The App That’ll Be Bigger Than TikTok

- October 3, 2025 (6 months ago) • 46:07

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	So last night I downloaded an app that blew my mind. It's called Sora, and I don't say that casually. I'm not trying to be an AI thought leader who's like, "Holy crap, the new model is so unbelievable, they changed the game." No. This app was weird—weird in a way that hasn't settled yet. Basically, OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, have released a new app called Sora. When you hear it, I think the first reaction is a big eye roll: it's a feed like TikTok, but all the videos are made by AI. You don't have to worry about "Is this a fake video?" — they're all fake videos. The initial reaction from the "smart guy" community was basically, "Oh good — pure AI slop." In fact, there were some great tweets about this that I just want to call out for humor and excellence. Chris Bocky had a great one. He goes, "Sam Altman, you know, OpenAI — we're gonna cure brain cancer. OpenAI today: we created brain cancer." That sums up the internet's knee-jerk take: the worst thing you could do is just a feed of AI — AI slump. But when you go in, it's not just AI slump. I think calling it that gets you cool points on the internet, but I don't think that's what's going on here. I think you'll be on the wrong side of history if you try to resist this. When you open the app, the way it works is like ChatGPT: you can type anything and it will create an AI video. But the very first thing it does—the camera's on. This is not like any onboarding I've ever seen in any other app. The camera's on and it says, "Say these three numbers out loud." You say, for example, "127488." It's like, "Stole your voice — got it." It captures your voice from those three numbers. Then it says, "Hey, just look to the right real quick — there's something over there." You look to the right; it captures your face. With those two little actions—saying three numbers and looking to the side—it can now recreate your face.
02:09	Sam Parr	I did mine last night in bed. I made a few, actually. The first one was, "Put me in a Ralph Lauren ad," which is hilarious. But the really shocking one was, "Make it look like I have a ponytail." Let me—sorry—share that ponytail one. It's scary. Yeah, I let it grow out over the last year. It feels completely different, but I kind of like it. It's easy enough to keep in shape: just rinse, put in some conditioner, and let it do its thing. When I'm working or need it out of my face, I just pull it back like this. Simple. Feels good.
02:38	Shaan Puri	So this app is unbelievable. I did one where I did a ding-dong-ditch on somebody, used the Ring camera footage, and then I cartwheeled away to hide. Alright, here we go: quick knock and I'm out. Perfect.
02:58	Sam Parr	How does it know your height and stuff?
03:02	Shaan Puri	"It just inferred my entire body from my face, which is disappointing in its own way [trails off]."
03:10	Sam Parr	Looks real.
03:11	Shaan Puri	Yeah. So—okay. You could do it for yourself. Now watch this one I just sent you. You could also use other people, if they let you. This is Sam Altman, you know, the founder of OpenAI. He's, like, available to be used. If you just tag him, it's like "me talking to Sam Altman" or whatever. In this case, somebody used Sam Altman and they were making fun of the idea of the AI slop. Have you seen this?
03:36	Sam Parr	Are my piggies enjoying their slop? This is crazy. This is 100%. I think it's better than TikTok, actually. I think it's better than TikTok, and it's... it's—this is V1. It's so, so... </FormattedResponse>
03:56	Shaan Puri	I have a couple of predictions. I think this is going to be the most-downloaded app in the history of the world, and it will happen over a short period of time. I think it'll be the fastest to reach 100 million downloads. Right now it's gated — you need an invite code. But as soon as they open that gate, or if they open it in short order, this thing would get 100 million-plus downloads very, very quickly.
04:24	Sam Parr	"I just went to the App Store last night, clicked 'Download,' and it worked. I didn't know you had to have an invite."
04:29	Shaan Puri	Yeah, same. Other people couldn't do that — they all hit a wall that said, "You need an invite code." I was like, "Dude, have you seen this?" I was texting people and they were like, "I can't get in." I was like, "I didn't have a code. I don't know why I got in and others didn't." I'm not sure. So that's my first prediction. Second prediction is I think this opens the floodgates of something that Matt Mazzio talked about on our podcast. I did an episode with Matt about AI. Matt is totally — he's so far down the rabbit hole. I'm like, "Matt," and it's like "Matt, Matt, Matt" echoing down the rabbit hole. He was talking about AI and he goes: > "The crazy thing about AI is we are so early. I don't mean just in terms of how smart it's going to be. We're so early because every AI tool right now is single-player." He's like, "ChatGPT is just a tool you use yourself," and the same thing with the image creators. Almost all of the tools are still single-player. But the internet has shown us that all the most powerful apps are multiplayer — the things you do with other people. Whether it was Facebook and social networking, Uber connecting you with drivers, Airbnb connecting you with other people, or Slack where you chat with your teammates. It's crazy that none of the AI tools are really multiplayer today. He's like, "I'm waiting for that — that's the next wave. That's the big thing." This was one of the first AI-native things where I'm like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to be using this with other people." Last night, me and my friends were basically creating videos of each other, making each other laugh. It was so easy just to do that back and forth and get it there. You get a tag — you got tagged; somebody made a video of you. It's like, "Do I have to go look at that? I can't not look at that." So, "Hey, here's somebody — hold this baby, I gotta look at this video somebody made of me." It's one of the strongest pulls. If you remember, one of the big growth levers for Facebook was when they introduced friend photo tagging. They made it super easy. Not just uploading photos — that's a solo-player experience — but when you could click on somebody in the picture and write their name, then you would get an email (whether you used Facebook or not) that said, "Sean just uploaded a photo — tagged you in it." You're like, "Oh, I gotta go see what this picture is." That's out there for everybody to see. That created this insane growth loop for Facebook. I think that's what's going to happen with this.
