Sam opens with a life update about his no-phone weekend and reflections on controlling your inputs. The hosts trade parenting stories before Shaan pitches three Sunday brainstorm business ideas: a Sketchy-style visual learning platform for SAT/AP prep, a satirical news site targeting the millennial mom demographic, and a clean-brand play on tampons following viral Berkeley research on toxic metals. The episode closes with a long, enthusiastic tangent on presidential assassination history — anchored by Teddy Roosevelt’s famous bullet-in-chest speech — and book recommendations for anyone who wants to go deeper.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host, co-founder of The Hustle), Shaan Puri (host, founder of Milk Road)
Life Update: No-Phone Weekend [00:00:00]
Shaan: Anyways, this was my Sunday brainstorm — here’s three cool ideas. But dude, let’s do a life update first because frankly you and I mostly talk to each other. I mean, we spend so much time on this podcast we don’t even really talk that much outside it. I want to know what’s going on with you, and I’ll fill you in on what’s going on with me.
Sam: I did a thing I’ve never really done before. It’s not that groundbreaking — I’m sure you or many people have done this — but I hadn’t. Friday hit and I just put my phone in a drawer and didn’t touch it till this morning. So I had a no-phone weekend, which was pretty awesome and very unusual for me.
Shaan: You’re not good at that. You’re hardcore about your phone. Tell me how that felt.
Sam: It felt like withdrawals from an addiction. There were funny things, and then there were these little moments where I would notice it way more. Like grabbing your pants all the time — I would just keep patting my pocket. I would put my kids in their car seat, shut the door, and I’m walking around the car to get to my side, and I instinctively tried to pat to check my phone. Why do I need to check my phone in this three-second break walking around my car? It’s pretty crazy. There were just like a hundred moments like that where I instinctively wanted to go pull to refresh. I needed to see a feed. Like, I need to get my feed.
It was nice to do that though. I found myself doing random things — I was humming a lot, I read a lot. Our kids are kind of picky eaters and we haven’t really taught them to eat very well on their own, so we still basically feed them every meal. Normally I’ve got my phone and they’ve got their cartoons — we’re all just cartooned up and I’m shoving bites of mac and cheese in their mouth. Without the phone, time went way slower, but not in a bad way. It was a lot more peaceful.
Shaan: Did you use your computer or Apple TV? Did you go full Amish?
Sam: No, the rule was I didn’t have to be without the internet or without entertainment. I was allowed to watch TV and use my laptop if the opportunity came up. But on weekends I’m pretty much fully in dad mode, so I’m not really on the computer much anyway. And even just the physical distance — the computer that’s in your pocket all the time versus having to go to your desk, open it up, type in the address — I could technically go on Twitter, but the friction was enough. I just couldn’t be on my laptop for that long.
It was a very good break. Something I’m going to do a lot more of, because I don’t like the idea of being addicted to something. And by any definition, I’m completely addicted to my phone. If I don’t have it I kind of freak out. “I gotta go get my phone, hold on, whatever we’re doing, I gotta go get it.” It’s pretty crazy that that’s the case.
Shaan: Did you follow the news?
Sam: That was of course the craziest thing — while I’m not on my phone, my wife is like, “Oh my God, Trump got shot.” I’m like, oh man, this is the one thing — the craziest news in the world happens, testing my resolve. So I did get on my laptop a little bit later and checked out what was going on. But I stayed off my phone, so that was good.
Shaan: Have you ever heard of No Fap November?
Sam: I like how you just said that as if it’s like a scientific phenomenon. Like you were like, “Have you ever heard of mitosis? It’s when the cell splits.” Rebrand it — “Have you ever heard of Non-Fap November?”
Shaan: So basically for people who don’t know, it’s just guys who don’t jerk off for November. I don’t know if the rules are you can’t have sex or if it’s just… I don’t know what the rules are. Never made it past day two, couldn’t tell you.
Sam: Clearly not into it. We should have a cute funny brand for like no-phone weekend. No scroll Sundays?
Shaan: No Scroll Sundays is good. A lot of my Jewish friends and family do no phones from Friday evening to Saturday evening and they all say the same thing — this is the best, it’s wonderful. We have to do a take on that. Some cute way to do a Friday-to-Sunday no-phone thing.
Sam: Have you seen people who raw dog flights?
Shaan: Dude, that is so funny. Explain it for people who don’t know.
Sam: Raw dogging a flight is — you know how when you fly you see the map of the plane going across America? Raw dogging is when a guy will just stare at that for the entire flight. No music, no phone, no books, no movies. They just raw dog it. I think it is the funniest thing going on right now.
Shaan: I love raw dogging flights.
