Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome back to Work in Progress. Today. I'm speaking with entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, and nonprofit leader Andrew Yang. Andrew first came to prominence in many people's minds during the presidential election, where he ran for president on a platform of universal basic income. His innovative ideas have inspired people all over the country and the world, and we are now seeing UBI programs launching all across the nation. Born and raised in New York, Andrew has been a champion for education and progress his entire life. In two thousand nine, he started Venture for America, which has worked to empower thousands of young entrepreneurs across the country. He was named Presidential Ambassador of Entrepreneurship by the Obama administration and a champion of change. In the last year, Andrew founded Humanity Forward, a nonprofit organization which has provided over a million dollars in basic income grants to New Yorkers struggling due to the COVID nineteen pandemic, and now he's trying to continue that work by running for Mayor of New York in the election. Andrew and I have also had the pleasure of working together on some great activist causes. Over the years, we helped to create an organization with a bunch of other incredible activists called Defeat by Tweet to use Donald Trump's cruelty on social media against him to raise political capital and funds for local organizations that were run by incredible black activists across America. And during into the Senate runoffs, we worked together on a program called Win Both Seats to ensure that John ass Off and Raphael Warnock got elected in Georgia and that we could take back the Senate and get this American Rescue Plan going. Very exciting stuff. It's been so much fun to work with Andrew behind the scenes, to witness his advocacy on the national stage, and on today's episode, it was such a pleasure to talk to him about everything from personal to professional to political. We discussed what it's like having immigrant parents, his experience growing up in New York in a Taiwanese family, what he loves most about New York City, how he balances his life as a father and as a political candidate, and what he's learned working in nonprofits, both advocating for people and for better education policy. I'm incredibly inspired by Andrew. He's dynamic, engaging and so very busy. I feel very grateful that he made some time to talk with me and to be here with us. Enjoy Hi. I know, it's so good to see you. It's funny, you know, we were we were on all those like text threads and doing all the things for the election, and then the Georgia runoff and the greatest freaking thing I've been a part of in I don't know, like a few months when both seats was truly the best first of all our text chain went off in the best way every day and just to kind of get that final energetic push over the line to take the Senate back, to actually have progress, to see COVID relief and vaccinations happening, and to know that we helped. It feels crazy, right, It feels so good. Every time I think about those races, I still feel a sense of joy and pride because you and I together raised about three million dollars for the Atlanta Center races, and John ass Off one by about one percent four thousand votes or so out of four and a half million votes cast. So can we say that we helped like hundred because you know, like a few million dollars, and you know, in our case, um weeks on the ground knocking on doors, maybe hundreds of volunteers, and we're seeing very clearly the impact of those victories. Because you get the American Rescue Plan across the finish line with zero Republican votes. You know, you need to have Kabba to come in and be the tiebreaker. It's one point nine trillion dollars. Everyone gets four checks. We may cut child poverty in half. And it's genuinely Sophia in part because people like you Uh stepped up to help win those Georgia races. So the fact that we saw clearly how important those races were and played a role makes me really proud. Yeah, and it really it reminds me. I don't know if you feel this, but there are definitely days where I look at everything going on in the world and they think I'm just one person, what can I do? And then I remember when each of us as individuals teams up together and really wishes for a more just tomorrow, there's potential, and it's it's that kind of potential, you know, in this present moment, obviously coming out of the last election year, moving forward into all the exciting things you're currently doing, including running for mayor of New York City. I want to get into all of that, but before we do, I actually want to go even further back than the start of I want to go to like childhood Andrew. So many people know, so many people know my guests as they are today, but I'm always curious about how you became this way. I know that you grew up in New York, just outside of Albany. You actually grew up in Schenectady, and I grew up with a bunch of New York and New Jersey family. So Schennectedy has always been one of my favorite words to say since I was a little kid. Uh, Schenectady. I just as a kid when I got it, I felt so cool. I imagine it was less cool for you since you grew up there and it felt more obvious. But talk to us about growing up in that part of New York. What was your world like when you were you know, eight, nine, ten years old? Oh, thanks, Sophia. I Uh, I was born in Schenectady, but I did move closer to New York City when I was four years old or so, though I do remember um, yeah, and then I spent a couple of summers upstate too, So like I I often say I grew U up state just kind of, you know, as like a bit of an oversimplification, But I do remember the house in Schenectady and our yellow Chevy. And my father was a physicist for GE. He and my mom met as graduate students. They immigrated here from Taiwan. And so my brother and I first, I'm so glad I had an older brother. So glad. You look so relieved when you say that. Why what what did an older brother mean to you? Well, because we we were the first generation born in this country, and so I always at least had my brother to explain stuff to me. Um. And then when we were in school, we were two of the only Asian kids in our school, and for better or for worse, my teachers called me by my brother's name all the time because he had shown up before me. And uh, you know, so he was two years older than