked with reporters who refused to even mention you when they were talking about Democratic candidates running because they said they didn't take you seriously. And so in a way, it's like, well, voters were taking you seriously. Yeah.

And they were sort of making a decision for the readers of The New York Times about how you should be framed and perceived. And what struck me so much about joining you on the campaign and like the energy that I felt from your supporters who were like overwhelmingly normies was it was like in a different universe of reality from the perception inside the headquarters of The New York Times.

I think that there are two major things at work. Number one is there are some organizations that have some directives from the powers that be saying, look, some candidates give them the time of day, others less so. And then there is this layer of professional leadership.

perspective that many journalists bring to the table where they say, my job is to not elevate certain marginal candidates because that's my role. My role is to elevate the quote unquote serious candidates and demote the unserious candidates. And it is up to me who falls into these categories. You know, how do they decide who's serious or not serious?

Oftentimes, it's by the treatment that other media figures bestow. So it's very circular. They look around and being like, hey, other journalists or networks aren't talking about this person, so I should not either. It's groupthink. I mean, in the most ultimate way. You write in the book this line that resonated for me. You said...

of journalists. They're not there to report the news. They're there to make the news. And you give this example from, I think, your first major event, which was the Wing Ding. Did I get that right? Yep. Iowa 2018. Clear Lake. Tell me about what happened that night in the media of the way you experienced the event and the way the press covered it that led you to that insight in writing that line.

I showed up, my first major political speech, my team's all geared up. They're like, oh, you knocked us out of the park. It's going to be a big deal. Four candidates are on the docket. John Delaney, Tim Ryan, me, and drum roll.

Michael Avenatti. Oh, nice. Classy. Classy guy. Yes. So Michael Avenatti was the headliner. I spoke third. I'm an entrepreneur and a problem solver who likes math. And I say that because people have told me that the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math.

I thought that I did a fine job and you can judge for yourself if you wanted to. I've got to say that I've been looking forward to this occasion for a long time because I know the power you have in your hands even though you don't always feel it day to day. But together, if we work our hearts out, we can show our fellow Americans that we still live in a democracy, that people matter more than money, that our values are more powerful than any lobbyists,

And that if we put everything we have into it, we can still build a country that we are proud of to leave for our children. Thank you very much, Democrats of Iowa.

And then I watched Michael Avenatti speak and I thought he was awful. Tonight, I want to speak with you about the fight for the soul of our republic. He read every single word. One way to put an audience to sleep is to read your speech. If you read your speech, it doesn't matter what the words are. Everyone's like, oh. What we Democrats are fighting for now is nothing short than the survival of our republic. And so I watched this and I was like, okay, people will judge this to be objectively terrible and that he's unserious.

And I could not have been more wrong. So you're really considering a run for president? I am. I'm serious about it. I'm seriously looking at it. I'm traveling around talking to people in the country. And, you know, I've been really surprised at how much enthusiasm there is out there for the potential. So.

As soon as he comes off the stage, he gets encircled by a phalanx of camera people. I didn't even know we're in the room. Joining us once again is Michael Avenatti. Let's bring in Michael Avenatti. Michael Avenatti. Michael Avenatti. Michael Avenatti, thank you very much. And then the coverage afterwards was, Michael Avenatti fires up ION. Look at the field of Democrats right now, and Avenatti's the one who stands out. If they decide they value a fighter most, people would be foolish to underestimate Michael Avenatti. I have always...

Always said that they need a fighter. Got to fight fire with fire kind of thing. And I was like, what event were they at? And then my team came to me and was like, oh, you know, why didn't you get like mentioned in any of these write-ups? And I was like, honestly, I think it had nothing to do with something I did or didn't do, something with Michael Avenatti did or didn't do, that they came to write a story about

They wrote that story and they left. And whether or not I knocked it out of the park or didn't was immaterial. And of course, if you think about incentives, that makes a lot of sense, right? Because at the time, of course, like Michael Avenetti was this media darling. People perceived him as the, you know, he had the ability to sort of become a Trump of the left type figure, like so bombastic, sort of so shameless, like meet fire with fire.

all the way up until it was revealed that he had been involved in like actual crimes. And you understand that, you know, just looking at, let's say, in the case of The Times, like who the readers are, that of course that kind of story is going to sell. And maybe the story of the guy that's trying to promote a universal basic income, who seems like a decent guy and is not bombastic at all and has a good marriage and children, like maybe he's a little less interesting.

Well, I guess that was one takeaway. I just wish someone would be like, hey, he gives a shitty speech. That would have made me at least somewhat satisfied that someone was paying attention. When I look back on how you originally came onto my radar, it was...

obviously not through mainstream media. It was through independent media. I think I saw you first on Rogan, but I think you did Sam Harris before you did Rogan. And the reason even that you write in the book that you were at the Wing Ding was that one of the organizers of that event was a big Sam Harris podcast fan. And that's why you were invited in the first place. Yep. I owe Sam Harris a great deal. How is that experience, like the way that you sort of arose to national prominence from

outside of the so-called mainstream in the indie Wild West pirate ship podcast space. How is that? Welcome to the Wild West, Barry. Exactly. The West welcomes you, though. How is that experience sort of like you were the candidate of those people in a way? How is that experience of the power of independent media shaped your perception of where the mainstream, I guess, really is these

these days. Well, recently there was this back and forth between Joe Rogan and CNN and Joe was like, hey, isn't my audience 10 times bigger than yours or something along those lines? So I...

I'm an entrepreneur and I was running for president. It was a very unlikely candidacy. So we just did whatever we could to generate energy and attention. I vividly remember getting a direct message from Sam Harris via Twitter saying, "Hello, would you like to come on my podcast?" And I sensed that this was an enormous deal because up to that point, I had been doing various news interviews. I'll tell you that this is something that maybe doesn't come up very often. I think I mentioned in my book briefly.

