Business Brainstorm: SAT Prep Cartoons, The Onion For Millennial Moms & More
No Phone, New Ideas, Clean Tampons - July 22, 2024 (9 months ago) • 01:00:48
Transcript:
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Shaan Puri | Anyways, this was my Sunday brainstorm. My Sunday brainstorm was: here are three cool ideas.
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Sam Parr | Dude, let's do a life update because frankly, you and I mostly talk to each other. I mean, we spend so much time on this podcast that we don't even talk that much. I want to know what's going on with you, and I'll fill you in on what's going on with me.
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Shaan Puri | I did a thing I've never really done before. It's not groundbreaking; I'm sure you or many people have done this, but I hadn't.
Friday hit, and I just put my phone in a drawer. I didn't touch it until this morning. So, I had a no-phone weekend, which was pretty awesome and very unusual for me.
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Sam Parr | You're not good at that. Like, you're hardcore about your phone. So, tell me how that felt.
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Shaan Puri | It felt like withdrawals from an addiction. I would find my... there were funny things, and then there were little moments where I would notice it a lot more, right?
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Sam Parr | So, like, grabbing your pants all the time.
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Shaan Puri | Just keep patting my pocket like I would put my kids in their car seat, shut the door, and I'm walking around the car to get to my side. I instinctively am trying to pat to check my phone. Why do I need to check my phone in this three-second break that I have walking around my car? It's pretty crazy.
There were just like a hundred moments like that where I instinctively wanted to go and, you know, just pull to refresh. Basically, I needed to go see a feed. It's like I need to get my feed.
So, you know, it was nice to do that. I found myself doing random things. I was humming a lot, I read a lot. Our kids are kind of picky eaters, and we haven't really taught them to eat very well on their own. So, we feed them every meal basically still.
I'm sitting there feeding them, and normally I've got my phone, they've got their cartoons. We're basically all just cartooned up, and I'm just shoving bites of mac and cheese in their mouths. It really slowed me down. Time went way slower, but not in a bad way necessarily. It was a lot more peaceful, I would say. Also, it was part of the upside of not having my phone. | |
Sam Parr | Did you use your computer, Apple TV, or cable TV?
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Shaan Puri | This morning, the rule was that I didn't have to be without the internet or any entertainment. I didn't go Amish; I was allowed to watch TV and use my laptop if the opportunity presented itself.
But on the weekends, I'm pretty much fully in dad mode, so I'm not really on the computer a whole lot. Even just the physical distance of having the computer in your pocket all the time versus saying, "Okay, I guess if I want to go on the internet, I'm allowed to." I'm allowed to go on Twitter if I want to, but I just have to go to my computer, open it up, type in the thing, and then, you know, I can only be on my laptop for so long, basically.
So that was a very good break, and it's something I'm going to do a lot more of because I don't like the idea of being addicted to something. By any definition, I'm completely addicted to my phone. If I don't have it, I kind of freak out a little bit. I'm like, "I gotta go get my phone. Hold on, wait, wait, wait, whatever we're doing, I gotta go get my phone. I left my phone in the other room." It's pretty crazy that that's the case.
I find myself instinctively reaching into my pockets or really wondering, "What time is it? Did somebody text me?" It's like, who cares? I don't really need any of this.
Did you follow the news? Well, that was, of course, the craziest thing. While I'm not on my phone, my wife is like, "Oh my God, Trump got shot!" I'm like, "Oh man, this is the one thing that the craziest news in the world happens, testing my resolve here."
So I did get on my laptop a little bit later to check out what was going on and read all the crazy stuff, but I stayed off my phone, so I was good.
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Sam Parr | Have you ever heard of No Fap November? Yeah, so...
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Shaan Puri |
I like how you just said that as if it's like a scientific phenomenon. You were like, "Have you ever heard of mitosis? It's when the cells split." Like, yeah, okay, we're just gonna rebrand it... "Have you ever heard of No Fap November?"
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Sam Parr |
Well, I think that's a great movement, and they mix it with humor or whatever, but there's a reason to do it. So basically, for people who don't know, it's just guys who don't jerk off for November. I don't know if the rules are you can't have sex or if it's just masturbation... I don't know what the rules are.
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Shaan Puri | But I don't know. I never paid... I never made it past day 2, so I couldn't tell you.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, clearly not into it. We gotta have a cute, funny brand for like "No Phone Weekend" or something like that, you know what I mean?
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Shaan Puri | No, no. Scroll Sundays.
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Sam Parr |
"No Scroll Sundays" is good, but a lot of my Jewish friends and family, you know, they do no phones from Friday evening to Saturday evening. They all say the same thing: "This is the best... it's wonderful."
So we have to do a take on that, and we'll have to have some type of a cute way to do like Friday to Sunday no phone, right?
Have you seen people who *raw dog* flights?
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, dude, that is so funny! So, explain what it is for people who don't know. It's so funny.
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Sam Parr | So, "raw dogging" a flight is what I think. It's mostly men. So, men are like, I'm...
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Shaan Puri | I can't imagine a girl would ever care to do this.
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Sam Parr |
"Raw dogging" a flight is when a guy goes on a Delta plane and, you know how when you fly, you see the plane going across America on the screen? That's all you see. It's guys who will just stare at that for the entire time. No music, no phone, no books... they just "raw dog" it.
I think it is the funniest thing going on right now. I love raw dogging flights!
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Shaan Puri |
Yeah, exactly. I think it's hilarious. I'm big on this though, this idea of "control your inputs." I think it applies to all facets of life:
- Control the foods that you put in your mouth
- Control the information you put in your mind
- Control the people you let into your world
- Control the number of problems you are willing to make your problem
I think that is probably the most underrated skill you can have as somebody who's trying to lead a good life: learning how to control your inputs.
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Sam Parr | So, we're doing a little bit of a life update. I was going to say that one of my updates is I am not really reading the news a lot. Honestly, I don't have Twitter on my phone.
The news, man, particularly this weekend when a lot of crazy stuff went down, is exhausting me. Current events, I find, wear me out. I'm just trying to refer mostly to books when I want entertainment, as opposed to just scrolling through the news. It kills me, dude. It wears you out. | |
Shaan Puri | A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I used to get a lot of shit for this. I don't watch the news; I never have. I don't have a news app on my phone, and I don't typically follow news social accounts.
You know, obviously, some news just brute forces its way into your world. That's kind of what happened this weekend with the shooting and stuff like that. But for the most part, I completely abstain from the news. I used to feel somewhat ashamed of that, like I was kind of ignorant. It just wasn't really interesting to me. It wasn't very hard for me to abstain from it, but I used to call you out on that.
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Sam Parr | I called you out on that one time when we were just hanging out off air. I was like, "You're not a good citizen."
Now I've done a 180. I'm like, no, what's going on in most cases isn't important.
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Shaan Puri | Well, my trainer gave me a great perspective on it. He was like, it was one of the years when the election was going on, or maybe it was like the state elections or something like that. Everybody was talking about voting, and every time it was kind of getting heated, as politics tends to do.