me, and so then by the time I got there, they just like called me by his name, which probably is not a great thing, um, But I used to say, it's like, well, at least he was good in school, so so but I remember growing up just feeling very nerdy and awkward and out of place, very introverted. I'd also skipped kindergarten, so I was smaller and scrawnier than my classmates essentially all the time, um, and felt very self conscious about that. Uh. So I escaped a lot by reading science fiction books and playing dungeons and dragons with my brother and kind of having this imaginary world at home. It's one reason why I feel very saddened for kids today with social media, because I feel like for them they never actually feel alone, like they go home and like their classmates are still with them. Um. In my case, you know, I I definitely felt a degree of a need to enter my own little world that I frankly oh my brother a lot of because he was a bit older and would introduce me to various books and games. I sound very nerdy because I was. I like it. Like, I grew up an only child, so I read a lot. It was kind of the thing I got to do in my house. And also my parents really encouraged that kind of exploration for me. You know, they always had a book to hand me. Was it the same in your house? I mean, your dad being a physicist, I imagine there was a lot of intellectual prowess under one roof. So was was reading really encouraged for you? What? What did your parents kind of push you and your brother towards? Well, my parents, because they were in a grants, didn't really understand what my brother and I were doing at any moment in time, and didn't No, I really did it, so we we would find our own pursuits. Certainly, Like the message from my parents was dwell in school, But my parents were very busy and they worked until dinner time. And so for the first number of years of school, my brother and I went to us sitter, which I'm super grateful for, um Mrs Ingram. And I'm super grateful because, frankly, like to the extent that I, you know, like I learned how to play sports or poker, or watch movies or like any of that stuff, it was because I went to the Ingrams. Like we'd go there and you know, there was a neighborhood with a bunch of kids, and we would play sports and fight. Honestly, like we had games that were essentially just fights. Um. But I'm super grateful because this stuff, you know, it made me feel like I understood this country better, frankly, because my parents were very clueless. I'm gonna say something that's probably gonna people are gonna judge my parents, and I feel bad about that. But whatever, I went into school one day and I was like maybe fourth or fifth grade or something like that, and I revealed that I went to sleep in the clothes that I wore all day pretty much every night. That like, my parents never really got the concept of pajamas, so so I was just like whatever I was wearing, I'd just light out and that that was that that I would, you know, change for the next day. But but then when when my teacher found this out, they were like appalled. I don't understand being appalled at that. Honestly, all I'm thinking is, you're telling this story, is so your parents were decades ahead of the rest of us in this pandemic because no one has changed their clothes since like March. Yeah, they might have just been ahead of the curve simplification, But all jokes aside. I am curious what was your parents immigration story, because I don't know if it feels kind of like legend to you since it's a generation away, But certainly for me and my family. You know, my grandmother and great grandparents coming on a boat from Italy, you know, through Ellis Island has this sort of lore. And then my dad actually, so for I guess on my dad's side of things, I'm first generation because he came to America in the sixties and he eventually became a Green card holder. But my dad didn't become a citizen until I was twelve. So I helped Sophia and the whole thing. I helped my dad's study for his citizenship tays. I made flash cards, remember when we were kids, and you had like the little plastic box that all your flash cards. So I had a little file section of you know, civics to help my dad study for his tests. So I have such a nostalgia about this sort of idea of coming here for the American dream. Where on the spectrum does that fall in your family? Yeah, I mean I figured this all out much later, and I was kind of clueless about it for most of my childhood. But my parents both came over from Taiwan. Their circumstances were a bit different. My father grew up on a peanut farm with no floor in southern Taiwan, which I saw for the first time when I was a teenager, and I was like, holy cow, Dad, Like, I don't know how you you managed to get from here to there. Um. So my my father tested into National Taiwan University from the farm and I asked him once, it's like, hey, why do you study physics? He was like, so I could go to the States. And so at that time, the United States would accept students from Taiwan who were studying various sciences, honestly, So my my father got his degree in physics in Taiwan and then came to the States and got his PhD in physics at UC Berkeley, where he met my mom. And my mom at the time was an undergraduate at Berkeley and then she went to get her masters at Berkeley. But it was a little different from my mom because my mom didn't grow up on a farm. My mom was the daughter of a professor and heard her father was actually a visiting professor at Berkeley when she was a student there. So between my parents, my mom is definitely the classy one and my dad is sort of the roughneck one. And they talked all about how my dad kind of misled her during their courtship about how he was going to you know, never let her watch this Is again and like all this other stuff that after um they tied the knot. Then you know, like some of that stuff didn't come to pass, but they they got together at Berkeley as students. My brother was born in San Francisco, and then when they moved to Schenectady, I was born. So there are pictures of them as newlywed's in California, and it's I think the some of the first memories I have of them were as you know, like relatively young parents still in upstate New York. That's so sweet. So in addition to the D and D that maybe they didn't understand what else was kind of keeping your focus as a kid, you know, books and games. Yeah, my parents drill was like get into a good