back to indexThomas Tull: From Batman Dark Knight Trilogy to AI and The Rolling Stones | Lex Fridman Podcast #259
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The following is a conversation with Thomas Tall, founder of legendary entertainment known
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for producing blockbusters like Batman's Dark Knight Trilogy, The Hangover franchise,
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Godzilla, Inception, Jurassic World, 300, and many more.
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He runs Talco, which is an investment company that focuses on how artificial intelligence
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can revolutionize large industries.
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He is part owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
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He's the guitarist for the band Ghost Hounds that tours with the Rolling Stones.
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But most importantly, he's humble, down to earth, and someone who has quickly become
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a mentor and friend.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, here's my conversation with Thomas Tall.
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In 2004, you founded legendary entertainment known for producing blockbusters like Batman's
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Dark Knight Trilogy, that includes Batman Begins, Dark Knight and Dark Knight Rises,
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The Hangover franchise, Godzilla, Inception, Jurassic World, 300, and the list goes on.
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It's just some of the biggest movies in history.
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What does it take to make an epic movie like that, or what does it take to make it happen
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from start to finish?
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Well, look, I've been enamored with movies since I was a kid as a fan.
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And I think what you need is to be able to tell a great story.
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And if you're going to tell a great story, you need a great director.
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You got to start with a fantastic script that is able to take some of these iconic characters
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that we did and put your own stamp on it while still respecting the mythology.
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And I had zero experience in movies and television before I started legendary.
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So it was a very interesting trip.
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Total luck that we had the opportunity to make five movies at the time with Chris Nolan,
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who turned out to be one of the greatest filmmakers of all time.
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But each one is its own little startup company.
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And I don't think there's any formula to get there.
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But I know that if you don't have a great director and a great script, if you don't
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have that foundation, it's hard to pull off.
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Who is the CEO of that little startup company?
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Is it the director?
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Who would you say kind of defines the success or the failure of a movie?
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Well, when you build a big movie like that, it's an enormous effort, 360 degrees.
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I mean, from digital effects, it's certainly the actors.
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I mean, if you have an amazing script and amazing director, but you don't believe anybody
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playing the parts, that's a problem.
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So the reason I think it was so difficult to pull off is I always used to say, you
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start with a stack of papers with words on it called a script.
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Bring that to life, and you're asking an audience to believe in everything that you're trying
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to put out there, and you've got a cast that even if they're immensely talented individually,
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they have to mesh together, they have to have chemistry together.
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And the director is kind of the general on the battlefield, but if you have a strong
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producer who's very hands on, but it truly to me is each one had its own story and its
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own sort of how it came to be and why it worked or didn't work.
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So you said you were new to the industry, but you did a lot of revolutionary things with
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So at that time, and now what is the good, the bad, and the ugly of the business of filmmaking?
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What are some interesting holes that you were able to, or like problems that you were able
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to fix, what problems still exist that can still be solved?
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Well, look, the business has changed so radically since 2004.
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When I started legendary, DVDs were still a cash cow.
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So that's how far things have come.
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But I would say a couple of things.
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The reason that I started it from a business perspective was at the time it was a $30 billion
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industry and there was no institutional capital around the movie business.
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And I was fascinated by that because almost every other category that you look at of that
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size as institutional capital, private equity, et cetera, is kind of a cottage industry set
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And I was perplexed and fascinated that that didn't occur.
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And the way the movie business worked was unlike any business I'd ever looked at before.
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So after kind of convincing myself that you could actually make money if you were disciplined
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and had the right approach, you know, went out, raised the money from the capital markets,
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markets which was Hercules, still maybe the hardest thing I've ever done in my career
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to walk around and say, look, I have no experience.
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I've never done this before.
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But you know, and the second thing, being very fortunate at the time, was able to partner
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up with Warner Brothers.
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Warner's at the time was run by a man named Alan Horn, who besides being creative is also
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So really understood what I wanted to do.
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And Alan, you know, was just an absolute gentleman, someone that I still look up to
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this day after Warner Brothers, he went and ran Disney with their run, you know, between
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Marvel and Star Wars and everything.
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So between Alan being responsible for Harry Potter, the Dark Knight stuff and then on
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to all the Disney stuff, he probably had as great a career as anyone I've ever heard
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of in the movie business.
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So my first focus was around sort of two concepts, global worldwide large tentpole films and
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And then the business aspect of bringing long term institutional capital to bear.
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I'm going to ask you dumb questions, which is part of the style, I guess.
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But just for people who don't know, including me, what is institutional, what is capital,
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what is institutional capital, what is equity, what is private equity?
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So if you're starting a company and you go around to a bunch of your successful friends
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and say, hey, you should invest in my company, well, that's sort of, that's great and it's
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capital, but it's not getting money from Fidelity or TeeRow or, you know, a sovereign wealth
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fund or an endowment fund from a university that has large pools of organized capital
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that has a long term point of view on your business.
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So if you get money from your neighbor who's a successful dentist, next year, the dentist
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may say, hey, times are hard, I need my money back.
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If your partners with, you know, Fidelity or Morgan Stanley or any of these institutions,
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they have the capital and the wherewithal to say, okay, I'm looking in this over the
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next five to 10 years and I thought there was an opportunity to bring that type of capital
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to the movie business to be patient.
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And the benefit of that patient, so it's a long term, you have to deal with fewer parties
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and they would do much larger investments.
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So what are the benefits, what are the sort of the challenges of that kind of investment?
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Well, I think the benefits in some ways are they're professionals who are largely dispassionate.
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It's like, look, if you're hitting the numbers you told me and you're hitting your plan, great.
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And the other thing that always was interesting to me about the movie business is if I'm investing
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in our artificial intelligence company or a chip set company or something like that,
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a lot of the institutions don't have the technical expertise to really, truly grasp what's being
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done so they don't, you know, other than good business practices, they're not offering every
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The movies and television are completely approachable, meaning everybody has an opinion.
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So you know, whether it's, I think you guys chose the wrong actor for that or why did
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So it invites a lot more sort of second guessing and things like that.
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So that was always one of the idiosyncrasies of the business that I thought was interesting.
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And then when you talk about private equity versus public equity, if you're a public company
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where the companies are traded, you want to buy Microsoft shares, you just go to your
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broker, go on TD Ameritrade and buy them.
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If on the other hand, you're talking about private equity, that's institutions or individuals
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investing in private companies.
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So thus the, if you have pools of capital that mostly invest in private equity deals,
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that's how you think about it.
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It's difficult to make those happen because it's individuals, you have to sort of what
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have dinners and agree, so it's much less, it's a much more human, much less mechanical
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Now, and again, massive difference between large private equity shops who are professionalized
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and in the same category that I mentioned earlier versus private individuals who are
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wealthy or whatever, but again, it's much more individualized when you're going to people
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who like your idea and just say, I'd like to invest in this.
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Is that from all the kinds of investments you've seen, what do you think is the most
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conducive to creating works of genius, whether that's in technology, AI space or whether
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So creating something special in this world.
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I would say a couple of things, enough money that whatever endeavor you're going into that
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you're not so nervous about the edges, right, if I have $100 to spend and I think I can
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create a perpetual motion machine or something for $104, I can't do it because they're all
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over me about the budget.
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So I would say making sure that you have enough capital, making sure that that capital is
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patient enough so that it's, you know, if you're going to do things that are extraordinary,
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it takes some time and you're going to break stuff, right?
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You're going to make mistakes, you're going to have a whole bunch of film on the cutting
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room floor, so to speak, or if you're in the lab, you're going to have a whole bunch of
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And I also think it's very important at the beginning, and I always try to do this with
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companies I invest in or buy is make sure that you have a philosophical and somewhat
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mechanical alignment with the management team so that going in, you both understand, hey,
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this is how we think about this problem or this company.
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This is what we feel like our culture is.
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This is what our goal is.
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And these are the metrics by which we'll agree to measure them by because if you don't have
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that shared, you know, hey, we're going to take this journey, then I think that's where
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people get upset, disappointed, et cetera.
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What about, this is a weird question, but constraints, so this is both for filmmaking
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Do you think more money is always better?
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So I like constraints a lot.
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Like constraints and almost like a desperation and deadlines are catalysts for creativity,
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for productivity, for sort of innovation.
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So can you kind of speak to that as an investor, as a creator, like what's the right balance
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Well, I think if you're focused on a particular problem or a company or a thesis, if you have
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that focus and you feel like I have unlimited resources or renewable resources.
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So there's really, there's no leverage in the situation, right?
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There's no, if I fail at this, I'll just go get more money, right?
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I'll just go, I think that's a hard way to be resilient and to think of new ways to solve
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So I think capitalizing things just to the nth degree does create some problems.
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So I think there's that perfect blend of don't starve the oxygen to the point where you make
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short term decisions or non strategic or thoughtful decisions because you got to pay the rent.
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And on the other hand, you can't have it be like this everlasting gobstopper of whatever
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you want will just keep flowing the cash because that doesn't create any friction points that
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I think do result in works of genius and things that are transformative.
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And one of the things that is interesting to me about society sort of writ large is
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I think that when you go through hard times and you have to do things that are uncomfortable
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and you don't want to do them because you're tired because you're that in some ways builds
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up that you're comfortable being uncomfortable muscle.
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And I sometimes think we're losing that a little bit and you can't sort of paint with
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a wide brush, but you know, that's that's one of the things that I kind of observe
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and hope that we don't go that way.
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I do think challenge and discomfort are kind of gift is like overcoming that.
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It's like from from every perspective, from a human perspective, it's a source of happiness
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and fulfillment overcoming challenge, but from a business perspective, I see like if
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something is really difficult to me, it's also a sign that most others would or many
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others would fail at this point.
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So like it's a feature.
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It's nice that something is difficult.
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When people tell you that something is impossible, I love that because it's like, all right,
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well then that's what a lot of people would believe.
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And that gives you an opportunity to be the person who shows it's not impossible.
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And you of course, you might be wrong, but if you're not wrong, you have the opportunity
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So going through that hardship, taking those big risks is going to really pay off.
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So like discomfort is a is a feature, not a bug of both personal life.
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It's just good for life, but for business, it seems like just good business sense.
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If something is hard, it's probably a good idea to do that because most others will fail.
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I don't know if you can answer this, but what's the most expensive movie you were involved
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with to make and why was it?
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You don't have to say numbers, but like, is something stand out as being exceptionally
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expensive and why is it expensive?
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I think Jurassic World was pretty expensive.
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I mean, it worked out great.
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And that's an epic film, by the way, look, it's it's it's one of my favorites.
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They just did an amazing job.
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And frankly, the crazy thing about my life is all the stuff that I loved as a kid somehow
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came full circle back into my adult life and having the opportunity while I was out there
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to to develop a friendship with Steven Spielberg and then have have my name on the same film
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as Steven Spielberg.
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I mean, that that was pretty surreal.
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So that was an expensive film.
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You know, Dark Knight Rises was was an expensive film.
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But again, to me, there's a difference between expensive and irresponsible and expensive because
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the vision warranted and it turned out financially, it certainly did.
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Yeah, with Jurassic World, it's I mean, I can't even imagine having those meetings because
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like you have to create so much and so much of it is obviously not real.
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You can't bring dinosaurs in.