So I declare in February of 2018, no one cares about a marginal presidential candidate in February 2018. Of the interviews that I was getting, a disproportionate number were by Asian American journalists who worked for Yahoo or Bloomberg. And we're just like, oh, let's have this guy on. And I talked about automation and universal basic income. And it wasn't working very well. I wasn't exactly getting a ton of support. So for me, Sam Harris was fantastic.

The tipping point because after we did that podcast and it aired people donated money based upon hearing me and Sam talk for an hour plus thousands of dollars a day and That was unprecedented for my campaign if I went on Bloomberg or I think I was on MSNBC once before a brief hit and then you looked at our donation page and

Zero dollars. It turns out that people are watching cable news and then they bust out their browser and donate. That's not really a behavior. But if you are

With someone that listeners trust, like they trust Sam, then you see genuine commitment and donations and behavior and people signing up. So then not being a total idiot, I was like, what other Sam Harris's are there out there? Let's find them. And it turns out that there aren't that many Sam Harris's.

But to the extent that they existed, I was very eager to go on their podcast. And did Rogan come soon after that? So Sam had me on mid-2018, and then Joe Rogan had me on February 2019. And that was the true game changer, where instead of thousands of dollars a day after Sam, we raised tens of thousands of dollars a day after Rogan. And it really just took off from there.

In some ways, it's actually an encouraging split screen, right? Like on the one hand, it's MSNBC and CNN cottoning on to Michael Avenetti, you know, a crook who was representing a porn star, no offense to Stormy Daniels, who had no real policies other than hating Trump. And then on the other side, we have like two and three hour conversations with

in a deep way happening on independent podcasts, talking to you, a no-name politician until that point, but a person with serious ideas, whether or not you agreed with them. And it actually worked. It actually did work. And the proof is here. Like, not only did you run for president, then you ran for mayor for a while, which we're going to talk about now. For a while, it really looked like you were going to win. And now you're here starting a third party. Yeah.

And everyone knows your name. And I owe it all to podcasts. It's totally true. So support your local podcaster. Barry Corp. Yes. So if the press sort of like, at least the mainstream press, ignored you in your presidential run, you kind of had the opposite problem in your mayoral race. Like they left no stone unturned to sort of make sure you didn't become mayor of New York. At least that's how it felt to me. They accused you of making your employees do karaoke. Right.

of having bros on your staff. There was this one amazing quote, I remember, where you had said at some gay rights event, you're so human and beautiful. And that was somehow seen as like offensive hate speech. I mean, how did you understand the shift of being totally ignored to all of a sudden every utterance you've ever had and every utterance of everyone on your campaign being like hyper intensely scrutinized? It was the opposite dynamic to your point, Barry. And I...

On the presidential, our enemy was oblivion. Like oblivion was encroaching at all times. We had to keep ahead of it or else we disappear. And the nature of that oblivion was the polling threshold to make the next Democratic debate. If you missed a debate, then you disappeared and dropped out, which happened to, as you know, a number of candidates.

In the mayoral race, it was the opposite, where I show up and everyone just wanted to take potshots at me. There were other candidates where their entire strategy was to plant negative stories in the press, run oppo, and try and drag me down to earth.

So the dynamic was new. It took a lot of getting used to. The tough part was figuring out how to respond because you take some slings and arrows and you're like, well, I'm ahead and it doesn't seem to be hurting me that much. So let's just grin and bear it. I used to joke with people that I felt like I was a whale trying to make it out to sea.

And then I was just getting all these harpoons stuck in my side. And it's like, oh, stick, stick. I'll just keep swimming to see if I can make it to June 22nd. It's going to be all right. So if you were Moby Dick, who was the ultimate Ahab?

You know, I'd say the New York Times. The New York Times really seemed to have it out for me where someone did an inventory and said they've written 25 articles about me and 24 were negative. And some of them really did not merit a New York Times treatment. Some of them was mystifying. It's like, that's a story? Yeah.

that someone tried to do a comparison with our now mayor-elect Eric Adams, and we're like, hey, not much being written about him. Like, you know, what's going on over on that side? But what do you think was, like, really going on? Like, you know, you're a moderate with ideas that resonated with a lot of people. You weren't—like, you can imagine a universe in which—

there would be a reason to go after a particular candidate for any number of reasons we could imagine. I always failed to see what it was about you that made you such a target of scrutiny. My comms people, number one, expressed total confusion as to why it was so harsh and negative.

And the theory they came up with, which is the best theory I'd heard, is just that if you work in that space, you're something of an insider. And I represented someone from the outside where if someone like me can come in and become misguided.

mayor then it invalidates the Work that they do the relationships that they've cultivated like all the stuff that they've been accruing over in some cases years and years And so if someone who's also on the inside with them says hey, hey, here's like this nasty story like do it do it They're like yeah. Yeah like that's because in some ways they're repaying a relationship that they've built up and

And this was, to me, the most logical thing that I'd heard as to why it seemed so one-sided. For a while there, it really looked like you had a shot. I mean, you were doing really well in the polls. I obviously have a weird sample size, but a lot of people I knew, most people I knew, many were going to vote for you. Obviously, like the UBI, free money stuff, not to be glib, but like excited people. We'll talk more about UBI. And it didn't work out that way.

What's your understanding of why it didn't work out? One of the major issues, I believe, was that as the city opened up, crime became the top concern of a lot of people. Three or so New Yorkers were getting shot every day. And the...

Yeah.

And so that shift, I think, was one of the most significant changes in the race. I ended up getting endorsed by the Police Captains Union and the FDNY, in part because my team and I thought that that was going to be, again, the main issue that voters were concerned about. And the media didn't really cover my getting endorsed by the police captains. But I think that was the single biggest sea change in the race. Do you think if you had gone harder on crime, you would have won?