Sam: I’m bringing on this whole control-your-inputs philosophy in all facets of life. Control the foods you put in your mouth, control the information you put in your mind, control the people you let in your world, control how many problems you’re willing to make your problem. That is probably the most underrated skill you can have as somebody trying to live a good life — learning how to control your inputs.
I’m not really reading the news a lot. I don’t have Twitter on my phone. Particularly this past weekend when a lot of crazy stuff went down — it is exhausting. Current events just wear me out. I’m trying to refer mostly to books when I want entertainment, as opposed to just scrolling through news.
Shaan: It kills you, it wears you out, 100%. I don’t watch the news, never have a news app on my phone, don’t follow news social accounts. Obviously some news just brute forces its way into your world — that’s kind of what happened this weekend with the shooting. But for the most part I completely abstain from the news and I used to feel somewhat ashamed about it, like I was ignorant. But it wasn’t very hard for me to abstain.
Sam: I called you out on that one time when we were hanging out off air. I was like, “You’re not a good citizen.” And now I’ve done a complete 180. I’m like, no, what’s going on in most cases isn’t that important.
Shaan: My trainer gave me a great perspective on it. It was one of the years when the election was going on and everybody was talking about voting and things were getting heated. And he just said something in passing — “I don’t worry about the government. I’m trying to govern myself. I can’t even govern myself. What am I worried about in Washington DC?” He’s like, if we all did that, society would actually be in a much better place.
And when somebody criticized him for not doing his civic duty, he was like, “I don’t know what you think your civic duty is. I’m in the grocery store helping the old lady. I’m talking to a friend. I see a kid doing something I give him a compliment.” There are many ways to be a good member of society besides just being fully up to date on the news and having an opinion on everything. Govern yourself first, then be a positive influence in your grocery store. That seems like a much better way to actually have an effect.
Life Update: Shaan in Connecticut, Scooter Life, and Being Happy [00:09:30]
Shaan: What else is good with you, Life Update Corner?
Sam: I’m currently in Connecticut where I’m staying for a little while. I go to the beach every morning and most evenings at 8:30 after the baby’s gone to sleep.
Shaan: Nine months — are you walking or what are you doing on the beach?
Sam: Dude, I have a scooter. An electric scooter with an odometer. I go through sand. I ride from my house to the beach — it’s a mile away. I have 2,000 miles on this scooter. I drive it everywhere. Sometimes I’ll go two weeks without driving a car, just drive the scooter everywhere.
I’m nine months into having a kid, it’s the best. I’m genuinely feeling like a happier human being. I had a little mini — not a midlife crisis, but I’ve been asking myself, what’s the point of this or that? Being more intentional. And I think it’s because I’m so happy. When you get happy and you have less of a chip on your shoulder, that’s a weird feeling if you’ve spent years grinding.
Shaan: Oh, you’re asking the question because you’re happy?
Sam: Yeah. Because I’m happy I’m like, why am I doing this or that, you know what I mean? You start questioning things. So I’m really happy right now. That’s the biggest update from me.
Parenting Hack: Just Be a Kid [00:12:00]
Shaan: I saw a great Seinfeld clip the other day. Seinfeld is talking and he goes, “You know why I believe in God? God made it so that people who don’t have kids don’t know what they’re missing. And that’s the nicest thing He could ever do for somebody.” I thought, wow, that’s a really powerful way of putting it. Because I’m the same way — my cup feels incredibly full just because of what’s going on in my house.
For anybody who’s out there on the fence or wants to wait, it really is amazing. It’s hard to describe how good it feels. Especially once they’re like two, three, four and you can play with them — it’s such a golden period.
I do have a life hack here. We go to a kids’ birthday party — bunch of three and four-year-olds, it’s at a park with a splash area where there’s water coming out of the ground. We show up and I notice all the parents are standing on one side sweating, trying to get shade, like kid runs up, needs a drink of water, they give it to him, kid runs back. The parents are making awkward small talk and you could just see the look on their faces — they’re checking the watch, ready to get out of there.
My kids run in and I see a fork in the road. I can go hang out with the parents, or I can just go run around with my shirt off in the splash pad. I chose The Road Less Traveled. I went down to the splash pad and had so much fun. We’re going through the splash pad, we’re playing tag, doing water fights. Two hours go by. I look over and all the other parents are still just sweating and waiting.
Sam: Was this during the actual birthday party?
Shaan: The whole time. And what I realized was — the great parenting hack. Before I had a kid, I did read a couple books about what to expect, how to be a dad, I want to be good at something, let me read some books. I now have a book that I’ll write that has one line in it: don’t worry about being a dad — just be a kid.
The best part about kids is that they keep you playing. You have to act astonished and fascinated to get them excited about things, and actually it kind of makes you excited too. It makes you more curious. And the easiest way to be a parent is to literally just play with your kid 80 to 90% of the time. Sure, 10% of the time you snap back into adult mode and make sure the train doesn’t completely go off the rails. But I have so much more fun as a dad when I just lean in and play with them all day.
