podcasts
The University of Austin (UATX) is reshaping higher education with a bold focus on intellectual freedom, lower tuition, and Bitcoin as part of its endowment.
In a conversation with Chad Thevenot, co-founder of the University of Austin (UATX), he outlines the institution’s mission to transform higher education by championing intellectual freedom, pluralism, and the fearless pursuit of truth. Opened in 2024, UATX addresses systemic issues like high costs, ideological bias, and limited intellectual exploration in traditional universities. Its innovative financial model, which incorporates lower tuition and Bitcoin for its endowment, reflects a broader commitment to decentralization and challenging the status quo. Situated in Austin, Texas—a growing hub for free-thinking and entrepreneurial innovation—UATX embodies a cultural shift toward decentralized systems in education and beyond.
This episode highlights the urgent need for disruption in higher education and how UATX is crafting a bold blueprint for change. By emphasizing intellectual freedom, rethinking economic models to lower tuition, and incorporating Bitcoin for financial independence, UATX is redefining what education can look like in a decentralized and open-minded society. Anchored in Austin’s cultural shift toward innovation and decentralization, UATX is not just building a university but contributing to a broader movement of individual freedom and truth-seeking. Thevenot’s reflections offer a hopeful vision for the future, urging us to challenge outdated systems and embrace new ideas with courage and optimism.
0:00 - Intro
0:56 - 6th and Congress is the center of the universe
3:37 - The story of UATX
9:54 - Bitkey & Coinkite
11:53 - Problems with current education
20:47 - Curriculum for a free society
28:10 - Regulation and Trump regime
32:06 - SOTE
32:39 - Enlightenment values and free discussion
46:10 - Destroy institutions or reform them?
51:46 - Bitcoin endowment
55:58 - Austin’s strength
1:00:24 - Decentralized power
1:07:08 - We’re gonna win
(00:00) I think this is very much part of the human cycle like every 50 years or so we kind of go through these moments we saw that in the late ' 60s people forget how volatile that was the president was assassinated a presidential candidate was assassinated leader of the Civil Rights Movement was assassinated students were shot on campus at Kent State all in the space of a few years Chad thut founding leader of the University of Austin uncovers the Dark Truth behind today's college educations half the time the students don't even
(00:25) know that's what they're getting they think they're getting this kind of broad truth about the world and what they're really getting is just like AAR version of what one group believes if you're interested in reforming universities you have to ask yourself what is the incentive of the university to change and honestly if you look at the incentives for University to change they're not good you know it's weird knowing that you're probably living through a moment of History not just where things are just kind of going
(00:48) along but like we're we're seeing this kind of cataclysmic shift Chad thank you for coming over spending your Friday afternoon with me is perfect it's right across the street as you know caddy cour there's a lot of synergies going on I think I think we need to uh Foster this relationship between the commons Unchained plebb now and uatx we're very excited to have you as neighbors yes look we're at six in Congress right now center of the universe literally right because you think about it United States is most
(01:23) important country in the world right Texas is the most important state in the Union Austin is the Heart of Texas and we are dead center downtown right now in Austin it it it does feel that way Parker lewiis I'm not I think you may have met him before at zap R he I am a a refugee from the Northeast born in Philadelphia College in Chicago spent six years in New York postco the Bitcoin industry shifted away from New York and San Francisco and a lot of it settled here uh on six in Congress and you can feel the energy Parker is in
(02:04) austinite and made sure that when I moved down here I understood the history of Texas the history of Austin and the gravity that exists where we where we sit today exactly this is a special place right now and it's not just Bitcoin it's ideas broadly and it's more specifically what they would call liberal ideas not liberal in the current sort of progressive sort of view of that it's liberal the sense of Freedom Liberty right and so the ideas of Liberty we might call them broadly or what what they still call liberalism in
(02:37) higher education the epicenter of those ideas has shifted over time um you know hundreds of years ago it was the Enlightenment in in parts of Europe and then you know at different times in the United States it might have been San Francisco or other parts today it's Austin Texas where the ideas of Freedom the ideas of Liberty have sort of Taken root and are being renewed right here literally on this corner and in this city yeah I mean speaking of your side of the corner at uat let's let's jump into the history of how this
(03:10) came to be because I didn't even mention this before we hit record but um we were chitchatting about Trump winning the election and the vibe shift that is certainly happening uh and we've been talking about it in the Bitcoin industry the the companies the individuals that have been working to bring their product to Market or develop a Bitcoin stash like the timing is perfect if you're building in the space I think what you're doing across the street the timing couldn't be more perfect either because it seems like you guys have been laying ground
(03:43) workor for a few years now and are really about to take off yes there look there's no question we've been laying groundwork for a little over three years in fact it's almost what's today November 7th uh 7th or 8th yeah yeah so tomorrow is our third the third anniversary since we announced the university on November 8th 2021 so for 3 years we three years ago we talked about this idea of a new University committed to The Fearless Pursuit Of Truth which basically just means freedom of inquiry the free and open exploration of ideas
(04:15) that's the kind of thing a university ought to do but they weren't doing so we sort of doubled down on that principle and so we've been building it nobody thought you could build a university in 3 years we've done it we promised from the beginning we would have students start in the fall of 2024 they started in September 2024 we have our first class so yes there's so much energy in Austin it's a kind of place where you can get things done and culturally we're seeing a shift and we've seen it slowly over the last three
(04:45) years but we're seeing that sort of accelerate so separate from the politics of the moment beyond the politics there's been a slow sort of simmering shift in the culture and the culture is wanting I think to return to some common sense return to evidence and reason rather than just your kind of Hysteria and a lot of that orbits around the university the kind of things that we're doing early on we were saying look let's just get back to the core principles right just Merit you know um freedom of inquiry what we call
(05:19) intellectual pluralism which is basically just a diversity of ideas in the classroom because if you're going to explore ideas I can't just if you've already figured it out then you're not exploring then it's it's just an Orthodoxy it's a kind of church if you already know what the right idea is but if you don't know what the right idea is if you're honestly exploring ideas you need a diversity of thought so anyways those are the kinds of things that I I see out in in the world I'm not interested in politics at all I've never
(05:42) been interested in politics so I don't follow it nearly as closely as most people but I follow what they I follow culture basically which is Upstream of politics and that's very much what I see with the university as being part of a cultural sort of shift it's what I see with Bitcoin without a doubt people are rethinking you know what it mean what current currency means and um and Bitcoin as an asset and so on and it's happening in like almost every space in my in my view in the country whether that's education or Finance or higher
(06:11) education or whatever there's this sort of shift that we can do things better yeah and I was telling you that understanding I studied economics at the Paul University in Chicago there's like a two-pronged way to better understand Bitcoin one studying economics at University at a typical university in the United States uh in the 21st century means you're inundated with Keynesian neoliberal Doctrine right and it's it's taught as gospel this is the way the economy works and luckily for me um I was able to find Bitcoin which pushed me