I don't know. I think that voters tended to operate in types and in frames more than who I hung out with on a given day. You know what I mean? Like if your issue was crime, you would look at Eric Adams and say, hey, that candidate is going to have the best direct experience. I think that it might have affected who you get.

second, third, fourth place with in a ranked choice voting election. I think that there were a number of voters who were voting on crime who voted for Eric Adams first, and then I was on their ballot second or third. There was a moment that I really remember from the mayoral race in which, you know, there was the war between Hamas and Gaza and Israel. And you were sort of, I think, forced on the campaign trail or pigeonholed and commented on Israel. And you caught so much heat for

to me, making a commonsensical statement condemning Hamas bombings, including from AOC, who I think called your statement something like utterly shameful. Was that as stressful as it seemed, that whole incident? And when you condemned Hamas, did you understand that there was sort of like a wing inside the party that was going to come and attack you for it?

The main reason why it was stressful for me was that there were people that worked for and volunteered on my campaign that were very stressed about it. And so if you're in an organization and the people around you are in pain or confused or something along those lines, that surprised me.

But then that would affect me because obviously, you know, if you're a human being and there are people that are working for you who are affected by something, you'd have to be kind of a jerk to not feel something. So that was a surprise to me. I thought that people would respond to it in a certain way. And I thought even if someone disagreed with it, they would not be distressed to the extent that at least some people were in my own organization.

So you're saying that people working for you and for the campaign had a kind of allergy against saying anything, I don't know, I don't know if you would say positive about Israel or, you know, or condemning a bombing by a terrorist organization. I was surprised by it, but there were people that either were on my campaign or who were volunteering for my campaign who did have that kind of reaction. And it was...

New to me. It was a surprise. What insight did you take away from that experience? Like, is your sense, okay, wait, I thought this was the commonsensical democratic position, support the democracy, being under siege by a terrorist organization at its border. Turns out maybe that's not sort of where the prevailing wins are, maybe in the younger part of the Democratic Party. Or do you think it was an exceptional situation? I'm just curious. Yeah.

My main takeaway, Barry, is that anti-Semitism is very much on the rise in a particular way. You know, the fact that that was my takeaway is that there's been this narrative that has overtaken a segment of the Democratic Party that frames everything as oppressor and oppressed.

and it's very binary. And in that construction, Israel is the oppressor, which is something that I confess to finding confusing because last I checked, Israel's like a democracy in a sea of

at least at certain points, mortal enemies. And so that's a narrative that we should be very, very mindful of. Social media is amplifying it to the nth degree. And I think you might know this, but I had people screaming in my face, you know, like when I was walking around about this and looking into their eyes, like that there was something that

seemed to have almost possessed them and it struck me as something that often was born of social media because as you know a lot of this was driven by Twitter, you know a tweet and so I was I learned a lot, you know like I learned that the excesses that one can imagine can reach to heights or depths that some might find unimaginable and that we should be very very concerned about it and that if you are

who's concerned about anti-Semitism, I am right there with you. Let's move from your experience running for mayor of, I would say, the most important city in America to the Democratic field more generally. I think this recent offseason

off your election offered a kind of object lesson in the direction of the Democratic Party. And to me, at least how out of touch it seems with most of its voters. I mean, if you look at Virginia, the governorship won by a first time Republican candidate in New Jersey, the race was too close to call. Moderates were trouncing the progressives in local elections in Seattle. The defund the police movement goes down in flames in Minneapolis. Like a

A lot of those things were the kind of slogans of a lot of sort of elite progressive pundits, influencers and parts of the party itself. I mean, you had in the case of New York, you had, I believe, Maya Wiley, who was running on the idea of defunding the police, if not abolishing it. I think it was defunding it. It was defunding by one billion dollars, I believe. OK, what's the lesson you take from that?

the outcome of these various races and failed policies. I think the lesson you have to take is that this has become a very negative climate for Democrats nationally, that a lot of the policies that light up social media are not shared by a majority of voters.

And that we should hope that the Democratic Party engages in some real soul searching. I'm not that optimistic about that happening. It doesn't seem to be a party of deep introspection. I mean, to judge from like, I don't know if you watched election night coverage. I was mostly on Twitter, but then I looked at some of the clips from MSNBC and CNN and

And it was just unbelievable. I mean, it was just like pundit after pundit after talking head, talking about how this is proof that voters are dumb and racist and bigoted and voting against their own economic interests. And maybe the most galling of all, which we were talking about just before we started, was this case of Winsome Sears, amazing name, a former Marine, an immigrant from Jamaica, black, the new lieutenant governor of Virginia, Republican. And you have pundits like Jamel Hill declaring that this is evidence that the country simply loves white supremacy.

And as absurd as it sounds, like that was the trope. Like it seems like every bit of evidence should be telling them that's not the right tack, guys.

telling people, you know, that they're wrong or dumb or not to believe their own eyes or that, you know, they don't really get it or that, no, a black woman's actually a white supremacist. Like, it just seems so foolish and so out of touch and so disconnected from what you're suggesting, which is kind of taking a look in the mirror in deep introspection. Why are they going down this path? How do they not see that it's not working for them?

I'm going to say that it is working for them as long as you don't imagine that maximizing public well-being is the goal. As soon as you realize that that's... And one of the hard lessons I learned

learned when I was writing this book was that our political incentives you would expect them to be towards winning elections and governance and policy and that's not really the case that you can benefit politically just by getting people charged up and raise a lot of money and get a lot of attention and lose you can make a losing case and lose and still feel like you know your job secure you're gonna be okay and that's doubly true for

the media organizations where they're getting rewarded for giving people what they want. And what they don't want is to hear, hey, maybe the ideas we're talking about aren't actually appealing to the average American voter. What they do want to hear is that they are righteous, that the other side is the opposite of righteous. In this case, racist, I guess, is the description that they might use. And that benefits that media organization commercially.

The problem that we're facing, Barry, is that everyone's adhering to their incentives and their incentives are not around either reality, truth, public good. It's around generating energy money votes.

And energy money votes. Yeah. Or just, you know, it depends upon like what level you're at. Like if you're a social media personality, it's energy. If you're a political consultant or one of these candidates, it's money. Ideally, at some point you win some elections. But the truth is that.