college and so as Asian parents like that took the form of piano lessons. So I started playing piano when I was five, and they had us go to Chinese school on Saturdays, and I was really bad at Chinese. So I would get left back regularly at this Chinese school, which is fine, whatever any better now or you just never kind of still not very good. Um. And and so my about with the piano. There was a point when I was pretty good at piano. My high point was I performed in like a youth concert at Carnegie Hall. Um. I did make a tape for college, so you know, like there was like me playing the Black Mountain of Prelude in G minor or something like that. Uh. And the other thing is my parents were like, you need to sport to get to college, so they sent me to tennis camp so I can make the high school tennis team. So but it was very utilitarian, honestly. It was like, well, like time to make you seem well rounded. Honestly, at this point, I'm so envious. I started taking tennis lessons about a year and a half ago. I played for one year when I was nine, So you can imagine that as a grown adult human woman, I am not good. You remind me a bit of my wife Evelyn, because she also tried to pick up tennis fairly recently. And I know, like you should stick with it, like tennis is like a great sport for us all as we get a little bit older and more rickety. I'm going to stick with it, honestly, and I think the reason that I I'm very comfortable being self deprecating, which you have to be as an actor, because what nobody knows is that even if you're quote unquote successful as an actor, you go on thousands of auditions for jobs you never get. So I'm very used to being like, well that didn't work out, which kind of the way I feel every time I try to serve and it was in the wrong direction. Um. You know that's true for entrepreneurship too, And it's one reason why I'm passionate about our schools trying to prepare our kids somewhat differently, because if you're trying to get something done, like in a sales or entrepreneurial context, if you you have a success rate of you're doing great. So you have this sort of well rounded Uh. You know, Andrew on paper getting ready for college apps. I know that you went to Brown and then you went to Columbia Law School. What was that like kind of getting into high school? What else came into your life? What else was influencing you that led you on that path to car I made a very very strange decision when I was fifteen years old, um, which is I went to a boarding school in New Hampshire, Uh, called Phillips Exeter. You decided to go to a boarding school? I genuinely did I know, even though boarding school is eighties code for your parents hate you and our shutting. But but in my case, I went to summer program and some of the folks there went to a school called Exeter and said, oh, we like it. And then I went to my parents It was like, can I go to Exeter? And my mom just about jumped for joy. It was crazy. She had like the application in her hand like a day later, being like, you're doing this? Uh. And my motivation was partially because my brother was leaving for college at Berkeley actually, and so the prospect of being left alone with my parents did not excite me. And I would have been fifteen and unable to drive, which also seemed really pathetic. So so that those are some of the things that made me think, hey, let me go to this place called Exeter. So I went to boarding school in New Hampshire for the last two years, which was a very very big adjustment, and I wasn't happy there for the first year, but it was my decision to go. So if you decided to do something and it's not working out, then you kind of have no one to blame but yourself. So so you look at yourself and be like, all right, I gotta make this work. I got improved, um, and be happier with it. What led to that unhappiness in your first year there? And then what changed in the second? I felt very out of place at Exeter, And if there are pictures, I think I was objectively out of place, Like I think there are some photos of you really can find them, um. And so it was interesting because like, I felt out of place in my public school, even though you know, like I found my plate, my niche. But it was a real struggle. And I'd grown up with these people and had become friends with, you know, some some of my childhood friends that I'm still in touch with it to this day. But I still felt like my public school was not really pushing or challenging me in a particular way. So I decided to go to Exeter, which was a very academically rigorous environment. But these kids were from totally different backgrounds than anyone I had been around. A lot of them were from New York City, a lot of them were from all over the country like San Francisco. I mean, EXTRA takes from all over and it was a very high pressure environment. You don't see your families, so it did have kind of Lord of the Flies vibe a little bit like you're in a dorm and their curfews, and it was just a bit of an adjustment for me. And there was also a sense that your status was measured in part by what college you were going to get into, and so there's just a lot of pressure. You know. When I actually went back and spoke at EXTRA when I was running for president and I shared some of these stories with them, just asking it's like, hey, if things changed, and uh, you know, like like EXTRA has gone through a real evolution in some respects because um, they've had some kids who've been really unhappy and so they're trying to evolve in different ways. Did that feeling come from that intense pressure, which to me sort of feels like this blanket pressure of success in capitalism that gets thrust onto young kids when they're applying to college. Was it sort of that be successful, prove yourself rat race kind of mentality or or do you think that some of what made you feel a little out of place was a further continuation of what you said you experienced elementary school, which was that it wasn't very diverse. You know, you and your brother were kind of two of two. Did you experience a class that was made up of more diverse and different people when you went to boarding school or was it more of the same. Exeter and for this matter, Brown in Colombia were all statistically much more diverse in terms of how many Asian Americans were there. Frankly, my experience went from being one of one or so at my public school too. I think that extra was maybe fourteen or fifteen percent Asian