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Is that where a lot of the cost is is in the, you know, the computer side of things?
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Yeah, those are generally pretty massive components of the of the budget and especially
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if you're doing it and inventing things as you go.
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I mean, Jim Cameron is one of those filmmakers who, you know, is designing the plane as it's
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flying in such a brilliant way.
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And you know, I've got to know him over the years and just in awe of the way his brain
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works and so yeah, it's a big component.
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Can you speak a little bit more to him in terms of because you're such a fascinating
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person because you care a lot about technology.
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You care a lot about the cutting edge of technology.
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So how does he a creator, a director build the plane while it's flying?
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Like what's the role of innovation in this whole process?
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Well, so I never made a film with Jim.
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I'm just a huge fan and got to know him and John Landau, his producing partner.
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And one of the things that just fascinates me about Jim is so he makes Titanic and there's
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a bunch of underwater cameras and things that they need that don't exist.
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So he goes and invents them and, you know, has a good grasp of engineering and has not
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only the imagination, but the ability to lead a team to build them.
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I got to go down early when they were shooting Avatar at a warehouse, I think it was where
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they were shooting.
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And as they were explaining to me how they were capturing it and that they could go back
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later because they created the environment, it blew my mind.
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And I said, okay, this is truly, people talk about a big leap, this certainly is one.
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So he has continued to push the envelope in terms of the art of the possible.
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And I just think he is an incredible genius in that way.
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Again, another hard question.
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So you in the realm of music care about story, storytelling, is there some aspect in which
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money and beautiful graphics get in the way of story in filmmaking?
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If you think about Jurassic World, obviously that's an experience like any other.
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Like what do we, what do you think about the tension between story experience and like
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Well, look, if you're using big effect shots and all kinds of tricks to cover over the
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fact that you don't have a very interesting story to tell, that's where I think it gets
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Where I think you have these incredible filmmakers, we mentioned Chris Nolan and Jim Cameron,
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Guillermo del Toro, you could go on and on of folks that just see the world differently
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and use technology to enhance the storytelling, to make you believe differently, rather to
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make you not just suspend your disbelief, but to feel like you're immersed in it.
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So I've certainly seen it done expertly and I've seen it done poorly.
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You've talked about this a little bit in the past.
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You kind of left the movie making business at an interesting time.
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Perhaps you saw the changes.
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There's been a lot of excitement with Netflix, with TV.
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So the role of film and society has changed.
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So what do you think is the future of movies versus TV?
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Like if you were as a business person, as a creator, as a consumer, as a technologist,
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are thinking about the next 10, 20 years, what do you think is going to be the godfather,
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the great pieces that move us as a society in the next 10, 20 years?
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Is it going to be TV?
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Is it going to be movie?
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Is it going to be a TikTok clips?
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Well, and I think the other category that I would add to that, that will be the next
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great medium, is truly immersive virtual reality in which new storytellers will emerge, especially
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when you can go into VR and there's enough computing power to sustain it and to allow
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it to be social and for you to have different paths to go down.
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That'll be, I think, the next realm of what storytelling and experience will look like.
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So do you think video game kind of world, or is it more movies, or is it more social
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network, or is it all of it kind of blending reality and gaming and movies?
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I thought if you saw Ready Player One, which I love the book and the movie was cool, too,
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but that's one version of it, where you go in, now everybody's talking about the metaverse
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and all that, but you go into a world that's fully rendered as yourself and you interact
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The other side of it is to go in somewhere between being a passive observer, but being
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able to move around your point of view and experiences, which I think is interesting.
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And then I think another adventure, so to speak, I could think of is a blend of video
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games, so there's a mission, right?
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There's obstacles, there's everything, and you move through it, but it's immersive and
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it tells a story at the same time.
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And that's why I think you're going to see new, amazing storytellers that we don't know
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yet that understand how to innovate and how to make you feel something in that environment.
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And to your earlier point, I saw probably around 2015 when Netflix decided to be bold,
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put out House of Cards, put out all the episodes, leave you in charge of the pace at which you
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would view them, which I thought was great.
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That was a gutsy move.
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And I can't tell you around Hollywood, anybody that says that everybody thought it was a
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great idea is not being truthful because everybody I talked to said this is their idiots, right?
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What do they know about moviemaking and TV?
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And what I saw happening was if you look at what Netflix pulled off and they realized
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that there isn't really a moat around the studios, you really could make stuff and really
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And so they started to create their own content that pulled in Amazon, which pulled in Google
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through YouTube and then you had Hulu, then you had Disney deciding that they're going
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to have Disney Plus.
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And the next thing you know, you have some of the biggest companies with the largest
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balance sheets on the planet being in the creative business.
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That's if you're an independent, that's bringing a knife to a gunfight to be sure.
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And so I thought that was interesting.
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The other thing that it used to be that movies were where the big things happened and television
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was sort of small screen, different experience.
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And you had something like Game of Thrones come out, which was not only on the same epic
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level visually and storytelling wise, but had the budget to be able to do it.
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And now, I think you're seeing all kinds of different storytelling taking place and also
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like that you're not pigeonholed into a time like you got two hours to tell the story.
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You can do a three part mini series, a five part mini series.
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You can do television that's all kinds of different format.
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That I think allows creators to do a lot more interesting things.
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It is also interesting to consider the role of companies that enable that, like the capital
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that enables that.
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Without Netflix, you wouldn't an HBO, you wouldn't have some of these epic shows.
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And so if we're thinking about the virtual reality world that you're talking about, it's
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interesting to consider who will enable that.
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You know, now, like you said, Facebook is talking about meta and metaverse, but it's
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unclear that just having money is enough.
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Netflix did a lot of really revolutionary stuff.
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There's a, you know, Amazon has money, there's a lot of companies that have money that don't
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quite do as good of a job yet at enabling creators of creating revolutionary new content
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that changes the whole industry.
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And that's probably going to be the case with virtual reality.
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There is a lot of money needed to enable experiences like in terms of compute infrastructure.
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There needs to be a huge amount of money there, but you also need to somehow give freedom
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to creators to have fun, to do their best work, and at the same time, like provide the
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perfect amount of constraints, all of that together.
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Like however Netflix makes it happen, they do a pretty good job, because it's a very
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constrained platform, but yet all the creators I've ever talked to, comedians and so on,
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that work with Netflix are really happy because they feel free to create their work.
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Yeah, and I think a lot of times, you know, companies are a letterhead, but it boils down
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And I think I've known Ted Sarandos a long time who ran the studio at Netflix and now
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took over Fareed running the company, but Ted, very smart, talented guy and understood
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early how to cultivate talent and relationships with talent, which is important.
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When you're dealing with creative people, their motivations and their goals are not always
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They're not always capitalistic, right?
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And so in terms of being able to communicate with creative people that are not always A
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to B to C is a talent.
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And so I think they did a great job.
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Ted did a great job with that early, you know, but I think that you're going to see different
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And I don't think, I mean, going to a theater to see a massive movie on that screen in that
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format is a fundamentally different experience.
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And I think you're going to find movies, you know, my old shop Legendary just put out Dune,
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which I thought was phenomenal.
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I, you know, when we secured the rights to Dune years ago, it was over the moon because
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it's I love the book.
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I love the entire world that is Dune.
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And that's a movie that I think you see on the big screen.
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I think when Avatar 2 comes out, I want to see that on a big screen, but I think you're
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going to see a ton of content is obviously being produced, and it's not all going to
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go to a theater going experience.
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So you're going to see, I think different versions of this over the next five to 10
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And James Cameron is listening to this.
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So he officially agreed to talk at the time of, on this podcast at the time of Avatar
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I'm just holding you to that in this recorded conversation.
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Also just super excited, both the movie and the director.
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There's something special about movies.
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You know, they win Oscars, they, they're historic in nature.
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There's something about TV shows, even when they're epic like Game of Thrones, that they're
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forgotten much quicker in history.
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Maybe that's because we haven't had enough of them, but you know, the De Niro performances
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and you know, the Scorsese films, all the great films that kind of we think of throughout
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the generations that define generations are films.
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Is that, is that just old school thinking?
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Is that always going to be the case?
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I mean, look, to me going in a darkened theater with a bunch of strangers and the lights go
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down and you go on this journey, there is something special and magical about that.
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And I think movies have been a part of our cultural fabric forever.
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And for some reason, Hollywood in America was, you know, uniquely positioned to do a
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great job with it, right?
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Not that there aren't great foreign movies, but far and away, American movies, you know,
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are dominate the, not only the world market, but you know, and so whatever it is that we
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do well or Hollywood does well, you know, there's, there's something in the water apparently.
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But I agree that I love movies and I will, you know, for the rest of my days.
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It's interesting how creators can move back and forth now as well.
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That used to be a complete no, no.
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You're either a movie guy or you're a person or a, you know, or you're a TV director.
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But those lines have completely blurred.
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And they're also blurring.
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I mean, they're blurring all kinds of lines.
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Like they're, they're moving to TikTok and Instagram and like, I know right now it seems
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ridiculous to consider that these like one minute things could be considered even in
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the same realm creatively as a, as a film, but maybe that changes over time too.
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Maybe experiences can completely become fluid in terms of their size, as long as they have
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some deep lasting impact on you as a human being, as a consumer.
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Look, to me, the whole thing is about either the moving image or even sometimes a picture
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will bring out an emotion or reaction, something.
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So, you know, short form is harder because you have less time to set things up and all
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But I'm sure there will be short videos and creators that come up with things.
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And if a moving image can get a reaction out of you and make you feel a certain way and
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stay with you or inspire you, well, that, that to me is just the next evolution of whatever
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it's going to be between humans and cameras, et cetera.
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See, I think that's why we've talked offline about this.
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That's why I love robots is I think there's certain things in the short form with robots
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that immediately can bring out a feeling in people.
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There's something about our consideration of our own intelligence, of our own consciousness,
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of all the fears and hopes and the beautiful things about human nature, the dark things
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about human nature that somehow, especially legged robots bring out, because we have both
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a fear and excitement towards that.
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Are these going to be our overlords, our gods that overtake humanity?
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Are these going to be things like horses or something like that, something that empower
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Like you don't know what to make sense of it.
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That's why they're super exciting.
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Speaking of robots and film, you've gone into traditional industries and disrupted them
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quite a few times.
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Was there, is there a system for deciding which industry is right for disruption?
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Can you look at the world and see one of the big problems you would like to solve?
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Do you have a system of how you see which problems to solve?
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How do you look at the world?
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Well, on the business side of that, so I have a holding company called Tolco, very imaginatively
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And part of that is literally every name ever is now taken, registered and all that stuff.
link |
So we're a holding company.
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What's a holding company?
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So instead of being a fund that has money flowing in and out of it and there's what's
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called a vintage year, I raise capital and I agree to invest that capital for so long
link |
and then I give it back to you, which sometimes creates artificial time pressures and things
link |
A holding company is more permanent capital.
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So the idea was behind Tolco was to buy almost always whole companies or majority stakes with
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great management teams in spaces that did not traditionally have a lot of innovation.
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And to have our labs group who were data scientists, AI practitioners, you know, engineers, machine
link |
learning, et cetera, and to be able to bring that wherewithal to that company.