The two sides can just trade power back and forth. And most of the political industrial complex moves on to the next candidate, the next race, and keeps on making money. I mean, in 2020, the two parties spent $2.65 billion on both sides of that race. And so a lot of the money just canceled each other out. And so you have this group of actors who benefit.

from the polarization, from making us angry and agitated and depressed and inflamed. So when you start realizing that that's what the system rewards and that the rewards have nothing to do with policy or governance, then you start to understand why we feel the way we do, why organizations can make the claims they do that have nothing to do with...

You, I'd like to think me and other people are like, okay, we're reasonable people. We'll take a look at the world as it is. We'll say, hey, this message isn't working. Maybe we should reexamine that. But what you said is right. So they'll just blame the voters. They'll be like, oh, these voters are not listening. Yeah, they're dumb. They're racist. You know, and that's actually a more self-serving version of the world that they can give to themselves, their viewers, their donors, their supporters. Yeah.

But you would imagine they'd want to win. Right. So, like, just just take the idea of, you know, we need to defund the police to protect black lives. Every single poll shows that that is essentially a luxury belief held by highly educated, privileged people. And not by most black people, I can attest. Yes, exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say.

And not by black voters who say, no, we want a precinct in my neighborhood. I want my neighborhood to be more safe. That's what they told me when I was running for mayor. I'd go to a poor black neighborhood in Queens and they would say, we want a new precinct here. And I'd say, I get it. And I'd say, I'll try to deliver that to you. How are those voices? You know, we hear like, listen to...

Black voices listen to people's lived experience, right? This is the trope that we're hearing from mainstream elite media organizations. Like, why aren't they doing that?

These average people who are living in this poor black neighborhood don't work for the media organization. They don't have massive social media followings. And so they will be disregarded or ignored for the most part. The other thing though, is if you're part of this activist class, again, you get rewarded for bringing energy to a particular policy that may or may not be echoed by the average black person living in one of these neighborhoods.

More with Andrew Yang, including his wild but maybe not insane idea about how to create a country where the next president is neither Donald Trump nor a Democrat. Stay with us. One of the things that was on most obvious display in the election in Virginia was the question about schools and what's being taught in schools. And if you turn on MSNBC or CNN or you read The New York Times, you hear critical race theory, which isn't real.

Turned the suburbs 15 points. Critical race theory is a myth. It's not being taught in schools. It is not taught here in Virginia. But how do you define it? Doesn't matter. It's not taught here in Virginia, so I'm not going to spend my time. Your thoughts on what it is. I'm not even spending my time because the school board...

Critical race theory is only an idea that you can find in a law school textbook. Your sixth grader is not being taught critical race theory. Your college student is not being taught critical race theory. This is a high-end theory that—

that's taught and discussed in a theoretical sense at the law school level. This is a legal theory and analysis. Or they'll say, you know, if it is real. Critical race theory just says, let's pay attention to what has happened in this country and how what has happened in this country is continuing to create differential outcomes so we can become the

that country that we say we are. It's actually a good thing. So there's different talking points.

Regardless, what parents, what voters in Virginia said was, it is real. We don't care about the semantic games you're playing on television. What we know is that our kids are getting these really weird ideas about re-racializing themselves, re-racializing others, looking at everything through the lens of race and getting really dangerous, bad ideas, either about themselves or about their peers based on it. And we don't like it. And if you look at the polls, I think something like

who ended up winning the first time Republican candidate, he led among parents of children between the ages of like kindergarten through 12th grade by something like 15 points. And yet even on that night, you could turn on the television and yes, still heard the same thing. It's not real. I'm curious if you followed that aspect of the race, which seemed to be like the sort of focal point. Okay. What did you make of it? How important do you think that was to the outcome of the race? Yeah.

Oh, it was significant for sure. There were two related concerns. Number one is parents dislike the fact that schools were shut down for so long. Yes. They sense that was not for their kids' well-being. That was in service of the teachers unions, who we all know are very powerful organizations.

group in democratic politics. And number two is that their children are being taught ideas about race that parents did not agree with. And I had a friend's 11-year-old daughter come home and say, why can't I be friends with my black classmate?

And so this parent was very unhappy with the fact that her daughter had come home thinking that she somehow could not be friends with her black classmate. And so she brought these concerns to the school and then the school dismissed my friend's concerns. And so hearing that story makes me think that something is happening in these households where kids are coming home, talking to their parents and their parents are like, what are you freaking learning in this school environment? And they're upset about it.

And the Democratic response saying, oh, this is imaginary, like doesn't work for a lot of these parents. Democrats need to accept a definition of critical race theory and then either...

have a stance on it that they can embrace, but trying to hand wave it away is unsatisfactory to a lot of parents. Though I will say that there are some school districts where I'm sure, you know, nothing, nothing is being taught. And like there, is there a conservative boogeyman element in some places? Almost certainly. Yes. Yeah. But are there places where something is being taught that parents find genuinely troubling? Also, absolutely. Yes. And so that the case that

I think most Americans would accept would be that race is an important element of American life. Racism is a real problem, but there's much more that holds us together and that we have in common than separates us. And we should not view ourselves as purely these racialized beings. And I think most Americans would accept that. Yeah.

And then if you were to say, hey, look, like our history includes some not so great stuff, most Americans would accept that. The problem is when you try to bring it into a zone where people think that race is the primary determinant of their relationships, of their trajectories, of what their ambitions should be. And then that becomes something that most parents have a very big problem with.

You tweeted the night of the election about how the main problem for Democrats is that their main message is fear. It's the boogeyman of Trump and the boogeyman of COVID. And that's just not working. So if you're running the DNC or somehow running, waving a magic wand, you're now running all the candidates in the upcoming election, how would you be advising them? What should their main appeal be instead?