(06:51) into uh the exploration of Austrian economics an alternative view of of how the economy does and probably should work and that highlighted was like why am I not learning about any of these these Concepts in my economics um major and it that was like highlight number one number two funnily enough had to write a paper about student loan debt and really discovered how the introduction of easy money into the university system specifically created these perverse incentives where the universities know that the the government and the culture
(07:31) more broadly are pushing people to go get your degrees and get a good job the government is giving out loans to anybody who needs to get them and so they're able to increase their cost and implant an administrative layer that just um feeds off the the money spigot that that student loan debt creates and then it leads to this situation where you're not actually forced to create an environment where people are exploring ideas and actually learning earnestly it's uh it's almost like a factory good at that point yeah
(08:07) exactly look I mean this this the ballooning cost of higher education is one of the problems that we're tackling so we have three core principles we were founded on one is the Fearless Pursuit Of Truth this idea of sort of freedom of inquiry and and intellectual pluralism the second is a new kind of curriculum which we can talk about U but basically a curriculum for the 21st century and the third is the the financial model so for example our tuition is half of what other leite institutions are charging and the core reason it's half is because
(08:38) we don't have any of the kind of Legacy nonsense that a lot of other universities have so for example we don't have the bloated Administration which is the number one cause of this increase in cost but it or at least the number one sort of symptom the cause is exactly what you're saying it's say these incentives right if we create an incentive if if a third party comes in and says well I'm I'm going going to give you money to turn around and give the universities the universities are like great you know we'll take more
(09:05) money and so I you know me the student takes money from the government in the form of loans and then I give it to the university and then the university just ratches up the cost so I go back and I say I need more loans and then all of a sudden surprise surprise right the incentives are there for an increased increased costs that are going to be basically subsidized by the government and then you the student get stuck in between with this debt so uh one of the things we're doing this semester or rather this year is we have
(09:34) full academic tuition for all of our students that means all of the students at least graduate without having debt from their tuition they still have to pay their housing and their food but that's pretty affordable but um and so that's one of the ways like at least this year and and this coming year we've already committed to basically free tuition for the students so freaks this rip of tftc was brought to you by our good friends at bit key B makes Bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose it is a hardware wallet that natively embeds
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(11:35) comes to bitcoin Hardware the Bitcoin price seems to be going up you want to take care of your security before Bitcoin goes to six figures make sure you get your Bitcoin off exchanges using coin kite Hardware MK4 cold card Q got to coin kite.com use the code tftc we have a code now tftc for 5% off at checkout talking about the debt to it compounds not only yeah the it compounds into it you the financial debt which obviously compounds over time is you get your degree and you go to the workforce and find that uh the jobs that you were
(12:05) promised are not um either there or as lucrative as as you thought they would be and then to the intellectual debt compounds as well because that factory mindset of education and indoctrination which is frankly what many of the universities have turned into these indoctrination camps like really leaves individuals at a disservice in the long run cuz unless you have the cognizant ability to recognize that you're being indoctrinated and actively work to rewire your brain and seek out ideas outside of the walls of the University
(12:38) you're you're probably running down a a path of uh intellectual dishonesty for longer than you otherwise should so you have this financial debt compounding with this intellectual debt that builds up over time and um individually like it's a problem but if you add those individuals into a group into a whole nation generation of people people it's it's pretty systemically uh adverse to the success of the nation yeah look there's no question if you're not prepared for reality if you're just prepared for some fantasy version of the world that puts
(13:13) you at a an extreme you know odd odd disposition you're going out into the world and you've only heard one point of view right and one version of the world the way the world ought to be under some particular Vision as as opposed to the way the world is so the you know it's always struck me as odd so like let's say I go to college and I'm protected from sort of all of these ideas right that might hurt my feelings or might challenge my my beliefs or my presumptions well as soon as I leave College I'm I'm in the grocery store
(13:45) aisle and I'm seeing magazines and I'm talking to people and I'm going to restaurants and I'm working jobs and I'm having conversations none of that stuff is going to be catered to me I'm not going to be sheltered I'm not going to be protected like that's the real world I'm going to see ideas see people experience things that are completely at odds with this narrow version that have been given in highed you can immediately see how ill-prepared I'm going to be and this is why I think a lot of people shut down
(14:13) they just they're not prepared for the fact that other people have different kinds of experiences different kinds of ideas the world doesn't exactly work exactly the way that people want to so the one thing we ought to be teaching people is the one thing we're not it's the opposite of what we're doing we ought to be teaching people how to be uh antifragile how to be resilient how to be um agile in terms of being able to shift with different ideas different Trends different changes in a highly Dynamic world and instead we're teaching
(14:41) them to basically be um Orthodox sort of you know it's almost like this kind of secular Orthodox view of the world and that's it yeah like teaching people how how you should know things not how to think and develop the ability to come to your own conclusions yeah and you're right look you half the time the students don't even know that's what they're getting they think they're getting some version of the truth you know as and what they're really getting is what they think they're getting this kind of broad truth about the world and
(15:11) what they're really getting is just like a narrow version of what one group believes yeah I mean obviously the infection of the woke mind virus into the university system has been a topic the of recent years particularly BLM but I mean I graduated college in 2013 and I vividly remember having to take it wasn't an elective it was a mandatory class on multiculturalism which basically taught that um people with my complexion eye color and hair color uh were the reason that that everything is bad in the world and
(15:48) literally to pass the class had to acknowledge um acknowledge that that Doctrine and yeah uh where was this depal University in Chicago um and even back then like this was before it became apparent um socially that this was a thing like wokeness probably didn't accelerate until 2017 forward through through covid yeah um in the sense that it was front and center in everyday life but the the seeds of that indoctrination were at least around when I was in college and it what I was like um I was essentially like what the like
(16:28) getting in debates in class like trying to defend like I'm a good person like I'm an individual and right it's uh look when when people are you know when people are called racists or misogynistic and stuff all the time and they they believe in their own heart that they're not then you know they're going to be at a Hots with that um the sad thing is is like it as a nation we spent decades trying to to have a sort of a reckoning you know around civil rights and around uh women's rights and so on and that was a
(16:59) good thing right and I saw a lot of that I'm I'm quite a bit older than you so I saw it throughout the the 70s and the 80s and um and we made some progress and we and we also learned to to better understand each other and live with each other right and so we would experience each other's cultures and ideas and challenges and so what I saw personally was a lot of progress even as a southerner from Louisiana you know I saw from some bad behavior to increasingly better behavior um all the way up through college in the 1990s so in my