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So to provide them with the right capital and to provide them with access to technology
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that would be hard to individually recruit for that company.
link |
So I would say that the thesis was to look for industries that were large enough that
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hadn't traditionally had access to that type of technology or innovation and to try to
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look for companies that not only look that part, but had management teams that embrace
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this and wanted to take that kind of journey.
link |
Yeah, there is quite a few industries like that, but that finding the industries and
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the management pair, because like those industries often have a lot of old school folks who don't.
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It takes quite a bit of work for them to leap into technology.
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I work quite a bit with the autonomous vehicles and just the automotive industry, depending
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There's old school folks.
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It's like Detroit thinking versus like, what do you call it, I don't know, California thinking.
link |
Well, I think you have to look at the nexus of two things there.
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One is just plain old human behavior.
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If I am uncomfortable, and this isn't a comfort zone for me, and it's not something I have
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as a field of expertise, I'm going to shy away from that.
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Especially if I'm successful and I feel good about myself and it's a big successful company
link |
or person or whatever it might be.
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The second thing is that especially if you're a public company and you're being weighed
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and measured every quarter, you are rewarding the managers of that company to hit metrics
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and to be reliable and to say, hey, I'm counting quarter to quarter that you're going to deliver
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It's difficult to say, you know what, everybody, for the next two years, I wouldn't count on
link |
our financial projections at all, because we're going to reinvent what we're doing.
link |
It's going to work in the long run, and you're going to see that this was a really smart
link |
investment five to seven years from now.
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That's not the way capitalism is currently wired, generally, right?
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Again, if you reward managers with yearly bonuses and stock options based and tied to
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stock price and all these other things, and then ask them to go break stuff, that's hard,
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You're saying the talk or approach to this, the private investment is the best way or
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perhaps the only way to enable this kind of long term innovation, investment, taking
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big risks and investing in innovation?
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Well, look, we certainly are not, by any means, the only one doing it.
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I'm just saying that when you think about big companies, more successful that are in
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old line businesses, and I hear people sort of talk about, well, why can't they just pivot?
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They recognize they need to be in the technology business because it's hard.
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It's hard to steer a ship and turn it that big, and especially if it's not part of your
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DNA at that company.
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I just think that what we tried to do is to enable management teams that know where they
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want to go and to be patient with capital and also, again, bring innovation to bear
link |
that they have access to.
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There's plenty of capital structures doing interesting things.
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That's one of the things I love about our country.
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This country innovates, and this country invents things, and I'm constantly in awe of just
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the human ability to innovate and to iterate.
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I get to hang around some universities, including your old shop, MIT, and it's like...
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Yeah, still there.
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Still teaching there.
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Still teaching, but that place is like Hogwarts.
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It's inspiring, right?
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And certainly the energy in Silicon Valley, which now Austin, Texas, where we're sitting,
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has its own incredible ecosystem.
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That's one of the things I love about America is the ability, and that really is, I think,
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in the American DNA, to create things and invent things, and I think that's invigorating.
link |
I think that's even bigger than capitalism, the machine of how capitalism works.
link |
That's just human nature.
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Capitalism is just one of the ways to make that human nature shine, I suppose.
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But it's like you mentioned MIT.
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There's a drive there to invent, to innovate.
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That's so purely human.
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That human spirit to build something new.
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It's that hopeful, optimistic spirit, especially in the engineering space.
link |
If you pay attention to the internet, Twitter and all that kind of stuff, intellectuals
link |
and so on, there's a cynicism to when we talk about stuff.
link |
But there's an optimism to when we do stuff.
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And the doing part, when you actually build things especially, you care a lot about manufacturing
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When you actually build physical products, that's where we truly shine.
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No question about it.
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I'm passionate about our country making stuff again, doing our own manufacturing and making
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sure that we don't lose the ability not just to create things intellectually and do the
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world's greatest blueprints, but actually make things here.
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That's exactly right.
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How do we do that?
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How do we bring more manufacturing to the United States?
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There's a company that I have a big personal investment in called Rebuild with some folks
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that all went through the MIT school years ago.
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There's a good friend of mine named Jeff Wilkie who used to be at Amazon.
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And we all felt the same way that America needed to make sure that it didn't lose its
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So it's a company that invests in American high tech manufacturing.
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And I think the way that we do that is provide capital, provide training.
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To me, this is also fertile ground for good, sustainable, high paying jobs.
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And we have to make it economically feasible to do that again here in this country.
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And not to say to companies that, again, are being weighed and measured quarter by quarter,
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hey, this is three times as expensive to do it here, but you should do it here.
link |
We need to innovate and we need to create processes and companies and opportunity that
link |
balance that equation.
link |
And I think as we saw during the pandemic, I don't think in this day and age you can
link |
be an isolationist.
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That doesn't make any sense to me.
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But being self reliant and self determinant and making sure that you are never in a position
link |
as a nation, that we can't do basic things because we're relying on supply chain in other
link |
Whether it's we're not friends anymore or a natural disaster or a virus or something
link |
pops up, I think those are costs of doing business that we have to put into the calculus
link |
of being able to make things here.
link |
There's an extremely high cost to making supply chain resilient that we really have
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And so if you really consider that cost, it makes a lot of sense to invest, especially
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long term in building up manufacturing in a way where you're making most of the stuff
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in one place, bringing it all, not all, but as much in as possible and building it almost
link |
like from scratch here in the United States.
link |
What I guess your thought is with innovation, it's possible to revolutionize the way we
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It's possible to reduce the amount of supply chain stuff and build stuff from scratch,
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do high tech manufacturing, optimize all aspects of the manufacturing, all that kind
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And I think where technology is the most efficient is the human machine interface.
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It's not let's automate everything and have nobody work anywhere.
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For a long time, that's neither feasible nor desirable.
link |
But where we can enhance jobs and make that interface immensely productive with the right
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training and so forth, I think that's a worthwhile endeavor and something that's going to be
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important to our country.
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I mean, you know who you're talking to.
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I love human robot interaction, human machine interaction, human AI interaction.
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So what do you think is the role of robotics in this high tech manufacturing, sort of like
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industrial robots, robotic arms, all that kind of stuff, or even more complicated kind
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What do you think is the role of robotics?
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What do you think is the role of AI in this manufacturing future you're thinking about?
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Well, robotics to me is an extremely exciting field.
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I don't have the same expertise that you do.
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I have an adjacency, but not the depth of knowledge, have never really delved deeply
link |
into it or made investments in it.
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But I think what's exciting about it is everything from doing jobs that are very dangerous for
link |
humans, enhancing the human experience.
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When you look at really repetitive labor, things that, you know, it might take away
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a job, but is it a good job for that person is spending 30 years doing something highly
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Is that a good experience in life?
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So I think, and then when you think about everything from military applications, you
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know, rescue, we're already seeing a bunch of those things.
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And then just lastly, when you talk about that human interaction with robots, when you
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start to have the combination, so you have some level of intelligence and interaction,
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I mean, that's why we always love the droids and Star Wars, right?
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I mean, it's, it's, it's exciting, it captures the imagination.
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And I think, look, many, many hours and have been spent on debating artificial intelligence
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and the, the ramifications if things go sideways and so forth.
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And I think those are all, you know, those are appropriate conversations to be having.
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I think it's actually happening slower than most people realize because there are tasks
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that humans do every minute of every day, standing up without losing your sense of balance.
link |
These are really hard things, but I think there's enough investment both in private
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industry as well as nation states now on artificial intelligence that it is coming.
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So both in the software space, in the digital space and in the physical space.
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So we talk about manufacturing, so industrial robotics is very true that even in the factory,
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even in the tasks that you think are pretty basic, you know, the amount of small intuitive
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decisions that humans make is quite incredible.
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So we have to be kind of explicit about saying which tasks are actually really hard and humans
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are just really good at them.
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And so on the flip side, in the digital space, with social networks, we recommend our systems
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with all kinds of like personal assistance in terms of voice based AI systems, all of
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There's opportunities there to find niches where AI can really have a transformative
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I think one of the places that really haven't, this is where, like you were to say stupid
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things, but I believe this very much, that when we have AI systems in the home currently,
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you have somebody like Alexa and Google Home and so on, they're kind of very basic servants.
link |
They tell you about the weather, they can play some music, they can turn the lights on
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and off, all that kind of like smart home stuff.
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I think there's a lot of value in systems that form relationships with us in the way
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that pets to dogs and cats, I don't know, just for people who have cats, cats don't
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They really don't.
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They don't form any kind of relationship.
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I don't know why you have relationship with them.
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Anyway, sorry, throw some shade.
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I'm just kidding, by the way.
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That's a basic kind of connection you have with another living being, then there's also
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You have different levels of friends, acquaintances, you have lifelong friends, all that.
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That friendship you have, I really believe that there is some aspect of the human experience
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that is deeply enriched by interacting with other beings.
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For systems, computing systems, artificial intelligence systems in our world, to have
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the capability to engage in some of that, I think is not just an opportunity to help
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people grow, become better people, but it's also just a good business opportunity, too.
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That hasn't really been explored enough, so that to me is really, that's a whole exciting
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space that I think will enable better industrial robotics.
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It will empower a better Facebook or a better social network, a competitor to Facebook that
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overthrows Facebook.
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It'll create better technologies that currently don't have that human robot interaction touch,
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That's super exciting to me, but that has to deal with the mess of human nature.
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The reason that most robotics people and AI people stay away from humans, they stay away
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from the human robot interaction problem is because humans are complicated, they're messy,
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they're hard to control, they're hard to predict stuff about, they're hard to make sense of
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or test repeatedly because one human can be drastically different from another human.
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To deal with that is the robotics problem is super hard.
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One of the questions is which problems can you remove the human from consideration when
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you're trying to solve the problem?
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Elon Musk is an example of somebody who believes autonomous driving, we can remove the human
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from consideration, we can solve autonomous driving as a robotics problem.
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It's stain lane, when there's a red light, you stop at a red light.
link |
If there are humans in the picture like pedestrians, that's a ballistics problem, it's just treat
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them as a moving object that would like 90% probability, keeps moving in the way they
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were in the past few seconds with some smaller probability that might stop or turn.
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Just do some basic models about them and you'll be able to do just fine.
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I tend to believe that even driving has to consider the full messiness of humans.
link |
The dance, the game theoretic dance of chicken that we all do when we J walk, we look at
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the car, that driver doesn't have the guts to murder me, so I'm going to walk in front
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of him and not look at the car.
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We do that kind of dance and AI systems need to be able to do that kind of dance.
link |
In Tolco, there's the labs, so there's a data science component, it's an AI component.
link |
How do they go into a company and help revolutionize that industry?