I would focus on the things that the Americans I talk to on the trail, by the way, I talked to thousands of Americans in every background from rural counties in Iowa to New York. I think you've talked to way more than thousands. Yeah, at this point, maybe tens of thousands. Yeah. But there are a lot of things that we all agree on and care about. Example, it's like if you go to a conservative Republican and say, hey—

Drug prices, too high. He'll be like, oh, yeah. We want them higher. Yeah, you can get agreement on a lot of things as long as you avoid coded speech. So part of the learning I did on the trail is that all politics is tribal at this point. And media organizations are inflaming that tribalism to the nth degree. So if you use a particular term, they will shut down.

And unfortunately, you know, one term that will shut down a lot of Americans, Democrat. I'm a Democrat. So this happened to me on the trail is that I'd say I'm running for president. They'd be like, oh, great. What party? And I'd say Democrat. They'd be like, oh, you know, what did I say? What did I do? So if you can try to get people to approach something neutrally,

you will see that a lot of Americans agree on trying to get drug prices down, trying to get health care access up, trying to improve our schools or make college more costly, or like all this common sense stuff that you look at and be like, OK, why are you upset? Why are we upset? And a lot of people are upset because their quality of life has been going down. The cost of various essentials just keeps going up while their wages haven't kept pace. So

So just focus on the common sense stuff, avoid coded language, and try and deliver and say, look, let's drop a lot of the cultural jargon, the social issues. One of the things I said is like... It's like so refreshing to hear you. Like you just speak so forthrightly. It's so...

wonderful and rare in a politician. Well, that's why I'm not much of a politician. Exactly. Maybe that's why you didn't win any of your races, but yes. Yes. Yeah. So far, 0 for 2. But this is what most Americans want. And if you had this as the dominant political messaging, the problem is that no one wants the culture cops. No one wants someone to- Well, no one wants to be told they're bad, that they're on the wrong side of history. They just don't want to be told that.

No, no one wants to be scolded. No one wants to be treated like a child. No one wants to be told you're a bad person because you forgot what pronoun to use in this context. The messaging is around fear and shame to a much too high a degree. And instead, it has to be problem solving solutions, because a lot of the stuff that Democrats want on a policy platform, actually, like people like. In October, you announced you were leaving the Democratic Party. Yes.

What drove you to leave the party other than everything we've been talking about for the past hour? Well, interestingly enough, this is not what drove me out of the Democratic Party. I just wanted everyone to know. And I will say I have loved being an independent. I thought that changing my voter registration would be a small deal, but it was actually kind of a big deal where my interaction with the world really changed. It was kind of wild.

And I was accused of being very, very pro-Trump in my departure. I was accused of being like a commercial actor, which I was like, wait, on what planet does going independent somehow like pad my wallet? Like, this is very, very confusing. So there was like a whole set of strange attacks happening.

But I have to say that has been part of my enjoyment of this month. Like, I feel like I see things more clearly. I interact with the world in a less ideological way. I feel like I perceive the results of this week's elections as someone who's kind of walking around. Oh, no. I mean, there was, I will say the Ford party got a lot of incoming interest this week, but...

But that I could be objective and empirical because I didn't have as much of a rooting interest and I've loved it. So third parties in this country are either punchlines or dead ends, typically, as you well know. Why is forward party going to be different?

Well, forward party is arriving at the right time. We're the right idea at the right time is part of it. Because at this point, the dysfunction of the duopoly is so clear and so glaring, people can't look away. Where 62% of Americans now want an alternative to the duopoly, but we're being told it can't happen, to your point. We're being told, look, this is the system. System cannot change.

And it's like wigs don't work. Jill Stein doesn't work. They, you know, it's yeah. I mean, it's the immediate reaction I get whenever I bring up the subject to anyone. Yes. And I'm going to suggest that we've been conditioned in that direction. I also do want to take a step way back in the history books where there's zero about any political party in the Constitution because the founders hated political parties. George Washington was anti-partisanship and warned about it in his farewell address in

John Adams said two great parties would be an evil across the republic, which, by the way, I think he's being proven right.

The parties didn't really exist in their current form until after the Civil War. And then over the last number of years, they've suppressed dissent in different ways and convinced people that you can't actually have an alternative to us. You don't like us. You're stuck is kind of the message. And look at the other team. They're evil. Don't make the bad people win. Exactly. You'll be a spoiler. You'll be the spoiler. And there is an extent to which I agree with this. And what I present to people is, look, we're

Let's solve that problem. If we adopt ranked choice voting, no more spoiler effect. People can vote for whomever they like, and then their preferences will be expressed better. You'll have less negative campaigning. You'll have new political parties and voices emerge. Why not try that? And then they don't want to hear it because they're like, no, no, don't solve the problem. I'm too busy berating you about how you're going to mess it up for my team.

And so that's one of the things that has gotten me so convinced that this case is so vital and timely because you're seeing the polarization grow to unprecedented levels where we're at literally Civil War levels of political tension. We are going to see political violence and strife and dysfunction. We already have. Yes. It's going to get worse, not better.

And so to me, the choices are very clear where we're either going to ride the dysfunctional duopoly to ruin and strife and violence and Civil War 2.0, which is frankly the path we're on right now, or we are going to find a way to rejuvenate our system politically.

And any rejuvenation is going to come in the form of a third party movement or an independent movement. But I will be the first to say that if the forward party is successful, the goal is not that the forward party runs everything. It's just that the system works better. I'm not after three parties. I'm after four or five or six parties where if, by the way, one party succumbs to terrible leadership, that's not going to happen.

That's not an existential threat because if you have five parties and one succumbs to bad leadership, then you're like, well, I hope party number five gets itself together. The problem right now is that all of our political incentives are to follow the leader of your party because look at the other team.

It's one reason why the duopoly is so vulnerable and why our founding fathers would be shocked and horrified that we're allowing this design to persist. We're living through the greatest design flaw in the history of the world and being told you can't change it, you can't change it. And enough of us now know that it better be untrue or else we're going to be stuck in this doom loop. Imagine it's 2024 and maybe Ford Party's on the ballot.

