What Happens When Andrew Yang and Dr. Drew Go On A Reality Show?

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This week on the Andrew Yang Podcast, folks like to, uh, embrace those ideas because they maintain the fiction that we're all going to be market compatible. And what I try and explain to people, Drew, is that As a 50-year-old, if I don't get dumber in a given month, that's a good month. Meanwhile, AI might get twice as smart in the same time period. So expecting us to compete with AI is getting increasingly dumb. This week I sit down with my fellow Nation's Dumbest castmate, Dr. Drew, for a wide-ranging conversation on UBI, what it's like to get the heck off that show, and much more. Do want to unpack a little bit now that I can talk about it openly because I am off the show. If you've been watching, I hope you've enjoyed it. I've certainly had a blast watching it with my family. My kids cringe a little bit every time I screw up. I think they actually felt proud when I did something right and good. Got a number of text messages and DMs from people who said they watched it because of curiosity, frankly, on how I did. And I hope anyone who did watch it enjoyed it half as much as we did as a family. I actually kind of miss being on the show because we would bring the boys together and watch it. And knowing that millions of families had the same experience, albeit not as direct because dad wasn't on the show, or, you know, they're just watching it for a bit of escapism and to have a good time and to laugh at someone else. No, it was what I'd hoped for. I'm on a group text with the other contestants, so we remain in touch and friends. We kind of laugh and cheer at each episode. And as someone who was on the show, but you have no idea what they're going to depict. You do tons of interviews, and so you have no idea which snippets they're going to air. So it's been a revelation for us to the contestants, because like, oh, I forgot about that. They showed that I have no idea what that, that this person said that thing. But I will say my rationales for going on the show were borne out that I had a distinct, unique, maybe once in a lifetime experience. I made some new friends. I did create some— the thing I didn't anticipate was how much my family would enjoy watching me participate in this, whether it's my kids, obviously most directly, but also, you know, my niece and nephew, like some of our friends' kids. That part I didn't anticipate to the degree that it would be fun and meaningful. So thank you for folks who maybe were scared at first. Some people, some supporters of mine have actually told me that they got mad when they saw that I was on the show because they thought it was somehow an insult to me. And certainly it's not that. I mean, I freaking chose to go on it. And I think if you did watch the show, you came away with a good spirit. I had one friend who's part of the Forward Party text me and say, "Hey, I'm happy to say that I think this added to both your story personally and the movement's story." And it was like a double win. So I'm thrilled that that's the way it came across. Certainly it's the way my family and I experienced it. And I'm happy to say that I'm going to be on season 2. No, nothing like that. Um, but who knows? Uh, new experiences, new friends, new relationships, fun for the family. Coming next, I unpack this and talk about a whole lot of other things, including AI and the future and politics with my friend Dr. Drew. It's the summer, which is supposed to mean we all get fit and healthy, but if it means what it means to me, you eat a lot of crap and junk, and it's actually not great for your waistline, which makes it a great time to switch to Factor. Factor makes chef-crafted, dietitian-designed, ready-to-eat meals that are sent to you. Even a klutz like me in the kitchen can get them done in 2 minutes. Salmon burger, shredded pork, collard greens, plus desserts like pumpkin-flavored cheesecakes, protein shakes you'll actually like. Factor's been a game changer for me because I'm kind of a set it and forget it guy. I just want to go to the fridge, bang out the meal. Let's eat real. Head to factormeals.com/yang50off and use code YANG50OFF to get 50% off and 1 free breakfast item per box for 1 year. While supplies last until 10/31/2026. That's code Yang50off at factormeals.com. Yang50off at factormeals.com. See website for more details. Thank you, listeners. Please make sure to like and subscribe. And if you have any questions, send them to mailbag@andreyang.com and We'll do our best to answer them. Thank you.

Andrew Yang is both an entrepreneur and a former 2020 Democratic candidate. He is an author. He is the CEO of Noble Mobile. And I'll have him tell you about that, which seems like an extraordinary opportunity for those of us getting taken to the cleaners by our various cellular carriers. His bestseller was The War on Normal People, and I am reading most of the way through his book, Hey Yang, Where's My $1,000? Hey Yang, thank you for joining me.

Drew, thanks for having me. Look at this. We're not trapped in a high school set in a fake gym trying to avoid making dumbasses of ourselves. So it's great to be out here in the free world with you.

It's so funny, Andrew. When I was watching last week's episode, it's a Fox reality show, Fox, you know, think the Fox Network that airs The Simpsons. And it's 9:00 on Wednesdays and it airs on Hulu. And when I was watching myself last week where I got out, I remember thinking to myself that day going, oh crap, I could be here a long, I could never get outta here. This is, if the luck, if the cards go just so, I'm going to stay. You know, it's a lot of luck involved in that game.