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Well, there's different examples.
link |
One of our companies, FIGS, makes healthcare workwear started by these two brilliant women
link |
and early days helping to build the platform and recruit and make sure that everything
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that we did at the company embraced technology and at the same time, they were obsessive about
link |
their customer, which is doctors, nurses, healthcare workers who are putting it on the
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line every day and obsessive about their product.
link |
When you have those two things come together, you get the result that we did at FIGS.
link |
We have a company called Acashure, which its AI lab and base is down here in Austin, Texas.
link |
It was an insurance, one of the largest insurance brokers in the world, and we did a deal with
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them and sold some of our insurance holdings that was completely AI driven.
link |
In that case, you basically put the team inside the company, right?
link |
Because it's a massive company and we've gone into all kinds of things.
link |
It just depends on the different situations, but the biggest thing was just to make sure
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whatever the company needed, they had access to the talent.
link |
Sometimes we'd build it, sometimes we'd help recruit for it.
link |
You know how in technology, it's whatever works, right?
link |
There's no one way to do things.
link |
Well, Acashure is really interesting as an example, so insurance is a fascinating space.
link |
It seems like very ripe still for disruption across the board.
link |
It seems like a lot of the disruption has to do with almost the first dumb step of we've
link |
been using mostly paper.
link |
It's not digitized.
link |
You have to basically create an infrastructure and a framework where everybody is using the
link |
same digital system, like databases, and just organize the data.
link |
It seems like that's a huge leap that basically can revolutionize major industries that still
link |
Insurance is obviously the great example of that.
link |
One of the things that struck me, the founder, CEO of Acashure's guy named Greg Williams,
link |
they're out of Grand Rapids, Michigan.
link |
As we were looking at expanding our footprint in insurance, I met with a lot of insurance
link |
They would talk about technology, but Greg truly understood the power of what would
link |
happen across actuarial sciences, predictive analytics, and using machine learning to really
link |
run every aspect of your business, and then automating a lot of just the back office
link |
As you said, one of the things that was great for us, they already had a data collection
link |
system and department, so it was much easier to pivot, and I'm very excited about the future
link |
They're doing some pretty innovative groundbreaking things, and those are the things that I like
link |
Right, is that, yes, I want to make money, that's what that is, but at the same time,
link |
what did you do with your time on earth?
link |
Did you do anything to leave any kind of mark that you did anything interesting?
link |
I can only speak for myself.
link |
There are many more ways to measure one's life, and I can only speak about how I think
link |
I grew up poor in upstate New York, with a single mom, and watched her work a couple
link |
jobs and had to, from a young age, shovel snow and mow lawns and do all kinds of things
link |
to help her make sure the lights weren't turned off in our little place.
link |
That's just something that I've always been driven towards, and I have a really eclectic
link |
taste and interest, and it's just been an interesting journey.
link |
So help be part of and help enable some cool new creations across the board, like film,
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music, AI, manufacturing, insurance, all the specific industries that you disrupted.
link |
Child tangent, back to your childhood with your mom, any memories stand out, stick with
link |
you as something that helped define who you are as a man?
link |
Even though the university and college experience was not part of the family tree, and we had
link |
I didn't understand, I didn't know what a trust fund was, or prep school, I didn't
link |
know what any of that was.
link |
But my mom from a young age would always say, you know, you're going to go to college.
link |
There's no, you know, if you choose to, and I think from a young age, that was just an
link |
expectation that I had and that she instilled.
link |
And the work ethic, I watched her, and then my grandmother was a janitor, a cleaning lady
link |
in a hospital for 50 years.
link |
And then I remember there were times of, you know, I'm probably 10 years old, it's freezing
link |
And if I don't go out and shovel six driveways, we don't have enough money to pay the bill.
link |
So I don't know, I'm not a psychologist, so I don't know how that manifests itself in
link |
my life today, but I think the grit to say, I'm not in the mood to do this, I don't want
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to do this, but that's the work that needs to be done.
link |
And no excuses, not I'm a victim, and I'm going to sit around and talk about, no, it
link |
is what it is, and you have to get done what you need to get done.
link |
And again, I think it's, you can never fully put yourself in someone else's shoes or experience,
link |
because I don't know what that is or feels like.
link |
But for me, those were two, I think, formative things that were important in my childhood.
link |
So that's pretty, the reality of life like that is pretty humbling.
link |
You still, you've been so exceptionally successful that it's easy to get soft now.
link |
How do you get humble these days?
link |
By getting up, I think for me personally, trying to push the envelope and being weighed
link |
and measured, that's why I always love sports too, there's a scoreboard.
link |
And I'm a huge believer in opportunity, meritocracy, all those things that I think are ideals that
link |
we want to aspire to, and I think that there's a lot of things I'm involved with right now
link |
that I just want to see if I can do it, I want to see if, you know, if, and, you know,
link |
my own little mantra is cause the outcome, right, as much as you can, and at the same
link |
time have the humility and not to have the hubris or arrogance to say, I'm always going
link |
to cause the outcome because you'll get your ass kicked pretty quickly and humbled.
link |
The world and the universe is a big place with forces, you know, beyond.
link |
But I think, you know, I also think a lot about being intellectually honest, which when
link |
I do university talks and so forth, I think that's a superpower.
link |
Because if you find yourself making decisions based on other people's expectations, based
link |
on places you don't want to go, but, you know, you're either, you feel like momentum is taking
link |
I think that's a big problem.
link |
And there are people that go to our top universities and can't wait to get out and start their own
link |
company and they want that pressure and they want to grind and there are other people that
link |
are smart and talented, but just say, look, I don't want to lay awake staring at the ceiling
link |
wondering how I'm going to make payroll.
link |
I don't want that in my life.
link |
And I think if you can square that up and be okay with it and say, what, what makes
link |
What makes me happy?
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What puts me in a bad headspace because there's a difference between challenging yourself
link |
and going against your nature.
link |
So that's why I think that being intellectually honest and being able to really sit down and
link |
go inside your own head and say, what am I good at?
link |
What am I not good at?
link |
How am I going to put myself in a position to be successful?
link |
Because, you know, I'm working on my weaknesses, but I'm not going to put myself career wise
link |
in a position where I, I'm just fundamentally going to have a hard time being successful.
link |
Intellectually honest is a tricky one and it gets, there's like levels to it too.
link |
Because some of the things, you know, I think about when you, when you dream of doing certain
link |
kinds of big things, a part of intellectual honesty is to say several things.
link |
One is like, hey, the thing you're dreaming about, like one, the fact that nobody's done
link |
it probably shows that you're, you know, you're just a dreamer.
link |
This is not, this is not going to like think clearly.
link |
The fact that it hasn't been done probably shows that it may not be the right path.
link |
And two is like, if you're dreaming about stuff, there's a certain point where it's
link |
like, hey, you haven't done it.
link |
Like why haven't you done it already then?
link |
Like you have to be honest with yourself.
link |
Like you have to be ambitious like, you know, a lot of people work hard a long time for
link |
a dream, but you have to wake up and be like, all right, I've been at this for 10 years.
link |
Like with a startup, you launch a startup and you think, okay, one year, two years,
link |
three years, four years, pretty successful, you know, but it hasn't exploded.
link |
Like you dreamed and you have to shut it down, you know, you have to be intellectual
link |
At the same time, you might want to be like step it up, lean into it, say almost like
link |
the flip side of like intellectual honesty is like maddening ambition of just saying,
link |
fuck it, I'm going to go all in.
link |
But that is a kind of intellectual honesty saying like, you know, the big problem here
link |
is I've been kind of going and doing too many things.
link |
Maybe with this dream, you have to go all in on it.
link |
All those kinds of things.
link |
I mean, this is human experience.
link |
Yes, without all human things are complicated.
link |
And I think there's a difference between being reckless and making well thought out
link |
informed decisions.
link |
If you're going to go all in, make sure you've, you know, measure twice cut once as they say.
link |
And one of my other favorite, I forget many years ago, I heard this saying and it stayed
link |
Never mistake clear line of sight with distance and, you know, that so I think that the key,
link |
whether you're starting a business or you're thinking about leaving the company you're
link |
at and starting a business or just leaving for another job, any of these things is as
link |
much as you can, right?
link |
And psychologists, I think would tell us it's hard to be self aware completely, right?
link |
That's the rub that if we were all completely self aware of everything that we did and strengthen
link |
weaknesses, it'd be a different world.
link |
But I do think you can work on that and at least challenge yourself to think about it
link |
and not be in a position where I'm, you know, I'm going to medical school because that's
link |
what you do in my family.
link |
And even though I'm miserable doing it, you know, things like that.
link |
So definitely you don't want to be sort of, because you don't think fall victim to conformity.
link |
Let's just go on doing the same thing over and over.
link |
But at the same time, is measure twice and cut once.
link |
It does feel like some of the, the biggest leaps taken are where you cut once and measure
link |
later is you leap in first.
link |
So it's almost like a gut.
link |
I suppose that is a measurement, but you build up a good gut instinct of like what to do
link |
and then you just do it and then you figure out as the building the airplane as you're
link |
Well, and I think each one of those instances that you could probably cite has its own unique
link |
circumstances, right?
link |
I don't have a deep biotech background.
link |
So if I suddenly stood up and said, I'm going to put everything I have into this idea, well,
link |
that's, you know, those are, right, it's game theory, right?
link |
What are the odds of success?
link |
If on the other hand, you know, you're, you're brilliant in your field or you've seen some
link |
opportunity that you, you think is wide open and you're going to go for it and break stuff.
link |
And you just want to wait, to me, always say like, how crazy is this on the spectrum of,
link |
you know, do I have any expertise?
link |
What is the downside if I fail, right?
link |
You know, if you're, if you're at a certain point in life with young children and you've
link |
got a mortgage and whatever else that, that is one circumstance versus I just got on a
link |
Stanford or I just got out of whatever and I'm going to go for it.
link |
It's just the whole thing, right?
link |
It is complex as you point out.
link |
And sometimes you just want to have the right matrix in your head of decision making process
link |
to try to arrive at the right place.
link |
And even if you get close, that's where I think you say, you know what, the hell with
link |
it, I'm doing this.
link |
I do want to ask you about one specific idea that sounds super fascinating that you're
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involved with recently.
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You led the $50 million C round for a company called Colossal that is focused on de extinction.
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This is funny relative to our connection and conversation about Jurassic World.
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They're seeking to restore lost ecosystems and use gene editing to restore the woolly
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mammoth to the Arctic tundra.
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How are they going to do that?
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Well, I met this fascinating guy at Harvard named George Church five, six years ago and
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found him to be incredibly smart, have an imagination and he partnered up with a guy
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named Ben Lamb who's an entrepreneur.
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And basically the press and to me, the imaginative, like you're capturing my imagination by telling
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me you're going to bring back the woolly mammoth and other extinct animals.
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And I, you know, we'll see where that road leads.
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I was more interested in an investor in the things that they're working through around
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understanding genes and proteins and CRISPR and all these other things because being adjacent
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to George Church and his team as these things unfold over the next decade, I thought was
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the right thing to do.
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So people are important here, just like investing in people and seeing what the hell they come
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You can look through history and great things are done by great people, right?
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And companies, they end up over time becoming a logo and immediately what you think of them,
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but they started out with a person, with an idea and a team that cultivated that and made
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And I think there are certain folks that are just immensely talented that if you can be
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around them, and I also know his and his team's ethics in terms of, you know, after spending
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time talking about where the lines are, people in other countries that, you know, may not
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have the same process, may not have the same checks and balances are doing this and pursuing
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So at least I felt like with George and Ben and their teams, they're also very responsible
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This is where the human side of things comes into play.
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I've interacted with a lot of really brilliant people in the technology space where you kind
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of, you know, there's a lot of ways to feel this all.
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You can ask them whether they kind of read literature.
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You can feel out how much they really understand about like human nature here.
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Like whatever the technology is when it actually starts to play, interact with society at scale.
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Like do they have an understanding or an intuition about how that happens?