Give us a flavor of who the forward party, other than you, who the forward party candidate would be. Like, are we talking like, let's say, a Liz Cheney and a Richie Torres, people who are sort of willing to not toe the party line inside their own party? Or are we talking about outsiders, someone like maybe a Tulsi Gabbard? Like, who do you imagine sort of being the faces of the forward party, other than Andrea Yang, of course?

Well, first, let me say that my attention is focused on 2022, which is that we have to try to

do what they did in Alaska and other states around the country, where they shifted from closed party primaries to open primaries and ranked choice voting. And that would free up more legislators to vote their conscience and principle. They would want to deliver for 50.1% of the population instead of just the 10 to 20% most rabid partisans. So that is my goal in 22. That said, it seems likely to me that we are going to be facing a Biden-Trump rematch in 24.

A lot of Americans are going to want an alternative to those two figures. And I am highly interested in having an alternative to those two candidates because I just think it's really unhealthy to have just them again, the rematch, combined age 158, like a significant number. I'm amazed that you think Biden is going to be on the ballot. Well, let's play it out on the Democratic side. Okay.

Trump, frontrunner on the Republican side. Ron DeSantis has been telling people privately he will not run against Trump. Nikki Haley's already said publicly he will not run against Trump. It's Trump versus Mike Pence, Chris Christie, maybe Larry Hogan. He probably rolls.

The Democrats will look at this and say, OK, Joe Biden, the incumbent, defeated Trump once, downside age 81, and will be flagging somewhat by then. Just somewhat. I mean, Andrew, come on. Wait, wait, let's continue, though. Continue. And this is a sign of where we stand as a country. It's not great. Number two, Kamala Harris. Problem. Polls five points worse than Joe.

That's kind of the beginning and the end of that. When you look at that and say, okay, like that does not seem like the path. Who's up next? The problem then is that you have the optics of pushing aside Kamala Harris, who's obviously a woman of color.

And you're not even sure who your third horse will be. So you have to go through a competitive primary, which makes you seem fractious and disunified. And you're not even sure how it plays out. And then you have Trump coming the other side. So this leads you back to Joe. And Joe has been telling people he wants to run again.

This is where the incentives lead us. And so if you do have this rematch, millions of Americans, in my opinion, will be looking for an alternative. I agree. So who is that unifying figure? I'm going to throw out a name and it's someone I know. It's someone I've spoken to about this. Mark Cuban. Mark Cuban.

So he's a business leader, has his own resources. He's a shark. He's very well known to the public. He's a shark. He's got his own brand. And so people disparage Ross Perot on the regular. I get it. But the man got 19.3% of the vote in, no, 92. And institutional mistrust has gone up a whole lot in the last year.

29, 30 years. I think if you have Biden versus Trump, there is an easy 20 to 25 percent of the country that if you have a credible alternative, they get on board. And then, you know, at this point, you can see some new things happen. So this is something that I'm interested in. I think that one process that might be highly engaging is if you have a third party primary,

Where if you can imagine Mark Cuban, Tulsi Gabbard, me and Adam Kinzinger, like whoever the heck in this. And I think a lot of Americans would look at this and say, wait a minute, like I actually like some of these people. They're not detestable in all ways. Exactly. And so that could be a fascinating alternative that I think a lot of Americans would get excited about. OK, so let's talk about the big ideas that you're championing.

both publicly and also in your book, Forward, that you, I think, hope will be the anchors of this new party, rank choice voting and open primaries. And of course, UBI, but we know about UBI.

UBI, it's pretty sexy. Free money. Data rights, kind of sexy. When I hear rank choice voting and open primaries, I'm like, oh my God. Oh no, I know. So boring sounding. Can you please try and sell me, like get me excited, Andrew Yang, about these two deeply unsexy policy subjects.

Okay. So I'm going to go back to this Alaska example, which I think is sexy enough. So Senator Lisa Murkowski has been in the news because she is the only Republican senator who voted to impeach Donald Trump, who is also up for reelection in 2022. So she's running right now. Her approval rating among Alaskan Republicans now stands at 6%. It's genuinely politically suicidal to go against Trump in the Republican Party.

And yet she has a fighting chance to be reelected. Why? Because Alaska switched from party primaries where just the rabid partisans dominate to open primaries where anyone in the state can vote and rank choice voting, which then can choose among candidates from different parties. So now she can make her case to Alaskans. Look, I'm an independent voice. I have my own principles. I've represented you to the best of my ability. Bring me back. And she might win.

The thing that I'm focused on that hopefully will make people excited is we should not expect the system to work because it is not actually designed to work. And the incentives are designed to take reasonable people and make them unreasonable in order for them to keep their jobs. And as soon as we realize that, then we're like, okay, let's try and realign the incentives so that if you're reasonable and rational and you compromise with the other side, that actually pays off for you politically as opposed to having you drummed out of office.

And a Republican senator said to me that right now they get rewarded more for keeping an issue around than trying to resolve it. Because if they tried to compromise on something like immigration reform, they pay a huge price at the polls immediately and they probably lose their jobs. If they say, hey, it's the other side's fault, then they can raise money, they can get votes, and they just keep the issue around. Again, a Republican senator said this to me.

So that is why it's so broken. And what I'm going to suggest is that solving the problem is sexy. If you shift to open primaries and rank choice voting, then all of a sudden every legislator is going to seem more reasonable and prone to compromise because they have to deliver for 50.1% of us.

And that would change things overnight. And ranked choice voting, I want to explain it to people who don't know it. It's a system that allows you to express your true preferences. It gets rid of the spoiler effect that people seem so concerned about. It discourages negative campaigning because if I trash you, we both look bad. And then the third person benefits relative to us. It rewards consensus builders and coalition builders. I think it rewards women candidates who just are a bit more naturally successful.

collegial, it will punish the incendiary firebrand type who will excite 20% and then turn off 25%. So if you like...

incentives and rewarding rationality than open primaries and rank choice voting are very, very sexy. So you're basically saying stop complaining about how the incentives are out of whack and the two party system is broken. Like stop complaining. Let's do something to disrupt the system. And the thing that's going to disrupt the system are these two sort of academic sounding topics, which is rank choice voting and open primaries. Yes. And here's the magic. We do not

have to have Congress do a damn thing because we know they wouldn't do anything. We can actually do what they did in Alaska in 24 states around the country because there is nothing about political parties in the Constitution. All of this is governed at the state level. They just made it up. And so they can make a change if just enough of us get together and say, look, I'm tired of it. It's not working. Let's change the incentives. There's a weakness in the system.