I’m in gymnastics class doing cartwheels, I’m on the trampoline. If I have to be there anyway, I might as well have a good time. That’s contagious for them — they have a better time, I’m in a better mood, I’m more patient. It’s a complete life hack.
Sam: Dude, I can just see you bouncing around gymnastics and breaking some kid’s femur because you sit on it.
Shaan: Definitely not everything is built for me. There have been some spills. But yeah, it’s great. Yesterday I woke up, we go to a coffee shop, hit up a donut shop, go to soccer class — I’m playing soccer in the class. After soccer we just wanted to play more, and four other kids join us. It’s me, my kids, and four random kids all playing soccer. Then we go to the pool for three hours. Come home, playing Smash Kart — this version of Mario Kart my kids can play because they’re toddlers. Then we eat dinner, read books, go to bed. I was just a kid for the whole day and I had a great day.
Are you going to have more? You’ve got three — how many more would you want?
Sam: My cup runneth over. I am completely happy as is. I don’t feel the need to have more kids. I’ve got Sarah bought into three, but in my head I’m like, if we’re gonna go three, five would be interesting, right? I’m definitely in the more-is-better camp. But I don’t have to push it, so it’s easy for me to say. Being a dad is awesome. It has completely changed things.
I tweeted this out years ago before we had kids — I had a bunch of friends doing psychedelics because they felt lost, and some of them kind of went over the edge. I think having a child kind of filled that void for me. I didn’t feel like I needed to do psychedelics because I didn’t have a lack of meaning.
Shaan: But you’ve got a lot of interesting topics here.
Sam: I got a lot of interesting stuff. Okay.
Business Idea #1: Sketchy — Visual Learning for Test Prep [00:22:00]
Shaan: So I have three ideas I want to pitch you. I’m going to tell you about a cool existing business and then an idea someone could start that’s similar. The first one is Sketchy. Have you ever seen Sketchy — sketchy.com?
Sam: It is kind of an incredible business idea. I’m somewhat jealous I didn’t start this business.
Shaan: So if you go to Sketchy, it says: “Turns what you need to know into creative visual stories you’ll remember forever.” Basically it’s learning to take the MCATs or the medical board exams with cartoons and drawings instead of boring textbooks.
What they did was they created a Kaplan or Princeton Review-style test prep business but with two twists. One, they focused on a specific niche — med students. Before you get into medical school you want to take the MCATs, or after you’re in med school you’re going through courses and eventually the boards. Second twist — they said, cool, but some people will prefer to learn in a way that’s way more visual. Easy to remember, rather than traditional learning.
I love this because that’s how I like to learn. It’s more fun. And there’s actually a bunch of science around why we learn better through visuals — the same way we talked about last time with jingles and how a catchy earworm is a much better way to remember something. It’s basically storytelling and cartoons to teach you things, specifically for med students and test prep.
Sam: Do they make all the cartoons and you pay a monthly fee?
Shaan: That’s exactly it. And the only article I could find about them was from 2020 when they were apparently doing around $88 million in revenue. They also raised $30 million.
Sam: 500,000 students — that’s a big number.
Shaan: It’s a great business. The “bleeding neck problem” — somebody wants to pass a test, they need help studying, they see this and think, oh, this seems more fun than the other way. You pay something like $25-$50 a month, sign up for a 12-24 month plan, go through it, and it’s actually a really useful way to study. Then the next test happens — maybe it’s your board exam, maybe it’s a really hard med school course — and they’ve got a supplemental thing for your whole med school journey.
I also just like this because it’s like Khan Academy. The founder was just like, I kind of want to make courses for everything on the internet for free, and it’s just me talking and writing things out and trying to explain things. He started by explaining things to his own nephews, published on the internet, and people liked it. Sketchy has that same cool mission, cool business model, fun product.
Sam: What’s the idea?
Shaan: So — do you remember Dylan and Henry? The guys behind Clipped Smart, Nonsense, and Clipped?
Sam: Basically if you don’t know them, they’re young guys. We met them because they came to our house and built out our podcast studio — they were fans. Then they started cutting clips for our podcast, then for All In right when All In blew up. They were the ones doing the animated clips for them, so they got popular there. Then they created an agency called Clip where you can hire a video editor from them — a really good animator from the Philippines, for a monthly fee be your animator. That business got to low seven figures of annual revenue. Then they started using their own animators to do their own YouTube content and they both blew up. Henry has like millions of subscribers now doing really short-form Shorts. Really good. I’ve never seen someone take Shorts that seriously.