American. Um, it's pretty high. So it was probably more along the lines of what you were just describing as the meritocratic culture and this kind of rat race that got started young at Exeter. And I do think that our meritocracy in these selective schools ends up shaping people in a particular way that makes it very difficult for folks to go back and either inspect or amend to the system that produced us. And one of the things I just randomly tweeted a while ago but ended up being very well received was it's hard to tell how funked up a system is if you've succeeded in that system, uh And I do feel that way about a lot of the A lead educational institutions. I love Brown, I mean, I think Brown is the most human of the selective schools I've been exposed to, honestly, but that there has been some kind of pummeling that then a lot of folks have been subject to as they've come up. And I think one of one of the this is a bit of a non sequitor, but you know that that scandal where parents were spending a lot of money getting their kids into selective schools, uh Like, I think that's like one manifestation of it. Is just that there are these particular institutions that bestow a certain type of status on folks, and then a lot of families rear their kids saying, well, you know, you need to get into these schools or you're not going to have the kind of life that you want, and kids internalized that very very early. So I think that that was one of the things I was struggling with because Exeter at that time was very much like a hub of that kind of mindset. Is it is this getting too sad? I don't know, Sofia, I don't think it's sad. Honestly, I think I think it's really fascinating. And to your point, I I think that when we reach these moments along the roads of our lives where we have more tools in our tool belt, know where we understand more about systems and we can look back, just like you said, on the systems that raised us. I think that's kind of required. I get that some people maybe think it's a drag. I love this stuff. I I like to analyze and and inspect so that we can envision bigger and better moving forward. And I know that you do too. I mean, I imagine that there was some version of that spark in you that led you, you know, from uh thinking you were going to be a lawyer too, jumping away from law and and working in startups. Can can you tell people a little bit about that, because to your point, you know, especially as a young man, there's so much pressure about, you know, go to the good college and get the big job. And you know, you're a son of immigrants, and I grew up in a family of immigrants, and I joke that, like, you know, my uncle Raymond used to be like, you're either going to be a doctor or a lawyer, or a lawyer or a doctor, like that was the thing in my family. You were going to get one of those jobs. And I'm curious, how did you have the courage after Brown, after Columbia Law How how did you say, you know, J K L L. I don't think this is for me. Yeah. So I graduated from law school, I get a job in New York. I'm making six figures as a twenty four year old, and I don't like the job at all. And so I think to myself, well, why am I doing this job? And then just to try and figure out why I was doing the job, I went to a department store and bought gifts from my family, and I was like, maybe I'm doing this for the money, so let me try that out. So I bought nice gifts for my mom, my dad, and my brother and gave them those gifts over Thanksgiving. And then I was like, Nope, that's not it. Where it's like, this is not a good enough reason for me to do this. From that last all of thirty seven seconds, yeah right, So, and it actually did make me question why my parents came to the US. It was like, did they come to the US so their son could make a good living and then maybe kind of self replicate, like maybe I could find, you know, like a nice woman that you know, wanted to try and like like repeat the process. I was like that there had to be something more to why my parents fought to raise my brother and me here. And so I left the law and my parents were not pleased by this at all, Like, you know, I leave the law. I owed six figures in law school alone, so this was objectively like a poor decision. And I left the law to start a dot com that had its mini rise and maximum fall. Uh. And during that time, my parents still told their friends I was a lawyer, because that was a much easier story for Asian parents to share than oh, you know, our son went and left it all behind to start this dot com that flopped and I still owed the six figures in law school debt. So my mid twenties was this kind of quest for some alternative to climbing the corporate ladder. And climbing the corporate ladder I said at the time, I was like, look, I don't have wife, kids, mortgage, Like I don't really have any obligations like why am I acting like I have obligations that that I don't have instead of trying to find something meaningful. And the dot com that I co founded was You're gonna love this. It was called Stargiving dot com. It was a dot com to raise money for celebrity affiliated nonprofits more effectively UM and the Internet was very new back then, and so the thought was that we could find a celebrity who wanted to help a nonprofit, and then we'd set up a click to donate button on star Giving, and then one person who clicked on the button met the celebrity, and then everyone who clicked got shown very sponsors. And we thought we'd generated millions for charity and do it much as you know. It's very dot com one idea. And so when that company flopped, it was very difficult for me and my confidence was shot. I was in my mid to late twenties in New York City in debt, not making a lot of money. All my law school classmates were starting to make money, uh, and I moved into an apartment with a roommate to save money, and I started throwing parties on the side as like a side hustle, I joined another startup, so it was, you know, it was like that kind of New York story for me for a number of years. What kind of parties were you guys throwing? Well, so what happened was I had a birthday party and a lot of people I didn't know showed up, and so I said, maybe there's a business here. So then I got together with some friends and started throwing parties, especially after nine eleven in Tribeca, because after nine eleven, like all of downtown Manhattan kind of emptied out, and there were these bars and clubs that