(17:31) view we were making progress it wasn't perfect but we were being exposed to other people and other ideas but it was part of an organic kind of evolutionary process a social Evolution process it wasn't this idea that we're going to force you to take a course and then in the process of that course we're going to demonize you that's going to make that's going to give you the opposite right people are going to they're going to reject that and just sort of say well hold on you know this whole thing is not about me and it's not about and you
(17:57) don't even know me every person's experience experence was different of course and so in a sense it's anti-progress because it's it's it's this perversion of this idea of we're going to get to know each other better or we're going to be more tolerant by by being less tolerant like well wait hold on the whole idea was that we were going to integrate Society right whether that's race class gender sexual identity whatever and and have more of this Melting Pot but as soon as you start making it sort of like um you know the
(18:28) ministry of culture that's going to come down and and have exact dictates and it's going to cancel you if you don't go along with the agenda then you get this massive backlash which is what we're seeing today yeah and so it's it's good the backlash is good in the sense that it's it's a backlash to some of the excesses of that it's bad in the sense that we still do have this fundamental challenge of living in a pluralistic society right and so it breaks my heart a little bit that that some of the progress we've been made that had been
(18:55) made I think for decades certainly from the 60s through maybe the 20 we're now sort of we've lost some of that ground certainly lost some of that ground but Silver Lining is it highlights that uh Humanity as a collective does still have this inherent immune system that sort of Rejects at at some point like obviously things have gotten bad but it has gotten to a point where people are throwing their hands up saying this is insane we need something new exactly I I think it did reach a point of insanity and so then everyday people I mean a lot of
(19:26) people believ that it was insane but they they felt like they couldn't say say it CU they didn't want to lose their friends or they didn't want to get canceled or whatever and now people I think feel very comfortable just sort of saying hey look this is this is crazy you know the fact that I you know I can't talk about you fact that I'm a holder Bitcoin because that's somehow going to make me some conspiratorial Republican or something that's crazy right like so I'm hoping we can get back to like the Thanksgiving dinner we have
(19:51) Thanksgiving coming up where you're sitting across from your family and friends and you have differences and you make fun of each other a little bit and you know you poke and you prod and you and then everybody gets along right yeah you don't have to agree you know it's not that it's not about making each other agree with each other it's just understanding right it's like oh I you know my uncle believes this because he has had this kind of experience I don't get it but he does and I love him and that's fine yeah I mean coming from the
(20:18) Northeast there's a lot of that in my family specifically but I love my family the other day I prefer to talk about uh time spent at the beach and the jokes and the practical jokes that we played on each other growing up but uh it and I hope moving forward we can get away from the political divisiveness and the focus of if you're meeting with family and friends particularly you're forced to talk about these political topics which is not where Society should be at all yeah you should be talking about ideas that are outside the political landscape
(20:47) which gets to like developing a curriculum creating a new University and basally trying to form a curriculum in an environment where you're actually battle testing these ideas what does that process look like how did it look like for you guys well for us we had a vision right out the gate on the kind of curriculum that we thought would be valuable for students and so we have a a two-sided coin basically on one side of that coin is what they call the the liberal arts or the classical liberal arts and all the liberal arts is really
(21:21) is um it's how do you learn to live in a free and open Society right it's this Jeffersonian ideal of if we're going to be self-governing we have to learn how to be self-governing so it's philosophy and history and law and economics where we learn about the world particularly about the world in a liberal Society a society that has a a relative freedom and openness that's that's all it meant so it's living in how to live in that kind of World um so we we believe in that right so going all the way back to Classics you know going all the way back
(21:56) to Socrates and the Bible or whatnot all the way forth to Modern thinkers how does that tell us about how to about ourselves as people as humans what does it tell us about human institutions like banking or higher ed or the criminal justice system and what does it tell us about societies right what are these perennial questions in these disciplines that inform us about The Human Experience it's that simple so we think that's necessary if you don't have that that grounding and that depth and breadth about The Human Experience then
(22:29) you you become like a technician like a like a you know like an automaton a cog in the machine right and so you have to have that grounding in the in the humanities literally call it the humanities in social sciences that grounding kind of pulls you into being a human and it and it in the process it increases your empathy for other humans you can see that other PE humans either before us or or even now are wrestling with the same kinds of questions right so that's half the curriculum the other half is oriented towards moving forward
(22:59) how do we take all this experience and all this learning about humanity and use it to make the world even better moving forward right so how do we solve problems how do we develop new policies new technologies new nonprofits new art and music that makes the world better more beautiful more just and so that's what we call that the Polaris project so Polaris is the North Star so it's half sort of liberal art in half what entrepreneurship and Innovation like moving forward and they're not like two two separate things
(23:35) where it's bifurcated again they're two sides of the same coin it's very hard to be an ethical and principled entrepreneur or leader if you're not grounded and a a firm understanding of what's come before yeah I I completely agree with that I was actually the minor or I didn't minor it but all my electives were taken uh in philosophy reading like Plato Socrates n even and that's one thing that's been completely lost and that's I mean we don't to go too hard into the woke mind virus but the uh the idea of pretty popular idea these days is the
(24:17) fact that like you had Marxist individuals sort of infiltrate the university system more broadly here in the United States and um via concerted effort try to um basically wash over that history and that that important knowledge that came before us yeah and it's um that's again going back to what I said earlier the intellectual debt that that occurs from that um is pretty significant I think the works of literature and art um that have been produced throughout the years uh particularly in philosophy and philosophers throughout time have said
(24:59) very similar things in different ways like these um first principal beliefs about how the world works and how logic works are pretty consistent throughout time for a reason um and it's being able to have that base knowledge of logic first principles it allows you to continue progress and it feels like uh a lot of that ancient knowledge is been actively glossed over in the University system a lot of universities obviously there's yeah some that are better than others exactly some are better than others for sure and some departments are better
(25:34) than others even within the same University so it's hard you can't paint it with a broad brush for sure uh but I think you can say look the general trend line has been to move away from some of these this the liberal arts right some of this um classical thinking and so on to just sort of practical you know knowledge because we're we're Preparing People for their career well I think that's true in part you're Preparing People for some for some discipline to be an engineer or to be a doctor or to be a teacher but um
(26:02) you're not just preparing people to be technicians within a field we ought to be preparing people to be better humans right so that for them for their own purposes their own transformation but also their contributions to a free and open Society right are they better neighbors are they better citizens of a free Society are they better bosses that requires something much different than just figuring out how to you know put put a widget and Place mhm um and that's where philosophy and history and stuff come in it it teaches us about this all