Shaan: Those guys are awesome. I really see a lot of myself in them. I think they’re like 25. They remind me so much of how I was at 24, 25, 26. And I think they do a bunch of dumb stuff — but that’s okay, I did so much more dumb stuff when I was their age. They’re way ahead of where I was.
Sam: Allegedly showed up to a meeting without a shirt on?
Shaan: I don’t remember if it was them specifically, but the story is we got them a contract with HubSpot and I guess they showed up to one of the video calls without a shirt on. That’s fine by me — common practice where I’m from — but it didn’t fly so well with the Fortune 500. Maybe they lost that contract. They get a pass. They were like 21, and they’ve redeemed themselves. They’re doing great, I don’t want to throw them under the bus.
So I went to them and said, guys — you should make Sketchy but for the SATs. Do this for the SATs, or for APs, or IB exams. Start wherever. Great idea. And no one on earth is better built to do this than you two, because of their skill set. They’re amazing storytellers, really good with animated cartoons. You’ve seen their newsletter — they’ve got this character, they tell great stories through it. I was like, dude, just do that but instead of doing it for free for random subjects on the internet, charge for it and do it for something people are willing to pay for. Which is test prep. People need to pass this test to move on to the next phase of their life. Why would they not do that?
Sam: That sounds so much better. The newsletter business is hard.
Shaan: Hard. I tried to tell them — if the newsletter is okay or good, this is what great would look like in the same genre. Same work you’re doing, just applied differently. And they were like, we agree with you… but we just don’t want to do it. We’re gonna have more fun doing this other stuff. And I was like, honestly, more power to you, I support you guys in that. But now I can give the idea away for free out here.
I actually wrote them a business plan. A Google doc. Here’s how I would do it, here’s the go-to-market, here’s how to charge for it, I’ll fund it — just do this, guys. This is how you disrupt a Kaplan or a Princeton Review. You take your black belt in social media content — they are top 1% level content creators — but instead of competing for free views in the open market of social media, apply it in a place that’s really backwards and stodgy and hasn’t changed in 30 years. Which is test prep for the SATs, the GMATs, whatever.
I think somebody could still go do this. I think you could take Sketchy and do it in another niche — dentistry, nursing, whatever. And I’m sure Sketchy will try to expand into some of those too. It doesn’t matter. I think the pie is big enough. That’s idea number one. What do you think?
Sam: That’s actually one of the better ones we’ve talked about. And I’m giving this a nine out of ten. This is great.
Shaan: Chin Group is the one who put $30 million into Sketchy. I’m like, God damn it. Everything I find where I’m like, oh this is cool, this is interesting, I’m ahead of the curve — it’s like, oh, Chernin funded them a year ago. We did that episode on Epic Gardening and I’m trying to tell people he can be big, this can be really huge, like let me fund you — and he’s already got 20 million from Chernin. How are they ahead of me on all of these?
Business Idea #2: The Babylon Bee for New Audiences [00:34:00]
Shaan: Alright, the next one — Babylon Bee. Have you lived under a rock? A little bit? I’m not saying this is new, but I don’t think most people really appreciate this. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a satirical news site. Like the Onion but a variation. They’ve been around for a little while but they’re getting more and more popular, and a big part of it is that Elon retweets them a lot. So if you’re on Twitter you see them — A, they put out good content, and B, they got a turbo boost from the most popular guy on Twitter.
The business model is really interesting to me. It’s a media company but with a completely different approach. The way a media company normally grows is you make content that’s worth spreading. But there’s this tension — you need to write what’s going on and be trusted, but you also need to clickbait the hell out of everything to get people to click and come to your site. Too much clickbait and you lose trust; too much dryness and nobody clicks, nobody shares, nobody gets outraged and reposts it.
Sam: By the way, I ran a media company that made money on advertising and I hated that feeling. I thought email would solve it — a newsletter instead of a website — which it did help. Then I was still mad about it so I thought subscriptions would solve it, so we launched a subscription thing that was doing like $5 million in year one. Still doesn’t fully solve it.
A newsletter monetizes so much better than a general news website. You could have a million subscriber newsletter and that business should be doing $5-10 million a year. You could have a news website with a million visitors a month and that might be doing almost nothing. The Babylon Bee does 25 million-plus visits to their site. The biggest newsletters in the world don’t have 25 million subscribers. It’s a different game — it’s a volume game when you’re trying to make a media destination.
Shaan: Exactly. So the beautiful thing about going the satire route — you try to be the Onion, you do fake news as a service — it doesn’t need to be factually correct. You only have to win on one dimension, which is shareability. And people will share because it’s funny and it strikes a chord. That’s why this has spread so quickly.
The backstory — I think it was started by one guy and then he kind of sold it to the main writers.
Sam: You’re missing a big part. The Onion and most satirical websites are left-leaning. This one is right-leaning and also has a Christian component to it.