were trying to survive, and so I would just go and like fill those venues up with twenty something year olds who wanted to drink and party. And so I did that for a number of years. In my late twenties, I was like I also started tutoring on the side, and I was working at a healthcare software a startup. So I became a very scrappy type, in part because I had a company fail from under me, and so I always thought, well, if the next thing fails, I should have something to fall back on. I was a little bit burnt, you know, for a few years, totally I think that's a very fair reaction, especially when you when you know that something could work and you have an ideal behind it and it doesn't work, it feels kind of like a loss, you know Morkin too, almost a death than just to miss the business opportunity, because it's it's your core, you know, it's something about your belief system well, and it's very tough because it's public too. I mean, as a creative, you might feel this like there you've been in you know obviously like does the project, but there might be a project that you were like, this is uh my project, and I put put my heart and soul into it, and then if that fails, like you feel it very very deeply and personally. Yeah, And that was my experience with the first company I started, because I went out to everyone I knew and was like, I'm starting this company that you know, it's very public at least that the company existed, and then it's failure was also thus similarly very well known to everyone I knew um And so there was a period when I felt like everyone I knew regarded me as a failure and it was very very difficult. But then you start realizing that's mainly in your head, not their's, and that you know, like, like you know, no one actually is looking at you saying like ha ha, Andrew, you started this company and you failed, like you suck, even though you might think they're thinking that at least for a little while. Yeah, it is funny when you realize that people are so concerned with what's going on in their lives that they're not really paying attention to what's going on in yours. Did you did you have a particular project that you felt more like there was much more personally yours, and that whether it succeeded or failed, you were going to be either elated or hurt by that. Yeah. I it's interesting. I met a really incredible writer who wrote an unbelievably smart kind of political, you know, espionage thriller story, but he wrote it during the Obama era. And what I've learned about TV is that you know, when we for example, when we feel safe politically, we want to watch the West Wing. When we feel like we're in danger politically, we really want to watch Ship's Creek. We can't handle scary political content when the world is politically scary. And so when we felt safer, like there was hope, like the energy. It was, yes, we can make it better, do smarter. It was great times. Um, you know, you and I both got to work on really really cool stuff during that administration. We were excited about exploring, you know, the dark Web and Russian misinformation and all of these things that this script was about. And then by the time we met and we kind of finessed it to fit for me rather than this woman who had been you know, in the game forever and was fifty five and all of these things. We made this unbelievable pilot. We had this unbelievable cast, and honestly, everyone was like, we really love it and it's really good and we can't bear to watch it, like it's in the Trump era. For for the television studio, they were just like, it's too close to home, Like we can't we don't know how to market this. We don't like, you can't sell this as a cool idea because it's happening and it's you know, and my poor writer Dave was like, I didn't know what was coming, and we were also sad, but you know, you have to you have to understand where things work in the landscape, and you know, you guys were early honestly with your idea for this click to donate thing. Now everybody does it, but yeah, that was so hard for me. It was so hard to take that l and really hard even though in my head I understood the landscape emotionally, it just felt like I made a thing I cared about and it didn't work for me. Yeah, you put your heart and soul into something, work closely with people, produce a pilot that it sounds when we were super proud of it was so good. But you know, there should be there should be a way for us to see these pilots, because I've now heard of a number of pilots that seem like they'd be awesome, and then we can imagine. I'm still really close to everyone from that project, and I was actually saying the other day, I was like, what do you think, like we can get the rights back and maybe make it a movie like this would be a sick Netflix movie now, you know, um so who knows, We'll see. There's always I think, an option. But it strikes me that even in my storytelling, I'm so drawn to activism. I'm drawn to politics. I'm drawn to social change. And and you know when you were talking about wanting to get out of the legal world, not wanting to fall victim to this estimation that you were supposed to have, you know, the six figure job and do the thing that didn't make you that happy, just so you could go to the department store. That that's a reaction to the you know, purely average capitalistic success story of the quote American dream. And and so I'm curious for you, where did the desire to envision a new way forward, a new way of doing business, a new way of participating in the economy, which to me really is rooted in activism and political change. Where did that come from? Was that a natural drive? Did you have a mentor was it like an itch you have that you needed to scratch? How did that start? Oh? What's interesting, so bea is I was fundamentally or deeply affected by going to Columbia Law School and seeing a lot of really smart young people show up and then having their ambitions shaped and channeled in a particular way. Uh. And if you go into corporate law New York City at that time, or frankly, I think pretty much ever since the nature of the work that we were doing was that we were ministering two very very large corporate transactions and making sure that the documents are okay. So I started to compare myself to grease on a wheel. It was like, we were like transaction costs um. But because you're talking about transactions that are worth hundreds of millions, then the lawyers get paid, you know, eventually