(26:34) this Rich understanding that people before us have come you know have developed it's like why wouldn't we want that right we're dropped into this world kind of you know out of nowhere and we're figuring our way out in the world and wanting to make good decisions and there's all this history before us is there really nothing to learn from that history we're not better off as an individual if we don't you know it makes no sense sense of course we want to to it's to our personal Advantage sit there and go what have people learned before
(27:04) me so I don't have to learn it myself right and so it to kind of discount all of that and just sort to say no it's just about tight how you tighten up the screw tighter makes no sense yeah in fact that kind of knowledge that technical knowledge is easier than it's ever been because we live in an information economy right we can go get that knowledge if I want to learn how to fix my dishwasher I can now like watch a YouTube video for five minutes and I can solve a problem that might have taken me an engineering degree to get before
(27:32) right so that's not the problem the problem is figuring out how do we live you know um productive healthy lives in a free Society with other people who are trying to do the same thing who have differences and we have conflicting interests and so on the biggest challenge we face is literally just the day-to-day Communications and personal interactions and our own emotions and our own you know um stresses it's not you know we've got plenty of access to technical knowledge so it's just res Shifting the emphasis back to sort of say look some
(28:05) we don't want to lose everything that's come before and with this in mind how are you guys gauging success of the the new University that you've created well it's important to remember we just have we just had our first trimester starting in you know two months ago um so to this point you know success has been hitting these Milestones of launching University most importantly you know having our first class of students start in September which we did and that alone honestly is a bit of a miracle to to launch a
(28:37) university is an insane insane thing um you the regulatory burdens are almost prohibitive the financial burden in terms of the resources necessary just extraordinary um so all for all of these reasons like it's very very difficult um so hitting these Milestones particularly starting with students um this fall was is Success now of course we're very much focused on how do we get better how do we grow um some of that is of course continuing to recruit students being able to lower the acceptance rate meaning we're basically getting the best
(29:13) students um we certainly have an excellent class this this year but I think we're going to have even stronger classes moving forward as we gain a reputation for being you know a strong institution uh it's fundraising of course because we have to have the resources to to do this at this point in you know in our infancy we're we're 100% philanthropy you know we don't have a revenue model yet we will in next five years or so but we don't today so we have to raise money and that money of course is a signal whether we're doing a
(29:45) good job um or whether people think we're doing a good job um and so on accreditation is a hoop we have to jump through and that would represent a certain level of success in terms of you know being able to meet the standards that are set before us from regulator ERS um and we're look we're really well positioned for all of that and this institution even though it's only 3 years old is incredibly strong I mean we have just we have put on so much muscle in three years it's just incredible yeah and diving into the regulatory landscape
(30:15) because we were talking about it before with Trump coming to office and many uh many people surmising that uh if he's going to implement this High tarce lowincome tax uh regime he's going to need to cut spending and he has spoken publicly or people around the campaign of spoken spoken publicly about uh cutting departments like the Department of Education and have they Department of Education been a Hance to what you're trying to do no but I think it's a hindrance in part to Innovation within higher education and as as well
(30:53) as K through2 like education broadly um so I I think there are real problems there and I think it's getting in the way of bringing about the kind of choice and Innovation that people really want um it's a one siiz fits-all approach when you have the federal government sort of dictating terms um do we need to abolish the you know Department edification I have no idea do we need some serious reform maybe all the way up to BOS sure you know I think there needs to be a really radical look at what we're doing um so you know we're in
(31:25) certainly we're in favor in having an environment that just allows more upstarts right makes it a little easier for new universities to be started new schools to be started new kinds of curriculum new kinds of Technologies around education all of that's a good thing right competition is a good thing it it it raises everyone up to a higher standard um so I'd like to see that I certainly don't want to see more regulation right we don't want more requirements that and most some of which are just either political so they're
(31:52) just not it's not good you know these kind of political litmus tests that you were talking about with your class or they're just necessary bureaucracy that just stifled the process of innovation and that's true of almost any department but certainly the Department of Education has its own problems yeah this rip was also brought to you by our good friends at salt of the earth you got to be hydrating Freaks and while you're hydrating you got to be getting your electrolytes this is the best electrolytes mix that I've ever come
(32:17) into contact with uh Pink Himalayan salt with calcium magnesium potassium sodium no sugar it tastes incredible my favorite is the orange and the pink lemonade the to drink so.com it's drinks.com use the code tftc when you make your purchase and you'll get 15% off I'm telling you get on it freaks you're going to love this stuff move around a little bit here just as you're discussing this like you've thought about this a lot like how like what's your background before uatx and like what was the the impetus that drove you
(32:51) to say all right we're going to do this yeah I mean um it's funny cuz you don't yeah my experience has been it's very very hard to sort of um plan out your career right and then end up where you are like you know there's no way when I was you know 30 years ago when I was starting my career that I thought i' that I'd be where I am today you know it's just radically different I went to business school at University of Texas I went to um Georgetown University for graduate school and cultural studies so I actually studied a lot of this
(33:20) critical theory and so on um not so much as a sympathizer I was actually just interested in ideas and and I'm particularly interested in society and in culture I mentioned this early earlier cultures Upstream from politics in my view and that's really important because we're having these fights around politics but in some ways we're having them 10 years or 20 years too late at that point by the time you have the fight in politics it's already done the Cake's baked um and so if you want to go Upstream of politics you you have to
(33:53) think about culture and what are the cultural institutions well it's entertainment it's higher education right now it's things like blogs and so on that's Upstream um and so that's what I spent my career doing is thinking about culture thinking about what they call social change and in particular sort of how do societies change how do cultures change and how do they change for the best because there's of course there's bad social change right when all of a sudden you have you know Nazis or Communists or something and then there's
(34:22) good social change where people are there's more peace there's more prosperity and so on well where does it come from where where does positive social change come from um so in looking at those questions I got obsessed with the idea of of liberalism again properly understood the the way to understand liberalism as a in in this proper sense is to look at the enlightenment right and the values that came out of the Enlightenment which are things like pluralism the rule of law democracy the scientific method very basic things
(34:55) things that we almost take for granted now private property right private property absolutely uh free enterprise U constitutional protections these are all things that came out of the Enlightenment these are all what we would call liberal values and higher education in the United States is supposed to be a liberal institution about living in the society that has those values right if you look at institutions and you look at societies that have embraced these classical we'll call them classical liberal values so people aren't