Shaan: Exactly, so whereas most of these tend to be left of center, this is right of center. That’s where I’m going with the opportunity. The guy who started it calls himself a Christian entrepreneur. He started off doing Christian cartoons and then it became more conservative in general. But I think there are way more variations and segments that could be served with this same category.
I’ll give you two that I think somebody should go do. One is the far right-wing version. These guys are conservative but still more centrist than full right. If you go read Drudge or Infowars, there’s a whole appetite for really far right content. So you could go do that.
But here’s another angle altogether — not political at all. Just do the Onion but only for fake news articles that appeal to the millennial mom. The millennial mom follows a certain set of subjects. Less sports, maybe The Bachelor, Taylor Swift, whatever topics are of interest. Do the Onion for that category. It’s a very valuable category. And this might already exist — I have no idea — but I think that would be a very successful version of this that’s not political at all. Same thing — poking fun at popular subjects — but for a different customer.
Sam: Here’s why I know that’s true about the millennial mom. We had a couple over with a one-year-old and the kid started crying, so I go grab a bunch of toys to entertain him. I start using this puppet and I’m like, oh I bet you haven’t seen this. And the mom is like, yeah we have this toy, we have that toy, in fact all of the toys that you have we have the exact same ones. And I’m like, well you guys clearly follow the same three people on Instagram and read the same blogs. I couldn’t impress this kid. The millennial mother — there are probably six buckets and for each bucket it’s just buy all of this stuff, read all of this stuff.
Shaan: I think every segment’s that way. There’s a Joe Rogan bro version — let me guess: favorite podcast is Rogan, you listen to Huberman, you cold plunge, you do sauna. You can predict their whole life if you know one or two things about them. And that’s kind of what you need when you’re doing media — a giant cluster of people who have a taste match.
So take that business model, apply it to a new segment. The way to start this, by the way, would just be Instagram. Don’t even need a website. Just make an Instagram account doing these funny fake news things. There’s a version of this in sports I follow where they just post funny fake sports headlines making fun of the NBA. I think that can be done so many times over, and it’s probably one of the easiest ways to build a media business.
Sam: The guy who started Babylon Bee — his personal website is Adam4d.com, all dedicated to web comics. Which is intriguing because that’s similar to what Dylan and Henry do.
Who owns the Babylon Bee now?
Shaan: I think it’s Seth and Dan — the main writers. In 2018 he sold it to them. He kept a stake until 2023 when he sold the remaining stake.
Sam: Do you know who owns the Onion?
Shaan: Isn’t it the guy who started Twilio or something?
Sam: Jeff Lawson, I think his name is. He bought the Onion. Instead of like rich billionaires — Bezos bought the Washington Post, one of the Facebook guys bought some other one, Benioff bought Time — this guy goes and buys the Onion. Which is actually like an interesting purchase.
Shaan: That’s what I like my billionaires doing — do interesting things. Go buy the Onion. Make sure it doesn’t die. The Onion was basically dying, right?
Sam: It’s been around since 1988, so it’s been around forever, and it just became a bad business. Particularly in the last eight years where digital media has just been rough.
Shaan: It’s a hard business because — who’s going to want to advertise on an article that’s fake? But I think if you curate the right high-value audience and they trust your voice, it’s kind of like comedy podcasts. Why do people sponsor comedy podcasts? These guys are vulgar, they’re just saying random stuff. But they have a trusted audience. And when they do the ad read, people dig it. The trust from keeping it real in every other context carries over.
Sam: I think the difference is a lot of people think Babylon Bee articles are real and they share them as if they’re real. That’s actually a massive issue.
Business Idea #3: Native Deodorant for Tampons [00:44:00]
Shaan: Let’s do the last one — toxic tampons.
Sam: Yes.
Shaan: So I saw this tweet about a TikTok that went viral. A woman is walking through a store, she’s in the tampon aisle, talking about the big brands. Five million people saw this video because Berkeley released a paper basically saying the popular tampon brands all have toxic metals — arsenic and other contaminants in them.
So there’s a moment here. I don’t know who the leading player is who’s doing Native deodorant for tampons, but whoever that is, they’re in a good position. And if nobody’s doing it, somebody should. It seems like there’s a general trend of people being concerned about gut health, microplastics, is your water clean, heavy metals in your water. This seems like another category that’s going to get transformed.
What I’m trying to avoid is a bunch of dudes talking about this where every woman listening is like, yeah, we know, we already use these eight brands. I actually have no idea — I’d love to be educated. Feel free to DM me.
Sam: In my home I only see the popular stuff.