Where a movement can succeed and you know this can succeed because it happened in Alaska already and no one listening to this had anything to do with it I don't think I mean, maybe you did if you were in Alaska but the cost of that successful ballot initiative in Alaska in 2020 was seven million dollars and

And I want everyone to think what price tag would you put on restoring sane incentives to our political system, our democracy? Well, again, we're spending billions of dollars just smashing against each other every cycle to no effect because again, we're getting manipulated and told like, "Hey, the other side's evil. Give me money or the world's going to come to an end." Right? So why don't we spend a small fraction of that money

Restoring the incentives. That's the forward party. Did I sex it up enough? Is this appealing? You're just so enthusiastic. Yeah, I'm into it. Let's talk about the ideas that would make up or drive a forward party candidate.

I think there are huge problems with our economy right now. I don't think you can live in America and not think that. How would a forward party platform or worldview, let's say, help with labor shortage or with inflation? Let's talk about the forward party's perspective on the economy.

First, we can agree to disagree. That's actually one of the core tenets of the Ford Party is grace and tolerance. We think that other people are awesome. And if you disagree with me on some front, you're still awesome. And we're all worth the same. And I don't want to demonize anyone. When it comes to the economy, the single biggest change we have to make is try to shift

how we measure how we're doing. Because one of the things I'm very confident in is that as AI and technology develop and improve, they're going to provide more and more value in something like GDP. So GDP could continue to go up and up, and there could be a lot of Americans that are left out

of that growth. So you have to line up our measurements to around how our kids are doing, our health, our mental health, our access to clean air and clean water, things that would speak to our general quality of life. And I think this divide is what's driving so many Americans crazy.

is that the economy has been growing. More and more people's quality of life has deteriorated. Government's not actually able to have a coherent conversation around this. Our media doesn't care. The political incentives are not towards actually solving any problem meaningfully. So if you could go to the American people and say, hey, guess what? I've got bad news. We're 28th in the world in terms of quality public education, environmental quality, life expectancy, the basics. We suck. We're bad. We're bad.

And now you should hold us responsible for trying to go from 28th to 25th or whatever it is. And you can bring us back if we're succeeding and you can get rid of us if we're not. That at least is a foundation you can start from. The problem right now is that the political parties don't care about how we're doing. The political parties just care about winning that news cycle, winning that press conference, raising enough money, go to the next race.

Okay, one last break and then a lightning round where I ask Andrew questions from the front line of our culture war, from Elon Musk and Dave Chappelle to critical race theory and cryptocurrency. Stay with us. I love your ideas about grace and honor. And it feels like you're talking to me from a distant galaxy about what could be possible here in America, but I want to believe you. And I think it's awesome that you're holding up the flag for these things. Yeah.

There's so many things, obviously, that Americans disagree about right now, especially things in the culture war. And I wanted to just get your take and your vibes around them in a little rapid fire round, which we don't do a lot. Sure. But again, I want to stipulate that if you disagree with me on any of these things, it's still cool. You're still awesome. You could still be in the forum party. Continuing race-based affirmative action at places like Harvard.

Oh, gosh. I wish that you could shift to socioeconomic background. But I think if you were to shift to socioeconomic background, you would end up missing a lot of folks from different communities. So I would like to continue some version of that incorporates race.

Keeping gifted and talented high schools in places like New York. Keep, obviously. It's terrible that it's being presented the way it is because there's this nasty racialized zero-sum game that's going on. And we have to get away from it as quickly as possible. But schools are working for a lot of families, a lot of kids. Like, why on earth would you try and get away from that or make a change?

When you say presented the way it is, you mean like The New York Times calling a school like Stuyvesant, which is something like 75 percent Asian, calling it a segregated school? Is that what you mean? Oh, yeah. It's dismissing the achievements of certain types of kids or groups. I mean, a lot of these are poor immigrant families and they're getting a leg up based on these schools. And somehow that is being invalidated because it doesn't fit a particular narrative. Vaccine mandates. In what context? For kids.

Oh, yeah. You know, I'd have to look at the data. If the data said that it was genuinely going to be helpful and productive, then, you know, I'd consider it. But, you know, if the data is unclear, I'd prefer not to. Teachers unions.

I think that teachers unions are an example of organizations that you have to try and rein in their excesses. You have to take the value for what it is and then rein in their excesses. But you could say that about 95% of the organizations in American life at this point, where you look and say, hey, if left to your own devices, you're going to go overboard. And hopefully we can do something to change that. Tech companies, break them up, treat them like common carriers.

More government censorship? What should we do about them? I think we need to get with the program. We need to modernize our regulatory approaches to this. Ideally, you would have a consortium where it was government, the tech companies, nonprofits, media companies, and even think tanks and come together and say, look, we're going to come together and build some rules of the road so you don't have private organizations making de facto public policy decisions because our government is so asleep at the switch.

that all it does is berate them over stupid, irrelevant issues that have nothing to do with the core problems. And the core problems are very, very significant. I mean, it's the destruction of our kids' mental health. It's the disintegration of our democracy. It's the splintering of truth. I mean, these are real problems, not whatever weird talking point that the 75-year-old senator busts out at the hearing. Metaverse, yay or nay?

It's going to happen. I mean, am I excited about it happening? Yeah, that's the question. You know, I'd have to go to the metaverse to see what I think. But we all know if you hit the fast forward button that there's going to be a metaverse. How about Mars?