06:29	Sam Parr	"When you lived in China, did you— I forget what they call them— but what are the apps that are like... I think WhatsApp is one of them? Were they like an everything app? WeChat—super apps, WeChat. So, with WeChat it's hard to understand in America, but they call it an everything app because you chat with your buddies, you order groceries, and you send money. Is that right?"
06:50	Shaan Puri	You pay your electricity bill. You can buy furniture. You can do anything you want on the app.
06:55	Sam Parr	So I downloaded this thing—or I signed up for ChatGPT Pro, or whatever the most expensive one is—because they have this new thing called Pulse. Have you used Pulse?
07:03	Shaan Puri	Dude, no — but I love this idea. I haven't used it. Can anybody just turn this on?
07:08	Sam Parr	You have to pay money, so it's expensive. I think it's $100 or $200 a month. Basically, I tell it what I'm into or it gets to know me. Every day when I wake up—I'm on ChatGPT all day anyway—in the morning I pull up Pulse, and it's sort of like my news feed except it's all tailored for me. I'll tell it I'm interested in a particular book, and I see relevant articles that it has written. It's the journalist. So it's like Apple's News feed except it's also the journalist. Right now I'm into Greek philosophy, and it's telling me about Greek philosophy tailored to me. Or, when we're trying to learn more about YouTube, it suggests topics like how to get more popular or be better at storytelling on YouTube—I want to perfect that craft a bit more. It writes articles based on the conversations I've had with it. So when we do this podcast, we'll use ChatGPT to research and come up with story ideas. It's giving me daily articles based on that, which is insane.
08:13	Shaan Puri	They should've just called this Ben Levy, because this is what Ben Levy does. He gets to know you — he knows what your interests are, what your dreams are, and what you're working on right now. Every day he'll just text you useful, interesting things, celebrate your success, and help you. He might say, "Hey, here's a tweet I saw that's relevant to the thing you're talking about," or "Hey, here's an article that talks about how to do that thing you were talking about." Now Ben has to compete with AI, because AI is doing that.
08:36	Sam Parr	And this is the first example of a super app. Now I'm starting to get it — I'm like, everything's going to be on here. Frankly, I'm a free-market guy; this is scary. This is like every quarter I'm like, "Okay, now I am a little bit more fearful." What's going to happen in five years? How is this company not going to take over the world and be the biggest company on Earth, the way I'm already using it?
08:58	Shaan Puri	But why is that something you're fearful of? There is—there is always a biggest company on Earth. Why is it scary that it would be OpenAI?
09:04	Sam Parr	Because I think it's potentially going to be significantly larger than every company ever, and will know more about me. It'll be ubiquitous in more ways than it has ever been. NVIDIA is the third-largest company in the world. I don't particularly interact with that every day, and I don't know if it knows anything that it could... ruin.
09:21	Shaan Puri	Right.
09:21	Sam Parr	"It used to ruin my life, but now OpenAI does. I just think that OpenAI is going to be like the combination of Facebook, Google, every news company ever, and five other companies combined into one."
09:32	Shaan Puri	I want to talk about this for a second — this is pretty fascinating. I sent one of these videos to my sister. She was like, "What, AI, Sean? What is this?" I told her, "The makers of ChatGPT now have an app. You can make any video about anything using anyone. You just use your face, and then they do it." She said, "Oh my God, being your sister is so tiring. You have so many cool things that I now need to know about. I was just getting settled on this couch of life, and now I have to get up and go do things. What is this?" I feel that. I actually feel that in a big way, right?
10:06	Sam Parr	"You feel exhausted."
10:07	Shaan Puri	Yeah—because even when you talked about Pulse, it's like, "Oh, another game-changing thing I need to go learn, do, try." "Oh my god, am I irrelevant now? Am I super powerful or irrelevant? I can't tell." So I think there's that angle: some people feel exhausted by the rate of change, and I don't know what to tell you. It's like on Survivor [the TV show] when someone says, "I'm so cold." It's like, well, you still have thirty more days out here and it's going to keep raining. I don't know what you're going to do. You sleep every night in the rain now—that's what happens. You're going to be drenched.
10:42	Sam Parr	"You just summed it up perfectly. Am I now super powerful, or am I irrelevant? I don't know which."
10:46	Shaan Puri	One. Yeah, because, dude... I mean, I was looking at this thing like, "Oh, cool—so content creation, everybody can just do it easily." Interesting.
10:53	Sam Parr	Hi.
