Learning Business and Marketing from Taylor Swift and The Most Expensive Colleges in the US (DF#146)

Hannah Maruyama [00:00:00]:
A college is selling essentially a case study of a degree free billionaire. They're selling these kids paper paper instead of empowering them to go do what Taylor Swift did, which is learn on her own and build on her own.

Ryan Maruyama [00:00:19]:
Hello, folks, and welcome back to degree free. I am super excited. If you're watching the YouTube videos, you notice something's a little bit different. One, I'm in the temporary studio AKA my office, and I have another guest co host of this podcast, and we are sharing a camera because it was easier to do it this way. We have the studio with the multi cameras and the fancy lights and everything like that, but we have been super swamped and we do not have time to set all that up and we want to get the help to you, we want to keep making this show, so we are doing it the easiest way possible. I wanted to share with you why we've been so busy and why we haven't had time to go into the studio. And I'll just pick this up on my floor right here. And now if you're listening, I would definitely suggest you go over to YouTube now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:08]:
I mean, if you're driving, don't

Speaker C [00:01:10]:
Don't do that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:11]:
Park first and then go over to YouTube. This is

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:15]:
Ta da.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:15]:
Couple edits of what is going to be a book, a couple of books, curriculum style books for parents and their young adults ages 16 to 20, trying to figure out what to do after high school. Had we been working on this thing basically full time for months months months, and then on top of actually running the business and making this content and everything like that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:44]:
And we're trying to get it done. We're trying our best to get it done by graduation because we know that that's coming up for a lot of people, and it's a big decision point for a lot of people.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:52]:
You can't buy it yet or anything like that. I don't even have a web page for it. I don't have a name for it. I don't have a cover for it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:01:58]:
We're working on it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:01:59]:
Yeah. But I just wanted to show you that we have been working. We work sometimes.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:04]:
We do sometimes. Every once in a while.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:07]:
Yeah. We're doing something a little bit different for this show. It is something that Hannah has been bugging me for weeks to do, and I finally don't have anything else to talk to you guys about because I've been busy writing this thing that I had to basically give in to this content idea.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:24]:
So I got my way.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:25]:
I actually think that this content idea is very good, I I think.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:29]:
I'm super excited about this.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:30]:
Yeah. I just the way that I think about it is it's very lazy.

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:32]:
It's fun.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:33]:
But

Hannah Maruyama [00:02:34]:
It's fun. He doesn't like fun. He likes to be prepared. So we're gonna do the fun thing today.

Ryan Maruyama [00:02:38]:
Right. We are gonna do the fun thing today. It's actually I have a bag here for you guys in a second. She hasn't seen what I'm about to show you. And so we're just gonna I'm so excited. Yeah. We're just gonna do, like, kind of like a react type of thing where we're gonna talk about things that are in the news and then kinda break it down. I was actually not light looking forward to doing this right now, but now that I'm about to show you guys this thing, it's pretty funny.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:02]:
And if you're just listening, you can just listen to but going to YouTube is gonna be a little bit better for this episode. So for a little bit of context before I hit play on this video, 1, I came across this as an article, and then I clicked in it. And then the browser that I use, it did, like, the article view of it. So I just saw article, and I just read the article, and I thought it was funny enough to do a react on just an article. But then I I was like, oh, maybe there's a video, and I didn't think there was gonna be. And, I clicked out of the reader view or whatever. And sure enough, CBS Evening News, they did not disappoint. And here is a

Hannah Maruyama [00:03:44]:
I don't know what this is about, but the fact that it was already newsworthy makes me pretty excited.

Ryan Maruyama [00:03:48]:
Here is CBS Evening News talking to us about one of the most recent college courses.

Speaker D [00:03:57]:
Yes. In just a few short hours, Taylor Swift will release her much anticipated 11th studio album, the tortured poets department. But Swift's cultural impact goes far beyond her music and record breaking tours. It's now entered college classrooms. Oh god. Your studio's Jolene Kent.

Speaker E [00:04:15]:
All the marketing strategies in the world will only work if you have a good product to work in.

Speaker D [00:04:20]:
You might not expect a business school course to begin like that. Not. But at UC Berkeley, Taylor Swift is not just a tortured poet. She's a case stud. How to build an empire. Taylor Swift, it was Oh

Hannah Maruyama [00:04:34]:
my god. Oh my god.