He just said something in passing. He was like, "I don't worry about the government. I'm trying to govern myself. I found that I can't even govern myself. What am I worried about what's going on across the country in Washington, D.C.? I can't govern myself yet."
So he's like, "I focus on that. If we all did that, society would actually be in a much better place if we all learned to govern ourselves a little bit better."
When he was talking about the current election cycle, somebody was criticizing him. They were like, "Oh, well, you know, you're not doing your civic duty." He responded, "I don't know about what you think your civic duty is. I'm in the grocery store, I'm helping the old lady, I'm over here talking to a friend. I see a kid doing something, I give him a compliment. You know, there are many ways that you could be a good member of society. Just being fully up to date on the news and having an opinion on everything, or downloading today's big problem, is not necessarily the only way to do it."
I kind of like that idea of governing yourself first, then being a positive influence in your grocery store and the places around you. That seems like a much better way to actually have an effect than just siphoning off CNN all day.
What else you got in the life update corner? Anything else, Gabe?
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Sam Parr |
For me, I'm currently in Connecticut where I'm staying for a little while. I go to the beach every morning and I go to the beach most evenings at 8:30 after the baby's gone to sleep. [My baby is] 9 months old. [I] walk in.
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Shaan Puri | What are you doing on the beach?
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Sam Parr | Dude, I have a scooter, like an electric scooter. It has an odometer. I have gone through sand.
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Shaan Puri | What do you mean?
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Sam Parr | No, like I ride from my house to the beach, which is a mile away. Oh, I have 2,000 miles on this scooter. I drive it everywhere. There are times I'll go two weeks without driving a car; I just drive a scooter everywhere.
I'm nine months into having a kid, and it's the best! I'm so freaking happy. I genuinely feel like a happier human being. I had a little mini... not midlife crisis, but I've been asking myself, like, "What's the point of this or that?"
I've asked myself about all types of things, like, "Why do I care about this? Why am I doing this?" Being more intentional. I think it's because I'm so happy. When you get happy and you have less of a chip on your shoulder, that's kind of a weird feeling if you've spent years grinding and things like that.
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Shaan Puri | Oh, you're saying you're asking the question because you're happy?
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Sam Parr | Yeah, because I'm happy. I'm like, "Why am I doing this or that?" You know what I mean? You start questioning things. So, I'm really happy right now. That's kind of like the biggest update from me.
Alright, guys, really quick. Back when I was running The Hustle, we had this premium newsletter called Trends. The way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts and created this sort of playbook for researching different companies, ideas, and emerging trends to help you make money and build businesses.
Well, HubSpot did something kind of cool. They took this playbook that we developed and gave to our analysts, and they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that anyone can download. It breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcoming trends and identifying different companies that are going to explode and grow really quickly.
It's pretty awesome that they took this internal document that we had for teaching our analysts how to do this and turned it into a tool that they are giving away for free. Anyone can download it! So, if you want to stay ahead of the game and find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea exist, this is the ultimate guide.
If you want to check it out, you can see the link down below in the description. Now, back to the show. | |
Shaan Puri | I'm with you. I got two things. I saw a great Seinfeld clip the other day. It was Seinfeld talking, and he goes, "You know why I believe in God?" The guy goes, "Why?" He replies, "God made it so that people who don't have kids don't know what they're missing. That's the nicest thing they could ever do for somebody."
I thought, "Oh wow, that's a really powerful way of putting it." Because I'm the same way. My cup feels incredibly full just because of what's going on in my house, regardless of anything else.
Not to get too sentimental, but it's pretty awesome. For everybody who's out there on the fence or wants to wait, it really is amazing. It is a hard-to-describe phenomenon how good it feels, especially when your kid is pretty young. Right? She's only, what, less than a year old? Once they're like 2, 3, or 4, and you can play with them, it is such a golden period of time.
I do have a life story here—our little life hack.
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Sam Parr | What's that?
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Shaan Puri | So, we go to a birthday party, a kids' birthday party. There are a bunch of 3 and 4-year-olds running around, and it's at a park. It's like a park with a splash area where water is coming out of the ground.
We show up, and I notice something. All the parents are standing on one side, kind of like standing in the heat, sweating, trying to get shade. Just, you know, when a kid runs up needing a drink of water, they give him water, and then the kid runs back to play. The parents are all making sort of awkward small talk with each other, and you can just see they're looking at their watches. They're ready to get out of there. It's like, "Okay, we'll be here for an hour, then we gotta go do the next thing."
So, my kids run in, and while we're walking up to the party, I see a fork in the road. It's like I could take the right path and hang out with these parents, or I could just run around with my shirt off into the splash pads.
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Sam Parr | Wait, was this during the past weekend?
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Shaan Puri | I chose the road less traveled. I went down to the splash pad and I had so much fun. I just played with my kids. I'm up in the playground, we're going to the splash pad, we're playing tag, and we're doing like a water fight. I just had a blast!
Two hours go by, and I look over. All the other parents are still just sweating and waiting. What I realized was the great parenting hack. Before I had a kid, I did read a couple of books about, you know, "What to Expect When You're Expecting" or whatever, like how to be a dad. I wanted to be good at something, so I reread a couple of books to see if there was any good information in there.
Now, I have a book that I'll write, which has one line in it: "Don't worry about being a dad, just be a kid." The best part about kids is that they keep you fresh. They keep you playing. You have to act like you're astonished and find things fascinating to get them excited about things. It actually makes you excited and more curious because you're doing that for them.
The other part of it is that the easiest way to be a parent is to literally just play with your kid 80 to 90% of the time. Sure, 10% of the time you snap back into adult mode and make sure that the train doesn't go completely off the rails. But I found that I have so much more fun as a dad if I just lean in and completely play with them all day.
I don't know why more parents don't do this. I'm in gymnastics class, doing cartwheels, I'm on the trampoline—I'm doing all the things with them. Because if I have to be there anyway, I might as well have a good time. That's contagious for them. They have a better time, I'm in a better mood, which makes me more patient. It's a complete life hack. | |
Sam Parr | Dude, I could just see you bounce around gymnastics and break some kid's *fucking* femur because you sit on it.
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Shaan Puri | Well, definitely not everything is built for me. So, you know, there's definitely been some spills. But yeah, it was great!
I woke up yesterday, and I literally went to a coffee shop, hit up a donut shop, and then went to soccer class. I'm playing soccer in the class, and after soccer, we just wanted to play some more sports. Four other kids joined me, so it was me, my kids, and four other random kids all just playing soccer afterwards.
Then we went to the pool and were in the pool for three hours. When we came home, they were playing Smash Kart, which is this version of Mario Kart that my kids are able to play because they're toddlers. We played that, then had a little bit of dinner, read some books, and then went to bed.
It was like I was just a kid for the whole day, and therefore, I had a great day.
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Sam Parr | Are you going to have more? You've got 3. How many more would you want to do?