10:55	Shaan Puri	You know, I was watching this interview with Steve Bartlett. Steve's podcast, Diary of a CEO, is basically like the second-biggest podcast in the world right now—it's pretty insane. He was talking and said, "You're either the hunter or the hunted." You are either going to get disrupted, or you're going to be the one doing the disrupting. For his own business, he said, "I have a team that's just working on AI podcasting." They're making like AI Steve or AI guests, and then they're creating all-AI podcasts. He said they're testing them with ad spend to see: do people watch the AI podcast as much as they watch the normal podcast? Before, it was really bad. He said now, as bad as it sounds, the average watch time is the same on the AI podcast versus the human podcast. He said, "So that's gonna be a thing." I'm like—I don't even know if that's true. I don't know if I believe that. I don't know what he exactly means. But that idea—that if I'm a content creator, maybe I'm irrelevant at this stage—it's possible I could be completely obsolete, or maybe I'll be ten times more powerful. There are two different perspectives. I think there's an exhausting reaction to it. Another reaction is a dystopian one: yo, this is all too powerful and you guys are getting way too powerful. It took my face and my voice in three seconds. If I toggle the button on, you can make a video of me doing anything, saying anything. If you use ChatGPT, you could just upload all of my writing ever and all of the transcripts of this podcast and be like, "Hey, let me just have Sean as my coach," and I don't get paid for that. That's just a thing people could do. This is all a little insane, right? It's all quite powerful, and some people don't trust Sam Altman. So there's that dystopian fear: where is the world going? Do I want this all-powerful technology or this company to be all-powerful? I think there's a third reaction, which is the one I'm trying to lean into: be curious, go have fun, go play. Wow—what an amazing time to be alive. You're seeing the birth of this thing, and you get to ride these waves. The whole world's going to change—hopefully for the better—and you can kind of impact that. I think that is the only useful reaction of the three.
13:19	Sam Parr	Alright, guys, here's the thing about side hustles. Everyone wants one, but most people overthink them and never actually launch anything. But because of AI, you can go from my idea to your first sale in only seven days. My old company, The Hustle, just dropped an AI Side Hustle Crash Course. Basically, what The Hustle did was look at things that me, Sean, and HubSpot CMO Kit founder said, and they broke it all down into simple, bite-sized steps. That means you're going to get a guide that gives you everything you need to launch a side hustle without any of the guesswork. You can get it right now — scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, back to the show. Dude, what's going to happen in the next couple years is Palantir is gonna — we're all just gonna be in a Palantir cage. You know, like Cooper's gonna be in a Palantir cage and Sam Altman's gonna be throwing stuff at us, like our slop that we have to eat at the cage. This is just how it's going to be. I do think the haves and the have-nots are just gonna separate even further.
14:29	Shaan Puri	Can I tell you some of the more positive, uplifting, exciting versions of this? I think learning and education are getting way better. For example, there are people building AI tutors that are incredible. We've talked about Alpha School. Google just released something—I forgot the name—but it's a personalized learning tool where you can tell it what you want to know. It then develops an incredibly personalized curriculum for you and guides you down that path, which is really cool. I also think the idea of having a therapist—or, as we discussed, a "therapist in your pocket" or a "sponsor in your pocket"—will extend to having "Socrates in your pocket."
15:06	Sam Parr	"What's it called?"
15:07	Shaan Puri	You know, Google sucks at naming everything. So they're like "Google Learning and Development Trees." It's like... I don't know what—I don't know what it's called.
15:13	Sam Parr	That something — all these companies, they just name their product with one word, like "Maps." It's just one word. It's like, "Yeah, this is Ava."
15:20	Shaan Puri	Ava—your cute friend who's all-knowing. "Hey Ava, want..." All you have to do is, out in public, just say "Hey Ava." It's like... I don't wanna say "Hey Ava" out in public, you know? "Hey Ava, how much is that house worth? What am I gonna be saying?"
15:44	Sam Parr	I would've.
15:44	Shaan Puri	"Hey, Ava—does she have an OnlyFans? Thanks, Ava."
15:52	Sam Parr	While your glasses are on.
15:55	Shaan Puri	Hey — can you hold still for a second? "Hey, Ava, record." "Hey, can you turn this... Oh, I'm out of range. Hold on, let me get closer to your face."
16:09	Sam Parr	Do you ever gawk? Like, do you ever see a crime and... I'm like—whenever I see a police officer doing something, I'm just like, "Sarah, let's go gawk." I'm just like, "Hey, can you guys..."
16:22	Shaan Puri	Dude, I just overestimate myself. I'm like, "You guys need a hand with anything?"
16:25	Sam Parr	Could you guys explain what's going on...?</FormattedResponse>
16:30	Shaan Puri	What did he do? What did he do?
16:33	Sam Parr	I'm just, like—I'm just, like, shamelessly I would just go up to someone and be like, "Can you give me a play-by-play?"
16:41	Shaan Puri	Dude, by the way, that's one of the best horror prompts: "Use body-cam footage to show me doing X." It's a cop body-cam that's following you. It's okay.
16:51	Sam Parr	Let me tell you a story, and then I want to ask you a question. I was with someone recently—this past weekend—and we were watching a baseball game. Between each inning he would look at his phone and start messing around. During the game I kept hearing "ka-ching" or a buzzer noise. After four innings I asked, "What are you doing?" He said, "Oh, I'm betting $3 or $5 between each inning on what's going to happen over the next inning." He explained he has an app that uses AI somehow and it comes up with different micro-bets that you can place throughout the game. I asked, "Do you do this all the time?" He said, "Literally every time I watch sports." I asked how much he watches sports; he said, "Every day." I wondered if this was a common thing, so I went and talked to about ten other people in the room: "Do you do this? Do you do this? Do you do this?" Almost every man in the room said they did it. If it was a woman, they said, "My brother or husband or boyfriend does it."