(35:25) confused um it is absolutely clear that those societies across time and across geography have done better classical societies that adhere to Liberal values they're not just doing a little bit better they're doing 10x 100x better and and now of course there's all these memes around this where you can see like you can see satellite footage of North Korea versus South Korea that tells you everything this is also true I I traveled to Cypress about 20 years ago Cypress is divided in half um and there's a more liberal again
(36:02) classical liberal Enlightenment inform formed sort of South and less so in the north including this the capital city which is divided in half you can climb up these ladders you can look over the wall I forget the name of the capital city and you're standing in the same city in the same country with the same people and the same geography and it's radically different and is clearly better in the South than it is in the north that is not so you can't say it's resources or it's people or it's it has to do with what values were U Were
(36:34) realized out in that Society it's funny I saw um a picture on X the other week of the the border of I believe it was Monaco and France and the is that right is that sound right yeah I think that's right yeah and it was like Stark difference like a Monaco like way better than France likewise I mean I you see it here in the United States driving through the Northeast order I had a wedding in New Hampshire once and you you drive through Massachusetts to get to New Hampshire and as soon as you cross the border into
(37:06) the Free State the roads are materially better you're driving on 95 in Massachusetts and literally once you cross the border the road is wellmaintained and and much better it's insane to see exactly and that's not that's not people geography that's that's policy and that policy again is informed by the kind of culture that the kinds of things that that we support the kinds of things that we value right Texas is look Texas is great at this Texas is not perfect just like the US is not perfect but as a as a state Texas I
(37:38) think has the right values and is doing a good job of seeing a lot of that through in the terms of the kinds of policies it has but the culture is what really matters right and one one amazing thing about Austin is how diverse and heterodox it is it's a place where people come to do new things whether that's art or technology or education or politics there's where there's this kind of creative conflict the good kind of conflict that you want where you know it's it's these ideas are converging and sort of conflicting and then there new
(38:11) stuff is born out of it and so it's an unbelievably creative environment you people kind of characterize Austin in the you oh it's the blue City and the red State kind of but you know if you walk around Austin you see all kinds of different people you can go to a restaurant and you're going to be sitting next to the person who's this crazy so Progressive with blue hair right next to the really uptight Republican guy and they're getting along right they're having lunch together and you're like what's going on here well
(38:36) that it's because it's that's the sort of Creative Energy that's allowed to actually interact culturally and learn from each other right and kind of bounce ideas off each other that you don't see when everybody in other parts of in other states kind of go off to their Corner um and so it's one of really it's and that's true in my view that's true about every aspect of Austin that there's there's these differences but the differences are allowed to kind of come together and you just you don't see that in other states you see people sort
(39:04) of separating moving into different neighborhoods and different friend groups and so on yeah I mean somebody who's lived in three of The Bluest cities in the country in Philadelphia Chicago and New York yeah uh when everybody scoffs me because I live in Austin and te in Texas they're like ah it's the libs Capital like compared to the other cities I lived in this is vastly superior and yes without out like I lived in DC for many years and that was a city that was more uniform in its views and you had to kind of watch it
(39:35) what you would say I don't ever feel that way in Austin I feel like I could talk to my conservative friends or my Progressive friends and have be honest and I'm not going to get you know I'm not going to get shot down or canceled from it I mean we might have a passionate discussion and that's fine I mean that's how we challenge each other right that's growth yeah but um yeah you know I did in the DC area got to a point where you couldn't even have a real conversation it was really a bummer similarly in New York Chicago really
(40:04) wasn't having those uh those conversations as much at a younger age but as I get older particularly after you have kids those conversations rear their heads I mean yeah it's much easier to have them down here so that's the microcosm for you know those kind of conversations are the microcosm for the macro situation in higher ed right in a sense the research the teaching the mentoring can't really happen because it's stifled people self-censor people cancel each other and and so the very thing that highered exists to do which
(40:37) is the sort of foster conversation Foster exploration is the very thing that it's failing to do that that's what was so frustrating and so depressing and that's that's what fed energy into US starting the University of Austin people you know we get characterized the Wall Street Journal recently had a an article about us where they you use anti-woke in the title and I'm like now you're not understanding this isn't about woke or anti-woke this is literally about whether the core purpose of higher education this is about exploring ideas
(41:09) or having an an orthodox view of ideas and how has the faculty how how are how are what are their Vibe like because I was mentioning as we were taking the elevator ride up John Constable brought him over from the UK he pretty prolific in the world of of energy and and physics and uh I'm supposed to uh meet up with him at some point here in the next couple of weeks and just really interested to get his perspective on why uatx and like what are you feeling is there a sense of wow I feel like I'm actually able to go and have the
(41:50) relationship with students that I've been looking for yeah I me look the faculty in some ways are what exactly what you'd hope they're all over over the place right different disciplines different sort of political sentiments different personalities um I mean look the first thing we hired for with faculty was their their Merit their abilities right um and particularly right at this stage their ability to teach because that's what we're starting with we're we're a full-blown University teaching in research but we're starting with these
(42:19) students come in and this undergrad and so we need great teachers so they're great teachers so they have that in common um we also look for for faculty who ideally demonstrate some level of Courage right because it's the Fearless Pursuit Of Truth pursuing truth in this environment like openly exploring ideas I mean really doing it requires some courage particularly in this environment where you know if you say things you get shut down and so on um so we we needed to know that they had the courage to kind of to live out this principle of
(42:50) The Fearless Pursuit Of Truth so they have that they have some of those stories um about you know how they felt in the classroom people think it's just conservatives it's not I mean your your your mainstream sort of leftist Center Professor was feeling shut down from people even further left than they are yeah we saw this in Australia with the uh oceanographer who at one point said climate change is killing the Great Barrier Reef and then he went back and did research a decade later Reef's becoming revived and he came and just
(43:20) brought like hey I think I was wrong yeah uh the great Barry reef is recovering and he got fired right exactly and so every one of those instances of that happening is a chilling effect for for scientists for researchers for teachers that's why it's so important it's look even if it's not completely prolific in one area if people know about it right it's kind of like going down the highway and you know that there's you've heard that there's like one or two cops on the next stretch of 50 miles that's all you need to know
(43:50) right just just the just the possibility that you're going to get that ticket is enough to sort of quash what you're doing so it doesn't even have to exist everywhere it just has to exist enough to make you afraid and so then that's why the Prof professors start to self- sensor that's why the students start to self-censor so that's why there has to be this really kind of radical commitment to The Fearless pursuit of truth because you can't even have one instance where you're shutting somebody down for political reasons because it has this