How are you feeling about Mars? I'm glad that someone's working on it. I mean, I did sit with Elon and the man is genuinely motivated by trying to give the species another place to go. If there's anyone who has a big fast forward button, it's that guy. He's hit fast forward on a lot of things. What do you make of him being demonized the way that he is?

I think that demonizing someone who's advancing the species just seems bizarre and silly to me. Yeah. And expecting someone who's capable of doing what he's done to also somehow have all of these other characteristics or attributes that now pass as kind of, you know, strange litmus tests of virtue just strikes me as completely off base. Yeah.

If you had Elon Musk on one side and then like, you know, our institutions on another, we'd all take Elon Musk in the sense of like, hey, who's going to get us to Mars faster? It's like, yeah, Elon's going to do it. And so I think that there is like a reflexive antipathy towards Elon from institutional apologists. Yeah.

You know, because they're the folks who are like, hey, hey, like, no, no, not like not the individual mold breaking individual. Like we can't have that. And I dare say that I think I might have experienced some of this. You might be able to relate a little. Taking down Confederate statues.

Wow, I think you're an independent now. You could say anything you want Well, you know, so my general feeling on this is like I don't understand why we are so Brought up in stat like I'm just gonna speak for myself. I have no fucking idea like what statue I just walked by Like

And so people being like, oh, that freaking statue is going to make you feel terrible. It's like, oh my gosh, have I been doing this wrong this whole time? I haven't had really strong feelings of any kind. So I guess that gives you a sense of...

of my relative ignorance on the right approach to some of these structures. Should Dave Chappelle be deported from the country or just have his mic cut forever? I think Dave's an American legend personally, and I'm happy to say I'm going to see him in a couple of weeks here in New York when his documentary comes to town. So he's a member of Forward Party, I take it?

Oh, like I haven't spoken to him about, you know, in putting the cap on or anything, but he's aligned sort of that way. I will say this. This is my first time sharing this. And Dave, I'm sure you don't care. But after I left the Democratic Party, I received positive messages from various people just congratulating me on a personal level. And Dave was one person who just said on a personal level, it's like, hey, man, like congrats on doing what you thought was the right thing. Can crypto save democracy? Yeah.

And the dollar. I would certainly like to see it be a part of that. I think that the governance innovations that are made possible by crypto could be the forebearers to a much more effective market.

dynamic democracy. And it does belie just how decrepit our duopoly is, just kind of creaking around. It's like, oh, these people being like, oh, can't change it, can't change it. And then you have these cryptocurrency DAO type organizations just kind of like turning on a dime. Should the U.S. boycott the Beijing Olympics?

I'm not really a boycott Olympics guy. It's like you have Olympians who are just freaking training for their events. You know, it's like, like who benefits from having them not go? You know, I mean, do I have massive problems with the Chinese government, particularly their mistreatment of the Uyghur population? Of course. I mean, it's malignant. It's terrible. But I'm not sure if boycotting the Olympics is going to help on that front. More worried about Russia? More worried about China? More worried about China?

I'm more worried about the good old U.S. of A. Kind of not...

Keeping its act together. Certainly in some cases, Russia and China, I don't think aliens, but Russia and China may be helping accelerate our disintegration. They have a hand using social media, our nice vulnerable underbelly. Someone mentioned to me that some of the top evangelical Facebook groups are run by foreign actors as an example. So they said, you know, I didn't check up on it, but they were like, you know, number of the top 20 sites are actually, you know, like, like foreign orgs.

So they're taking advantage of our weakness, of our lack of integrity. But I'm most concerned about us. That's a good segue to, I think, the main question that I would want to end with, which is, you know, you mentioned before that we are experiencing antipathy and polarization and hatred of one another that feels something, at least to many of us, like a cold civil war.

How do we avoid it? According to the numbers, there's a political scholar, Peter Turchin, who said that his measurements of political stress have us at literal Civil War levels. That's like the only other time in American history that the index has been this high. So if we feel this way, we're not alone.

The antidote is hopefully a unifying popular political movement that says we're all still human beings, we're all still Americans, let's solve the problems, let's get along. And then an aligned media constellation that sends the same kind of message to people that it's not politicized, it's not polarizing, it's...

sanity media. You might even call it honestly. Yeah. Or you might even call it honestly. And if you have these two movements growing in conjunction, then you have a real chance to be an antidote. Because if you look at the dynamics that plague us, you have, you know,

Billions of dollars and media incentives to inflame us and turn us against each other you need equivalent incentives to unify us and bring us together talk about things that concern everyone Do it in a way that respects each other's fundamental humanity even if we don't see eye to eye on some things So these are the two great projects of our age Barry. You are a big part of this. I hope to play my part Hopefully Dave Chappelle will play his part and then the you know, we get enough of us together Then we'll have a real shot at this thing

So the great divide in the question of renew or try and fix the old institutions or build the new ones, your team build the new ones. I'm team build the new ones as quickly as possible, in part so you can put some pressure on the existing ones to reform. Because you have been part of one of the most important organizations there is, the

at least in terms of our media landscape. And, you know, I think you would have gotten brain damage and soul damage if you'd stayed there and tried to reform that thing, you know, I mean, being realistic. I mean, I wasn't unscathed, but yes, I think I did. I think I did get out, uh, at the right time. Yeah. So I try to be generous. You know, you look at an institution that is not doing well and you hope that it can reform and mend its ways and become better, a better version of itself. But I think that if you create a new version of it, uh,

and do it as quickly as possible, then you can help create an environment where they might do that. If you look at the political parties right now, you think that their competition is each other, but they actually, I don't think that's the way they operate. They just use each other as the fear cudgel. So if you had genuinely competitive politics or a different media landscape, then you might see some of the incentives and behaviors improve faster.

Andrew Yang, thank you so much. Thank you, Barry. You're the new institution. Very excited about it. No pressure. Thank you, as always, for listening. I'd love for you to check out what's going on on Common Sense this week at barryweiss.substack.com. It's future week, and we're focusing on what's around the bend from a new university, a new political party, and the future of the GOP. See you next week.