17:51	Shaan Puri	Right, well—if you watch any sport now, almost every ad is basically from FanDuel or DraftKings. The sponsor of every podcast is, you know, one of those. The leagues used to ban gambling as part of the game, but now they basically realize, "That's our premium sponsor," so they're heavily using it. It's funny because there have been all these situations lately where players were caught. There were probably five notable cases like this last year across the NBA and NFL. For example, one player owed a bunch of people money—owed a car dealer money, his jeweler money, and so on. They went back and looked at patterns in his games and thought, "That's weird that he didn't shoot the ball there at the end of the game." Just last week there was another incident with a football player—the quarterback. They were winning and the quarterback wanted to run out the clock, so they were just trying to hold the ball. He took the snap and, to make sure the clock ran out, he started running backwards—which you would never normally do. He said, "I just need the seven seconds to expire," then ran all the way backwards into the end zone and took a safety—so, a two?
19:02	Shaan Puri	Swing for the other team, which didn't matter — they were up by seven anyway. The line was six, so it went from a win to a loss. He wasn't cheating, but gamblers... these guys get death threats in their DMs every day now because they're like, "Dude, you messed up my parlay. You messed up my over/under. You piece of shit." They get harassed, so the players don't really like it — players who are just trying to play the game. All of a sudden people take it uber, uber personally if they have a bad game, miss a shot, or score one fewer time when they could have swung the line. By the way, there's another angle that's kind of fascinating in the sports-betting nerdery. I don't know if you've seen lately, but there's this great tweet showing Robinhood stock going one way and DraftKings stock going the exact opposite in the same timeframe: > [Tweet showed Robinhood stock moving in one direction while DraftKings stock moved in the opposite direction during the same period.] Sports betting is a pretty regulated thing. You can't do it out of California, for example. I think you can do it in Texas, but I can't do it there. I don't know what states — there are 38 [states].
20:00	Sam Parr	States in America allow it.
20:02	Shaan Puri	Yeah, and it started with, like, just New Jersey, and then Michigan, and then it's been expanding since then. But it's a pretty regulated thing. All these other apps now do sports betting, but they call it prediction markets. Prediction markets are legal. So Robinhood now has sports betting in its app even though it's not a casino. You could just go in Robinhood right now and bet on sports. You could do it on Kalshi. You could do it on Polymarket. You could do it on all these prediction market sites, and their volume is exploding because they now added basically sports wagers. There's a technical loophole in sports betting. Here's the distinction: sports betting is wagering directly on the outcome of the game — for example, $100 on the Warriors to win. This is regulated under U.S. gambling laws by the state gaming commissions. Prediction markets are seen as a financial market where you're trading the future, like trading futures or stocks, not a bet. You are buying and selling shares of an outcome.
21:01	Sam Parr	That's insane. I don't.
21:02	Shaan Puri	I don't know why that's any different, but it's basically... it's almost like a commodity. All these apps were able to add it as prediction markets rather than sports betting, so now it's in more places than before and it's easier to access.
21:19	Sam Parr	I think once you become, like, a famous podcaster — like Scott Galloway or you and I — we have to take on the cause. We automatically get interested in saving young men, which is all the rage right now. Men are getting left behind. But in all seriousness... which...
21:34	Shaan Puri	"It's ironic, because I spent most of my twenties gambling at riverboat casinos and Indian reservations. But yeah, you guys shouldn't do it—even though I did."
21:42	Sam Parr	Well, you know, I don't like gambling at all. I also don't particularly like outlawing stuff, but I think there's a difference between going to a casino as your night out — I still don't think it's great — and what I've experienced in my short amount of time around guys betting $3 every game and having a DraftKings account manager call you and say, "Hey, do you want a $500 credit to try this new bet?" It's a little more isolated, and it's strange to me to see this. I talked to this guy — bircheshealth.com [bircheshealth.com]. This company just raised $20,000,000 from General Catalyst and Kevin Ryan from Alicorp. I don't know this guy at all, and I've got no involvement or anything; I just thought it was cool. But it's a company that raised $20,000,000 and their whole thing is helping particularly young men get cured or get help from gambling addiction. The reason I thought this was interesting is I brought this up about three years ago. I was like, I'm shocked that there's not more alternatives to Alcoholics Anonymous because Alcoholics Anonymous is massive — it's not a business, but it's a massive organization. One of the reasons now that I run a community — an in-real-life community — is that I realized Alcoholics Anonymous is all based around you and like 20 other alcoholics where you're sharing, and the connection is what matters. Doing that online doesn't really solve the problem the same way that doing it in real life. And so that's one of... </FormattedResponse>
23:13	Shaan Puri	The reasons.
23:13	Sam Parr	Why there hasn't been an alternative, however, with the rise of BetterHelp and telehealth psychiatrists — which I've tried — it does actually help solve the problem. I don't know if it does it as well as in-person therapy. I don't know the research behind that, but it definitely helps. It is a fine alternative to in‑person therapy. I saw that these guys had just raised money. I think he said they're only two years old; they grew 5x in the last year. I was also reading in the New York Times about online betting. It said 60% of guys between 18 and 22 do sports betting, and a large percentage of them are now problematic gamblers. I thought, "This company's gotta take over the world." Years ago I was looking for an Alcoholics Anonymous alternative as an interesting business that could do good in the world. This Birch Health — and I'm sure there are competitors — is a very interesting business that I think could take off.