(44:16) ripple effect and that manifests at U uatx like outside the class room as well cuz I know you guys are working on curating talks and discussions yeah forums as well corre yeah and we've already done a lot of that we and we still do a lot of that so there's a lot of public sort of facing stuff both uh events and speakers and whatnot but also content that we put online we're fairly prolific yeah and has the work that you've done going out with the ambitious goal of starting University getting through the red tape
(44:49) getting it across the line has it inspired others is that your hope yeah it was always Our Hope to do two things one one was to start a new University and you know committed to The Fearless Pursuit Of Truth and have students start by the fall of 24 and we did that the the parallel goal was it by doing that that it would Inspire other institutions and you know people around those institutions to um you know to think about things differently and think about what the possibilities are basically to inspire them towards a A Better Way Forward to
(45:23) be a light in the darkness right and we you know we see this so much some of it's also very private when we have University presidents reaching out to us consistently and saying look this is great I won't I can't say it publicly but it's great keep going you know it's helping the kinds of conversations I'm having with with our faculty or with our board or whatever we get that from Boards of Trustees we get it from major donors of other institutions they're all I mean 100% calling us up and saying this is great we encourage it this is
(45:53) helping change the conversation in higher ed some of them don't feel like they be public about that but they definitely want us to succeed and and they've asked us about starting new institutions we've been offered institutions in other cities that are on their way out and they've asked us you know can can we save their institution that's what I was Justin um Moon out there he he was screaming at me as we were running into the studio we've had this conversational iers um there's a part of the public or maybe not the
(46:25) public but there's a group of people who want to tear down institutions like the Ivy Leagues and they think it's gotten way overblown way too indoctrinated and we've had this back and forth like do you tear it down or do you try and like reinvigorate the institution are these institutions worth saving I guess is another way to frame it and do they need something like U uatx as an external signal um of competition like yes we are forced to to reinvigorate and um preserve this institution in the long run yes uh look
(46:58) higher education is absolutely worth saving um but it's also must be renewed right in a sense it's it's a renewal it's a coming back to its original purpose and with a new sort of relevance a new commitment a new vibrancy so it's not about throwing it out and burning it down um but it is about look taking a sober look at what is its core purpose recommitting to that and then making that real through your policies your practice the kind of culture you're building the people you hire all of that so there needs to be a very
(47:30) robust sort of renewal and an institution like uatx can and I think should be part of that you know providing some some guidance providing some lessons learn providing some inspiration it's very much part of what we want to do um we'd love to see dozens if not hundreds of other institutions out there competing with us in a sense to try to you know to try to do things better I think that's how you get there I think you need competition I think you need some outside forces I don't think the answer is is the sort of marginal
(47:59) reforms that they've been trying with universities like let's start off let's have this little project off to the side you know these projects off to the side that they kind of bolt on um to universities don't succeed because they're overwhelmed by the the incentives within the university right I'm just completely overwhelmed by it I mean if you're interested in reforming universities you have to ask yourself a single question to start which is what is the incentive of the univ University to change and honestly if you look at the
(48:31) incentives for universi to change they're not good there's not a lot of incentive for change right so you have a big problem if you're if you're somebody who wants to sort of see higher ed be reformed you have to answer that question about what are the incentives and if you don't have a good answer to that question you know you got a problem and that's very much again I think where we were 3 years ago that doesn't mean burn it down that just means like we need a more radical sort of fix we need a more um fundamental kind of answer
(49:02) yeah actually the one I thing I can think of is taking away the student loans where it's like hey you don't get this free money spigot anymore you got to actually compete exactly I mean you at least those kinds of things should be looked at because you know when it comes that when it comes to sort of a more radical shift and a and you want things like accountability you want transparency I mean things like accountability and transparency put the light of day on institutions whatever they are business is high Ed and that's
(49:29) the kind of thing that that gives people a view into what's happening and saying whoa whoa whoa you're doing what I'm not going to give you my money or I'm not going to have my kids go to the school or you know whatever so in some ways there needs to be much stronger governance there's the governance within higher education the kind of oversight that we've had it's been appalling and the thing is these are really good people so I'm I'm not trying to knock these people individually a lot of the people that are in these kind of governing board
(49:56) type of roles are very successful business people very smart and so on but they've let the the administrators and so on just run a muck they've got the first thing I would like to see is is the boards of trustees and the major donors and sort of you know people that are basically have governing oversight of these institutions start to hold people accountable to their own values to their own what they're saying that they stand for if they stand for merit then they stand for merit what does that look like if they stand for
(50:23) institutional neutrality what does that look like let's make it real let's don't just talk talk about it uh we've got to move past this kind of I don't know L Fair almost sort of governance of higher ed and keep pretending like it's going to be okay to like a much more Elon Musk esque kind of aggressive go in and and clean things out a bit and hold some people accountable it's like if you're not going to do the job of maintaining this institution's values its core values then you can't be the president yeah this is our ultimate goal are you
(50:52) working to achieve that here's some kpis and benchmarks we want to see you hit if you don't hit them exactly and I mean that's true for any institution so that's not some radical departure that's true for businesses or whatever we we don't see that much in h Ed you saw a little bit of accountability last winter you know when claudian gay you know um showed this kind of cowardice during her um her testimony before Congress and so she got held accountable and uh so did the woman from Columbia or it was a pen I can't
(51:19) remember now um and that sent a signal again that sent a good signal to other institutions that like oh we got to start paying attention so that was helpful um but again there there like something like 4,000 institutions of higher ad and some of these institutions have these enormous endowments and these huge base of alumni and the huge base of of local state and federal support all of those things create incentives for the status quo not for change I mean speaking of endowments it's a good segue yeah in terms of I mean that's mentioning I work
(51:52) at a fun 1031 we interact with a lot of endowments um to raise money and help Steward their capital and that having done that for the last three years now getting to understand the ultimate goals of these endowments and how they can achieve their ability to fund what they want to go do whether that's subsidize um schooling for individuals build new facilities whatever um you've got to get creative of how you actually establish and then grow and maintain that endowment into the future and very happy to see that uatx launch and you guys
(52:31) have an endowment with Bitcoin at the core of it and so were the the thought what was the thought thought process and decision process that went into making that ultimate decision oh so some level of endowment is good right you you you need and I think want to as a university to create um endowed funds for things like scholarships right so you have that money and perpetuity to be able to offer scholarships to students in need or or for merit um you want things like endowed chairs if you want to be able to attract top-notch intellectuals and