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Shaan Puri | No, my cup runneth over. I'm full. I am completely happy as is. I don't really feel the need to have any more kids. | |
Sam Parr | I've got Sarah bought into 3, but in my head, I'm like, "Yeah, you know, if we're going 3, then 5 would be interesting," right? You know what I mean? I definitely am currently in the "more is better" camp, but I don't have to push it out, so it's easy for me to say.
But no, man, being a dad is awesome. It has to completely change things. I tweeted this out before we had kids, like years ago, and I was like, because I had a bunch of friends who were doing psychedelics because they felt lost. Some of them kind of went over the edge where they took too many and started acting a little weird. I'd be like, "Hey, are you okay?"
I just think that having a child kind of filled that void for me, where I didn't feel like I needed to do psychedelics because I didn't have a lack of meaning, right? So it's been really... it just makes me happy. But you've got a lot of interesting topics here.
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Shaan Puri |
I got a lot of interesting stuff. Okay, so I have 3 ideas that I want to pitch you. I'm going to basically tell you about a cool business and then I'm going to tell you an idea I think somebody could start that's similar to that cool business.
The first one is Sketchy. Have you ever seen Sketchy.com? It is kind of an incredible business idea. I'm sort of jealous I didn't start this business. So if you go to Sketchy.com, what do you see?
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Sam Parr | Alright, learning made unforgettable sketchy turns. What you need to know is how to turn it into creative visual stories you'll remember forever. Oh, this is awesome!
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Shaan Puri | Right, basically it's about learning to take the MCATs or the medical board exams with cartoons and drawings instead of boring textbooks.
What they did was create a Kaplan or a Princeton Review-type of test prep business, but they did two things:
1. They focused on a specific niche—med students. So, before you get into medical school, you want to take the MCATs, or after you're in med school, you're going through your medical classes and then eventually the boards.
2. The twist was that they recognized some people prefer to learn in a way that's much more visual and friendly—easier to remember—rather than traditional learning.
I love this because, A, that's how I like to learn. It sounds more fun and interesting. There's actually a bunch of science around why we learn better through visuals.
It's similar to what we talked about last time regarding jingles—how a catchy earworm is a much better way to remember something. | |
Sam Parr |
So it's basically storytelling and cartoons to teach you things, specifically for doctors for test prep. Do they make all of the cartoons and you pay a monthly fee?
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Shaan Puri | Yep, that's exactly it.
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Sam Parr | Right. Alright. | |
Shaan Puri | And so, this business—I saw this and I was like, "Wow, this is a great idea!"
It's also just like a cool business. It's a cool thing to do with your life. It's kind of like Khan Academy, when the guy's like, "Yeah, actually, I just kind of want to make a course for everything on the internet for free."
It's just him kind of talking, writing things out, and trying to explain things. I'm a pretty good explainer, and that's how he started—just to explain things to his own nephews or whatever. Then he published it on the internet, and people liked it.
I really like this business because I think it has a cool mission. I think it's a cool business model, and I think that it's a fun product that I'm glad exists.
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Sam Parr | And what's the business model? Because it looks like educators use that. So, how does it work? Do they work with schools?
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Shaan Puri |
I'm sure they do a bunch of things. My thinking is that this is... it's very simple. It's your student who wants to pass an exam. That's the **bleeding neck problem**. That's the highest urgency problem, and so they're going to...
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Sam Parr | It's bleeding.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, I probably can't say that anymore.
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Sam Parr | It's bleeding. It's a neck problem. Your...
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Shaan Puri | Friend, no. It used to be "hair on fire." That's what Dave McClure said. Then somebody said "bleeding neck." I like that too. | |
Sam Parr | My God. Alright.
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Shaan Puri | So, I think that's the thing. If somebody wants to pass a test, they need help studying for it. They see this and they're like, "Oh, this seems like more fun to do than the other way."
You pay something like $25 to $50 a month for this, and you sign up for a 6, 12, or 24-month plan. Then you go through it and you're like, "Wow, that was actually a really useful way to study."
Now, the next test happens. Maybe it's your board exam, or maybe it's just a really hard course in med school. They have kind of the supplemental thing for anybody on their med school journey.
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Sam Parr | Wow, the only article I could find about them is from 2020, where it says that they're doing, I think, $8,000,000 in revenue. Did they also raise $30,000,000?
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, they raised $30,000,000. It says on their website that 500,000 students have used their service. That's a lot; that's a big number.
But I think a business like this is set to dominate a niche. Test prep is a proven business model, and this takes a 20% twist on it, which is the visual cartoon aspect.
By the way, what an amazing name: **Sketchy.com**! I think that's such an awesome name for a business like this. I believe this is a great business. Congrats to the people who did this; I think this is really cool.
So now, what's the idea? I tried to convince... Do you remember Dylan and Henry, the guys behind...
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Sam Parr | Clips or... | |
Shaan Puri | Smart Nonsense and Clips. These, basically, if you don't know them, they're young guys. We met them because they came to our house and built out our podcast studio. They were fans.
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Sam Parr | Of Podcast College. | |
Shaan Puri | And then what they started doing was they had their own podcast. They would cut clips for our podcast, and then they started cutting clips for "All In." So right when "All In" blew up, they were the ones doing the animated clips for them.
They got popular there and then created an agency called Clips, where you can hire a video editor from them. For example, a video editor in the Philippines is a really good animator who can, for a monthly fee, be your animator. That business is doing well, reaching kind of low seven figures in annual revenue.
Then they started using their own animators to do their own YouTube content, and they both blew up on YouTube. Henry has, I don't know, millions of subscribers now on YouTube, and he'll just do really short-form animations.
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Sam Parr | Are really good! I've never seen someone take shorts that seriously.
So for the listener, it's basically him talking, and he's clearly got a green screen behind him because you see all these weird, interesting animations pop up to interact with him and what he's saying. It's awesome!
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Shaan Puri | And so, those guys are awesome. I really see a lot of myself in them. I don't know how old they are; I think they're like 25-ish years old. They remind me so much of how I was when I was 24, 25, or 26.
I really like these guys, and I think they do a bunch of dumb stuff, by the way. But that's okay; I did so much more dumb stuff when I was their age. They are way ahead of where I was.
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Sam Parr | Allegedly showing up to a meeting without a shirt on.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, they show... well, you can tell that story. That's a good story.
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Sam Parr | I don't remember if it was them, but that seems like something in their wheelhouse, in their genre—the story.
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Shaan Puri | We got them a contract with HubSpot to do clips for us and other things. I guess they showed up to one of the video calls without a shirt on, which is cool by me, actually. You know, it's common practice where I'm from. But I guess that didn't fly so well in the Fortune 500. So maybe they lost that contract. I don't know exactly if that was the reason or maybe a contributing factor to it.
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Sam Parr | They get a pass. They get a pass because they're like 21 and they've redeemed themselves. So, I don't think they're doing good. I don't want to criticize them.
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Shaan Puri | They're doing great. So, I went to them and said, "Guys, you should make this but for the SATs." Do this for the SATs or for APs or IB exams. Start!
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Sam Parr | That's a great idea.
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Shaan Puri | But I was like, "This is a great idea, and there's no one on earth better built to do this than you two." Because of their skill set, they're amazing storytellers. They are really good with animated cartoons and stuff.