like you know, a million or two. And so if you're a young person, you're a lawyer in training, then you get paid six figures to maybe become like a better transaction cost. And I said at one point, I was like, this law firm is like a temple to the squandering of human potential um, you know. And and because you had some of the smartest, best educated people in the country doing work that was objectively not very productive or even interesting. Sorry, you know, I mean like hopefully that's not too you know again, I mean not not indictment of anyone. You know, we all like you know, we're we're all doing things. So for me saying, okay, like I'm going to try and do something that I'm excited about and proud of. And I read a book called Built to Last about entrepreneurship. It's like, I really want to try and become one of those, and then falling on my face so thoroughly was very, very difficult. And then I spent a number of years trying to become better at building a business and or managing a company, and through really great fortune, more than anything else, I became the head of an education company in New York City called Manhattan Prep. When I was thirty one. I was the first teacher outside of the founder at this company, maybe maybe five years prior, but I had seen it as something of like a side gig. And then the founder decided to leave to start a charter school for underprivileged kids here in New York. He's got a beautiful soul, and so he asked me to take over the business for him. And then I spent six years running that company. And if you run a company, you become kind of like the head of an extended family a bit. You know, Like the company had a couple of hundred employees, and we expanded around the country, and so i'd like every year I'd host all the instructors for this convocation. It's like, you know, also kind of nerdy, and when when that company was bought in two thousand nine. That that's when I had this soul searching that you were describing a bit of It's like, what what is the meaning? And I was driven by this reaction. I still had to those hundreds of people I went to law school with and the hundreds of people I worked with, and I said, why is it that we're turning are really talented people into And at the time it was bankers, consultants, lawyers, and now you you'd put technologists in there too, who eight times out of ten are not actually solving the most important problems like that, they're just driving our capitalist economy to your early earlier point, like in a very specific direction. And so then I thought, well, the reason why that's happening is because when you graduated from Columbia Law the way I did, there were many firms that were just waiting with a pile of money for you, and they recruited you when you were a second year, and it was like the path at least resistance, and those recruiting pipelines existed for all of these fields, at all of the selective institutions, and so I thought, well, what we need is we need a pathway to entrepreneurship and building things of meaning that will compete with those firms. And so I started a nonprofit called Venture for America to try and provide this um and it would train young people to be entrepreneurs in Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, Cleveland, all these cities around the country. And I spent six years building that organization, in part as like a reaction to my formative educational years. And it was only after running that organization for six years that I realized that our economy was transforming in really fundamental ways that we're going to be disastrous for a lot of people. That I then decided to run for president. That's when you and I met um. But in a way, I think my activism was catalyzed by what I'd seen and experienced kind of climbing the ranks here in New York looking at the trends in the economy that are very disastrous for a lot of people. You know, this absurd wealth gap that is growing. I always found it so interesting, you know, during the last administration, in particular the the just out in the open obsession with kind of obscene wealth, but also the demonization of people who are more obviously viewed as successful. Like I always laughed at Donald Trump always wanted to come for the actors and be like, well, you elites, And I'm like, bro, I don't know any actors with jets, but you have one, and like all your Wall Street friends have them, and come on, let's have real conversations about what these elite economic classes look like. But those people often get to operate in the shadows. And it's not lost on me that you know any of us. At least for me, I'll personalize it. You know, I am incredibly grateful that my job has allowed me to feel financially stable in my life. Also, I'm very clearly aware that some of that is because I have a union. I have health care because because I'm in a union, I only have any protections because I'm a union worker. And so when people say, you know, why are you always advocating for an increase in minimum wage? It won't affect you anyway, I'm like, it affects every person I work with, all my other unif you know, and and and for me, I think people also forget that, you know, actors have years or their work and making money and years where they don't make any money at all. And for me, the thing that could not feel clearer is that we're really all on the same team and we need a rising tide to lift all ships. And currently it feels like the tide has gone through. And this, this will show my Canadian on my dad's side, the tide has really gone through the locking system. So you know, the ship went in and and then that lock was raised, but all the other locks have stayed at low tide. And I feel like we're locking people out of the ability to participate more meaningfully in the economy. And that's what really makes me curious. You know, as you mentioned, your presidential campaign centered a lot on innovative economic ideas. You know, you talked about a digital credit system, you talked about a universal basic income. Can you explain a little bit about the digital social credit that you know, the d s C as you call it. Can you talk to us a little bit about how the economy might work better for us? Yeah, I would love to just talk about the pandemic, because one of the themes of this conversation with you, Sophie, is that there's been this kind of myth of the meritocracy that has suffused are our country where it's like, if you're successful, it's