What does the future hold? Glenn talks to entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis

Does college matter? What happens when 50% of current jobs disappear? What does the future look like? These are the kinds of questions that people across the country need to be asking, but many don't even know where to start looking for the answers. To help fix that problem, Glenn has started to seek out strange bedfellows, many of whom are on the cutting edge of shaping the future. Jason Calacanis is an angel investor, entrepreneur, and blogger. He knows better than most what the future holds, and more importantly how to prepare.

Start listening to the interview at 1 hour 36min into today's podcast:

Below is a rush transcript of this interview

GLENN: This is crazy. I don't want to make this about politics. I want to make this about the future. Does college matter really? Or is it what -- how you learn to think and can you remain nimble enough in your thinking. I don't want someone who's gone to college and just learned how to think in a box. If you can go to college and learn to think outside of the box, great, but too many times college is making you just draw this straight line that everybody is going down. The world is not like that anymore. We have Jason Calacanis on. He is really the father of the blog. He started one of his web logs back in -- I don't know when. Sold it to AOL for $30 million in 2005, and he's an angel investor, has been investing in some of the greatest new technology around. And he also runs something call This week in start-ups. He's also one of the biggest entrepreneurial festivals that go on called Launch Festival, and Launch Festival happens in march. I am actually going to speak there in San Francisco. 10,000 entrepreneurs come to this, and think out of the box.

So I wanted to start with Jason there. Does college matter in the future to the extent of you would be concerned about someone who didn't finish college?

CALACANIS: Great question. Thanks for having me, Glenn. One of the major issues is the value proposition. $10,000 for four years or $20,000 or whatever you paid and I am a little younger than you, maybe $30,000 for four years for me, as a product of Fordham University.

One year salary. Maybe it seems like an okay thing it would for a couple of years, as you mature, but do go into debt, the equivalent of five year's salary, no, makes so sense. Then if you look at what truly matters in the world, to make it today, a combination of skills that are in demand, that go out of demand probably every five, ten, 15 years for some of these very specific skills, programming a specific computer language, using a specific peat of design software. What you need to have is grit, ethics, morality, leadership and resolve. When I look at entrepreneurs, people always ask me hey, how did you pick Thumbtack or Uber or some of these? I said I picked the individuals, not the ideas. If you look in someone's eyes and you can feel the passion and you can hear the logic and the decision-making and problem-solving they approach a space with, whatever the space happens to be -- for you, it would be media. For me, it would be angel investing -- their approach and resolve and problem-solving leadership ability, these are the things that matter. We have to re-optimize the school systems for those things and even if we do, the fact is, we are going to live in a world with much less employment and that's going to be a scary thing for everybody, independent of party mines, so I know this show gets a little political at times, but when you look at just the world and the flattening of the world, which means hey, everybody is going to trend towards the same arrow we wage at some point, and that is happening, and there's too many workers in the world, we are going to live in a negative job economy.

GLENN: What does that mean? I was just talking to my son last night. He's 10. We were talking about great cars. I said when you are my age, you will tell your kid, when they are your age now that you remember when your dad drove cars, and you drove a car, but you probably won't -- you may live in a world where you are not allowed to drive a car anymore. And as I was having this conversation, what I really wanted to say to him -- and by the way, it will be a scary world, because by the time you get out of college, if you go, 50% of all the jobs that are currently available, are going to be gone. I can say that, but I don't know what that really looks like. What does that mean, that we are going to be in a much more jobless world?

CALACANIS: You can see what it looks like. If you go to the Middle East, if you go to some of the underperforming European countries, referred to as the pigs, perch gal, Italy, Greece, Spain, and you see what happens when 20-something-year-old males hit 20, 30, 40% unemployment, it means riots in the street. And it could mean people hanging out, drinking coffee all day, getting a stipend from the government, looking for somebody to hate for their lot in life. And having a lack of purpose in life is dangerous. Those are the people who can get picked up presently easily by people who are using religion Todd bad things in the world and drugs and just whatever?

GLENN: So who is doing anything on that?

CALACANIS: Very interesting question. Now you are getting to the heart of it, which is hey, we have a lot of rich people in the world, right? Polarization of wealth is happening. What do the billionaires think? What do the people in true power think, the people running these huge companies? They are staying up late about it. I have had many after night thinking about this issue, and there are some creative solutions. I think we will work it out and we'll be in a beautiful world in the future. What's going to happen, we'll have to-start thinking of creative solutions. I am kind of against this as a workaholic, group up with an Irish-Catholic for work ethic, we will move to a four-day work week. If you give everybody three days offer, we have created 20% more employment on a mass basis. Another one, double the number of teachers, double the number of health care workers. And you do that, then the number -- amount of time they each have to have with each of the people that are working with would double or triple. Those would be good things for society. Of course, if you say anything creative like that in the environment that we live in -- and you are part of that environment as someone who talks about this at stuff -- you have to be careful. If I said that, oh, you are a socialist. I would say I don't know what you mean by that word in this context N 2015, but the world is moving awfully quick. When a lot of people are under employed and you see Operation Wall Street, that was like our little preview of what happens when a group of people gets disenfranchised. That was a completely ad hoc poorly run organization. That's why none of us are thinking about it all that much today, but they had a great moment in New York -- I mean effective. I'm not endorsing it necessarily -- but they went to Bloomberg's house, put 30, 40 people out of his town house and started protesting. When that happens, someone like Mike Bloomberg will be like if you are taking it to my front porch and I have to deal with this, okay, that four day work week thing works well. Or let's think about -- the really scary one, which I was dead set guest, now I am kind of starting to think about, is minimum income. This is a super-interesting --