I don't know if you've seen their newsletter, but they have this snail newsletter. It's great! They created this character and tell great stories through it. I'm like, "Dude, just do that! But instead of doing it for free for random subjects on the internet, charge for it and do it for something that people are willing to pay for, which is test prep." People need to pass this test and move on to the next phase of their life.
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Sam Parr | Why would they not do that? That sounds so much better than... I mean, I was in the newsletter business. The newsletter business is hard. This sounds way better.
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Shaan Puri | And I tried to tell them, I was like, "Guys, if that's okay or good, this is what great would look like in the same genre."
Like, the same work you're doing, just applied in a different way. They were like, "We agree with you, but we just don't want to do it. We were going to have more fun doing this other stuff."
Like, we don't know what, but maybe these other three ideas. And I was like, "Hey, honestly, more power to you! You know, that's actually cool. I support you guys in that."
But now I can give the idea away for free out here. I wrote them a business plan; I wrote them a Google Doc and I was like, "Here's how I would do it. Here's how we'll go to market. Here's how we'll charge for it. I'll fund it. Just do this, guys!"
This is how you disrupt a Kaplan or a Princeton Review. You take your black belt that they have in social media content. They are top 1% level content creators. But instead of competing for free views in the free market of social media, apply it in this place that's really backwards and stodgy and hasn't changed in 30 years, which is test prep for the SATs or test prep for the GMATs or whatever.
And so I think somebody could still go do this. I think somebody could take Sketchy and do it in another niche. You could do it in whatever it is—dentistry, nursing, whatever. And I'm sure Sketchy will try to do some of those things. It doesn't matter. I think this pie is big enough.
If you just take the principles of what they did, I think you could have a lot of success with it. So that's idea number one. What do you think of that idea?
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Sam Parr | What was sketchy? So that's actually one of the better ones that we've talked about. But sketchy wasn't always sketchy. What were they doing before? Because they launched in 2013, or did it take 7 years to get to $7,000,000 in revenue? Because that's pretty...
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Shaan Puri | I don't know their full backstory yet. Then I see, of course, Churnin Group is the one who put $30,000,000 into them. I'm like, "Goddamn it!" Everything I find that I'm like, "Oh, this is cool, this is interesting, I'm ahead of the curve," it's like, "Oh, you know, yeah, Churnin funded us, you know, a year ago."
Right? We did an episode on the guy, the gardening guy at Epic Gardening, and I'm like, "Dude, this guy could be big. Actually, this could be really huge." I'm trying to tell people, and they're like, "What? Gardening? I've never heard of that."
I go to them and I'm like, "Hey dude, I will write you a big check. Let me fund you. I really believe in you." He's like, "We're all good on funding. Churnin gave me like, I don't know, whatever, $20,000,000 like a year ago." It's like, "Oh damn, wow! How are they ahead of me on all of these?"
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Sam Parr | I'm gonna give this a 9 out of 10. I think this is great. I think this is awesome.
Alright, I think this is sketchy. It's a great one. Now, the next one: Babylon Bee.
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Shaan Puri | Yes.
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Sam Parr | Have you lived under a rock a little bit?
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Shaan Puri | I'm not saying this is new, but I don't think most people really appreciate this. If you haven't seen it, it's a satirical news site. It's like The Onion, but just a variation of it. They have been around for a little while, but they seem to be getting more and more popular.
I think a big part of it is that Elon retweets them a lot. So if you're on Twitter, you see them because, A, they put out good content, but B, they had a turbo boost from the most popular guy on Twitter.
I've seen this, and I'm like, "Wow, this business model is really interesting to me." It's a media company, but it has such a different approach.
The way a media company grows is by making content that's worth spreading. There's a tension for most companies because you need to write what's going on; you want to be trusted. But then you kind of need to clickbait the shit out of everything to get people to click and come to your site.
You're constantly in this dilemma: too much clickbait and you lose trust; too much trust and factuality leads to too much dryness. Nobody clicks on my thing, nobody shares it, nobody reacts to it, and nobody gets outraged and reposts it saying, "This is bullshit." That's what gets people to share.
So you kind of want to outrage people or get them to share something, but then you don't want to be overly sensationalist. So they always have...
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Sam Parr |
This tension... and by the way, I ran a company that was a media company that made money on advertising, and I hated that feeling that you're describing. I thought email would solve it—a newsletter instead of a website—which it did. It actually helped solve it.
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Shaan Puri | The news that comes to you.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, it helped. But I was so mad that this existed. So I thought subscriptions would solve that. We launched a subscription model that, within year one, was doing like $5,000,000 in revenue. It still doesn't solve it; you still have to play the same game. | |
Shaan Puri | A newsletter monetizes so much better than just a general news website.
You could have a 1,000,000 subscriber newsletter, and that business should be doing $5 to $10 million a year. I would say, in broad strokes, a million subscribers should get you $5 million or more in revenue.
If you do a news website and you get 1,000,000 visitors a month... | |
Sam Parr | That ain't shit.
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Shaan Puri | That ain't shit. You might not be doing anything.
So, like, you know the Babylonian Bee or whatever? The Babylon Bee, these guys are doing over 25,000,000 visits to their site. The biggest newsletters in the world don't have 25,000,000 subscribers or readers. So, it's a different game. It's a volume game when you're trying to make a media destination versus a newsletter.
Anyways, I guess the thing I'm trying to say is the underrated part of these media sites is this tension—the inherent tension between trust and viral, kind of like spreadability.
The beautiful thing about this category, where you go and try to be the Onion, you do fake news as a service, you do satire, is that it doesn't need to be factually correct. So, you only have to win on that one dimension, which is shareability. In this case, people will share because it's funny, and they'll share because it strikes a chord with them. That's why this has spread so quickly.
The backstory of this, I think, was started by one guy, and then he kind of sold it to the two writers.
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Sam Parr |
Well, you're missing a big part here, which is... The Onion, which is a satire website. Although most satirical websites are left-leaning, this one is right-leaning. I think it also has a Christian component to it a little bit. Yeah, so whereas many of these things tend to be left of center, this is right of center.
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Shaan Puri | Exactly. So, that's where I'm going to get to with the opportunity. The guy who started this calls himself a "Christian entrepreneur." He started off doing Christian cartoons, and now the guys who write it lean more conservative than they do the other way.
However, I think there's a lot more to consider. The world is not just liberal and conservative; there are about a hundred other variations and segments of the market that could be served within this same category.
So, I'll give you two ideas that I think someone should pursue. First, I believe someone could create a far more right-wing version of this. These guys are super right. They are conservative but still kind of more centrist than fully right. If you go read sites like Drudge or Infowars, there's a whole appetite in the world for really far-right content.
But here's another angle altogether that is not political at all: just do "The Onion," but only for fake news articles that appeal to millennial moms. Millennial moms follow a certain set of news subjects. It may be a little less about sports, but maybe they watch "The Bachelor," so they understand the memes. Perhaps they are following Taylor Swift or whatever other topics are of interest.
