00:00Alex Karp told me he's doing an interesting thing over at Palantir.
00:03It's a meritocracy fellowship.
00:05He's taken kids straight out of high school,
00:08and he's training them very specifically in a number of skills
00:12and putting them on these very consequential engineering projects.
00:16But at the same time, he's exposing them to the Stoics
00:19and to the Aristotelian-Socratic method of learning
00:23and philosophers and Nietzsche and Descartes
00:26and all of these things that are so clearly of a liberal arts bent.
00:31It's insane that we're looking at the next workforce as one thing or another.
00:38I think it was Marco Rubio during the presidential debate 10 years ago.
00:42I forget what the question was, but his answer was,
00:44what our country needs are fewer philosophers and more welders.
00:48And it got a big applause line, and thousands of people went on my socials to say,
00:52hey, that guy's really singing your song.
00:53And I had to say, no, actually, he's not.
00:57What our country needs are more welders who can talk intelligently about Nietzsche and Descartes
01:03and think critically, and more philosophers who can run an even bead
01:07and talk sensibly to a skilled tradesperson.
01:10We have to find a way in our educational system to talk to both sides of the brain.
01:16And if that means taking certifications into the Ivy League for the trades, great.
01:21And if that means taking liberal arts professors into the biggest and best trade schools that we have,
01:28I think that's fantastic, too.
01:29But we've got to walk and chew gum at the same time.
01:32We've got to walk and chew gum at the same time.