Speaker D [00:04:36]:
She's like revitalized so much of the economy and boosted the local economy everywhere she goes. Undergrads Sofia Landahl and Miad Vashala teach artistry and entrepreneurship, Taylor's version.

Speaker E [00:04:46]:
Her songwriting ability is what gives

Speaker D [00:04:48]:
her Shame. To fool our fellow students. They're charging people to tear things through it. Things

Speaker C [00:04:54]:
that she Okay. So many things, you guys.

Ryan Maruyama [00:04:59]:
I think maybe you should say why it is that you're laughing.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:02]:
This is hilarious. So this is what is this? A marketing class? What is this?

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:06]:
I think it's business school.

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:07]:
It's business. Oh my god. That's even funnier. Undergraduates.

Speaker C [00:05:10]:
So what these kids need

Hannah Maruyama [00:05:11]:
to know and what they should be being taught in their marketing class at their was this UC Berkeley? It's gotta be. What they should be being taught is that spending money that you don't have instead of going out and honing a craft or building a business or learning something that is actually useful is the best way to get to the point where you create enough value that you can employ people and stimulate the economy. And also, what they don't realize is if you are as good as Taylor Swift is at building a business, eventually, NYU will turn around and just give you a college degree for free.

Ryan Maruyama [00:05:46]:
Yeah. So that's you're jumping ahead. Let's watch keep watching you because that's where this got me, which was I did the whole honorary degrees, and I'll link it in the show notes for everybody. That episode where I go over, like, the marketing of honorary degrees. And Taylor Swift was a recipient of one of those degrees.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:07]:
Oh, okay. We're talking about okay. Okay.

Speaker E [00:06:09]:
Loyal customers, and that's what Taylor has. There's a reason top institutions are studying that. They know that this is, like,

Speaker D [00:06:14]:
a trend. Universities nationwide are teaching this with respect in departments from super They don't. Watching. I understand. Are you ready to go?

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:21]:
For those not watching, they are aware that she didn't get a degree and then put up a picture of her getting her honorary.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:31]:
They white labeled the on her. They white labeled the out of Taylor Swift just now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:37]:
And, they have a picture of her getting her honorary degree, and I I don't know if this is an array. I thought I thought that it was from It's from NYU. Was it?

Speaker C [00:06:48]:
Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:48]:
I don't remember.

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:48]:
Yeah. I do. Yeah. It was from NYU.

Ryan Maruyama [00:06:51]:
And that's what I found funny about this was that they're like, yeah. She went to college. She's like, well

Hannah Maruyama [00:06:58]:
No. She was just so good that they gave her a degree because that's what happens when you're really good at something.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:03]:
Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:04]:
So the craziest part about this is that these are all kids that wanna be marketers or wanna be in business. The creative risk they should all be taking is they should be in business or working at a business or just getting a job to learn this instead of sitting in this class. What are the qualifications of the people teaching this class?

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:21]:
That's a great question.

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:22]:
And I only say qualifications because colleges, they're so big on credentialism. What are the credentials of the people that are charging these students to take this marketing class?

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:29]:
I mean, maybe they work for Taylor Swift?

Hannah Maruyama [00:07:32]:
Maybe they work for Taylor Swift, which would be super funny because maybe there would be some value there. But all of this is very interesting. A college is selling essentially a case study of a degree free billionaire. They're selling these kids paper instead of empowering them to go do what Taylor Swift did, which is learn on her own and build on her own.

Ryan Maruyama [00:07:53]:
Hey there. I hope that you're loving this episode of the degree free podcast. We spend a ton of time every week creating this content for you. So my only ask is you take a quick second to leave a review or thumbs up on whatever platform you're on. It's one of the best and easiest ways that you can support this podcast, and this simple action can help bring more people into the degree free community. At degree free, we wanna help as many people as we can thrive and succeed without needing a college degree. Your review will be a step in that direction. If you could do this small favor right now, pause this and leave a review.

Ryan Maruyama [00:08:24]:
It would truly mean the world to us. Thank you, and back to the show. I thought this was hilarious. This is I first saw it, and I was just like, she's degree free. How why are they making a college class for it?