Shaan: In general though — look, I don’t know how many hundred-million-dollar-revenue businesses are doing this. But there will be one, there will be two, there will be three. The current incumbents will either adapt or be replaced by alternatives that play on these health concerns. This is not going nowhere. Look at your detergents, your soaps, your deodorants — this has happened in pretty much every other category. They’re going to do it here.
And this is a great product because it’s high margin, repeat purchase. And women’s products tend to be underserved compared to the ideas most guys will go start — to-do list apps, whatever the average bro idea is. You can compete in a less saturated field.
Sam: What’s interesting is that with a lot of these brands, they’ll feel like they need to come up with some hugely innovative new thing. Our friend Moiz — when he was selling Native deodorant, the buyer asked, well how are you going to expand? He said, well, can you write the word “Native” on an all-natural shampoo? They said yeah. He said, that’s how you’re going to expand. So with a lot of these brands, you don’t need a significantly more innovative thing. You just have to be able to accurately describe it as a better-for-you alternative.
And it’s not like Native deodorant was original — there were plenty of people selling it. They just weren’t savvy go-getter entrepreneurs; they were hippies selling it on Etsy. Let’s do this — go to Etsy and look up tampons. Let’s just see what’s available.
Shaan: I like how you’re making me do it so I get targeted for these ads.
Sam: There we go — “all natural.” Getting some interesting results… The Honeypot Company, 100% organic regular tampons, unscented, organic cotton with bioplastic applicator. No chlorine, no pesticides, no fragrance. First review — “very good coffee.” Hmm…
Shaan: What’s going on with that review?
Sam: I think the shop has other products — the reviews are for the shop, not the product. Fbal teas and other things too.
Shaan: A tampon coffee company.
Brainstorm Recap [00:51:00]
Shaan: Anyways, that was my Sunday brainstorm — three cool ideas.
Sketchy, which is doing visual learning in the medical space. The Babylon Bee, which has taken off as a satirical news website for conservative/political news. And this TikTok that went viral and obviously tapped into real concerns people have around toxicity and metals and arsenic in popular tampon brands.
For each, I think you could just take a 20% remix and do it. For Sketchy, use it for another customer segment — maybe AP students, SAT takers, some other exam. The Babylon Bee can be done for other customer segments — the millennial mom is the one I’d go for. And third — Native deodorant for tampons. Maybe somebody’s already doing it, but that’s my Sunday brainstorm. Maybe these aren’t great ideas but they’ll at least get the wheels turning.
Sam: I think we’ve got to keep your phone away from you on more weekends. This is good stuff.
Shaan: Exactly. This is what happens when I don’t have my phone.
Presidential Assassinations: How Many Have Been Shot At? [00:53:00]
Shaan: I want to talk about one more thing. I don’t want MFM to talk about politics — I don’t think that’s fun, I think this is meant to be an escape. And I see that you’re into Teddy Roosevelt.
Sam: I went down this rabbit hole. The crazy Trump stuff happened and I’m like, wow, that’s crazy, got shot. And I wonder how many presidents have been shot at. Don’t answer that question yet — let me tell you something.
Shaan: Why I’m happy I can talk about this — I have read not only the biographies of all those presidents but multiple books on each assassination. And this is one of my trivia questions I would ask people all the time: how many presidents have been assassinated and can you name them? Virtually no one gets the second two. The first two are easy.
Sam: Okay — easy assassinations: Lincoln, Kennedy. Hard ones… McKinley, because he died right before Roosevelt. I think Roosevelt was the VP? Is that how that happened?
Shaan: You’re right.
Sam: And the last one I wouldn’t have gotten — Garfield. Andrew Garfield? And both of those guys — when they got shot, it was very solvable. Up until like the 1910s or 1920s we didn’t really believe or know that germs were a thing. Most of these guys got shot and then you go digging around with a dirty surgeon’s hand or a dirty instrument, they get infections, and that’s how they died. McKinley died like eight days later from gangrene caused by the wounds, not from the bullet itself. Garfield died like six weeks later. Pretty mind-blowing.
Shaan: So — how many presidents have been shot at, either hit or missed, with a shot fired at them? What’s your number?
Sam: I think it’s seven or eight or nine, right about there.
Shaan: Thirteen. Out of 46 presidents. That’s basically a 25% chance of being shot at if you’re president. Dangerous job.
Sam: And then of those, four have died.
The Jackson Story [00:58:00]
Shaan: Which crazy stories stand out to you? Because I think there are two really interesting ones — Jackson and Roosevelt.
Sam: The Jackson one is crazy. My understanding: Jackson is going to a funeral, he’s 67, walks with a cane, not very popular. He’s walking into the funeral and a guy approaches him with a pistol. The gun goes off but the bullet doesn’t come out — it’s a misfire. The powder explodes but the bullet doesn’t leave the gun. And Jackson becomes angry, charges at him with his cane, swinging at him, trying to beat him to death.