Yeah. And it's a really tough pill to swallow when you're close to getting out on a particular day and then it doesn't go for you. And then you're like, I'm going to come back tomorrow and do this again. And I don't know how many more days it's going to be like this. So kudos to you. Anyone who watched the show, Dr. Drew Freeman, not nation's dumbest, whether I join him or not, you'll have to tune in to find out.

Exactly. But it was a great— it was a really positive experience all the way around. And I, I still owe, um, you and— are you in LA now? Are you in New York still?

I'm in LA still, happily being a good helicopter parent.

Okay. I still owe you and, uh, Michael a dinner. We gotta, we gotta organize that. We're in New York right now. We're getting back, so we're in the— we're gonna travel a little more. Back in 2 weeks, essentially. Are you still there in 2 weeks?

Maybe we might just overlap. So yeah, let's try and figure it out.

All right, let's figure it out. Let's figure that out. So, all right. So I enjoyed your book. And do me a favor before we get into the AI story and the presidential candidacy and the universal basic income, thumbnail your story for them because it is pretty extraordinary.

Oh, well, thanks. I was Uh, an unhappy lawyer for 5 months and then a failed entrepreneur and then a nightclub promoter and then a less failed entrepreneur. I ran—

well, the nightclub— but hang on a second, the nightclub promoter dovetailed into the second entrepreneurial effort, right?

Yes, it, it, it did. Uh, yeah, I, I ran an education company, um, that grew to become number 1 in the U.S. And was bought by a public company in 2009. I was 34 at that time, but in my late 20s, I ran a promotion company called Ignition NYC, where we convened hundreds of 20-something-year-olds to drink their sorrows away. This was back when young people both drank and partied. And, you know, may that still happen. You know, if you're a young person watching this, You know, nothing wrong with socializing and getting out there with friends.

It was, it was really interesting to read that part of your story. You, you minimize a little bit your performance as, uh, the— or you were the CEO, I guess, ultimately, of that educational company. I, I'm guessing that was a pretty monumental effort.

Well, we had a great team and, uh, like a really strong curriculum and offering. Our secret sauce, Drew, and some people appreciate this, is that we paid better than others in the industry. And so attracted the best teachers, the best talent. Uh, this was an industry where average turnover was 100% a year. So people would do this for 12 months and then peace out. Uh, and our turnover was something like 4 or 5%. Um, so you had better teachers who stuck around and then students would figure out, wait a minute, this company is actually much more serious about education and, uh, making us perform better. So we did that and grew. But thank you for saying so. I mean, I joke even now that that was the best time in my life professionally because it was a private company and profitable and growing, and you just did what you thought the right thing was for customers and staff members, and you didn't have weird investors breathing down your neck. Um, so it was a joy. Around that time, I met my now wife Evelyn too, and I think there's a theme there where if something is clicking for you professionally, then it's much easier to form, uh, the right relationships. And it's also true, I think, particularly if you're a man, that if your professional life is in limbo, then it's hard to have something click, uh, romantically. Yes, yes.

I'm going to put a little magnifying glass over that and say that men need to understand who they are in the world before they have something to offer somebody else. That's really kind of what it boils down to. We don't, we don't know what we are, what our potential is, who we are until we are in the world. And, uh, that, that's how we then can engage in a relationship. But before I forget, I want to go back to the AI and then the universal basic income. But before I do, tell us about your current effort, which is Noble Mobile.

Yeah, so I'm the magical Asian man from the future who wants to make Americans less broke. Uh, ran for president on the Freedom Dividend, $1,000 a month for everybody, which today would be a bit higher now that AI is here in force. Uh, but what Noble Mobile does is, um, it lowers the average American's phone bill from $83, which is what the average American's paying now. I was paying Verizon over $100 a month. Um, the average Noble Mobile user is spending $42 a month and using your screen, your smartphone, 17% less because any money you don't spend on data, we give half of it back to you at the end of the month. Um, so, um, imagine like rollover minutes, but instead it's money, um, back to you. And then we pay 5.5% interest on any money you save. So it becomes a set it and forget it savings plan that's saving you money every month, but also saving this guy, saving your brain. I think it's one reason why Dr. Drew and others enjoy this company. So Noble Mobile, it's off and running. And if you go to noblemobile.com/yang, give you 3 months for free, which will save the average American about $250. See, Yang still working on it, still trying to get money back in your hand.

No, I get it. I like it even better than just handing people dough. It's teaching people to save and then to put it in an interest-bearing account. I mean, that's really economics and it's an efficiency, which is what I love more. Just finding that efficiency. You get a piece of it, I get a piece of it. Great, let's go. And you said when you— I think you said when you were in Europe, your reception was better than everybody you were with.