Hannah Maruyama [00:08:36]:
Well, I wonder if they're doing the pre marketing where they're explaining to them, hey, by the way, this is how she learned all of these things without a college degree, without buying a degree and sitting in these classes and doing this. Right? Because she learned it from experience. She learned it from doing. What's interesting about this is I'm willing to bet they're not in this case study that they're doing of her success, breaking down the fact that a large reason that she was successful was because she wasn't sitting in a college classroom paying for paper for years. Instead, she was out doing. She was out building. She was out learning. And truthfully, what they talked about there about her getting back her master record labels was an incredibly savvy business ordeal and not the original part of it, but that mistake led her to make some very wise decisions down the line.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:19]:
A mistake she wouldn't have made if she had been sitting in a classroom for 4

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:23]:
years. Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not sure. One of the reasons why she is who she is, and this is just from somebody who has studied at least a little bit of how she became so popular, especially in the beginning. One of the things is this time in the market.

Hannah Maruyama [00:09:39]:
Yeah. She's been doing it forever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:40]:
She's been doing it since she's, like, 12 years. She's been famous since she's been, like, 12, 14, something like that. She's been making music and doing this. How old is she now? 32?

Speaker C [00:09:51]:
Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:09:51]:
Something like that. Yeah. 8 almost 20 years of doing the exact same thing day in and day out, and she just every step of the way, she just kept leveling up. She's, what skills do I need to learn to get to the next level? K. Now I'm at this level now. How do I get to the next level after that? K. Well, I'm at this level. How do I get to the next level? And that's just really how anybody I mean, it's not a secret formula.

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:16]:
There's no secret sauce to it. I'm sure there's a bunch of luck to it, and I'm sure there's a crap load of hard work. Sure. Absolutely. But really, when it all breaks down to it to get to that level, I mean, it's just a bunch of you get to this level and then you get to this level and then you get to this level.

Hannah Maruyama [00:10:30]:
Mhmm. If you read about her, she's incredibly hardworking. I'm actually not a Swifty. I'm not a particularly a fan, but objectively, she's extremely hardworking and she's obviously extremely disciplined to get to that level. You have to be. It kinda reminds me of remember when you told me that story about Leonardo DiCaprio saying that he remembered thinking, oh, maybe I won't be an actor or what what was the story? Can you tell the story?

Ryan Maruyama [00:10:51]:
I don't know if this story is true. I've read this on the Internet. I thought it was funny, and it was somebody saying that leonardicaprio was talking to him and basically saying like yeah I remember when I had self doubt of like when I thought that I couldn't be an actor when I thought I couldn't do that like, do this job and perform at this high level. And they were, oh, wow. How old are you? 13.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:15]:
That's crazy. Can you imagine doubting your career

Speaker C [00:11:17]:
at 13 years old? That's crazy. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:11:20]:
Right. Exactly. And so, I mean, that's just she's another example of that. I mean, maybe if one of these people just did the same thing. Even with this class, hopefully, they take all this learning, and then they do apply it, and then they do whatever it is for 20 years and then they become successful in whatever endeavors that they wanna do for 20 years. Hopefully, that's that's the lesson that they're gonna learn here. One of the many lessons I hope that they learn.

Hannah Maruyama [00:11:45]:
This kinda takes me down a little bit of a rabbit trail, but I've wondered about this before because the gray artists were all apprentice. Right? Like Da Vinci and Raphael and Michelangelo, they were all apprentice very young. That's how they taught great artisans. And there's a school, and I've wanted to do this on the podcast for a while. I will eventually we'll get to it, but there's a school in New York called the New York Professional Children's School. And, basically, what it is is a school that allows child actors, child performers to work, but also graduate high school. So they get their high school credits, so they get a diploma when they are done, but they are working full time, and the entire school is structured around their work. And I've always wondered so some crazy people have come out of that school.

Hannah Maruyama [00:12:23]:
Like, Scarlett Johansson graduated from this school. It's very prominent. It's very wealthy. Wealthy people send their kids there, like, talented performers, or they want them to be. And I've often wondered if we treated other people and other professions and allowed them that opportunity to work if they so chose, if they wanted to at that age, if we would have people that were much better much earlier. Because I remember reading about Bill Gates, and when he was young, he was kind of doing the same thing around that, like 12, 13. He was taking apart computers and you can't discount that like time and market, like time with hands on doing something that that eventually leads to outstanding or outperforming skill. Right? Because you see that with all kinds of people, like performers are a good example of it because you can really see.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:06]:
Yeah. I think that you get quickly into child labor law.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:11]:
Oh, yeah. For sure. It's just one of those things that we always take it as a societal norm, but you can see where it's almost like a bell curve of people where very rich people let their kids do that at much earlier ages.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:22]:
Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:13:22]:
And they get different results.