Shaan: There are conflicting reports — one says he beat him up, the other says he missed. Not sure which is true.
Sam: And then the guy takes out a second pistol, shoots again — also misfires. Other politicians tackle the guy, and they take both guns. And then they shoot the guns again to test them and both bullets come out. Both guns were actually functioning. The odds of both pistols misfiring were estimated at something like one in 150,000.
Shaan: And up until probably the 1960s after JFK, Secret Service wasn’t really much of a thing. It wasn’t a thing when Garfield got shot in 1881. And when Garfield got shot, he was just walking from the White House to a train. He and a buddy were just walking and someone walked up and shot him. It’s insane how you could get away with all this stuff.
Teddy Roosevelt and the Bullet-in-Chest Speech [01:02:00]
Shaan: Now the Teddy Roosevelt story — the one that just blew my mind.
Sam: This is a trivia question that I would ask people. The Teddy Roosevelt story goes: he’s supposed to give a speech, he’s having dinner, he leaves the dinner, he’s getting into his car. As he’s walking up to his car a guy comes up and shoots him. Hits him right in the chest. Roosevelt got lucky for two reasons. Do you already know what they are?
Shaan: I believe the first was he had his speech in his chest pocket — a 50-page speech rolled up in his jacket pocket. The second reason… he was strong, his chest muscles were just — he was a buff dude?
Sam: The second one was his glasses case, which was made of steel. So the bullet went through both of those — through the speech, through the glasses case — it took a lot of the heat off of it. It still hits him in the chest, but it slowed it down significantly.
The story is crazy. His secretary, a former football player, tackles the guy. And Roosevelt is like, no, no — bring him to me. I want to look him in the eyes. They bring the guy up to his face, he goes, “Why did you do it?” The guy doesn’t answer. He’s like, all right, forget it, take him away. But no violence on this guy. I want him to go through the judicial system.
Roosevelt’s a hunter and a casual anatomist. And he says, I’m not coughing up blood, I don’t think it’s hit my lung. The bullet’s lodged in there but I think it’s okay. So he says, take me to the speech.
He goes and delivers a 50-to-90 minute speech. They have the shirt he wore — the blood is just soaking out of it, Kurt Schilling style with the sock — as he’s giving the speech. And he says to the crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot. But it takes more than a bullet to kill a bull moose.”
After the speech he goes to the hospital. They take the X-ray, see the bullet, but the technology wasn’t great. They’re like, we could try to take it out but it’s risky. The doctor decides to just leave it in. He lives with it for the rest of his life. People asked him if he still felt pain from it and he said, “It doesn’t bother me more than if it was a bullet sitting in my pocket.”
Shaan: What a badass.
Sam: Did you know he was partially blind?
Shaan: Roosevelt was a crazy person. He liked to box. There’s a story where a professional boxer would come in and he would invite people to spar him in the White House. He’d be like, prove it, let’s see — you like to box? Let’s box. He would box with these guys, professionals. One time a guy — I think it was his aide — damaged his eye. And during the boxing match he was like, hey, we can’t tell anyone about this, I’ll get in a ton of trouble. So he didn’t tell a lot of people. But he was blind in one eye.
Sam: He had a detached retina from the boxing match. And then he switched to Judo and Jiu-Jitsu instead.
Shaan: Can’t top that. There’s also a story that when he was born, his organs were too small for his body. They were like, you’re probably going to die young, you’ll be in bed most of the time, die as a teenager. And so that’s why he was so invigorated — he expected to die, and his father was like, we have to get you strong so you can survive. That’s one of the reasons why he was so active.
Sam: Yeah, that’s like the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other crazy stories. And the teddy bear is named after him. He was known for hunting bears, and at one point some group took him hunting and they had a bear chained up to a tree. Teddy sees this poor bear and says, no guys, this is not how we do this — you have to release that bear. And that story involved him refusing to shoot the tethered bear, and that’s how the teddy bear got its name. He didn’t like being called Teddy either.
Shaan: There’s a whole book called “The River of Doubt.” You hear that title and you think it’s about making good or bad decisions. But no — there was literally a river called the River of Doubt, I think in Brazil, that had never been explored. After his presidency he was like, well, I’ll go figure out what’s there, let’s make a map, I’ll do it. He goes and does this river for weeks or months and he almost dies. And this was just him wanting to explore.
There are all these crazy stories. A lot of people accuse him of starting a war just so he could go fight. He had the Rough Riders — his own crew of military folks.
Sam: And by the way, he lost the election after all this — gives a speech with a bullet in his chest and ends up losing because he was a third-party candidate at this stage. Pretty crazy.