24:03	Shaan Puri	Someone on the pod brought this up a long time ago. They were talking about how physical centers—basically, they were like, "Oh, you could repurpose..." I forgot what it was; there's some retail concept that was just dying, a Blockbuster-type thing. Their prediction—the idea they brought on the pod—was to repurpose those for gambling addiction. They said, "At that time there wasn't even the sports prediction markets; it was just daily fantasy," and, "You know, there's going to be a big need for this." Can I tell you about an MFM listener who's doing something really cool with this? Alright, so there's a guy who I think listens to the pod, DM'd me, and he's got a very interesting app. So, if you go to sunflowersober.com...
24:42	Sam Parr	Okay, that's cool.
24:43	Shaan Puri	Check this out: this guy, Kobe, created an app called Sunflower Sober, and it's an AI-based version of, like, a "sponsor."
24:53	Sam Parr	Yeah.
24:53	Shaan Puri	So, I think—I don't know exactly how AA works. I could tell you.
24:58	Sam Parr	"I could tell you."
25:00	Shaan Puri	"Did you go?" "Yeah. Were you a member?"
25:02	Sam Parr	"I was a member of AA."
25:03	Shaan Puri	Yeah. So, what did you tell me about your experience? You went to a physical place, and it was like, "Hi, I'm Sam, and I have a great newsletter to subscribe to." You also said, "I have a problem." What did you say?
25:13	Sam Parr	This is pre-newsletter, but basically I think, before I met you, I didn't make a lot of money and I thought I didn't have any money to go to rehab or anything like that. I needed help, so I googled "AA near me." I lived in [Patro Hill — uncertain transcription], and I went to a meeting. There were about 20 or 30 people sitting in a circle. They're famous for having everyone smoke cigarettes, because when you get off alcohol your addiction often transfers to a new thing.
25:41	Shaan Puri	Okay.
25:41	Sam Parr	Everyone is smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee at about 8 p.m. You basically go around the room and say your name and your issue, which is basically: "I'm an alcoholic, and I have been sober..." or "I haven't been sober for this long," and you tell your story. You don't have to share if you don't want to. After a certain amount of time, you get a sponsor — someone you're supposed to rely on. You're supposed to call them and say, for example, "I'm at this party and I'm feeling tempted right now; I don't feel great," or "I screwed up — can you help me?" The sponsor is expected to go above and beyond for this person. That's how you pay it forward in the community.
26:14	Shaan Puri	"Right, and that's free? All of that's free, or you pay?"
26:18	Sam Parr	AA is free.
26:20	Shaan Puri	AA is free. The sponsor thing's free. It's just a community of people helping each other. </FormattedResponse>
26:24	Sam Parr	Yeah, and there's a weird story about it. There's a phrase — have you heard the phrase "Are you a friend of Bill?" That's the secret phrase. So, like, are you... are you friends with Bill?
26:33	Shaan Puri	"Gave it out."
26:34	Sam Parr	"It's not really that secret, but it's like... are you—are you friends with Bill?"
26:37	Shaan Puri	And that means you're in AA.
26:39	Sam Parr	Yeah, because I believe the founder is named Bill W. They say, "Are you a friend of Bill W.?" The founder of Alcoholics Anonymous was this guy named Bill W. He started in 1935 and he has this crazy story where he was trying to overcome alcohol addiction and he created this 12-step program for himself. He's a wild character — like, he took a lot of LSD to help him overcome his addiction — and it's a whole cowboy story behind this guy. But the phrase in AA is a secret phrase: "Are you a friend of Bill W.?"
27:09	Shaan Puri	Okay, that's amazing. So check this out: this guy made an app that basically uses AI to do this. He thought, what if in your pocket there was an always-on, compassionate, nonjudgmental person who's there to talk to and help—so it's not just for rehab or therapy. I think he started it because someone in his family had alcoholism, but it's not going to be just for alcohol. It'll be for gambling and any type of addiction. The app is kind of exploding. In the last six months it basically went from zero to 100,000 users. Look at this revenue ramp: he's getting to $50,000+ in monthly recurring revenue from subscriptions. What's interesting is that people pay some low plan—like $9 a month—and this is going to happen in therapy and other fields where somebody currently charges $100 an hour or more. Suddenly you'll be able to pay $9 a month and have unlimited access to that level of expertise. It won't be a human, but the AI might, in some cases, be better because it's nonjudgmental, always available, infinitely patient—that sort of thing. In some ways it might be worse. You might think to AI, "I'm not accountable to this person in the same way." I'm not sure exactly how this will play out, but I'm very interested. He's grown it, and if you go look on Reddit people are talking about this—it's a very big market. One revenue stream for the business is that he passes leads on to anyone looking for a more clinical solution. There are drugs that can help in some treatments, and so he can pass users along to clinical providers. He might even go vertical and start his own clinic. All of a sudden, a user who was either free or paying $10–$20 a month becomes worth ten times as much as a customer. He's passing hundreds of leads a month to teletherapy clinics that want to speak to a human and be able to provide medicine for their addictions.
29:32	Sam Parr	This is pretty cool. You know what's crazy is alcohol use among young guys has plummeted. When you and I were at college, people drank on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday — those were the drinking nights. Young guys do not do this nearly as much anymore, which is good.