Create "The Onion" for that category because it's a very valuable market. By the way, this might already exist; I have no idea. I don't even know how you would search for this, but I think that would be a very successful version of "The Onion" or "The Babylon Bee" that is not political at all. It's the same concept—poking fun at a certain set of popular subjects—but make those subjects appeal to a different customer than the one who reads "The Onion" or "The Babylon Bee."
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Sam Parr | Here's why I know that this is true about the millennial mom. We had a couple over who have a 1-year-old, and when the kids started crying, I went to grab a bunch of toys to entertain him. I thought, "Oh, I bet you haven't seen this thing," and I started using this puppet or whatever.
The mom said, "Yeah, we have this toy, we have that toy. In fact, all of the toys that you have, we have the exact same ones." I realized that they clearly follow the same three people on Instagram and read the same blogs, so they have bought all of the same stuff.
I was shocked at how the millennial mother operates. There are probably like six buckets, and it's just a different persona for each thing. But for each bucket, it's like, "Just buy all of this stuff, read all of this stuff." It's so interesting. Do you know what I mean?
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. But I think every segment's that way, right? I think there's a Joe Rogan bro version of that where it's like, "Oh, let me guess your favorite podcast: Rogan, Huberman." Right? Let me guess, you cold plunge. Let me guess, you do this. Let me guess if you could kind of predict their life if you know one or two things about them.
There's, I don't know, a giant cluster of people that will fit that description. Not everybody, of course, but there's a giant cluster of people. And that's kind of what you need when you're doing media. You need a giant cluster of people who kind of have a taste match.
So I think you take that business model and apply it to a new segment. And again, this might already exist; it doesn't really matter. You don't have to be the first; you just have to be successful at it, which means just do a good job at it.
I think the way to start this, by the way, would just be Instagram. You just make an Instagram account. You don't even need a website. Just make an Instagram account that's doing these kind of funny news things. There's a version of this in sports that I follow where they're supposed to like funny sports, like fake sports headlines that make fun of the NBA. I think that can be done so many times over, and I think it's probably one of the easiest ways to build a media business.
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Sam Parr | You know what's interesting? The guy who started the Babylon Bee, you said he sold it. His personal website is called adam4ddot.com. It's all dedicated to webcomics, which is intriguing because that's similar to what, what's his name, Dylan and Henry do. Who owns Babylon Bee now?
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Shaan Puri |
I think it's Seth and Dan... There's like these... I think the main writers now. It says in 2018 he sold it to them. He kept a stake until 2023 when he sold the remaining stake to the Dillon brothers.
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Sam Parr | Do you know who owns The Onion?
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Shaan Puri | Oh, isn't it the guy who started Twilio or something?
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Sam Parr |
The guy who started Twilio... So instead of rich billionaires, you know, they like to... Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, one of those Facebook guys bought... I forget some other one. You know, Marc Benioff I think bought Time. Jeff Lawson, I think his name is, he bought The Onion, which is actually like an interesting purchase.
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Shaan Puri |
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. By the way, that's what I like my billionaires doing, right? Do interesting things. Go buy *The Onion*, make sure *The Onion* doesn't die because I think *The Onion* was kinda dying, right? He's trying to save it, he's trying to like reverse it out of pretty much bankruptcy.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, so the Onion has been around since 1988. It's been around forever.
It's a tough business to run, particularly in the last eight years where digital media has just been challenging. It's hard because when you think about the media business, it's primarily advertising. Who's going to want to advertise on an article that's fake? Do you know what I mean?
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Shaan Puri | Maybe I don't know. I think that if you could curate the right high-value audience and they trust your voice to talk about a subject, it's kind of like comedians, right?
Why do people sponsor comedy podcasts? It's like, "Dude, these guys are vulgar. They're just saying random stuff. This is not smart information; this is whatever." But they have a trusted audience. The audience trusts them, and so when they do the ad read, people dig it. People trust them because they've kept it real on all these other subjects.
So I think you could do it there. I think there's not that big of a gap between a comedy brand and a comedy podcast, for example. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I think the difference is that a lot of people think that the Babylon Bee and stuff like that is real. They share it as if it's real. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, that's actually a massive issue. Let's do the last one: toxic tampons.
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Shaan Puri | Yes, so I saw this tweet about a TikTok that went viral. There was a TikTok of a woman walking through a store, and she's in the tampon aisle. She's talking about all the big brands, like Tampax, and 5 billion people saw this video because Berkeley released a paper basically saying, "Hey, the popular tampons all have toxic metals, arsenic, and other contaminants in them."
So that's concerning. There's a moment here where I think, I don't know who the leading player is doing native deodorant for tampons, but whoever that is, they're in a good position. If nobody's doing it, someone should go do that. Even if someone is doing it, I still think it's a good idea.
It seems like there's a general trend of people being concerned about gut health, microplastics, and whether their water is clean or if there are contaminants and heavy metals in it. Well, this seems like another category that I think is going to get transformed. I think people are not going to want to use tampons if you can leverage the fear, uncertainty, and doubt around their safety. I believe you could build a new kind of alternative clean brand around it.
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Sam Parr |
What I'm trying to prevent here is a bunch of dudes talking about stuff where, like, every woman listening is thinking, "Yeah, we know. We use these 8 brands." Do you know what I mean? So I actually... I have no idea. Could be.
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Shaan Puri | Could very well be, and I would love to be educated. Feel free to DM me.
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Sam Parr | I'll tell you what, in my home, I only see the popular stuff.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, and in general, I don't know how many $100,000,000 companies—$100,000,000 a year revenue businesses—are there that are doing this. Trust me, there will be one, there will be two, there will be three that are in this category.
The current incumbents will either adapt or be replaced by alternatives that are going to play on these health concerns. This is not going to go nowhere.
Look at your detergents, look at your soaps, look at your deodorants. This has happened in pretty much every other category. They're going to do it here, and this is a great product because it has a high margin and repeat purchase.
You know, the other thing is that women's products tend to be underserved compared to the ideas that most guys have around what businesses they'll go start. So, you can kind of compete in a less saturated field than, you know, making to-do list apps or whatever the average bro idea will be.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, and what's interesting is that with a lot of these brands, they'll be like, "I need to come up with some innovative new thing."
Our friend Moiz, when he was selling Native Deodorant, had a conversation with the buyer of the company. The buyer asked, "Well, how are you going to expand?"
He replied, "Well, can you write the word 'Native' on some all-natural shampoo?"
And they're like, "Yeah."
He goes, "That's how you're gonna expand."
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Shaan Puri | Do you guys have a printer to do that? Yeah, would you be able to type this if I give you the font? Could you type it on a shampoo bottle?
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Sam Parr | Yeah, alright. Just wait.
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Shaan Puri | We should be good then.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, and so with a lot of these brands, you don't really need a significantly more innovative product. You just have to be able to make it clean enough that you can accurately describe it as a "better for you" alternative. But it doesn't need to be a significant change.
It's not like Native Deodorant was original; there were plenty of people selling it. They just weren't savvy, go-getter entrepreneurs. They were like hippies, you know, who were selling it on Etsy.