GLENN: Whoa.

CALACANIS: I know you are thinking -- what minimum income means is cancel all the social programs and just give everybody innocent country $1,000 a month. If all the social programs -- we have 300 million people, equals this amount of dollars, just give everyone $1,000 a month. Then, rich people get it too. Everybody gets it. You could probably waive it or something, but at least your rent and your health care, whatever would be paid for. Not necessarily endorsing its, but if we got to 40% unemployment and had to figure out what to do with everybody, oh, my God -- this is probably at the end of our lifetimes.

GLENN: This is -- I will tell you, this is something we do -- this is the kind of thinking that I think middle America needs to start hearing. Instead of just hearing the stat, there's going to be a loss of 50% of jobs buy the year 2025, someone has to start talking about what does that really mean. What does that look like. And what do people do? Because that's the -- what's happening right now, I think we are being led by the elites, and it's because nobody is talking about this with regular people. So they just -- we are just fed this technology and just like oh, we have this technology, but no one is thinking about the ethics of it, no one is thinking about the consequences of it, no one is thinking about what it means when it starts to punch in and what it means for our children, my child, who is 10, when they are 25. What does the world look like? Not the way it looks now.

CALACANIS: It will be completely different. If we put ourselves back in time when we were kid, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, whatever it might be, the idea that you didn't work for one company for your entire life and pick that company and get a gold watch an get a pension would be terrorizing, but we don't have pensions today and we don't stay with the same company. There's upside as well. You could go out on your own and be like I don't want to work for a big network or big radio conglomerate. That's the freedom you have got front this unbundling of society and moving away from the control state, where you have this limited number of options. The unbundling -- and you having all this freedom to do whatever you want, the Internet and technology treeing you also means that yeah, the old structures are gone. The unions are gone. We have to have this many people build a car, because a union person said that's how many people its takes to build a car, as opposed to an expert telling us. That's changed.

GLENN: The real challenge here is, if you really do have freedom and the state is not in control of everybody's health, insurance, information, and they have clamped down as a totalitarian state to keep control, then I think we have a chance. But I'm afraid of the growth of the state at the same time, because while people don't like to lose power, governments certainly don't like to lose power.

CALACANIS: One of the things -- I think that interesting is the technology industry -- not endorsing, where observing -- kind of taking over the government and having a big say, just like some of the big industrial companies did for the last 100 years. So Megan Smith previously worked at Google. I'm friendly with her. You will see Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, I think you will see her take a cabinet position in Hillary wins, which looks like she's got a pretty good shot. And so I think you are going to see the technology industry be very involved in government more.

GLENN: Which I have to tell you, scares --

CALACANIS: We're coming.

GLENN: I know.

CALACANIS: We have the money to pay the politicians.

GLENN: I know.

CALACANIS: You know how this thing works.

GLENN: I do. And the idea that it becomes cozy bed fellows with everybody having a back door is really disturbing. The NSA is very disturbing.

STU: Can I ask a more important question here? How the hell did you get the Twitter name @jason?

CALACANIS: Good story. I'm at brunch with my friend Evan and Biz Stone. He created a blogging company. And I was in blogging. And he said look. Biz will tell you he's -- I will tell you I'm having the oatmeal, and you tell everybody you are having the pancakes. The SMS -- it was all SMS-based at that point -- shows what you had.

I looked at him and said Evan, you are going backwards in your career. Look, you took this post and got rid of the blog. Do you realize every idiot in America is going to start telling us what they think in a -- can I curse on this show? I was about to say the F word. It's not even a full sentence. It's a fragment. This is going to be a cacophony of idiotcy. I would never invest in something with a name such as Twitter. That's when you learn nobody knows. And if you think you know, you don't. Therefore --

GLENN: I would love to have you on again. I would love to -- in San Francisco, it should be quite interesting with two of us in San Francisco, taught about what future holds. Thank you so how much. Jason Calacanis. Launchfestival.com is the web site and thisweekinstartups.com.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

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Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

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Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

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A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

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The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking shift: America’s youth lured by the “Socialism trap”

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A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.