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