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Some of that requires studying history.
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Some of that requires like just looking at the worst and best parts and events in human
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history to understand like, hey, it doesn't always turn out like everybody hoped the technology
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If a person has a depth of understanding about history, about human nature, then I think
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that's the right person to mess with some of this cutting edge stuff.
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You want Marcus Aurelius with a PhD from MIT.
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You just small tangent, but you mentioned having a conversation with Warren Buffett.
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You spoke really highly of him as an investor, as a human being.
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What about him do you admire?
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What insights have you drawn from him as a great investor yourself?
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Well, the afternoon that I got to spend with him, which, you know, is something I'll treasure
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Look, sometimes when you meet people, even that are immensely successful, you may decide
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that after 20 minutes or a half hour, oh, you were in the right place at the right time
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and, you know, that's fine.
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There are other people that are clearly different, special, and I don't care if you made them
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start from zero, you know, would end up in a good place.
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And so it was an absolute privilege to spend the time with him, you know, and a couple
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of things that stood out in the conversation.
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He is incredibly intellectually curious and well read.
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And I like how simplistic he likes to keep his thought matrix.
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And then also, instead of trying to outsmart the market, it seems like a simple axiom,
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but just look, good companies that are led by talented managers that are good businesses
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over time are going to get there.
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So I'm not going to day trade, I'm just going to, I'm looking for value.
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And then just on life stuff, he just, you know, and also his ability to take in and
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then use information, it was incredibly impressive.
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So I only spent the, you know, I'd met him before, but I only spent one afternoon with
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him, but it's, you know, pretty incredible.
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And one of the things that stuck out to me is we were in the middle of talking about
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Tulco or investing or how we thought about it.
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And I said, you know, I'm trying to be smart about, and he stopped me and he said, Charlie
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Munger, his partner of many years, Charlie and I don't try to think of the smart thing
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We try to think, what's the dumb thing we could do here?
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And I kind of laughed and he said, no, I'm dead serious.
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We think about it from the standpoint of what could we do in this situation that later
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we'd be like, that was a really dumb thing to do.
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And I actually thought that was, it got in my head and I still think a lot about that
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as I'm dissecting problems.
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So there's a, like, that's a kind of long term thinking if you just avoid the dumb things
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or if you simplify, just focus on those simple steps, all it takes is just do that for a
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long period of time and you'll be successful.
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It certainly worked for him, that's all I can say.
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You've been a great investor yourself.
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How do you know, when you judge people, so I, whenever I go to San Francisco, I was thinking
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of moving to San Francisco, that's why I decided to, after really giving it some thought and
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talking to people, decided to move to Austin.
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Everybody's dreaming big and they have big plans and it's actually, I don't envy the
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job of an investor of any kind because everybody has big dreams and it's hard to know who exactly,
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what idea is going to materialize, what team is going to materialize into something great.
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How do you make those decisions about people, about ideas?
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Well, if I had any kind of a lattice work on this, it absolutely starts with the people
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and I think the reason for that is your business plan is going to change, right?
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There's very few businesses I know of that say, we're going to make a widget in this location
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and 30 years later, we're successful and we just make a widget and that's what it is.
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Things happen, right?
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And today they happen with such velocity that you have to be able to make hard decisions
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based on imperfect information and are you, how are you going to calculate those answers?
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How self interested are you going to be?
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What kind of ethics will you apply?
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What's your short term versus long term thinking?
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Are you able to give an honest assessment of a situation?
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Because the thing that you can count on is problems are going to happen, things you didn't
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anticipate are going to happen, how pliable are you, right?
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How much elasticity is there in your ability to be successful and I think it's important
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when you invest in something that you both see, you understand the roadmap ahead and
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agree to it, right?
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It doesn't mean there won't be twists and turns but you're not like, well, wait a minute,
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what did we do here?
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This isn't what was in the thing I signed up for.
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And then I think honesty and communication is a huge thing to me with, you know, I always
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tell people if bi directionally, if there's something going on, start the conversation
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with, you know, Lex, we have a problem, okay, now I'm sitting up, you have my full attention,
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we're going to talk about whatever it is, bad news should travel faster than good news
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and because it's going to happen, being in business with someone that is going to shoot
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you straight and sometimes say, I don't know.
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I don't know what the answer is, I got to go figure it out.
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That I can process a lot better than, look, I don't want you mad at me or disappointed
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or I can't handle not having success so we're just going to kick the can and I think especially
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in today's business environment, that's very, very dangerous.
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So that's a bad sign, not just because it's good to do, to communicate and be honest,
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but if they're not willing to do that, then it goes back to the intellectual honesty.
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They're probably not also able to be brutally honest with themselves when they look in the
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mirror about the direction of the company.
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Look, I wasn't there so I don't know, but I think if you unpack many situations that
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turned out negatively, most of the people, whether you're faking lab results, you have
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a biotech company, we have everybody's staring at Theranos these days, do I think in a lot
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of cases you're either the villain, like you started out saying, I'm going to screw my
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shareholders over and I'm going to be a liar.
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That isn't my experience.
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Most things are little incremental moves that you say, we're going to get this right next
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week, but today we got to make the presentation.
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So we're going to just tweak things a little bit.
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That's a slippery slope, right?
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And so that's why I think from a standpoint of people, you want to go into the foxhole
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with folks that understand things are going to happen and I'm going to let you know about
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them and we're going to try to solve them together.
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And then just in terms of the idea, I always ask like, okay, if this company executed the
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way, that's the other thing that always cracks me up about financials, whenever somebody
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pitches you, inevitably they'll say, our projections are really, really conservative.
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I'm still waiting for somebody to commit and say, look, my projections are wildly optimistic.
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We'll never hit these numbers, but anyway, it's, you know, if this company did what
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it says and executes and does it matter, right?
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Does it move the needle enough?
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And what are the things that uniquely position this company to be successful and you just
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have to be able to answer, I think, a number of those questions pretty crisply.
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But at the end of the day, it's still a big risk.
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So you're just trying to minimize the risk.
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Let me jump to another topic.
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You're an incredible human being that you're involved with this.
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Your band, Go Sounds, is touring with the Rolling Stones.
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So before we talk about your band, let me ask about that.
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What's that like playing with the Rolling Stones?
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It's surreal, just because they're my favorite band of all time.
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To me, the greatest rock and roll band, it's not even close of all time.
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And, you know, to share the same stage, to be on tour and to go out and get that energy
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from the crowd, you know, and every night and come off stage and later when they go
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on and you hear that iconic, ladies and gentlemen, the Rolling Stones.
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And then it's incredible.
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And you know, what's amazing to me about the band, next year will be their 60th anniversary,
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And it's hard to be around anything for that long, but making music and packing stadiums.
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And what's amazing to me, they can play a two hour set and it's not just that, oh, that's
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a hit or you recognize it.
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It's like every song is an anthem.
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So it's been amazing.
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We got to play with them in 2019.
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And when they ask us to do this again, it's just an absolute privilege.
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I asked you the soft line.
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So I know you are a kind of rock star.
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But just me, maybe I'm projecting, but do you get nervous?
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Such a large audience with the Rolling Stones.
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It feels like there would be a lot of pressure.
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I mean, you definitely don't want to screw it up.
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I think the band, our band, you know, is tight knit and all that stuff.
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And I think that you, the individual nervousness dissipates when you go out as a group and
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you're making music together and you sort of, okay, we're all in this and you know, we're
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And by even in sports, I always look at individual events like ice skating or, you know, anything
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where it's just you out there alone.
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And that's different than being with a team and nerve wracking.
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So I'm sure if it was me with an acoustic guitar just going out, it would feel different.
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But absolutely, you get the right kind of butterflies, I would call it.
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And just the energy of playing music and having it be this relationship and you, and look,
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I've been to a ton of concerts where I'm like, look, can we just get to the band, please?
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But what's been great is just an amazing reception.
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And we have this guy named Traination as the lead singer is just incredibly talented.
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I mean, he's just not only an amazing voice, but just has that charismatic thing.
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What's it feel like to play in front of a huge audience?
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What's, as a guitarist, are you lost in the music, like you almost don't feel the audience?
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Does it add extra energy?
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Does it add extra anxiety?
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What does it make, what's it feel like?
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You know, stadiums are interesting just because it's so big and cavernous.
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And because, you know, you want to protect your ears.
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So we use an in ear system so that you are a little disconnected from the crowd because
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if you're playing that loud and you're standing in front of your amps without ear protection,
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How are you monitoring the sound?
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The in ear stuff, is that producing sound or is it strictly earplugs?
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No, it's producing the sound.
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So like putting ear pods in and listening to a song and you're playing to it, right?
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It's just us playing, but it protects your ears.
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But the energy from the crowd, when they get going and get into it, which knock on wood
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so far has been amazing, there's nothing like it.
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I mean, it's just this bi directional thing that happens and music was kind of, music
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and sports were, you know, kind of my first loves and it's, yeah, it's very difficult
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to describe, I think, accurately because it's like no other feeling.
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Really how is it different than playing in a garage with the band by yourself practicing?
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Is it, do you feel like you're creating something different when you're, when you're, when you
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got the guitar and the amp and just the sound dissipating out into and everybody's listening?
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Yeah, it's, listen, the first time we did it and there's nobody in the stadium, first
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time I ever played in the stadium and I'm just like, I'm out there in front and just
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hitting different chords and playing different licks and I'm like, it's like I want a contest
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and I get to do this.
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But you know, what's different about it in each venue is different.
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So if you, if you, we went on the road with ZZ Top a few years ago, which was incredible.
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Billy Gibbons, he's a Texan, incredible person and guitar player, but you know, when you're
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playing in like five to 7,000 seats, it's really, I mean, it's, you know, you're right
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there with them, with the crowd.
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And then when you play in an arena for, we toured with Bob Seeger on his last tour, which
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was cool, played some shows with him.
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And again, the arena, like they're all kind of packed on top of you and it's super loud,
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I mean, the crowd is, stadiums is a completely different animal and it's, it's just a completely
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different experience.
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Do you enjoy it versus like a smaller room?
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What's, as a guitarist, as a musician, what's your favorite like room to play of the size?
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Any room that'll have me, look, I think arenas are the perfect blend, if I had to say, because
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it's loud and you know, 20, 30,000 people, but like right up, right up on you, a stadium.
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Look, playing the stadiums with, with the Rolling Stones is just, is going to go on
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the headmark or somewhere is one of the more, you know, I say this and I really mean it.
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My life is like a punk episode that just hasn't, no one's burst in yet, but yeah, it's, it's
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as cool as you think it is.
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So 60 years, how do you think Mick Jagger still got it?
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Well, how do you, you know, how do you explain it?
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I got to tell you so.
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I mean, the funny thing is, whatever, wherever there is excellence, people want to know how
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It's a secret, not only is Mick Jagger, and I think the songs that Keith Richards and
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Mick Jagger wrote together, if you go back and listen to the lyrics, it's just incredibly
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poignant and I'm just a huge Stones fan, so, but he works out like a maniac, right?
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And it's, it's that 10,000 hours thing and it's that, hey, maybe I don't feel my best
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today, but I'm going to get up and do my routine and work out so that, you know, at his age,
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which, you know, I mean, you can look at people at different ages chronologically that are,
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you know, maybe we're both at this age, but I'm a lot older than you are advice versa.