Speaker C [00:13:23]:
I don't

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:24]:
know about rich people or anything like that, but just to piggyback on what you're saying about the acting profession, especially when you're a kid when you're a child. That is one of those things. You know, talking about child labor laws and stuff like that. I know I'm just some guy on the internet so I don't really know what I'm talking about here. But if you look at the other professions the children, I'm saying children because they're children, they can't go and do other work. They can't go, you know, like, work in the mines. Like, you're thinking

Speaker C [00:13:55]:
like, you're The child years the children yearn for the mines.

Ryan Maruyama [00:13:58]:
Like, you're thinking of those pictures that you see in black and white of the

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:02]:
Yeah. The dusty kids out of West Virginia and the coal mines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:05]:
But then you looked at Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:08]:
And Like, why is it different?

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:10]:
They were in Harry Potter. Super early. They were, like, 11 years old.

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:15]:
Or, like, Macaulay Culkin Macaulay Culkin. When he was at home alone. He's like, how old is he in that? Like, 6?

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:19]:
You look at all the Disney Channel stars. They'll they're all

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:22]:
Nickelodeon kids.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:23]:
They're all

Speaker C [00:14:23]:
working. And they're allowed to work.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:26]:
Young, and they're also working really long days. I mean, yes, there there are child laws around actors and and times as well, but they're still working very long days. Yeah. But it's okay for them to do it as long as

Speaker C [00:14:40]:
there's a camera there. Right.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:41]:
You know? Like

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:43]:
So the rule would be so kids can work on things if they want to as long as they're live streaming. That's the way around it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:14:50]:
Right. And so it's just,

Hannah Maruyama [00:14:52]:
It's a double standard in society that we're like, oh, because they're in a film set. It's totally fine. This is not like, oh, children should all work and labor laws, blah blah blah. I just think it's an interesting thing that as society, we go, yeah, that's totally fine. But if a kid wants to learn how to weld or do something, they're not allowed to do that. I just think that's interesting.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:08]:
Yeah. Or not even weld if you wanted to get hired at As a software developer.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:13]:
Exactly. Yeah. Same thing.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:14]:
Can't can't get hired. You'd have you can create your own company.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:17]:
Right.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:18]:
You can create your own company. You can be self employed. You can do all of those things, but you can't be employed.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:23]:
Like, traditionally, if you choose to be so. Not like your parents are making you. I have keep saying that because when the YouTube comes, they're like, oh my god. They want a child labor. I'm like, no. No. No. I just want kids who wanna do that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:32]:
At the

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:32]:
same time as But, also,

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:33]:
it is child labor. Well, at the same time, how do they know whether or not they do or don't wanna do something to Right.

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:40]:
Same thing with child actors.

Ryan Maruyama [00:15:41]:
They're not able to make their own medical decisions. Like, How are they able to make their own employment decisions?

Hannah Maruyama [00:15:46]:
It's a whole twisty thing, but I just think it's interesting, though, because, again, that New York Professional Children's School is I've always found that fascinating that they're allowed to do that, but other people, other kids don't have the same ability to do that with other types of work that they wanna pursue. And it's not the same, and I don't understand why.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:01]:
Yeah. Yeah. Me neither. Anyway, that's my first one. Let us know how I did on that. Go to YouTube. Leave a comment. Let me know if that was a good one.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:14]:
I wanna gauge what you guys like and don't like. Definitely do that. Alright. What do you got?

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:18]:
Okay. So what I got is on a video. Do you wanna pull it up? I pull the article?

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:23]:
Yeah. Sure.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:23]:
Okay. So you remember how the 2023 NCES data estimated the cost of a bachelor's degree at a $104,000. Remember that?

Speaker C [00:16:31]:
Sure.

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:31]:
It's the education data initiative sum up of the NCEES and the BLS data from last year.