Yeah, so on Verizon, they say, hey, you're, uh, in Spain, so we're going to charge you $10 a day on TravelPass. It turns out that Verizon is spending $2 sticking you on the foreign carrier. So at Noble Mobile, we do the same thing, but we only charge you $5, and then we cap it at 10 days per billing cycle and don't charge charge you for the domestic data you don't use. So when I went to Europe on Verizon, I might owe $300 that month, even more. And on Noble, I might owe $70 if I spend 2 weeks in Europe. So that's another way that Verizon and AT&T in particular are sticking it to you. And our reception, my reception genuinely was better. My wife got pissed off because I was the one ordering cars and whatnot, and she was like, you know, like on I think she was on Verizon, not to, you know, beat them up too much, but Noble Mobile, I got to say, like folks like Chelsea Handler and Scott Galloway, when they take it abroad, they're even more excited about it.

But let's, let's now talk about AI. Why were you going to say something? No, uh, what you saw coming with AI and why, and why it's pertinent for the universal basic income idea.

Uh, AI is going to eliminate millions of repetitive cognitive, uh, and repetitive manual jobs in the US. 44% of Americans' jobs fall into one of those two categories. And right now it's, um, hurting entry-level white-collar workers, otherwise known as recent college graduates, most directly. You're seeing the number of coders, uh, that are being hired out of school fall off a cliff. Customer service personnel also constricting fast. I have friends who are partners at law firms who are saying, look, AI can do better work than a third-year associate much more quickly and cheaply. And now I don't have to spend all this time training some newbie out of law school that for a while is kind of a value sink. So AI is here and, uh, unfortunately, um, this whirlwind, this buzzsaw is just gonna spin faster and faster. Uh, so we need to move to a different way to get value into people's hands, particularly because our data was used to form these large language models that are now empowering trillion-dollar enterprises. So the average American is going to see reduced job security and their kids coming home with nothing to do after college. Uh, and, uh, meanwhile these companies are just going to grow and grow, um, in both value and impact. Um, so I wish I was wrong in 2020, but I gotta say my stuff is aging, uh, a little bit too well. Hmm.

Let's do a little thought experiment, uh, as it pertains to the future. Uh, Elon Musk is saying that he's predicting that robots and AI are going to contribute so much to the production of goods and services that we will no longer have issues of deflation— well, inflation because of excess of circulating cash. We're going to have an issue of excess goods and services, and that deflation may actually be our problem, and that in fact money itself may become inconsequential. What do you make of that prediction? Am I afraid— you do understand about framing it? I probably don't do as good.

I mean, you're essentially repeating exactly what what John is saying. So right now, US GDP is at $84,000 per person, give or take, and AI and robotics are going to increase that number up and up to well over $100,000 per person. So the question is twofold. Number one, how is that value actually distributed to the average worker or the average family where they're chilling out at home and be like, okay, so, so that's One major, major, uh, issue to be addressed, and I, I'm going to dare say that that's going to be a front and center political question, uh, over this massive period. Um, and then the, the second thing is, what is the timeline? Um, because Elon is very visionary, and so he's projecting forward to when the robots and AI are doing all this work. Um, but then what happens in what at least one economist is calling the messy middle. Um, and, uh, that's what I think we should be focused on because that transitional period could be extraordinarily difficult. And, uh, an AI executive said this to me. He said that AI is going to push people up or down a class, and most people don't take that well. And I think he's completely correct. Like, most people get kind of accustomed to being in a particular socioeconomic class. If I send you down a rung or two, that's not something that Americans will willingly accept. Um, there are a Kind of seems like that's happening.

It sort of feels like it's happening already, right? That's sort of what, what you were sort of zeroing in on. And in the end, this sort of weird thought I had as you were talking was, oh my goodness, we're all going to become gentleman farmers again.

Well, that's one of the better outcomes, Drew. The image I like to evoke is that we're building this incredible vortex that consists of AI, capital, data, uh, and processing power. And these four things are now converging, uh, into multi-trillion-dollar enterprises that are going to hoover up value out of call centers and office parks, uh, and places where people used to get together to do their jobs. Right now, more money is being spent on building data centers in the U.S. Than on commercial real estate. So I don't know if there is a clearer illustration of the fact that the server is the new person or human worker. Uh, and most people don't understand what a trillion dollars is or $3 trillion. I mean, the amount of wealth that's being funneled into AI right now is beyond the comprehension of most Americans. Uh, one example I tried to use was that, um, we might spend $300 billion on data centers this year, which is the equivalent of building multiple NFL stadiums in every state. If you can imagine that, uh, and that, that's the scale of what's happening right now. It's summertime, which means you're going to lie on your bed all day long. I'm kidding, that's not really a thing that people do, but if you were to do it, you'd want to do it on a Helix Sleep mattress. I use a Ultra Dawn Firm mattress because I need a lot of support. I like my mattresses kind of a little bit like a board sort of thing. Not to say that the Ultra Dawn Firm mattress is like a board, but you know what I mean. And it's been a game changer for me, my health, my ability to just wake up and actually attack the day. Tested and reviewed by experts like Forbes and Wired. Who gets to test mattresses? That is a good job. Maybe that one will not be done by robots. Go to helixsleep.com/yang for 27% off site-wide, exclusive for listeners of the show. That's helixsleep.com/yang for 27% off site-wide. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you. helixsleep.com/yang, exclusive for listeners of the show.