In fact, let's do this: go to Etsy and look up tampons. Let's just see what's available. | |
Shaan Puri | I like how you're making me do it so I get targeted for these ads. All natural! There we go, getting some interesting results that are...
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Sam Parr | Well, I was going to say what I'm looking for is an all-natural tampon, really like a cup.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, yeah, not that natural what I found, but we can take this out. So, I find this one, right? The Honeypot Company: 100% organic regular tampons, unscented, organic cotton with a bioplastic applicator. No chlorine, no pesticides. | |
Sam Parr | No fritters, I'm like...
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Shaan Puri | Oh great! In and review. First review: a very good coffee. Alright, looks like we still got some work to do with this idea.
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Sam Parr | Wait, wait, wait. Go back to that. What's going on with them? Why is that like that?
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Shaan Puri | It must be that the shop has other products in it. And that's for the shop; it's like reviews from the shop, not the product. Yeah, okay, the shop has herbal teas and other things too. | |
Sam Parr | A tampon coffee company? Yeah.
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Shaan Puri | But anyway, this was my Sunday brainstorm. My Sunday brainstorm included three cool ideas:
1. **Sketchy** - This involves doing visual learning in the medical space.
2. **The Babylon Bee** - This is a satire news website that has taken off, focusing on conservative political news.
3. A **TikTok** that was going viral, which obviously tapped into some concerns people have. It resonated with the public around the toxicity, metals, and arsenic found in popular tampon brands.
For each of these ideas, I think you could just take a 20% remix and do it. I think for Sketchy, you could...
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Sam Parr | I agree.
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Shaan Puri | You could use Sketchy for another test or another customer segment. Maybe it's for students, SAT takers, or some obscure test—who knows?
I think you could do it for... I think that the Babylon Bee could be done for other customer groups or segments. Like, the millennial mom is the one I would go for.
And third would be this dude... Dude, native deodorant for tampons. Maybe there's somebody doing it, but this is my Sunday brainstorm of three ideas. They may not be great ideas, but they'll at least get the wheels turning in your brain. This is...
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Sam Parr | Kind of the promise I have here is that we gotta keep your phone away from you for other weekends. This is good stuff.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. This is what happens when I don't have my phone.
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Sam Parr | I want to talk about one more thing. I don't want MFM to talk about politics because I don't think that's fun. I think this is a little bit of an escape.
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Shaan Puri | I was gonna start the podcast with, you know, Sam and I have both sold newsletter businesses. So we feel pretty qualified to chime in here on...
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Sam Parr | Yeah, yeah. | |
Shaan Puri | What's going on in our country? Because that's how every business and tech podcast is. They're just like, "You know, as a venture capitalist where I started my career investing in early-stage tech companies, I just feel pretty qualified to talk to you about what's going on in the Supreme Court right now."
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Sam Parr | It's maddening, man. That's maddening, and I don't want to become that. But I saw that you're into Teddy Roosevelt.
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Shaan Puri |
Well, I went down this rabbit hole, right? So I'm like, the crazy Trump stuff happens and I'm like, "Wow, that's crazy." He got shot... I was like, "I wonder how many presidents have been shot at?" So I cannot...
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Sam Parr | Tell you what, wait... let me, let me... don't answer that question. Don't answer that question, but let me tell you something: why I'm happy.
I have read not only the biographies of all of those presidents but also multiple books on each assassination. One of my... and one of my... and so this is why I'm happy that you're able to talk about this.
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Shaan Puri | I've walked into your wheel. I've stumbled into your wheelhouse.
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Sam Parr |
Welcome home, Sean!
Wait, one of the reasons... and here's a trivia question that I would ask people all the time: How many presidents have been assassinated, and can you name them? Virtually no one gets the second two; the first two are easy.
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Shaan Puri |
So, okay, easy assassinations that I can remember... Let's say Lincoln, Kennedy. Right, those are easy. Yeah, let's see, what are the hard ones? McKinley, because he died right before Roosevelt. So that was... I think Roosevelt was the VP, right? Is that how that happened? You know, he became president.
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Sam Parr | I don't remember exactly, but they're in the same ballpark. I don't know if Roosevelt was the VP, but he could've been.
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Shaan Puri | Okay, so we'll leave it there. He could've been... and then.
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Sam Parr | Oh, you're right. By the way, I'm looking it up. Your ex? Yes, good job, Bryce.
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Shaan Puri | One, I wouldn't have gotten, but I see it here in the notes: it's Garfield. Andrew Garfield. I wouldn't have gotten that one.
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Sam Parr |
And both of those guys, when they got shot, it was a very solvable problem. Basically, up until the 1910s or 1920s, we didn't really believe or know that germs were a thing. Most of these guys, when they got shot, they got shot and then you'd go digging around with a dirty surgeon's hand or a dirty instrument, and they'd get infections. That's how they died, exactly.
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Shaan Puri | So, like, McKinley died, I don't know, 8 days later of gangrene caused by the wounds. Not from, like, the bullet itself hitting him in the heart or something.
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Sam Parr | Garfield died like 6 weeks later.
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Shaan Puri | So, I was pretty mind blown. Basically, I want to know how many presidents have been shot at—either hit or missed—but a gunshot has been fired at them. Do you know the number for this?
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Sam Parr | I think it's around 7, 8, or 9. | |
Shaan Puri | 13 | |
Sam Parr | Oh my god.
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Shaan Puri | And there's only been 46 presidents, something like that. So it's basically...
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Sam Parr | 10% | |
Shaan Puri |
More than that, a 25% chance of being shot at if you're a president. Dangerous, insane... dangerous job, insane, right? And of those, you know, 4 have died. The crazy one that I... So there's actually 2 that I found pretty interesting. I tweeted about one of them, I didn't talk about the other one. Can I tell you about the 2 that I found that were pretty interesting? This is me...
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Sam Parr | Just test.
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Shaan Puri | Beginner level on Wikipedia. | |
Sam Parr | So, I know you know it was Roosevelt. What's the other one? Andrew Jackson. Jackson.
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Shaan Puri | Yes, the Jackson story is crazy. Here’s my understanding—fill in the gaps for me.
So, the story is that Jackson is going to a funeral. He’s 67 years old and walks with a cane. He’s kind of an old guy and not very popular.
As he’s walking into the funeral, a guy approaches him with a pistol. The guy shoots at him, but the gun misfires. The powder explodes, but the bullet doesn’t leave the gun.
Jackson becomes angry and charges at him, swinging his cane and trying to beat him up with it.
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Sam Parr | He almost beat him to death.
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Shaan Puri | He almost beats him to it. Well, there's a conflict for us. One is he beat him up, and the other is he misses. So, I don't know which one's true.
Then the guy takes out a second pistol and does the same thing. He shoots him with the second pistol, but it also misfires. Other politicians who are there jump on him, trying to tackle the guy. They then take both of the guns and they're like, "Man, we got lucky that this guy... or maybe he didn't really mean to do it. Are these fake guns? What happened?"