(53:06) Scholars it's very helpful if there's money in the bank where you're drawing 5% roughly a year to pay for that chair and so they that individual and the university knows their stability right so that's a good version of the endowment um so the idea was was just that like any kind of um you know investment strategy we want to diversify our risk we want to diversify our Port portfolio why aren't people doing that with Bitcoin right as a long-term asset if you look at how Bitcoin was performed over the last five
(53:40) years you could at least have a plausible hope that it's going to perform well moving forward maybe it doesn't but you know you'd have it you'd have some reason to believe that it will so you put in your portfolio and so that's what we're doing you know we view it as a as a long-term asset um that we think is going to do well we want that in the portfolio uh we want to so that's the Practical part the more ideological part if you will or philosophical part is that we believe what it stands for you know in our mind it stands for free
(54:10) free speech you know free expression well that's what we're all about you know that's our DNA so you know we're like we're like spiritually we're like we're this close to bitcoin right in the Bitcoin Community we get it right we get what it means to kind of um want um a way out of The Madness of an institution and towards some freedom and and control and so um you know there's there's that kind of Community Connection and we're we're seeing this like so many of our supporters our students they're they're all interested in Bitcoin yeah well it
(54:43) was this your personal journey to bitcoin were you did you understand Bitcoin before you made the decision or was something you came to understand as I mean you know I I have some Bitcoin I've had it for a number of years but it was more like you know it was a whim whatever a few years ago and that was the end of it um I never got into it personally in terms of really understanding it until more recently you I blame Joe Kelly for this you know he he was telling me more about it and I was listening and Jonathan was talking
(55:13) with me as well and then and then I was like wow this really is important I need to pay more attention um because there's I'm a really curious person so everything interests me which is kind of a problem in the sense that I could all of a sudden I can deep dive into you know literature or music or whatever and just go deep for a year or two so I hadn't been paying attention really honestly to bitcoin at least not that much but I have a lot of friends and the University of course has a lot of friends that were interested so I was
(55:40) constantly kind of getting at least um being immersed in that community and then somebody like Joe you know had to basically explain it to me and then I was like oh right wow this is so much more powerful so much more uh diverse in its impact than just just being currency or just being an asset yeah and I think it's very serendipitous maybe that's the word maybe there's another word fortuitous that we're caddy corner to each other because I think yeah what's happening in this office we're almost at the same height too you you can
(56:10) literally see into our offices from here practically and it's it it is an incredible feeling knowing that like everybody out in this room right next to us down the hall and Unchained in the middle of the floor at pleb lab like all working on these cuz that's the other too like Bitcoin is so new still even 16 years in there's many things that need to get built many ideas of what can be built and it's truly an exploration of ideas in this building and I think it is a bit poetic that we are caty corner to each other as you guys are embarking on
(56:46) exploring uh a new realm of higher education yeah well all I can do is agree you know I feel it too it's um it's kind of comes full circle to the beginning the conversation about sort of the magic of what's happening in Austin particularly on this corner at six in Congress and um these days I you know I walk down the sidewalk and almost I'm I bump into people are doing these amazing things and then I wonder about the people I'm not I don't even know that are walking past me I'm like is this person going to be the next person that
(57:16) cures blindness or is this going to be the next person that you know um figures out some some new way to do the Federal Reserve you know like you you don't know you don't even know who you're walking by and like right down the street we had the mothership a basan of free speech in the world of Comedy is is right down the street from us it's uh no it's incredible I mean you got and then you you got the full spectrum of not just innovators but intellectuals everything from academics you know at UT as well as University of Austin and elsewhere but
(57:46) you've also got um you know the podcasters and you know so The Joe Rogan and then you've got the Elon Musk and you've got I mean yeah think about the amount of Firepower in Austin I mean Austin's punching so far above its weight intellectually at least um that is extraordinary I mean it's hard to even kind of put it into to really quantify it but you can feel it you know you can feel like well how how are so many of the most important people in the country in terms of changing the direction of the country pushing things
(58:18) forward wow there's a awful lot of are in Austin why you know what is that they're not in St Louis right they're not in you know you know I mean I'm sure those are fine cities but like why is it Austin Silver Lining of Co I'm trying to figure out how to phrase this I mean it drove a lot of people here drove me here I think that was like Texas generally putting the flag down saying we're going to be relatively free to the rest of the country yeah I I agree look I think it was a transformative moment for for the
(58:50) country I mean if you look at the internal migration there the largest internal migration as I understand in the history of United States except for the what they call the great migration in the early part of the 20th century with African-Americans going out of the South to the north um because of Jim Crow and so on so that was a huge per of internal migration but the largest since then um has been this migration during immediately after covid well again if the first question like that you know that Economist ask is you know why why
(59:22) is this happening okay well where the migrating to for example they're migrating to Texas Florida Tennessee what do those three states have in common yeah no income tax that's not the only reason I'm just saying they don't they don't right what was their covid policy all relatively free right same thing with Utah for example um and so it doesn't take you don't have to dig too hard to start seeing Oh there's something different happening in the places where people are moving to relative to where they're moving from and you can start to
(59:56) say oh common sense you know tells us that this probably matters it probably matters that they have more favorable tax policy more favorable regulation more sane approach to covid and so on sorry about that so thought I'd turn that off um so yeah no it's there been this incredible this incredible um shift because of Co um I mean it's tragic in the sense that it kind of so disruptive but of course like any kind of disruption it can reshuffle the deck in some good ways I think a lot of ways obviously what's going on here in Austin
(1:00:28) I think it's working on a fractal too um we have this reassertion of autonomous state rights which really shine through during covid which I think is incredibly beneficial to long-term health and quality of life of Americans overall because it really reignited that Interstate competition that the founders basically set out yeah when they founded the country and and crafted the Constitution and I think that's only going to accelerate from here and like what you're doing UT uatx is um like just like a fractal movement of that like
(1:01:06) you're doing at the University level and that's obviously near and dear to our heart in the Bitcoin Community because Bitcoin is this distributed system and our core one of our core beliefs or one of my core beliefs as a bitcoiner is that this distributed robust system is is what we should be building on top of and you need whether it's a robust monetary system or robust uh Republic of states with their own individual ways of doing things or robust distributed University system with a plethora of different models and ideas um this is
(1:01:38) how system should organize is in this distributed fashion exactly and that's been the magic of the Constitution for example is that distribution of power across the branches and so on between the states and the federal government I mean the the first thing that somebody who cares about a free and open Prosperity the the first thing you should really have I think is a general intellectual um kind of habit is skepticism not not cynicism but skepticism right skep and particularly skepticism about centralization of power