Ryan Maruyama [00:16:36]:
Yeah. So NCEES

Hannah Maruyama [00:16:37]:
National Center For Education Statistics and then the Bureau of Labor Statistics for everyone's reference. Sorry. It's also a mouthful to say and I always stumble over it. So NCES data from last year said the average cost of a bachelor's degree in the US is a 100 and 4,000. 23 though? Yes. 2023. And then if you go for 5 years, which most college graduates go for 5 and a half years, it's $156,000 on average. The average total estimated cost with interest, lost wages, and all that stuff because you lose out on the money you would make the high school graduates make.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:11]:
You lose out on that money while you're in school. They estimated and wrapped this all up, and their total estimate for the cost was half a $1,000,000. It was $500,000.

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:19]:
So that's cost plus opportunity cost.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:22]:
Right. So total cost. Like, total all in. Everything that you lose, essentially. I mean, it's Vanderbilt. Okay? So I'm gonna preface this with it's Vanderbilt, so obviously it's gonna be expensive. But a newly admitted Vanderbilt University engineering student was quoted an all in price of do you wanna guess how much per year they quoted this kid?

Ryan Maruyama [00:17:41]:
I am gonna say Vanderbilt 65750, final answer.

Hannah Maruyama [00:17:49]:
That is cute. Try $98,426 per year. This kid's bachelor's degree is going to cost $400,000, and that is his initial cost. That is not his opportunity cost, which we know to be $500,000. So let's just conservatively add in his actual half a $1,000,000 cost. He's about to pay a $1,000,000 over if he takes out loans. I'm not gonna do public math on, like, the interest for that because I don't know. I think the average interest is 8.2%.

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:27]:
The last time I checked is average student loan debt interest. We'd have to do wages over a year, but a $1,000,000 for an engineering degree. What what job is he gonna get that's gonna pay that off? I mean, he'd have to work for, I don't know. I don't even know who he could work for. He'd make enough money to pay that off. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:43]:
It's the interest. I would probably kill him.

Speaker C [00:18:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. Like like more than it's like more than better.

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:47]:
Penny, I mean, if he does if he does a good job and he goes in what kind of engineering?

Hannah Maruyama [00:18:51]:
I don't know. It just says engineering. It doesn't even say, like, the specific

Ryan Maruyama [00:18:54]:
Computer science type of thing or no. I mean, I I don't know. Let's check. Like, let's just say I I don't know. Doesn't matter. But let's just say that he is fortunate enough to get a a job at a big company and make half a $1,000,000 a year, which puts him

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:08]:
He'd have to be at a big five. Right? I mean, he we'd have to.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:11]:
Which puts him in the 1% of earners. To be a 1% error in the United States, you have to make $400,000 or something like that. Yep. Something like that. I've been wrong before. So let's just say that he's fortunate. I mean still at that level I'm assuming that he's living in a city because those are usually the incomes that cities demand. And then if you're living in a city you probably have a high cost of living at the same time.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:37]:
Because San Francisco, for example, I mean, there are so many people in San Francisco that make $250,000 a year, which is, like, in the top 10% or

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:46]:
Of earners.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:47]:
Percent of earners.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:48]:
Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:48]:
But they're they're living paycheck to paycheck.

Hannah Maruyama [00:19:50]:
Right. Because because California is gonna take half of it, mom. Yeah. By the time they're all said and done.

Ryan Maruyama [00:19:56]:
Well, then the at the same time, like, a lot of it's their own fault too. Like, you don't don't live in San Francisco.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:01]:
Right.

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:01]:
Right. Like, the the you know?

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:03]:
But then if that's where the jobs are and that's where you gotta go to make that much money, there's that whole cost of living versus inflation and all and all that stuff. But you're right. Because then too so he goes there. Let's say he goes there. He gets a $400,000 a year job. He's gonna end up with paying over his lifetime $1,000,000 in student loans and debt and lost wages. So he's got $400,000. Let's say California takes half off the top.

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:24]:
Right? He's at $200,000 now, and now he's $200,000 in at a major city. And then, hopefully, he never wants, I don't know, to buy a house or have a family or anything like that. That's a

Ryan Maruyama [00:20:34]:
good idea. You're getting you're getting dangerously close to doing a bunch of public math, which

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:38]:
I'm not gonna do it. I'm just instead

Speaker C [00:20:40]:
by religion. Instead, I'm

Hannah Maruyama [00:20:42]:
going to go over the most expensive colleges in the US right now. Okay. So we have Tufts University, which is $95,000 a year. University of Southern California, which is $95,000 a year. New York University, $93,000 a year, University of Pennsylvania, $92,000 a year, and then Wesley College, $92,000 a year, Yale, 90, and then Boston University, $90,000 a year. I wanted to tell you that because there are people on TikTok who are like, what are you talking about? Oh, it's not that expensive. And then, yes, it is. It is.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:14]:
And people just don't realize that it keeps continually going up because they just keep raising their rates, and people keep paying it. So why wouldn't you?