29:52	Shaan Puri	"Have you seen 21 Jump Street?"
29:54	Sam Parr	Yeah.
29:56	Shaan Puri	I feel like, daily, when they go back to school, they're trying to be cool. They're basically... like 29 years old or whatever.
30:04	Sam Parr	They're... they run back old to me.</FormattedResponse>
30:06	Shaan Puri	For first, they go with one strap on the backpack, right? There are all these little things that were cool then but are not cool now. And they're—like—a kid trying to make themselves cool. They're like, "Yo, that's not cool, man. That's bullying."
30:17	Sam Parr	Well, they do that, and the guy's like, "Why would you be so insensitive?"
30:21	Shaan Puri	Exactly. So they're like, "Woah — shit's changed." That's kind of what the drinking culture is like, from what I read. I don't know if it's actually true. I don't know if you go to college campuses and they're all dry now, but it does seem like it's much less than it was when we were in college years ago.</FormattedResponse>
30:38	Sam Parr	It's way less. Is this Sunflower sober? Are they—did they raise funding?
30:42	Shaan Puri	Yeah, they raised funding, so I was looking at investing because I think this is going to be a very successful company. That doesn't always make it a great investment, because valuation matters a lot. I think an app like this has potential. The way Calm and Headspace came in and did meditation on an app—something that was previously a little bit of a touchy-feely thing you did offline—they turned it into a daily habit, a daily ritual in your pocket. Basically, getting off your addictions—whether it's porn, gambling, alcohol, weed, whatever it is—could be addressed this way. There are plenty of things screens and social media have made us susceptible to. Helping people get off those addictions is going to be a pretty big deal.
31:26	Sam Parr	Have you been to therapy?
31:28	Shaan Puri	"I have an executive coach. I don't know if that would count as therapy—I would say probably no."
31:32	Sam Parr	I mean, cousins—have you used—do you think that ChatGPT could potentially change, or have you used ChatGPT to supplement and/or replace an executive coach or a therapist?
31:45	Shaan Puri	Definitely on the executive coach side. On the therapy side—I mean, I never went to therapy. I don't even know what I would say. I'd be like, "Hey... yeah, life's pretty good." I don't even know what I'd go into, so I don't even have the skills. It's kind of like in Lost when they find the hatch and they're like, "How do you get in?" and I'm like, "I don't know." That's my emotions—the hatch—and I have no idea how to get into it. I don't even know what the problem is. I don't even know what I'm supposed to say or do. It's a foreign language to me. </FormattedResponse>
32:11	Sam Parr	I have used it as, for example: "I'm mad at my wife because of this reason. Can you help me make sense of this? Am I wrong? Is she wrong? Why am I angry? Help me figure out why I'm pissed off." Or: "This person wrote me this email—help me figure out how not to react in a negative way and still get what I want." I have found that it has helped me tremendously—ChatGPT, like, crazy amounts.
32:36	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's really good — really, really good. I think that AI is only getting better. Using AI to do things that humans were otherwise doing — whether it's therapy, your sponsor, or other support — is going to help expand access to more people. They might otherwise not seek it out because they felt embarrassed, it was too expensive, or they live in some country where it's not as common. They might not have it available in Potrero Hill [neighborhood] where you're living at the time, right? There are multiple orders-of-magnitude improvements you can get when you look at those three variables alone: cost, access, and the taboo nature of it.
33:21	Sam Parr	So, I saw something on— I saw something that sort of got passed up on that I thought was amazing. Okay, so there's a podcast called Acquired. We've had them on here; they're amazing— they're awesome. They were talking to Toby. Toby's... I actually don't know Toby's last name. Toby's the CEO.
33:37	Shaan Puri	Loopkey, yeah. </FormattedResponse>
33:38	Sam Parr	What? What is it?
33:39	Shaan Puri	LoopKey, I think.
33:40	Sam Parr	Tobi Lütke — he's the CEO of Shopify, which is, you know, like the tenth or eighteenth or thirtieth largest company in America or in the world. It's a huge thing, and he made this small comment. Tobi is a guy whose partner we've had on before, and he kind of explained to him a...
33:55	Shaan Puri	Little dude, I know what you're about to say, because it was unbelievable what he said.
33:58	Sam Parr	"It was unbelievable."
33:59	Shaan Puri	"It was like, 'Guys, that guy just said something insane over there.' Are we just moving on? Like... what's happening?"
34:05	Sam Parr	So basically he's this guy, Toby. I gotta set the stage a little bit—he's a nerd's nerd. He's all about this stuff. He tells a story where he very casually mentions, "Well, about twenty years ago—about fifteen years ago—I created this program that logged every letter I ever typed on my machine." When he said "machine" people were like, "That’s Patel"—yeah, that's Patel. He goes, "I created this program that looks at every single letter I've ever typed on my keyboard, and then every ten minutes it automatically takes a picture of my screen." Now he has an archive of roughly fifteen years of every single letter and ten-minute screenshots. He just mentioned it as he was getting into another story, saying, "And what I noticed when I was building this program is x, y, z"—like, whoa... reverse, right? So I'm like, "I want that. Give me that." For context, I think Shopify is probably 15 years old, and basically, through the whole founding of Shopify, he has shown—you can see exactly how he felt. There's this one book—I forget the title—but the premise was like, "Google knows more about you than anything else because you..."