(1:02:13) wherever it might be whether that's corporate power the Federal Reserve the federal government whatever the nature of power is as it gets more centralized it gets more corrupt so when you distribute it out you make maintain that kind of competition of ideas of businesses of you know doing things better and so we always want some level of that distribution once we lose that distribution that's the problem right when the federal government gets too much power or the Federal Reserve gets too much power or the L the local
(1:02:43) schools get too much power things start to go south and so if you care if look whatever your politics are if you care if you genuinely care about you know peace and prosperity and Justice and moving the you have to at least say Oo we have to be careful right and it's not just whether it's concentrated under Trump we don't want it concentrated under anyone I don't want to concentrated under Mother Teresa you know it's not it's not so much who's in office it's like how much power does that person have once they're in office
(1:03:13) right if you're worried about power don't just worry about whether you know Trump has power versus Obama or vice versa worry about whether the Office of the President has too much power or worry about whether Congress has too much power um and so as we see it get redistributed to the states or decentralized through things like Bitcoin those are positive movements that creates more competition more accountability more transparency those are the things that that that's the the sanitation of daylight onto all of these
(1:03:40) kinds of Institutions yeah completely agree and I'm extremely optimistic I was I mean I'm a child of 9/11 great financial crisis um covid not a child of it but lived through it and uh that is for most of my life been hyper worried and pessimistic about the centralizing power that has existed throughout most of my life and maybe I'm naive maybe a bit gullible but it does seem like if you squint you look at what bitcoin's doing what uatx is doing what the Trump Administration is promising you can squint and see light at the end
(1:04:17) of the tunnel that maybe we are moving back towards sanity and distributed systems that that lead to competition and overall quality of life pce some Prosperity yeah I think we're starting to see the pendulum swing back towards sanity rather than this kind of nihilism and and gaslighting and so on right I think people have just had enough um and so the trick is not to have it swing too far the other direction where all of a sudden it's like it gets corrupted in a different way yeah um and so you know friends of Freedom friends of um of
(1:04:53) Sanity have to maintain their princi in terms of can't this is why I'm not a big friend of politics because politics ultimately becomes about tribalism and what tribe I belong to and what tribe I'm loyal to where what we really need to do is be committed to a certain set of ideas and decentralization is one of those ideas um and so it doesn't really matter like who's in in my view who's in control or what the party is it's like it matters what ideas are going to be implemented I'm optimistic right now I think we're swinging in the right
(1:05:24) direction and I think we have some people who can do some really positive things but we also have to maintain vigilance and sort of say do those things don't do a bunch of other stupid things that is a poetic that you said that cuz literally the episode we just recorded that was the whole topic of as this Trump Administration comes in how do we stay vigilant and hold the new um Administration accountable for promises it can't just be hope I mean Hope's a great thing and I and again I have some I definitely have some hope coming out
(1:05:52) of this I think there's there's the possibility of some really positive things but there has to be the vigilance to say no you know we have to do those things and we also have to not do the dumb things that that humans are are inclined to do right um retribution I'm not talking about justice but actual retribution is a terrible idea yeah terrible that would that would spoil the entire thing um so there are things like that that we just have to be vigilant about and and if you care about ideas and you care about
(1:06:19) society and how ideas manifest out rather than your political tribalism then you have to sort of hold yourself accountable in your own party and your own people in a sense accountable and that's the D that's the that's the downside right the downside is people get too comfortable and then they start to make the same mistakes that their opponents were making yeah you have to have the uh intellectual Vigor and competence to hold yourself accountable yeah so I kind of welcome that um I welcome for the University I welcome
(1:06:48) people holding us accountable to our own commitments to our own Constitution to our own ideals I welcome that for the Trump Administration I welcome it for any kind of new for the bitcoiners you know that that there's always sort of transparency and accountability and so on to keep it true to its principles because otherwise it runs the risk of getting corrupted over time yeah I think we're going to win optimistic yeah the the optimism and the potential I think the potential I think there's many people opening their eyes with the
(1:07:19) whether it's Bitcoin AI what we're seeing with SpaceX um all the booming company is here in Austin like the potential is palpable and that's what makes me extremely optimistic It Feels Like For the first time in a while there's this concerted effort to go realize that potential and I think what you're doing what we're doing um we're going to look back in a decade and be like I'm glad we were doing this because it was the right time I was telling my wife like last night I was like you know it's weird knowing that
(1:07:54) you're probably living through a moment of History not just where things are just kind of going along but like we're we're seeing this kind of cataclysmic shift right or this transformative kind of shift and and again that's not just that's not the election I'm talking about it's it's really it's the culture and it's entrepreneurship and it's but it's shifting a lot um of course it shifted during covid because of what we talked about earlier but it now it's shifting back in this in some other directions and the way it's shifting culturally I
(1:08:24) think is largely positive I think this is a time where people really can be more hopeful more optimistic if they can move past the tribalism of politics and literally just look at what's happening in the world in ter in terms of what's possible I think there's some good reasons to be optimistic um like you said you know the Bitcoin kind of phenomenon the university and and some of the reforms and Innovations there um technology You know despite all the problems in the world there's so much opportunity to do things better and we have people
(1:08:54) actually going out there and trying to do those things better but with all of the cataclysm of the last few years people were losing hope and people are sort of acting like it's the end of the world and I just don't think that's true um and I think I think this is very much part of the human cycle like every 50 years or so we kind of go through these moments um and we we saw that we saw that in the late 60s people forget how volatile that was I mean presidential candidate the president was assassinated a presidential candidate was assassinated
(1:09:23) the head of the you know the leader of the Civil Rights Movement was assassinated students were shot on campus at Kent State all in the space of a few years was unbelievably you know um Dynamic and dangerous uh polarized and yet we made it through right we can make it through the current moment and I think we've started to see that we are making it through the current moment um and that people are stepping up in different ways whether that's education Finance politics whatever to try to start doing you know to kind of
(1:09:54) emerge out of this Mor ass into sanity into hope into something positive so like I so I agree with you I like for the first time I'm starting to feel more hopeful about what the you know the kind of the kind of country we can have and the kind of community we can have yeah people keep working keep building keep going after we' like to say a lot on this show we're going to win I think uh I think we're going to win yeah um again I'm an optimist yeah Chad this has been incredible thank you for taking some time pleas come acoss I need to get over
(1:10:26) there uh and check it out I've have not been everybody should come and and visit uatx and see it for yourself I got uh when's the next event you guys are having tonight 5 in about an hour oh exactly you got to you got to drop by it's a huge event tonight an open house so it's mostly for students and parents I don't think you probably have young kids that are 18year olds yet no not yet but um but it's open to everyone to come drop by and just see what we're building right and talk to the faculty talk to the staff see the campus you
(1:10:53) know kick the tires awesome well I'm sure you have to go prepare for that so I won't take up any more of your time apprciate it thank you peace and love freaks