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:22]:
Yeah. That's crazy. A $100,000 a year for a degree. I'm very, very, very grateful that mine was not that expensive. 1, I wouldn't have paid that amount of money. And then 2, I got 0 utility out of that degree. So that would have made me cry more than I've already cried over my spilled milk. That is the time and effort it wasn't to get my degree.

Speaker C [00:21:50]:
Yeah. Oh, man.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:52]:
I,

Ryan Maruyama [00:21:53]:
We don't have a plan. We get really deep.

Hannah Maruyama [00:21:55]:
What have we done? How many people we pissed off today? We got, child labor laws and, Swifties.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:00]:
You said you're not you said you weren't a Swiftie.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:02]:
I'm not a Swiftie.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:03]:
What an insane thing to say. Why would you say that? Like, you can just, like, just you could just be silent. Are you profiling me?

Speaker C [00:22:10]:
You could just Just assume No.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:11]:
I'm me saying you could be silent and that they wouldn't come after you. But now, I mean, you

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:17]:
know, I'm not gonna not gonna sleep tonight.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:19]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:19]:
Terrifying. You're

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:20]:
on a watch list now. We're I have to edit that out. Oh my gosh.

Speaker C [00:22:24]:
Okay. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:25]:
On to my Guys, I am a Swifty.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:27]:
He is. He is.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:28]:
Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:29]:
Hey. You know, I'm just I'm just

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:31]:
for her. Leave me alone.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:32]:
I'm just it's Carrie Underwood for me, folks. Okay?

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:35]:
She's my girl.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:36]:
Been waiting all day.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:37]:
For a Sunday night.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:38]:
Yep. It's true. Waiting all week? Waiting all night.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:42]:
Went all day.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:42]:
Went all day.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:43]:
Went all week? Oh my god. Oh, no. Downstairs here.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:46]:
Break me off a key a piece of that.

Speaker C [00:22:50]:
Fancy piece. Okay. Anyway, we're having too much.

Hannah Maruyama [00:22:55]:
I told you we would have more of that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:22:57]:
2nd to the last thing. I'm sorry. 2nd I have one more,

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:08]:
to colleges try to gatekeep a technology a degree free guy pioneered because I think that's more accurate. Thank you. I work I worked on it for 10 seconds. Okay. So what I have here are 5 colleges that are trying to sell access to a technology that a degree free guy pioneered and created. For those of

Speaker C [00:23:27]:
you who don't know what I'm

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:28]:
talking about, Sam Altman is degree free. That is the CEO founder of OpenAI, which is currently the largest AI tool in the world. So anyway, big fan of that. And also for those of you that don't know, I actually currently work at, an AI and machine learning company. So this, I care about this kind of a lot, actually. Duke University currently selling master's degrees in AI. The reason I wanted to talk about this too was because all of these degrees just started existing. They just started these degree programs.

Hannah Maruyama [00:23:58]:
These degree programs did not exist because colleges cannot keep up with the speed of technology in general because they are constrained to how quickly they can develop and then sell something, and they're slow because they're not very good at it. Because of that, it took them a while to get this all together. What was interesting about this was the fact that this article talks about how you need at the bottom there's FAQs and it tells you that you need a master's degree in order to get a job working in AI, which is hilarious because if you look at the open job listings at Notion or Anthropic, none of the job listings for research engineers, research scientists, or AI developers require college degrees because those college degrees did not exist 5 minutes ago. And the colleges are already saying, oh, by the way, come pay us for Dukes. It's a $100,000 for an online course at Duke. That, by the way, if you wanna just Google open source AI machine learning curriculum Reddit, there is a Redditor who has put together an entire open source curriculum where you can learn these skills on your own, on your own time for $0. So big fan of that. What's funny about it is when I read through the curriculum for a lot of these master's programs, they are almost word for word.