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And he just, I think it's the combination of raw talent and the ability and he's, he's
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I think he's understands how to have interaction with the crowd and hold them in the palm of
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his hand and be an entertainer.
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But then on top of that, the reason he can at this age run around stadiums and be just
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as energetic as he puts the work in.
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And that's one thing, step that I think a lot of people miss sometimes where they want
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They want to know what's the shortcut.
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Most of the time, the answer is there's no shortcut.
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You have to work hard on the way there and work hard to stay on top.
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And sometimes it's not even like work hard is just like, it's like be a professional,
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which that involves like in his case at his age with the amount of stuff you have to do
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on stage and the way he does it for two hours, you have, this is a professional athlete, a
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professional athlete that has to do things that are probably designed for 20 year olds
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and 30 year olds has to do it at an older age, which means like, what do you have to
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Well, you have to probably, he probably has like a whole physical routine he has to do.
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Diet the whole thing.
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Look, if you want to do great things, you probably have to do hard things to get there.
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I'm not going to make you pick, just stick on the stones for one more minute.
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But what are some great Rolling Stones songs that were impactful to you, lyrically, musically,
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maybe something you like playing like air guitar or I don't know.
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Probably my favorites.
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I love sympathy for the devil.
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It's a very, I don't know, sort of Faustian.
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I love the lyrics.
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I love how the almost a voodoo beat just kind of builds throughout the song.
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That's always been one of my favorites.
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So in that song, he never mentions devil, does he?
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No, wait, sorry, like, you know, my name, there's like a flirtation going on in the
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It's kind of interesting.
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Yeah, it's, here's all the trouble I've caused along the way with you humans.
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And I just think it's really, really great.
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Musically builds really nicely.
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It's like both fun and dark.
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There's a playful nature to it.
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That's very stones.
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Only they can pull it off because it's like playful, but it's also like dark and cool.
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Dangerous, dangerous.
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And Gimme Shelter.
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It's just, you know, and to this day, when I listen to the studio version and Mary Clayton
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just comes on and sings that epic, iconic part and there's a documentary that was done
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about backup singers, phenomenal, and it tells the story of that moment and that song with
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Mary Clayton and it's just her voice and the way it unfolded, they got her out of bed
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at like 10 o clock at night in LA and she's like the Rolling Stones and went in and just
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And I can't sing at all.
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I'm by ordinance, not around a microphone.
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So I'm always in awe when someone can sing like that.
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But you know, those are some of my favorite Rolling Stones songs and Paint It Black is
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I mean, I could go on.
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Yeah, Paint It Black is great.
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But again, a song that builds is badass.
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I mean, it defines the whole generation.
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What made you pick up a guitar?
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What made you fall in love with the guitar?
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It's just the coolest instrument, right?
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I mean, when you watched back then, you know, and I was kind of an old soul.
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I was listening at a fairly young age to Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Lightning Hopkins,
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B.B. King and just the soulfulness.
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I mean, B.B. plays five notes and just kills it in the emotion that it evokes.
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So I just was just an awe of the instrument.
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And you know, I also, there's always somebody around who's a musician that just picks the
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instrument up and can play, right?
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And they're just so talented at it, and they can just listen to a record and play it.
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That was never me.
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I never took formal lessons.
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I had to grind, you know, to just make it sound like I wanted it to sound.
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So both technically and ear, everything was hard work.
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I mean, I could hear it and what they call, you know, you play.
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So by right hand, the rhythm side of it is, that's probably if I have anything, my strength.
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But there's something pretty amazing that happens when you get together with other people and
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play a song in that moment where it hits the pocket and you all kind of know it.
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And it's just such a cool feeling.
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And it was interesting growing up because I was, again, I always had a eclectic interest.
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So I loved math and physics and science, so I had those friends and I was an athlete
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and played football and baseball and basketball, so I had my jock friends.
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And then I had my music friends and so it was just kind of that.
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And so when I was still living in Los Angeles and had legendary, I just missed playing.
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And so I put this band together and called it the Ghost Towns because, again, huge Robert
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Johnson fan and that legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul at the Crossroads in exchange
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for his musical talent.
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You guys have that in one of the videos?
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Such a cool video.
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And I just thought that's such cool lore and I just love the blues.
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So Robert Johnson would often would talk about Hellhounds on his trail.
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And so I always just thought, what about Ghost Towns?
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So I wish it were a more clever, deeper story, but that's about it for the name.
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That's pretty deep.
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Robert Johnson is incredible.
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But you also talk about that you connect to the storytelling of blues.
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So what makes a good story in a song?
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What aspects of storytelling connects with you in songs?
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So I'm a big lyrics guy too.
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I love deep lyric people like Tom Waits and people that are like Leonard Cohen, even Bob
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Dillon, that are obviously as poetry.
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And then there's some people like The Rolling Stones there.
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It's like seemingly simpler, but it's still so much more to it.
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It's like less is often more.
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It still tells a strong story.
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And there's certain people and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are in this boat, Billy
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Gibbons is in this boat.
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They just say things in a certain way that are just cool.
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And so I write our music and lyrics, I have to tell a story, I have to know the characters
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I'm not good at just writing some rhymes and having it match up to the right key and the
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I have to understand like, that's just me.
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And so I think that, look, if you have three or four minutes to tell a story, you have
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to be more efficient with your use of language.
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And you have to understand what you're building to, if anything, and evoke emotion.
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And hopefully for those three minutes, get the listener to understand not only the point
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of the song, but where you're coming from and to make you feel a certain way.
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There's a song that the audience has seemed to like a lot on the new album called Good
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And I wrote that because especially during COVID and reflecting on what normalcy looks
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like and what happens when you're cut off, I just was kind of taken with this idea of
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that when you sit around and reminisce with friends, oftentimes, it's not just like some
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big event happened.
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It's remember that summer, we'd go up to the lake all the time and it's who you were with.
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And at the time, it probably seemed pretty pedestrian, right?
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Just seemed like kind of a normal day.
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But it was the company you were keeping.
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It was the time in your life.
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It was whatever it was.
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And I just kind of struck me that right now, we're doing stuff that you're going to reminisce
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about later that seems kind of ordinary to be like, man, that was such a great time.
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So the idea is be in the moment and all that stuff.
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But these are the good old days and enjoy it and soak it in and kind of be present for
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It's a great perspective to take on the present because we are in the thing that we'll remember.
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We're living through the thing we'll remember.
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And sometimes the things we'll remember is the simple stuff, the little stuff.
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Instead of Keith Richards, who is the greatest ridiculous question, but just indulge me?
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Who is the greatest blues guitarist of all time, rock guitarist of all time?
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Well, you got a little bit of a hybrid with Jimi Hendrix, right?
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Because he played the blues and he played rock and roll.
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So I think most guitarists would say Jimi Hendrix is pretty ridiculous.
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That probably for me, I'm a huge, huge, huge Hendrix fan to play.
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I mean, even to this day, I don't care, technology, pedals, whatever.
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He just somehow fused with the instrument.
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I can't be sitting here in Austin, Texas without mentioning one of the great guitar
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players of all time in Stevie Ray Vaughan.
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See, that's how I know you're like a rock star.
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You're sucking up to the audience.
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No, but you're the listeners all over the place.
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Stevie Ray Vaughan is another one of those just blows me away.
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And then with the older guys, BB King, Hubert Sumlin, Clapton, I saw him on his last tour
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and just walked out on my just like unbelievable how he still sounds.
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And both electric and acoustic, just so strange.
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And the greatest storyteller, Mr. Bob Seeger, that's an interesting one.
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He almost doesn't get enough credit, I feel like, for how great he is.
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Obviously, he's super famous, but.
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No, he's in his voice.
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I also, I had the privilege of getting friendly with John Fogarty, you know, John Fogarty
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And he's another one that's just the way he phrases things.
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And you just look at the catalog of stuff he wrote, amazing talent.
link |
I read Bruce Springsteen's book and was, I'm a fan, but after reading the book, it was
link |
really, you go back and listen to his lyrics and the way he pours himself out is pretty
link |
And then again, with the old blues guys, I just think the emotion they could get out
link |
of playing like the sustain on the one, right?
link |
Just playing the same rhythm, John Lee Hooker.
link |
You listen to Manish Boy by Muddy Waters and it's just, there's something so, it just
link |
draws me in every time and the emotion they're able to get out of things.
link |
And I'm also a huge Chuck Berry fan.
link |
I just think that sound is, I love it.
link |
Do you know how to play Johnny Be Good?
link |
Maybe, you know, one of the great moments, at least of my childhood, was back to the
link |
future and watching Michael J. Fox plug in and then at the end, play at the dance to
link |
save his parents with Johnny Be Good.
link |
The guitar is so much more than a musical instrument.
link |
It feels like, it's like the, in the 20th century, it's like the car, like it defines
link |
so much of Hollywood, so much of a generation of what it means to be, I don't know, what
link |
it means to be a man, what it means to be a human in America, it's, it's fascinating.
link |
It's emblematic to me of a certain type of music and that, that's, I made a documentary
link |
years ago called, It Might Get Loud with Jimi Page, The Edge.
link |
I highly recommend it.
link |
Everybody watch that documentary.
link |
It's an incredible celebration of the guitar.
link |
It says Jimi Page, Jack White from White Stripes.
link |
And The Edge from U2.
link |
Well, now you have to tell the story of that one because how the heck did that all come
link |
Because it's so fascinating.
link |
Such different musicians all coming together, talking about their story, talking about how
link |
they approach the music and also playing together a little bit in this casual kind of setting.
link |
Well, look, I, one day I came downstairs and I, the Rolling Stone magazine is sitting there
link |
and it was the 50th, it was the 50 top guitarists of all time, their list.
link |
And then I had some other financial report with video games and the top video game at
link |
the time was Guitar Hero, right?
link |
And then there was a third thing, I can't recall it, but I just, and I said to myself,
link |
what is it about the guitar that is so central to the rock and roll, whatever you want to
link |
Like, why is that the symbol?
link |
And I said to myself, I want to ask Jimi Page why he picked up the guitar because he's
link |
And so I called a friend of mine, Davis Guggenheim, who had directed Inconvenient Truth, and I
link |
think still is, but at the time was the biggest documentary ever.
link |
And I called Davis and I said, look, I have this idea, I want to make this movie about
link |
the guitar, about different eras and styles and whatever, but I've never made a documentary.
link |
I don't know how to do that.
link |
I was just looking for advice, and thankfully, because he's one of the best documentarians
link |
ever, Davis is like, you know what, I can't get this out of my head.
link |
I'll direct it, which was amazing.
link |
And we wrote three names down that represented different eras and different styles.
link |
Rarely do you get, you know, you go three for three, but it was those three guys.
link |
And it was just such an incredible experience to sit there and get to know Jimi Page, you
link |
I mean, it was like, and he was, it was like Gandalf, man.
link |
He was like, always Jimi Page.
link |
And that was so cool to see him, Gandalf was, there's like a wisdom, there's a calmness
link |
to him compared to like the restlessness of Jack White.
link |
Like, I mean, that combination was just fascinating.
link |
It was one of the coolest experiences ever.