35:18	Shaan Puri	You're right.
35:18	Sam Parr	Whenever you type something into Google, that's when you're revealing your real feelings. In this case, when we're talking to ChatGPT, that's where we say our real feelings — not what we're saying out loud to people. This guy has all of it right there, and we can see it. I just—A: I think it's amazing; I want to see this. B: I want to do this for myself. I want to log everything I've ever done so I can look back years later and have an archive of my personal development and things like that. I think it's so cool. What did you think when you saw this?
35:44	Shaan Puri	I mean, I thought that was one of the most... just sort of like, "What? What did you just say? You did that? You actually did that?" I was like, "Wow." What a forward-thinking thing to do. Because now, in the world of AI, it's all about data. This guy might have the best dataset you could want to create — a very, very strong dataset for himself. If he wants to create an AI that thinks like him, he logged every keystroke and took a screenshot of his screen every ten seconds, so you knew exactly what he was doing. It made me think of — I don't know if you've heard people talk about Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
36:25	Sam Parr	Of course.
36:26	Shaan Puri	And the remarkable thing about Meditations is this: here's this guy who was the ruler of the Roman Empire — which was the most powerful empire in the world — and he wrote in his diary every night. He never thought it would get... he never planned to publish this. So it's his true inner thoughts. Then, sort of, a little brother jacked his diary and published it for the whole world to see. Wow — what a one-of-a-kind event: the most powerful man in the world logged all of his innermost thoughts that he didn't think anyone would read, and now we all get to benefit from it. That's Meditations. I'm like, "Well, this is way better," because this is like that for a CEO. He didn't even have to write it, which is already one filter, right? Maybe some days you don't write. Maybe you do write, but you're not sharing the full context. Maybe you're being a little generous to yourself. Versus every keystroke — everything I looked at, every distraction, every tab I opened. I can't believe that he did this. Also, he didn't say what he's doing with it, but I'm pretty fascinated to find out what that is. </FormattedResponse>
37:30	Sam Parr	Me too. I think it's amazing. I'm a bit... I'm big into this. I have a secret—I call it my "secret YouTube", where I make... I, you know how in your phone when you film your kids you typically only do a ten‑second video of them doing something cute? I love home videos. Like, remember when your dad—
37:50	Shaan Puri	Just keep the camcorder on.
37:52	Sam Parr	Well, keep it on for, like, ten minutes and then... I don't know if you've ever experienced that magical moment where you're, like, 18 — or, you know, our age now — and you're like, "Oh."
37:59	Shaan Puri	Let me play one.
38:00	Sam Parr	"Let me play one and you'll just sit and watch it for 15 minutes. It feels magical. I only have, I think, one video of me as a kid because my parents didn't have one, and I'm like, 'Oh man, I long for that. I wish I had that.' So what I do is I film five-minute videos where I'm just walking around the house having a conversation. We're not performing—we're just hanging out—and I upload it every day to my YouTube. The reason I did it is there's this app called One Second a Day—or 1 Second Everyday—I forgot, is that what it's called? [speaker unsure of the exact app name]
38:27	Shaan Puri	One minute a day.
38:28	Sam Parr	One minute a day.
38:29	Shaan Puri	"No—no. One second. You're right."
38:30	Sam Parr	It's one second, but actually I think three seconds—we changed it to three seconds. When my little girl was born, from the day she was born up to her first birthday, we made a three-second video every single day. Whenever I watch the video it makes me cry. It's so emotional. I'll see my dog who's not alive anymore, or family members, and it's very moving. I'll think, "Oh wow, that was amazing—remember the time we were there?" I was inspired by that, and I decided I'm going to do this every day now, but make it a ten- or five-minute video. It's not a YouTube thing—I'm not editing. I literally just record a home video, upload it, and we'll scroll through it one day when she's older. I love doing archive stuff. I remember there was this thing called "RescueTime." Do you remember RescueTime?
39:12	Shaan Puri	"I remember that thing, but what was it? Did it just... bring—was it like Timehop? It was just bringing back an old photo."
39:17	Sam Parr	No. So RescueTime was a thing that Tim Ferriss promoted, and the whole premise of it was — it's gonna tell you that's... </FormattedResponse>
39:22	Shaan Puri	Tracking time.
39:23	Sam Parr	What you spend your time on. I remember using that, and I thought, "I wish you could tell me more — I wish I could track my behavior on the internet and learn about myself." But back then — 15 or 10 years ago — we didn't have that technology. Because of my obsession with tracking, I love tracking. I wish I could do this for more facets of my life. When I saw Toby's thing, I thought, "I long for that — I want that so badly."
39:47	Shaan Puri	Yeah, that's interesting. I go the other side on over-tracking everything. I only track when I'm trying to make a change. So if I'm trying to make a behavior change — either in myself or in my company — right now what do I track? I track my food, weight, and exercise habits. And because I'm writing a book, I track: did I write this morning during the first two hours of my day — yes or no. I'm just tracking those two things because that's a new behavior I'm trying to implement. I find that what gets measured gets managed. But generally, tracking everything feels like nervous energy to me. I said this once about sleep tracking: "Good sleep is obvious." How'd you feel when you woke up? You'll know. You don't need to check the number. Then people say, "Oh, my resting heart rate might..." or "I went into deep REM 4 last night for 48 minutes" — it's like, what are you talking about? It's very obvious if you slept well or not. Then again, I think Oura has sold like 20 million rings or something like that, right?