Hannah Maruyama [00:25:11]:
Some of them even require you to be enrolled in a Python bootcamp, which is also linked in the open source Reddit curriculum to the point where I wonder if they just went, took that curriculum, and then broke it down. Anyway, that was what I wanted to tell you was colleges are trying to sell for a $100,000 or curriculum you can get on Reddit for 0. So, anyway, that's fun. Alright. And back to you, Ryan.

Ryan Maruyama [00:25:30]:
Uh-huh. We called it on this show a while ago that this is exactly what's gonna happen and they were gonna start to create these programs and try to paywall these professions or these credentials and say it is necessary to get these jobs. Which is funny because one of the biggest comments that you and I get is that when we say oh colleges are saying that you should buy this piece of paper to then get a job. And then the most common thing that people say to that is no they don't say that they literally don't say that they just say come here for the education and like you're not gonna get a job from this. I don't know what that person or what these people are smoking because that's not true at all.

Speaker C [00:26:19]:
Or I'd

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:19]:
love some of it, though. Not The delusion's great.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:21]:
Not in my world, but this is a direct thing. As you said, it says you need a degree in this to work in that field. But you're saying that all of the people right now that are currently working in that field

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:36]:
Or built that field quite literally.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:38]:
That don't have those degrees aren't working in that field. The logic literally isn't there.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:43]:
Yep.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:44]:
Like so you're saying, oh, they just shouldn't be allowed to work in that field. Got it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:48]:
Got it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:49]:
But they are working in that field. So since they are able to work in that field, then you don't need the degree.

Hannah Maruyama [00:26:55]:
Correct.

Ryan Maruyama [00:26:56]:
Oh, wait a minute. That doesn't work for my logic. Oh, because your logic doesn't exist. Right? Right. Like the, like it literally is not logical.

Speaker C [00:27:03]:
Yep. So So all we can

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:04]:
do is hope that those people aren't trying to build large language models because then we're gonna be in big trouble. If you don't have any logic, it's probably not a good idea to try to build something that's entirely logic based.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:14]:
Pretty funny.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:15]:
Thank you.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:15]:
Okay. So I think we have one time for one more thing. Hold on. We'll be back, folks. I wanted to bring this up. I will put a link to this exact moment in the show notes, degree3.c04/podcast. I'm not gonna play it because that would be crazy.

Speaker C [00:27:35]:
No. You should. Literally.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:37]:
Like, in section. It's

Speaker C [00:27:37]:
a it's

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:38]:
a clip of me interviewing Hannah right here, and it is

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:46]:
No. Just play it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:47]:
September 13, 2023. I said, here. I'll just play it. Yeah.

Hannah Maruyama [00:27:51]:
Just play it.

Ryan Maruyama [00:27:51]:
Yeah. The hair let's also, I'm really excited because this is something that we've never done before. I actually got this idea because I

Speaker C [00:28:02]:
see how it sounds though.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:04]:
Interviewed my grandfather. I did a podcast episode with him. It's more of a personal thing. It's not really degree free related at all, so I won't be releasing it or anything like that. But I did on the show.

Speaker D [00:28:15]:
I see it now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:17]:
And I was like, wow. This was awesome. I got to connect with him on a different level, and I was like, wait. I don't think I've ever interviewed Hannah before. And because she is degree free and she is the other half to the show and to what we do here, I was like, you know what? She should come on, and I should interview her. It's okay. That part right there is the part in question, for what is about to be one of these comments here.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:47]:
Which when he read this comment to me before, I didn't think it

Speaker C [00:28:50]:
was so bad, but no. We won't not bad.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:52]:
It's not bad. No.

Hannah Maruyama [00:28:53]:
Not the comment, but I like, I was like, wow. That's a really crazy take from but now that I watch the clip, I'm like, okay. I can see it all.

Ryan Maruyama [00:28:59]:
I get it. If you if you don't watch the show, I I mean, I get it. It's from somebody who obviously doesn't watch.

Speaker C [00:29:04]:
Yeah. Just the watch. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:05]:
This is from Tiger Green. This is something we've to quote, this is something we've never done before. LOL. What? She's your wife. You've deliberately been interviewing her since the first episode. Why are you pretending you're so excited, quote, to talk to her? This sounds like something you just got from a cheesy 19 seventies marketing book. We Poland, pretend like you're incredibly excited even when there's nothing new and act like your cohost slash wife is a special

Speaker C [00:29:32]:
guest. I want to go get, like, the 7 what's the book?

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:36]:
The 7 effect of marketing?