We heard the gunfire, but no bullet hit. So then they shoot the gun again, and the bullet comes out. Both guns were actually functioning. They basically said that the odds of both pistols misfiring and jamming like this was like 1 in 150,000—that's what they estimated. | |
Sam Parr | That's insane.
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Shaan Puri | The odds of that happening are so low. That's pretty crazy.
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Sam Parr | And what's here... here's what's even crazier. Up until probably the 1960s, after JFK, the Secret Service wasn't really much of a thing.
So, the Secret Service wasn't a thing. I don't think it was a thing when Garfield got shot, which I think was in 1900 or so, maybe late 1800s. When JFK got shot, there were only about 150 Secret Service agents. It was not big, and the budget was tiny. They were overworked and tired all the time.
And when Andrew Garfield got shot, I... after the 1881...
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Shaan Puri | 18 out of 81 | |
Sam Parr |
Lincoln was shot 20 years prior. You could still, after Lincoln got shot, walk into the White House and schedule an appointment. Anyone could go see these guys. When Garfield got shot, he was walking from the White House to a train. Him and a buddy were just walking, and someone walked up and shot him. It was insane how you could get away with all this stuff. It's just wild to think about that.
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Shaan Puri | So, the Teddy Roosevelt story was the one that just blew my mind.
The story goes as follows: He was supposed to give a speech. He was having dinner, and as he left the dinner and was getting into his car, a guy came up to him and shot him, hitting him right in the chest.
Roosevelt got lucky for two reasons. Yeah, but I'm sure you already know what those two reasons are.
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Sam Parr | I believe the first one was he had his speech in his chest pocket.
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Shaan Puri | A 50-page speech printed out and rolled up into his jacket pocket.
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Sam Parr | And the second reason I think is that he was strong. His chest muscles were just like... he was a buff dude.
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Shaan Puri | Okay, the second one was he had his glasses case, which was made out of steel.
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Sam Parr | So, I was making that up.
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Shaan Puri | The bullet went through both of those. It went through the speech and the glasses case, but it kind of took a lot of the heat off of it. It still hit him in the chest.
The story is crazy. His secretary was an ex-football player and just tackled the guy. Then he's like, "No, no, no, bring him to me. I want to look him in the eyes." They bring the guy up to his face, and he goes, "Why did you do it?" The guy doesn't answer, and he's like, "Alright, forget it. Take him away." He said, "But no violence on this guy. I don't want this guy hurt in any way. I want him, you know, through the judicial system."
So they put him in the car, and I guess he's like a hunter and a casual anatomist. He's like, "You know, I'm not coughing up blood. I don't think it's hit my lung, so I think the bullet's lodged in there, but I think it's okay because it didn't puncture my lung or my heart."
So he's like, "Take me to the speech." He goes and delivers something like a 50 to 90-minute speech. They have the shirt that he wore, and the blood is just soaking out of the shirt, Curt Schilling style with the sock, just as he's giving the speech. They now have this in a museum.
He's giving the speech, and he says, "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot, but it takes more than a bullet to kill a bull moose." That was the line he gave during the speech.
After the speech, he then goes to the hospital. They take the X-ray and see the bullet in there, but the technology wasn't that good at the time. They're like, "Look, we could try to take it out, but it's risky. I think this is how McKinley had just died."
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Sam Parr | Well, the technology for the X-ray was basically invented for Garfield. I forget what the scientist's name was, but around the time of the World's Fair, they were trying to invent the X-ray. Garfield got injured, and they were like, "Dude, we've heard that you have this thing. Can we be your test patient? You've got to find this bullet in Garfield."
So, the X-ray was kind of being developed because of this one or two examples.
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Shaan Puri |
Well, in the end, the doctor decided just to leave it in because they're like, "It's too risky to take it out." So he lives with it for the rest of his life.
People asked him, "Do you still have pain from that?"
And he's like, "It doesn't bother me more than if there was a bullet sitting in my pocket."
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Sam Parr | What a badass! Did you know that he was partially blind? Because Roosevelt was a crazy person, he liked to box and he was a man's man. There's a story where, I think it was one of his aides, a professional boxer would come in and he'd be like, "Oh, you like to box?"
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Shaan Puri | No, he would invite people to spar with him in the White House, right?
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Sam Parr |
He'd be like, "Prove it. Let's see... You like to box? Let's box." And he would box with these guys, like professionals. He would make people get out and they would spar.
Well, one time a guy - I think it was his aide or a partner of his - damaged his eye, and so one of his eyes was blind. During the boxing match, he was like, "Hey, look, we can't tell anyone about this. No one can know that we were fighting here, otherwise I'm gonna get in a ton of trouble."
So... he didn't tell a lot of people, but he was blind in one eye.
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Shaan Puri |
Yeah, he got a detached retina from the boxing match, and then he switched to judo and jujitsu instead. Can't do enough, I guess.
There's also some story... I guess it was hard when he was born. He was born with some condition where his organs were like too small for his body or something like that, right? Isn't there something like this?
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Sam Parr | Does... and that's why he was so active. He was born with a bad [condition]. They were like, "You're probably gonna die young."
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Shaan Puri | Like, they told his parents he’ll probably die as a teenager. He’ll be in bed most of the time, and he’ll die as a teenager.
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Sam Parr | And so that's why he was so invigorated with life. Because, a) he expected to die, and b) his father was like, "We have to get you strong. You have to be strong so you can survive." So, he wanted to exercise and do all the stuff so he could live.
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Shaan Puri | Right. | |
Sam Parr | And so, that's one of the reasons why he was so active.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, there's... this is like the tip of the iceberg. I think there's a bunch of other crazy stories about Teddy Roosevelt. Also, the teddy bear is named after him.
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Sam Parr |
I didn't know that. I believe it's named after him because he was known for hunting bears and stuff like that. So one group was like, "Hey, we'll take you hunting." Turns out they had a bear chained up to a tree or something, and Teddy sees this poor bear. He's like, "No guys, this is not how we do this. You gotta release that bear."
It was something involving that story that led to him having the teddy bear... They call it a "Teddy Bear" [named after Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt].
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Shaan Puri | He didn't like being called Teddy either.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, I don't think people call him to his face, but there's a whole book called *The River of Doubt*.
So basically, when you read that title, you might think, "Oh, that has to do with making good decisions or bad decisions and doubting your decisions." No, there was actually a river called Doubt in Brazil that had never been explored. After he was president, he was like, "Well, I'll go figure out what's there. Let's map that out. I'll do it."
So he goes and explores this river for weeks or months or something like that, and he almost dies. This is just him wanting to explore. There are all these crazy stories about him. A lot of people accuse him of starting a war just so he could go and fight because he had the Rough Riders, which was his own crew of military folks.
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Shaan Puri | But no names. DMX... who else? Yeah, had their own anthem.
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Sam Parr | Teddy was pretty hard. Teddy was an interesting guy.
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Shaan Puri | And by the way, he lost the election after the guy gives a speech with a bullet in his chest. He ends up losing because, I guess, he had his own third party. He was a third party candidate at this stage, which is pretty crazy.