He also — his wife died giving birth. So the same day his daughter was born, his wife died. And in the same house that day, his mother also died. He used to journal every day, and that day he wrote in his journal: “The light has left my life.” And that’s all he wrote. Very touching.
And then he goes on this tear where for the next year he’s crazy active. They ask why you’re being so active, and he writes, “Ceaseless action outruns depression.” He was basically doing all these amazing things to outrun the sadness of that day.
Shaan: Was he a prolific writer?
Sam: His first book was when he was in his teens or early 20s — on zoology. He used to collect animals, take them apart, explain them. He loved Darwin, tried to discover species. He wrote dozens of books. So you can go read all of his writing. Really impressive.
What’s the best book on him that you’ve read?
Shaan: I would read his biography. Because he had a lot of bad things happen to him in his life and he was very, very optimistic.
Sam: What a guy. Well, he was his father who started MoMA — the museum. His father James Roosevelt basically founded that because he was a wealthy guy.
But Teddy Roosevelt — horrible businessman. That was the one thing he sucked at. He would invest in horses, start ranches. Really bad businessman. He blew a lot of money.
Was he a good dude overall? Because he’s definitely a man’s man in all these interesting ways, legendary feats, really lived a very interesting life — but character-wise?
Shaan: I’ve never read anything bad about him besides this: I felt like he wasn’t always the most present father. When his wife died, he went to North Dakota, to the Badlands, to do his thing. He left his newborn daughter for like a year and a half. You could argue he was maybe suicidal and needed to get away. But in general he had high character. Yeah, he was a good dude.
Book Recommendations: Presidential Assassinations [01:18:00]
Sam: Interesting. Alright, well that’s a fascinating tangent. I’m so glad we did this. And Shaan Gillis — why is Shane Gillis like a history PhD?
Shaan: He has a history major. He studied history.
Sam: I’m a biology major, couldn’t tell you three things. How does he know so much about history?
Shaan: He has a good series of history podcasts and he’s really talented at it. I think it’s really fun to read stories. You’ll read in the biography about Andrew Jackson beating up this guy and you’re just reading it, but then you put yourself there and you’re like, that’s wild that someone would do that. It’s fun to read between the lines and actually imagine these stories. I think it’s fascinating. I also think it’s cool to avoid the mistakes people make and just copy their wins.
I don’t read biographies. I read a lot about people, but I basically study the ideas and the core plot lines. I don’t care where they grew up, who they grew up with, what the scene was like. I really want to know their philosophy and then the action of how they implemented that philosophy — or failed on that philosophy. That’s all I care about. A very weird subgenre of studying history.
Sam: Let me give you two recommendations.
The first is “Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer.” The reason it’s interesting is — you’ve heard the name John Wilkes Booth. He was a famous actor — not quite Brad Pitt at the time, but almost that level of celebrity. And he was a bad dude. Crazy racist, horrible guy. But he had this intoxicating, I want to follow you to the death quality. Really charismatic, he entranced people. By definition the assassination was a conspiracy — a group of like 30 people who worked together. And Booth escaped for 12 days. He almost got away with it. He was very close. So “Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer” is a book about that 12-day hunt. Very good page-turner. Very easy read.
The second is “Hellbound” and it’s about the assassination of MLK. A lot of people don’t know this: James Earl Ray, the guy who shot MLK, not only got away — he escaped for months. He shot MLK in Memphis, drove all over America, went to Quebec, then to Europe — flying from country to country. The only reason he got caught: he was in London on his way to Rhodesia — which was basically South Africa at the time, run by a racist regime — and he was thinking they’ll accept me with wide arms because I just killed MLK, they’ll love me. He gets through security, and as he walks through, a security guard sees he has an additional passport in his pocket. “Whoa, why do you have two passports?” Pulls it out — the one you gave me was fake. And he was literally seconds away from getting away with it.
He was gone for roughly six months, gallivanting all over Europe and Canada. A lot of people don’t realize that about that story. And that book is called “Hellbound.” Also a page-turner.
If you want to read about assassinations, those are my two favorite assassination books.
Shaan: Dude, we should make a list — like a Blue Ribbon list — of books we think are awesome, with some commentary around them. I wish we just had our own curated list. We should just make a separate YouTube channel of us doing a book club. Read a book, talk about it, curate the ones we think are just really unbelievable.
Sam: I would love to do that. Those two rank really high. I go through series — I got obsessed with shipwrecks so I read like 10 books all on shipwrecks. Then I did assassinations of famous people. And the reason I love these books — biographies don’t have a very good beginning, middle, and end. Whereas I try to read books that are about an event. Because an event typically has a beginning, a middle, and an end. More succinct, as opposed to 1,000 pages. I like books on events, particularly events in America so I can relate a little bit more.
Shaan: All right, this was fun. I’m glad we did this at the end.
Sam: That’s the pod.