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No, I, I get it. And my son is sort of in the middle of this in terms of the, the, uh, users and creators and stuff. And, and he, he saw this coming just as a young person. I, and I'm wondering how young people view this, you know. I think, I think that's why a lot of them are feeling desperate, like there's nothing in it for them. They can't quite see where it's going. And I wonder, in addition to universal basic income, if we should really be focused on some sort of— I hear a lot about tradesmanship and I don't know, something where we can help these young people thrive.

Yeah, I'm all for skilled trades. I will say that people are not infinitely adjustable or adaptable. And so if you look at some of the recent narratives, like the warehouse workers did not become nurses. The coal miners did not become coders, and the college graduates are not all going to become electricians, particularly because 60% of college graduates are women and only 3% of electricians are women. So like saying to an army of college grads, hey, like, go rewire the building, is, is more a pipe dream than policy prescription.

Interesting.

But, but folks, folks like to embrace those ideas because They maintain the fiction that we're all going to be market compatible. And what I try and explain to people, Drew, is that as a 50-year-old, if I don't get dumber in a given month, that's a good month. Um, meanwhile, AI might get twice as smart in the same time period. So expecting us to compete with AI is getting increasingly, uh, dumb, uh, honestly. And so the quest, especially like you try and retrain someone and by the time the retraining is done, the goalposts have, uh, moved to like, you know, the next state. Uh, and so we have to actually start transferring some of this value that's being generated by AI to people and families quickly and directly, in my view, and then have people actually engage in entrepreneurship to determine how we want to spend our time. And I think that's one, uh, version, uh, of the future that Elon's actually talking about, is like, hey, let's say AI and robots are able to do more work than we can currently imagine. What does that mean for human civilization and society?

I'm telling you, this is your campaign rhetoric for next run, and we just got to get Elon in there championing on your behalf so that transition period is smooth. If he wants to get to that infinite goods and services department, we have to have that transition. But I see it so clearly, the multiple NFL stadiums, the, uh, class up or class down, and then the four siloed, uh, things that are going to shift and change. I mean, that's so clear. I can't wait for the next run for pregnancy. I'm, uh, uh, yeah, my last— but last— what? No, for presidency. Okay, pregnancy, whatever. But speaking— last thing about presidency, I hear— I heard you were a little concerned about Kamala Harris running.

Yeah, I heard from a couple of people in California that, um, she's, uh, running again, and, uh, I think that's a mistake on multiple levels. Uh, you know, I ran alongside—

are you gonna run? Let's announce it here now.

Yeah, uh, you know, you'll be among the first to know for sure, Drew, but, uh, you know, it's something that we're, um, considering, in part because so many of the things I ran on in 2020 are with us right now. I don't— Kamala and I ran in the same primary in 2020, and she dropped out before the voting started. It did not go well for her. She got elevated because Jim Clyburn pushed Joe Biden to make her Joe's running mate, and then she lost clean in '24. So expecting things to be different in '28 strikes me as folly. I think that she may run again in part because her own personal incentives make it so that she'll remain more relevant and vital. And now with South Carolina as the first primary state, she probably wins that state because 86-year-old Jim Clyburn is there telling his people, hey, we're gonna boost Kamala. It's one reason why I think the DNC's recent decision to make South Carolina first is a disaster in the making. I can't believe that they're reliving their mistakes over and over again or repeating them. Because we saw this in 2020 and '24, particularly in '24, when Joe Biden managed to squelch a competitive primary and then anoint Kamala as his successor without a real process.

Yep.

Andrew, always a pleasure to talk to you. I got to take a break here, but let's set that dinner in 2 weeks and you'll come back here when you announce your presidential run.

Nation's Dumbest or Not. Drew, it's a real pleasure connecting, and it's great to be out in the real world with you.

You bet. Tune in Fox, uh, or whatever your local affiliate number is, or Superlisten next day on— watch next day on Hulu. It's Wednesdays at 9 o'clock, I think, in all time zones except Central, might be 8. Andrew, talk to you soon.

Thanks, Drew.

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