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Sam Parr | He was an interesting guy. His wife died giving birth, and on the same day that his daughter was born, his mother also died.
He has this story where he used to journal every day. On that particular day, he wrote in his journal, "The light has left my life," and that's all he wrote. It's a very touching story.
Then, he goes on this tear where, for the next year, he's incredibly active. People ask him, "Why are you being so active?" He responds, "Ceaseless action outruns depression."
So, he was basically doing all these amazing things in order to outrun the sadness of that day.
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Shaan Puri | Is there any information on whether his journals or diaries are published anywhere? | |
Sam Parr | He was a prolific writer. His first book was actually written when he was in his teens or early twenties. It was on zoology. He used to collect animals, take them apart, and explain them. He loved Darwin and tried to discover new species.
He wrote, I think, dozens of books—if not dozens, at least 6 or 8 books. So, he wrote many, many books. You can go and read all his writings. He was a really impressive guy. | |
Shaan Puri | What's the best book on him that you've read?
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Sam Parr | I would read his biography. His biography is amazing because he had a lot of bad things happen to him in his life, and he was very optimistic.
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Shaan Puri | Wow, what a guy! Billy of the week, I guess.
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Sam Parr | Well, his father started MoMA.
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Shaan Puri | The museum.
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Sam Parr | The museum was founded by his father, James Roosevelt, who was a wealthy guy.
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Shaan Puri | Oh, no way!
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Sam Parr |
And... Teddy Roosevelt, by the way, was a horrible businessman. That was the one thing that he sucked at. He would invest in things like horses and stuff, and he would start ranches. Really bad businessman. He blew a lot of money.
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Shaan Puri | Was he a good dude overall or a bad dude? Right? Because he's definitely a sort of "man's man" in all these interesting ways and has legendary feats. He really lived a very interesting life. But character-wise, was he a good guy? I mean, I've never read anything about him besides this.
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Sam Parr | I think he had strong character. I have one massive critique of him, and this is where I kind of where the phrase "all great men can be bad men" comes into play.
For example, he wasn't, I felt, the most present father. When his wife died, he went to North Dakota or whatever to do his thing in the Badlands. He left his newborn daughter for like a year and a half. You could say maybe he was suicidal and depressed, and he thought, "I gotta get away," and you could argue that.
But he kind of wasn't always around for his daughter, I felt. In general, he had high character. Yeah, he was a good dude.
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Shaan Puri |
Interesting. Alright, well I think that's a fascinating podcast. I'm so glad that you have this. You and Shane Gillis, by the way... Why is Shane Gillis like such a history PhD? Do you...
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Sam Parr | He has a history major. He studied history.
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Shaan Puri | A biology major couldn't tell you three things. How does he know? He knows a lot about history—like, too much about history.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, he knows way more than me. He has a good series of history podcasts, and he's really talented at it. I think it's really fun to read stories.
For example, you'll read in the biography about Andrew Jackson beating up this guy. You're just reading it, but then you can take this other perspective and put yourself there. You might think, "That's hilarious" or "Not hilarious," but I'm like, "That's wild," you know, that someone would do that.
So, it's fun to read between the lines and actually imagine some of these stories. I think it's fascinating. I also think it's cool to avoid the mistakes that people make and just copy the successes that they have.
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Shaan Puri | I love biographies, and I read a lot about people. I don't know what the word for this is, but I basically study the ideas and core plot lines. I don't care where they grew up, how they grew up, who they grew up with, what the scene was like, or what their family life was like.
I find myself fascinated by people, but I really want to know their philosophy and the actions they took to implement that philosophy. I’m interested in the stories of them living up to that philosophy or failing at it. That's really all I care about, which is a very weird subgenre of studying history or these people.
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Sam Parr |
Well, let me give you two recommendations:
1. The first recommendation is a book called "**Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer**."
The reason it's interesting is because you've heard the name John Wilkes Booth. That's the guy who assassinated Lincoln. He was an intoxicating character. He was sort of like a cult leader. He was a famous actor, not quite but almost like Brad Pitt at the time, where everyone recognized him. He was...
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Shaan Puri | A celebrity.
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Sam Parr | He was a celebrity, and he was a bad dude. Like, crazy racist. He was a horrible guy, but he definitely had this intoxicating, "I wanna follow you to the death" type of vibe. He was really charismatic and he entranced people.
So, the Lincoln assassination, by definition, was a conspiracy. It was a group of about 30 people who worked together to make this happen. | |
Shaan Puri | To do this, yeah. | |
Sam Parr | And he was gone for 12 days. They assassinated him, and he escaped for 12 days. He almost got away with it; he was very close to getting away with it.
The **12-Day Manhunt** is a book about this chase for leaking killers. It's a very good, page-turning read; it's very easy to follow.
The second one is **Hellbound**, and it's about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. A lot of people don't know this, but James Earl Ray, the guy who shot MLK, was a complex individual. MLK was a great dude. He had some downfalls; he cheated on his wife a bunch, but overall, he was a net positive—a great guy in general, despite his flaws.
James Earl Ray shot MLK, and not only did he escape, but he escaped for months. Basically, when he shot MLK in Memphis, he drove all over America, then went to Quebec, and eventually to Europe. While in Europe, he was flying around from country to country.
The only reason he got caught was that he was in London on his way to Rhodesia, which is basically South Africa at the time, run by a racist regime. He thought, "They're gonna accept me with open arms because I just killed MLK; they're gonna love me."
He got through security, and once he walked through, the security guard who let him in said, "Thank you, sir," and then looked down to see that Ray had an additional passport in his pocket. They were like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, dude, why do you have two passports?" They pulled it out and realized, "Oh shit, the one you gave me was fake; I just got the real one."
He was seconds away from getting away with it. He was gone for roughly six months, gallivanting all over Europe and Canada. A lot of people don't realize that about that story, and that book, I believe, is called **Hellbound**. It's also a page-turner.
So, if you want to read about assassinations, those are my two favorite assassination books.
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Shaan Puri | Dude, we should make a, you know, like a blue ribbon list. When you were a kid or whatever, we should have our own list of books that we think are awesome, along with some commentary around them.
I wish we just had our own separate YouTube channel where we could do like a book club or read a book and talk about it. We could curate for people the books that we think are just really unbelievable for the year.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, I would love to do that. Those two rank really high. Those are some of my favorites.
I go through series; I got obsessed with shipwrecks, so I read like 10 books all on shipwrecks. I could tell you, in my opinion, what are some of the goals of shipwrecks. Then I did a deep dive into assassinations of famous people.
The reason why I love these books is that I think you don't like biographies. Biographies often don't have a very good beginning, middle, and end, right? Whereas I try to read books that are about an event because an event typically has a clear beginning, middle, and end. It's more succinct as opposed to 1,200 pages.
So, I like books that focus on events, particularly events in America, so I can relate a little bit more. | |
Shaan Puri | Alright, this was fun. I'm glad we just did this at the end here.
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Sam Parr | That's the.
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Shaan Puri | Pod. |