40:50	Sam Parr	So.
40:51	Shaan Puri	There's obviously a sort of insecurity or nervous energy you can tap into with people who are hobbyists—people who enjoy knowing more about themselves.
40:57	Sam Parr	I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about tracking as in memories—I like looking back. For example, I have clothes from when I was a kid that my little girl wears now, and I'm like, "Oh, that makes me feel special. I'm so happy I saved it." I'm talking about memories. I don't wear an Oura Ring... don't wear an—
41:17	Shaan Puri	But you're talking about RescueTime, right? That's more time tracking. Like Rob Deardeck—when Rob Deardeck came on, he goes, "Track every minute of every day." No.
41:23	Sam Parr	I'm not talking about... what I'm saying is, I wish I could have used that, but in a different way. What Toby is doing is a kind of cool example. I'm logging things so I can look back six or twelve months—or ten years—later and see my evolution. I just think it's very curious and interesting.
41:39	Shaan Puri	"Do you use the Meta glasses?"
41:42	Sam Parr	No. Are they awesome? Should I get them?</FormattedResponse>
41:44	Shaan Puri	They're awesome — they're really great. If you want to do the kind of one-second-a-day VHS-camcorder thing, it's kind of perfect. It doesn't record ten or fifteen minutes — that's too long — but you get two minutes of footage out of time basically if you just press the button. It's your POV, and you don't have to take out your phone. For one, would you take out your phone? You pull yourself out of the moment, and then you're like, "Okay, I guess I'm supposed to dance now — what do I do?" I'm not sure exactly what to do. Especially once your kid starts playing sports, it's the handiest thing in the world. It is like the soccer mom's dream to be able to just push the button: you get to watch the game and also record what's going on very easily. These things are amazing. I think they're about to make them good and bad. The "good" and "bad" is that they're putting a screen in it, so while you're walking around you could scroll Instagram or check your email. I can see why that's useful, but I don't think it's wise to do that. The version I have now is just camera-only — it's just a capture device.
42:46	Sam Parr	Maybe I will get those.
42:47	Shaan Puri	It doesn't do anything else. It's a capture device and its headphones you want. If you don't want to wear AirPods, it's an amazing set of headphones that just sit over your ear. You hear it — only you — and other people don't hear it. It's pretty great.
42:58	Sam Parr	"That's the third time you've mentioned this. I'll get it, I'll get it — I'll buy these. It's actually great."
43:03	Shaan Puri	It's a great thing for parents because, you know, your kid's on the swings and you're like, "This is a moment right now," or "I think this is a moment." It's one second away—less than one second away—and you're capturing it while still in the moment.
43:14	Sam Parr	"That's cool. Yeah, I'll get them—I'm in. They used to be $500; now they're way cheaper." </FormattedResponse>
43:19	Shaan Puri	Yeah, they're just getting better every time they do it. There's one more, but I don't want to bury it at the end of this episode. I want to actually lead with it next time because I've been dabbling with a different AI tool that I think is incredible, and it's been such an amazing, positive experience. I feel so empowered—like, you know, I feel total, total empowerment in my body. I want to tell you about that in the next episode, and I want to show you what I made with it.
43:45	Sam Parr	Oh my God, that's a really good cliffhanger. Okay. Yeah. Alright.
43:50	Shaan Puri	"That's it."
43:50	Sam Parr	That's pod.
43:51	Shaan Puri	Like and subscribe. Go to Spotify, please. Oh, by the way—the "gentleman's agreement". Yes, which we've talked about before. Listen: even if you think you may have heard this spiel before, I've decided on the spot to improvise and change the way we're gonna do the spiel. If I just say the same thing again and you feel like you've already heard it, this may not work as well. We are just simple creatures. Imagine that your friend Sam and your friend Sean need a little bit of help, but you get to decide. It's like the trolley car problem: are you going to let the train run over our bodies and keep us stuck at 800,000 YouTube subscribers and only 300,000 Spotify subscribers? Are you going to let us be at a measly 1,100,000 subscribers? Or are you going to pull the lever, move the train off the tracks, and go hit that button on Spotify for us? Just show a little love. Show a little support. We've entertained you, we've trained you, we've educated you. We've been here with you; we've been there for you when you needed us. Are you going to be there when we need you? Be a good friend. Be our—what's it called—be our emergency contact. Right now I'm putting your name down as my emergency contact. Go to Spotify and follow the show, please, because we're growing like crazy on Spotify. Spotify's got video, Spotify's got audio, and it also has comments. There's a polls feature. We're going to put up a poll with this episode—answer the poll. We're answering all the comments on Spotify right now. That's the new platform we're excited about. "What do you want the poll to be?" I think for this one it's a reaction to the AI ideas we have here. The options are going to be: - "Oh my God, this is too much" - "May I have some more slop, please?"
45:34	Sam Parr	Alright. Or it could be like, "Shit — we're fucked," or "Shit — this is awesome."
45:39	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah. Those are really the only two, and somehow I'm having that reaction at the same time, which is a very weird feeling.
45:45	Sam Parr	Alright. That's it. That's the pod.

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