Speaker C [00:29:38]:
We do have a 1970s marketing book on the table now. Yeah. But then we didn't get this for now.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:44]:
Yeah. Yeah. Pretend that that's your podcast executive. Pretend that podcast host. Pretend that your podcast host isn't your podcast host. Be super excited about it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:29:56]:
We should write a book of just crappy marketing tips or all things like that.

Ryan Maruyama [00:29:59]:
If you haven't listened to that episode, I suggest you listen to that episode. It does show from Hannah's perspective and from my perspective as well. It does show how quickly your life can turn around. It does show how quickly like if your child is graduating high school how quickly their life can turn around and with you know going from for either for job seekers or for young adults. Going from I don't have a direction to my life is totally changed. And so if you haven't listened to that episode, I'll link it in the show notes degreefree.coforward/podcast. Definitely listen to it. But one to respond to that person's comment.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:40]:
1, if you listen to the show I don't actually interview you.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:45]:
No. Don't you interview other people?

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:46]:
Yeah. I don't interview. We don't talk about it.

Hannah Maruyama [00:30:49]:
No. We do episodes where we talk about subjects where we break stuff down. Sometimes we talk about news and stuff. You had not interviewed me before.

Ryan Maruyama [00:30:56]:
No. I never said Lily. I'm gonna give you uninterrupted mic time just for you to tell your story. Never done that.

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:02]:
Yeah. And I've never told it to you in that way as a storyteller, actually, because you were there. You lived it. But we got some different perspectives out of talking over it that way, and it was kind of exciting because we'd never done it before.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:12]:
And like I said in that clip, and maybe you couldn't hear it because we were laughing. But I really did get this idea from interviewing my grandfather. That interview changed my life in a really profound way, and I thought that it was really cool to do it here. Or I don't know if I said in the podcast, I think I did. And I've told you before, I lived it.

Speaker C [00:31:35]:
Mhmm.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:35]:
You know, like, I lived

Hannah Maruyama [00:31:37]:
Yeah. We did the whole thing together.

Ryan Maruyama [00:31:38]:
Being with you during that time. But I wasn't able to ask you the questions that I had then, and I wasn't able to get your perspective on those types of things. And for those people that have never done this type of thing that have never taken a mic and had this I don't know what else to call it other than like an interview host or a interview interviewee type of relationship with somebody close in their life when you're experiencing something together. It is really really special and there's a lot of other places that you can go because the mic and the cameras and the recording lets you wander. And it lets you ask different questions and it puts you in a different mind space than being able to just ask stuff at the dinner table or things like that.

Speaker C [00:32:28]:
Mhmm.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:28]:
Now that I've watched it back, especially being recorded here, valid take if you've never watched. I mean, valid take regardless. I mean, it's your opinion.

Hannah Maruyama [00:32:36]:
Your take is your take. Yeah.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:37]:
Your take is your take. It's it's your opinion. Good for you. Valid take if you've never watched any of our episodes, and this is the first one that you've watched. Valid take if you've watched all of them, whatever. But I saw this, and I thought it was really, really funny. And, obviously, I thought it was funny the second time that I've seen this. I think that's pretty much it for this week.

Ryan Maruyama [00:32:55]:
Next week, I actually have a bunch of stuff. I've been saying this for weeks, but I actually have a bunch of stuff I wanna talk about. I had a bunch of things to talk to you about or at least to view the listener and the viewer.

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:07]:
We don't have anything to talk about. We're married, and so he's heard everything I have to say ever.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:11]:
But I wanted her to be here, and I wanted us to be in the studio and have a little bit more time to, like, talk about the things that I want to talk about, which is why we didn't do it this week. Hopefully, we have some time in this upcoming week to sit down and record that episode for you because I think that one's gonna be really awesome. I gotta tell you guys all about my trip where I met Drake and some of the realizations from that trip and conversations that I had. It was pretty awesome, and I can't wait to share it with you guys. I think that's pretty much it. You have anything else?

Hannah Maruyama [00:33:39]:
No. We're just writing a book. We're going to get it to you as soon as we can.

Ryan Maruyama [00:33:42]:
Yeah. We're going to get that book out to you folks as soon as we can. Eventually it'll be on pre order. The whole thing. Like I said, I don't have an ask for you right now because I have to finish writing it. But yeah, that's pretty much it. Till next you guys.