link |
And one of the things, there was a moment where Jimi, he was going through his guitar
link |
case and he had the double neck from stairway to heaven and he handed it to me.
link |
And I was like, mm hmm.
link |
I mean, it's like somebody handing you X caliber or something.
link |
Amazing experience.
link |
You know, on the edge, one of the kindest human beings you'll ever meet in your life,
link |
just an amazing person.
link |
And I think he hit it right on the head with Jack is he's got that, that energy, you know,
link |
and constantly pushing himself.
link |
But it's hard to believe it's been, I think 10 or 11 or maybe even 12 years since it came
link |
But after watching it, I realized like how much it was needed.
link |
And I was almost surprised it didn't already exist.
link |
It was like, yeah, the guitar wasn't quite celebrated like explicitly.
link |
We almost didn't acknowledge it.
link |
How important it was culturally.
link |
It's kind of amazing.
link |
And the way it closed from the song, the weight, it was called the weight by the band.
link |
That's because they didn't want to go home.
link |
We were shooting on a Warner Brothers sound stage for three days when we called it the
link |
summit where the three of them came together.
link |
And the two things I'll never forget is when Jimmy starts to play the riff from whole lot
link |
Edge and Jack cease to be rock, you know, rock gods or whatever and had the same 15 year
link |
old kid feeling that I did, you could see in their face.
link |
And then at the end, they're like, Hey, can we play?
link |
We just want to, we don't want to go.
link |
Can we just play something acoustically?
link |
So we printed out the lyrics.
link |
That's what they wanted to play.
link |
And they just sat there and sat on those couches and just such a good way and yeah, incredible.
link |
What's your guitar rig set up like you, you also, you have a few guitars first, let's,
link |
let's just put on the line.
link |
So what's better, Les Paul or Strat?
link |
Well, I'm not going to get into what's, what's better because I'm sure that'll start a flood
link |
of whatever for me.
link |
I'm going to say it's Strat.
link |
I'm going to put out the, my main instruments is a Les Paul.
link |
But I, okay, okay.
link |
Let me just put on the table.
link |
I'm speaking as somebody who literally, I don't think I ever actually strummed a chord
link |
So I've been, maybe I'm uninitiated.
link |
So I don't, I don't speak from experience, but I, it's probably because of Hendricks
link |
was so deeply influenced by Hendricks that I just kind of following his footsteps and
link |
clapped and so on.
link |
The amazing thing to me is if you look back at Leo Fender and what the Gibson Guitar Company
link |
and Les Paul did in the fifties, those are still the shapes and the perfect thing today.
link |
The Strat and the Telecaster and the Les Paul and it's, they got it right.
link |
Way back, way back then.
link |
So I have my main guitar, you got to name your guitar.
link |
So my main guitar is named Hazel and it's a 59 Les Paul and there's something magical
link |
in that year, like a Strativarius and they're just, there's something different about them.
link |
So I play that and then I play it through sort of my main rigs, either a 59 Fender twin
link |
or a 65 Marshall and then when we're on the road now, because when you use older vintage
link |
stuff, you just got to be super careful with the tubes and everything, it has to be reliable.
link |
So very nicely, the guys from Two Rock sent me some of their amps and they're really,
link |
because I don't use any new stuff, but the Two Rock stuff is pretty great.
link |
So that's actually what I'm using.
link |
Oh, it gets close.
link |
It gets close to the sound that you like with the Marshall.
link |
It's new and reliable.
link |
So that's what I'm using on the road right now.
link |
Do people use emulation?
link |
Do they use software or is it still?
link |
I personally don't.
link |
I go, I don't have many pedals.
link |
I use a Klon, an old vintage Klon straight into the amp and that's it.
link |
It's as old school as possible.
link |
Is there other cool guitars you have that kind of stand out?
link |
I have a bunch of what they call Blackguard Telecasters from the 50s, which are pretty
link |
What are those Blackguard Telecasters?
link |
No, it's in the 50s.
link |
Oh, they actually legit have a Blackguard.
link |
But they're incredible.
link |
What's the color of the Telecaster itself?
link |
Most of them are yellow with black and then they got into different configurations.
link |
But there's something, I have a 51 Telecaster that I play in Open G and songs with Open
link |
G that just, again, there's something, you know, and I'll take all the help I can get
link |
in terms of, you know, making it sound great.
link |
So I'll try to find the magic ones.
link |
What's your writing process like for the music and the lyrics?
link |
Is there, do you have to go to the mountains?
link |
Is there whiskey involved?
link |
What do you have to do?
link |
Or do you just write a little bit, whenever you have a moment of free time?
link |
I'm a boring guy because I don't drink, I don't, I just, I figure I can screw things
link |
up plenty on my own without adding anything.
link |
That's a good call.
link |
But you know, for me, it either starts with, with a riff, just some, something that I think
link |
is an interesting, you know, riff or tone that I, I can kind of sink my teeth into a
link |
And then a lot of times I'll write a title and love a title and then start to backfill.
link |
So the title is almost like an idea.
link |
Like this is where I want to be and, and then start kind of writing it out.
link |
Again, I just have to know, am I writing from a character's point of view?
link |
Am I writing about someone or something, you know, is like the narrator and, you know,
link |
what is this person?
link |
Are they, where are they in life?
link |
I don't know if all that, like great writers, I'm sure would say, why don't you just write?
link |
You don't need all that.
link |
But that's, for me, that's my process.
link |
I'm not so sure about that, and I bet you quite a lot of writers have created a world
link |
in their mind before they even put the simplest of words down.
link |
So yeah, there's, there's, there's quite a lot to that.
link |
What's your favorite song to play?
link |
Is there some favorite, favorite ones you go to both play and kind of, I'm sure you
link |
And I'm neither talented nor do I have the desire.
link |
And I think, you know, if you come see the show, you won't see a microphone anywhere near
link |
But do you, I mean, do you hear like when you're thinking about lyrics, do you hear the idea
link |
And especially what's great, you know, with Trey, is I write for his voice.
link |
And then we have these amazing backup singers that are just, and I can hear all of it.
link |
I just can't do it.
link |
And so I'd say to, of our stuff, there's a song called Half My Fault that I play in
link |
Open G that just, I love playing the song, I love that energy.
link |
And then there's, we have a new blues album coming out.
link |
And there's a song called Baby We're Through, and it just stays on the one.
link |
And for non musicians, that means like in a lot of rock and roll and blues, it's what's
link |
called a one, four, five progression from your, your kind of root note.
link |
And you would hear, if you're a non musician, if you heard it, you'd be like, oh yeah, that's
link |
And this song just stays on the same groove, like look range or shake your hips or any
link |
And it's just got this unbelievable energy and it's fun to play, but I have to keep
link |
the same rhythmic thing going for the whole song.
link |
Well, that's simplicity.
link |
I mean, the, the personality of the song can really shine me, Trey's, I mean, that guy,
link |
It just comes through.
link |
I mean, I guess you need that from a lead singer is just, you just, you gotta have that.
link |
And my other guitar player, Johnny Bob is, he's a phenomenal, I mean, like a legitimate
link |
guitar slinger, you know, we probably split the leads 70, 30.
link |
And he is just, you know, there's times, sometimes I look over at him and I'm like,
link |
I'm being a fan right now because what you just laid down is pretty good.
link |
From a lead perspective, what's the most fun thing to play?
link |
What do you, what kind of stuff do you like slow, do you like, I mean, if you, if they're
link |
like thrill is gone, there's, so if you look at BB King, sometimes one note just bending
link |
the shit out of that, what do you call that vibrato?
link |
If I'm going to play the lead, it's a certain kind of feel.
link |
Slow blues is probably my favorite to play or something that's got a little more of that
link |
Chuck Berry drive where you can be rhythmic in the lead.
link |
You know, I can't, the shredding thing that those guys do is that's not, that might.
link |
I was actually always able to do that really well.
link |
Like you mentioned people that pick up fat, like maybe it's the classical piano training.
link |
I could play super fast and guitar, super technical, but to me, the hardest thing and
link |
the, my favorite thing is, it's just, has probably less to do with a guitar, more living
link |
That's worth playing a guitar for, which is like a certain kind of emotion that you can
link |
put into the notes and that has to do with bending notes.
link |
Well, like bending notes is a whole other art form of, I worked surprisingly a long time
link |
on comfortably numb and there's, so David Gilmour does a lot of bending and they're
link |
They sound simple, but the dynamics of them to express like a build up in the way it's
link |
held and there's often a vibrato at the top for a bit, just that the, it's almost like
link |
a sigh and a sigh of relief and the build up, I mean, just the, that's an art form for
link |
him that's hard to get right.
link |
It's not just playing a note, playing a note, playing a note, it's, it's in that like dynamic
link |
movement of a note that so much can happen.
link |
That's where the blues is happens to.
link |
It's, look, I'm a huge Freddie King fan too, right, who, and you listen to these guys and
link |
they're, you sit there and they're like, man, you're, you're playing in a small range on
link |
the neck, but in, you know, if it's like, I know the notes you're playing and I'm playing
link |
them too, but not like that, right?
link |
I mean, it's in, Gilmour is certainly one of those guys that's incredible guitar player.
link |
And yet another chapter of an amazing life, you love football, like you meant, you, you
link |
What position did you play?
link |
So, maybe you can talk a little bit about your love of football and the fact that you are
link |
part owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
link |
So, I mean, where do we start to start the beginning, let's start at the end.
link |
What attracted you to the, first of all, I think not to be controversial, but one of
link |
the best uniforms in football, in terms of just the black and gold, just.
link |
DeKal only on one side.
link |
Look, I've bled black and gold since I was a little boy.
link |
I grew up in upstate New York and the first football game I ever saw was the Steelers
link |
and the Super Bowl is a really little kid and it just, I mean, Jack Lambert and Joe
link |
Green and Franco Harris and those guys were like, came down from Olympia, Mount Olympus
link |
And I just was enamored with the team and because we only had three channels, the only
link |
time I'd get to see them is occasionally when they were the game of the week or something.
link |
And I just loved, to me, what they stood for, the toughness and they played football the
link |
way that I thought was great.
link |
I was a huge Jack Lambert fan, Hall of Fame linebacker who just intimidated everybody.
link |
So that was the decade of the Steel curtain, arguably one of the great defensive in football
link |
And also one of the greatest football teams period in football history.
link |
I've been a lifelong fan and was very fortunate to meet Mr. Rooney.
link |
The Rooney family started the team in 1933, got to know him and just was asked to be part
link |
of the ownership group.
link |
I think it was the end of 2007.
link |
First year as part of the group in 2008, we won the Super Bowl and it was like beyond
link |
surreal and just beyond surreal.
link |
And you know, it's amazing to be able to do, I mean, the Rooney family is one of those
link |
most revered in sports or the way they conduct themselves.
link |
Mr. Rooney passed away, I think five years ago now and we lost him, but was a champion,
link |
helped build the league.
link |
I mean, put the league as we know it together.
link |
More importantly, was a civil rights champion who created what we now call the Rooney rule
link |
to make sure that we're being fair about giving minority coaches a chance to get hired.
link |
And just is one of the most kind and amazing human beings I've ever met.
link |
It's incredible what sport does to bring out the best in people, to give people hope, to
link |
There's something about football that has all the elements of a great sport.
link |
It's the teamwork.