because you worked hard and you deserve and if you're not successful, then somehow you messed up somehow, And and then we have all these educational institutions that are kind of reinforcing that in particular way, and the pandemic hopefully just kind of shreds that for good, because obviously it's not anyone's fault that there bus tour company or bar or a restaurant or a theater company or whatever it is, like has shut down for a period of time, like has something to do with your individual work ethic or or any of that um. And what happened with the pandemic was some of what I had feared would happen because of advancing technology that was just going to end up pushing a lot of Americans to the side. And so my goal with universal based Game Come And I'm really curious what you thought of when when when you first heard about, you know, the Universal based Gamecome proposal when I was running for president. Now versions of that are being passed into law by by Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and everyone else. I mean, we're going to get a tax credit that could alleviate child poverty. Thanks a part again to you and me and Rev Warnock and John Ausuf and all of that. I actually got to help work on UM the Compton Pledge here in l A. You know we've been doing it was so cool. We've been doing so much amazing, you know, local grassroots organizing here, passing Measure JA to make sure we can get restorative justice as part of the l A County budget, getting this, you know, universal basic income pilot program launched in Compton after Michael Tubbs did it as the mayor and Stockton. There's great stuff happening here, and I think so often about how it is a lot of what we were talking about in the primaries. Yes, And one of the things that I would love your help talking about, because I certainly have not done a enough job about it, is that I think this is imperative for women in particular, because women right now do the vast majority of the unrecognized and uncompensated work in our society. And so if you, for example, just start having a universal basic income, it's going to disproportionately benefit the folks who right now the market is pushing to the side which is going to be women in a lot more cases. And uh, you know, and one of the things I said on the trail was that, look like my wife is at home with our boys, one of whom is autistic. Like, what does the market value her work at like, you know, zero? What does GDP value her work at? Zero? Like? Does that seem right to you? No? Yeah, that was the dumbest thing ever. Yeah. I saw an amazing article recently that talked about how valued at current minimum wage, not a fifteen dollar minimum wage, current seven an hour minimum wage, the unpaid labor of women in America is a one point four trillion dollar a year deficit. Yes, And so if you look at that, there's no mystery why frankly, Like, you know, so many of our kids are struggling. I mean, there are a lot of reasons because they're struggling, but a lot of it is we're just like making it harder and harder for parents to spend time with their children because we're treating it like it has no value. And then you know, we make daycare super expensive and people have to make really really impossible choices. So at one point four trillion dollars, like if you were to properly value it. Imagine a world where all of that actually was just recognized and then just distributed as cash. It was like, guess what, if you're doing this kind of caregiving work, we're just gonna pay you. And if we did that, the world would be better, Like we'd be recognizing more of the actual value that's getting delivered. And so is one of the cases I was making on the trail was like, look like, if you're for gender equity, then we should just be putting money into people's hands immediately. Be this is just going to help women get what you all should have been getting for you know, years, in decades and generations, and that's just right now, Like the market is intrinsically anti women. So anyway, that that was the case that I was making, and I don't think I ever succeeded, as you can probably tell. Even listening to this, you're like, hey, Andrew, that still wasn't that great. No, I think I love it, and I think it is an incredibly important conversation to have. I'm really curious, you know, because you brought up Evelyn, you brought up your kids. How do you guys managed to balance this this big life? You know your work, your foundation, humanity forward, all of these things you're doing. And you said you've got two boys at home. What's personal life like for you, guys? How do you balance a family dynamic while you're trying to change the world. Well, first, I'm super grateful to Evelyn, and I expressed it every day. But I have to say running for mayor of New York City is vastly superior to running for president really because yeah, in these direct ways, because I see my family every morning and night. And then today, as an example, we went to the Yankees game to celebrate Opening Day as a mayoral event, but my wife and two boys were there and we just spent the afternoon at the game, and that was like totally like a fine way to spend the afternoon while you were campaigning for mayor. Um So I try and combine the two as much as possible. And this is light years better than the presidential was where during the presidential you and I have met for the first time in Iowa, like it would be like, Hey, I'm leaving on Monday, I'll be back you know Sunday. I think like that was really hard, and the fact that the family was strong and whole during those months is really just testament to how fortunate I am to have Evelyn as a partner, because she just was a rock and a rock star. But the mayoral campaign is vastly superior in that, like the family feels like they're part of it. And Evelyn is, you know, more New York than I am the sense that she was born and raised here and I grew up in Queens and I went to Stuyveson, which is a very New York school. You probably haven't heard of it. Um, So yeah, it's it's been great on that side. And Evelyn's really embraced kind of the activism spirit of the last several years for US Sophia, because it's funny, most people met me when I was running for president, but I started run a nonprofit for you know, six and a half years prior to that, uh, and then running for president was kind of an extension of that activism where I started an organization because I was trying to fix the economy to make it work better for people, and I was like, well, the only way to fix it is to start giving money out to people very quickly and directly, which was very dramatic sounding at the time, but I thought the only way to do that would be to run for president. And then that achieved, you know, many of its goals. And then now New York City is in a frankly and like in a very very tough condition, and I think I can help. We're going to try and make this the anti poverty city. The UBI trials you're talking about in Compton and Stockton, which I am so thrilled about, excited about. I want to go big here in New York City, Like I want to make this the anti poverty city because it's the right thing to do, but I also think it's going to help speed up our recovery, like the city. Have you spent a lot of time in New York City? It sounds like you have. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, my mom is is a born New Jersey and then raised New Yorker, and so much of my family's there, and I've spent so much of my time there, you know, as a kid, and also lived there off and on for the last fifteen years. So New York feels like we want to get it back. It feels like my second home. And and so this is like the next level of activism Sophia. You know, as I'm saying this, I'm thinking to myself, Sophia should run for mayor of whatever town, because this, to me is like the both the need and the challenge. Where like it or not, I do think the public sector is going to have to be the prime mover in addressing some of the problems we're sitting around us right now. Yeah, I don't disagree, and I think especially look, it's really also about priorities and investment. Right we have the money. We have the largest fiscal budget on Earth. We are so much money. People don't know where the money goes. The Pentagon, you know, spends two billion dollars a day. It's like, we have the money, Sophia. It's so fun because when I was running for president, that was the number one question I got, was like, where we're gonna get the money? We haven't then and then, and I always had made the argument. I was like, look, we gave four trillion to Wall Street when they needed it, like you know, uh, and now with COVID, you know, we we've frankly passed another four trillion dollars, which I love, fantastic, but we clearly have it. But we clearly, had it the whole time, we could have been doing something with this fortune dollars. Even in the absence of of this pandemic, we could be helping people the whole time. Um, you talk about the city, you talk about your family, you're talking about the way that Evelyn has embraced activism and social change, and we're talking about the many causes that we have been allied on. This is an incredibly profound and difficult moment for the Asian American community, and in terms of how we all can show up, one of the things that's been really well illuminated in conversations I've been lucky enough to have in our group of friends is the fact that there has always been a lot of mistreatment of the A p I community here, and there has been a bit of a turning the other cheek to it because of this model minority myth. And as we're seeing this moment where clearly our neighbors and friends need us to stand up for and with them, I'm curious, what do you, as a not only as a candidate and an activist, but also as a dad, what do you want to ask people to do to support you right now? To support your family right now, in your community right now. I think the heartbreaking increase in violence against Asian Americans really culminates in this sense of dehumanization and alienation. Like the man who beat the elderly Asian woman in my neighborhood said you don't belong here, uh, you know, precipitating his attack, and those words really hurt Asian Americans because there's been this sense really ever since any of us can remember that are belonging here is in doubt, and so to the extent that people want to help, it's just expressing a degree of caring and fellowship and shared humanity with Asian Americans and let let them know, let us know that U c s as human being as Americans, as people who belong here as much as anyone else, and reaching out to two people maybe that you wouldn't reach out to ordinarily. I will say on this podcast that the hashtag that's being used online is stop Asian Hate, which is not hashtag I love, though I have used it because it seems like it's the main one, But like I was trying to come up with a better alternative, because that's you know, you can't complain about something if you if you can't approve on it. Um So, I was thinking about no more hate or and this one was a little bit tongue in cheek, but I was like, what, you know, it's not stop Asian hate. It's more like like show Asians love or something like that. Like that, but that that would be my ask for people who want to help is just to show people love, you know, show Asians love, show people that you care. Yeah, it feels like such an immensely important time for us to all be standing in solid theority. I've been so moved by so much of the action that I've seen other communities who experience oppression taking to stand in solidarity. That young man in New York City who started the campaign to have you know, young black and brown men and anyone else who wanted to volunteer walk elderly Asian Americans home. I was like, this beautiful, this is our community, you know. And that's one of the things I will say I love so much about New York. I know we're out of time. I have so enjoyed speaking to you today. I'm excited to see what happens with the run. In parting, would you tell our audience their very favorite thing to know, which is what in your life is a work in progress right now? Wow. I think that my ability to manage being a good dad with running from mayor is a work in progress. It's something that I work at every day. So I'm so glad to be your friend, uh and your fellow traveler in this There's a lot of there's a lot of need and struggle out there, but talking to you is is genuinely uplifting. Thank you for me to my friend. Thank you so much. Every time we talk. I'm like, we're going to do really good things. We're gonna do really good things. Yeah, and we're gonna get New York City back on its feet. Let's go New York City, Sophie. I gotta get you out here. You gotta visit us. I can't wait to come home. I'll see you very soon. I hope. I love it. Come home indeed. By everyone. Bye, Andrew, Thank you,