link |
It's the sort of the combat aspect of it.
link |
It's the purity of it.
link |
It's of like strength and power and speed and all the elements of like last minute close
link |
calls required to win the game.
link |
And where referee decisions, of course that's essential for a sport, can screw up the whole
link |
Just got all of it together.
link |
I think just, I don't know, it gives the drama and the triumphs are just beautiful.
link |
Some of my favorite memories, I don't know if it's an accident or this is common with
link |
people is just with friends watching football and connecting over that.
link |
Well, it's, look, it's an incredible game because there's nowhere to hide, right?
link |
You're out there on the field.
link |
You know, it's a great game that requires not only all those attributes that you said,
link |
but it's incredibly complex game.
link |
So if you don't know what you're looking at and you don't understand how complex defenses
link |
are trying to disguise what they're doing, offenses are trying to overcome that.
link |
And you can set up one play the entire, you know, the entire game, but a team that plays
link |
well together, right?
link |
Knows their plays inside and out, knows their assignments inside and out, can overcome and
link |
beat a more physically gifted team because of that, you know, work that, that aspect
link |
of working together.
link |
What one of the things that I always loved about sports is just you're out there, there's
link |
a set of rules and there's a scoreboard.
link |
So at the end of that game, it says, and you can make excuses about the refs or this happened
link |
or that happened, but, you know, at the end of the day, did you go out and compete?
link |
And when you went out and we're a competitor, how did it work out, right?
link |
And the simplicity of that and the purity of that is something that I always have been
link |
What about the business of sort of owning a team or putting together a team or trying
link |
to like build up a team that's going to be a great team?
link |
Like, what are some interesting aspects that people might not realize that you can carry
link |
over from all the other experience you have in business?
link |
I think the hardest thing about professional sports right now, it's individuals getting
link |
paid money to play a sport, which is different than, it's certainly different than amateur.
link |
And you know, the decisions that are hard is when you get to know somebody who's a player
link |
on the team and either they're at the end of their career or you need to go in a different
link |
direction and that person who's done everything that you've asked, you know, whatever the
link |
coaches have asked of that person and you get close to them and then when they have
link |
to be traded, released or whatever happens, it's, you know, that's sad.
link |
And being able to stand back and in some ways be dispassionate and not be a fan, right?
link |
There's a, I'm on the Baseball Hall of Fame board and one of the guys that's on the board
link |
of me is Jerry Rheinsdorf and I think it was Jerry who said, you know, if you act like
link |
a fan, you'll be sitting with him, which I thought was kind of funny.
link |
Well, I got to push back on that a little bit as a by way of a fan asking a dumb question.
link |
Okay, let me just give some examples.
link |
It's very common in sport.
link |
It's funny you said this example of like certain great players going to another team right
link |
at the end of their career.
link |
And it always makes me sad.
link |
It almost makes me want to wish that you kind of retired right there.
link |
From a perspective of just like, do you ever, as a owner, but just in that space, think
link |
about like the Steelers in the full arc of human history.
link |
So not like as a business, okay, this question might be absurd.
link |
The good news is I don't have to think about it as a business.
link |
You could just be a fan.
link |
You know, I'm a minority owner so I can think about it almost as a fan, but I'm sorry, go
link |
Yeah, well, that's what I mean.
link |
I suppose this is a dumb question to think of like of a business in that way, not just
link |
investment, but like legacy of like what footprint would you leave on this world, on this history?
link |
That is one thing that I can say unequivocally, and I only have the experience that I have.
link |
But one of the things that I'm so proud of about the way the Steelers conduct themselves
link |
is, and that's the Rooney family, that's the legacy of the Rooney family is asking constantly
link |
about what's right for the league, what's right for the players, you know, what's the
link |
right thing to do here.
link |
And that's something that I would hear Mr. Rooney say all the time.
link |
So I think that legacy is important because ultimately the team belongs to that city,
link |
right, belongs to those fans, and you know, the owners are the custodians of that.
link |
So I think, and when you realize what sports teams mean to the fans, the memories that
link |
it creates, the bonds that it creates, it's a, you know, it's a responsibility.
link |
And I think that you do have to think beyond the, you know, certainly not just dollars
link |
and cents, but just sports is a very big deal in our society.
link |
And it has to be, I think, held to a standard that's not just, well, were we profitable
link |
That's, there are other businesses for that.
link |
It is certainly a business.
link |
I don't mean to romanticize to the point that it's not, but to me, it's more than that,
link |
or at least my experience has been that it's more than that.
link |
It's a source of meaning for millions of people.
link |
Like, and you see that most like doing COVID, for example, when there's so much desperation,
link |
so maybe people losing their jobs, so many people having to deal with the uncertainty
link |
what the future holds.
link |
There's something about sports that just unites us that, again, the tragedy and the triumphs
link |
of sport, of uniting, of gathering together with your friends, with family, shared experience
link |
of over like this, yeah, over just team, over rooting for your team, for your city.
link |
And the access, you know, again, as I alluded to, we didn't have anything when I was growing
link |
up, but I would pour through the box scores.
link |
I was a huge Yankee fan and Steeler fan and feeling some ownership of that, right, that
link |
I could read the box score and relive what they did and occasionally see them on TV and
link |
feel like I was part of that celebration when they won and everything.
link |
It's a very powerful thing.
link |
You've been exceptionally successful in a bunch of avenues and a bunch of efforts.
link |
What advice would you give to a young person a day, a high school student, a college undergraduate
link |
that's thinking about career, maybe advice not about just career, but about how to live
link |
a life they can be proud of?
link |
You know, we talked earlier about intellectual honesty and to me, that's the first step of
link |
just saying to the best of your ability, who am I and what's important to me and what
link |
do I want to do and accomplish.
link |
If you can start with that and develop some sort of rules based philosophical, here's
link |
what I'll do, what I won't do.
link |
And that way, you can be flexible and pliable and you're going to need to be, but if you
link |
still have a compass that tells you, hey, at least I know this is the path I'm going
link |
to take, I think that's very important.
link |
The rules you're referring to, the principles, that's kind of like underlying integrity,
link |
so knowing what lines you don't cross on this path.
link |
It's exactly right, because if you have those absolutes, there are many decisions that come
link |
into focus very quickly, because, hey, that's not for me, or, hey, I'm willing to do whatever
link |
it takes to do X, Y, and Z.
link |
And it has to do with the thing you were talking about.
link |
It's kind of interesting, you mentioned earlier in the conversation about slippery slope and
link |
that's how often it happens, like how the slipping into unethical behavior happens.
link |
It's the slippery slope of little adjustments, you put stuff off.
link |
And I found that to be, I've been fortunate to not have to encounter these moments very
link |
much in my life, but I still encounter them.
link |
That's what integrity, I think, looks like as the slippery slope is happening, those
link |
little things, is without drama, without making a show of it, making a decision that stands
link |
behind your principles and just walking away.
link |
And besides the big ideas, I'm going to change the world.
link |
I'm going to innovate, I'm going to do all those other things.
link |
I also start, if I'm giving any advice, which we can debate whether or not I should be giving
link |
advice, but just in terms of, well, let me start with this.
link |
Are you a good friend?
link |
Can you be counted on?
link |
Do you do what you say you're going to do, right?
link |
Are you accountable to what you sign up for and do you hold others accountable, right?
link |
What does all that look like?
link |
And then I think it's being as intellectually curious and well read as you can be.
link |
We live in a world that is designed to distract you, right?
link |
And being able to sit with your thoughts or go on a walk and think deeply about something
link |
and not just surface area, you text me, I text you back and we decide the fate of the
link |
world based on a couple of text messages or something.
link |
You don't want to lose touch, I think, with being well read and understanding and standing
link |
on great thinkers shoulders and learning from those works.
link |
And then I also think that there's resiliency and then there's grit.
link |
And I heard someone say one time that those are slightly different.
link |
And I know that there are all kinds of challenges in life that are tragic, that are unfair.
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There's no question that's the world we live in.
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But for me personally, to try as much as possible not to be in the victim mindset because unfair
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things are going to happen and we all want to live in an idealistic just world.
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That should be what we aspire to.
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I haven't seen that yet.
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I haven't experienced that yet, but yet you still have to function in that world.
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So I think that that resiliency thing is very important.
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And then putting yourself out there, right, because if you play scared and you're always
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afraid to fail, you know, this is probably a dumb way to get to the end of the podcast.
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But there are times, especially I'm out West, I love the big sky out in Montana, Idaho,
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And when you look up at night, it's almost like I've never seen anything like this before
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because there's no light pollution, so to speak.
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And sometimes when I look up, the most daunting problems that I've experienced, I'm like,
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those things have been there for a billion years or whatever, and I'll be gone and it
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doesn't, you know, the most famous person on earth 200 years ago.
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So it's pretty fleeting.
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And so make sure you have a good journey and especially coming out of COVID.
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I think telling people that you care about that you care about them and maintaining and
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cultivating your friendships and relationships, and they're not just transactional, right?
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And making sure that someday when you're laying there, you can say, yeah, I was good family
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I was a good, a good friend.
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I was someone that could be counted on.
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I think all those things go into the mix of, you know, however you want to take the journey.
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So when you look up to the stars, do you think about that quickly approaching end of yours?
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Do you think about your own mortality?
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Do you think about your death?
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Are you afraid of your death?
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I'm a huge fan of stoicism, right?
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I read a lot of stoicism.
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Like Ryan Holiday has done a great job of bringing some of that back and to the forefront.
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It's just really thought provoking to me and rings, a lot of it rings just hits me and
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says, I think that's right.
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And that momenta, memento mori thing, which is, hey, we're all going to die.
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So you should contemplate it.
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There's a finality to this thing.
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And so I think if you can rightly frame that between fretting about it every day and being
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afraid and being so laissez faire that you think, you know, you're going to, you're going
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to live forever, it'll influence some of the decisions you make, it will influence the
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way you attack things and hopefully the way that you live your life.
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So yes, I wouldn't say I obsess over it and I wouldn't say it's omnipresent.
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But because I read a lot of stoicism and just I think it's, it's right to pause and
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say, who knows, right?
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There's going to be an expiration date and if it happened tomorrow and my, have I done
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the things I wanted to do and am I the person I wanted to be?
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And I think it's important along the way to check those things.
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I try to make sure that I actually visualize this that I'm okay dying at the end of the
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day at the end of each day.
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Like if this is the last thing I do in my life is talking to you.
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I know you're joking, but I'm, I, you know, that, yeah, I'm happy I get to live the life
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And I think my mentor more, I think the, the stoics have it right.
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So you, and you have it right in saying meditate on death enough to remember that this ride
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ends pretty quickly to help you appreciate every day and the people you love, the people
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close to you and the cool shit that you're doing in your life, the cool shit you're creating
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and the fact that you, Mr. Thomas tall are playing with the motherfucking rolling stones
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You are the man in so many disciplines, so, so respect is so successful.
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It's truly an honor.
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You sit down and talk with me today, Thomas, thank you so much for showing up in Texas
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and for talking on this little podcast.
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Oh, it's great, man.
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I'm a huge fan of the show and I've had a great time hanging with you and really appreciate
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Thomas tall to support this podcast.
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Please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now let me leave you with some words from Mick Jagger and the rolling stones.
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You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you'll get
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.