Andrew Yang's New Company Will Pay You To Put Your Phone Down

We got a great guest for you guys now, Andrew Yang. I'm pretty sure you're familiar with him, former presidential candidate, entrepreneur, former recipient of champion of change, and presidential ambassador for global entrepreneurship. Now those two I didn't know, that's kind of badass. He founded Venture for America, he founded the Forward Party, he ran for mayor in New York. And now he has launched Noble Mobile, Andrew, welcome back to The Young Turks, brother. It has been far too long. Yes, I am back where I belong. How are you, Cenk? Good, brother, good. So we announced the partnership today on Noble Mobile, and I think it's the right way to go. In fact, we're going to show you our first ad slash video in a second, that'll be its international debut, you guys will love it. But I'm going to ask Andrew some uncomfortable political questions in a minute as well, okay? So got that in store for you guys. First, Andrew, what's Noble Mobile? Well, Cenk, everyone remembers me running for president on AI taking the jobs and that we should give everyone 1,000 bucks a month. I've been searching for ways to get money into people's hands ever since. And I realized that we're all paying hundreds of dollars, in my case, over $1,000 extra to Verizon, AT&T, the big mobile carriers. We pay on average $83 a month for our wireless data. In Europe, that's $35. Verizon is giving $11 billion a year to shareholders in the form of dividends, AT&T at 7 billion. So I realized, wait a minute, if I want to get money into Americans' hands, there's a way I can do it right now as an entrepreneur. And so we've licensed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of data from T-Mobile in our case. And then we're using it in part to save Americans money, but also to try and bring the temperature down and improve our mental health by getting us off of what my friend Hasan Minhaj calls our rectangles of sadness. Noble Mobile actually pays you if you log off, look up, touch grass, use a little bit less data and doom scroll a little bit less. So there's two ways that you save money through Noble Mobile, right? One is, if you don't use all your data for the month, or you use less data for the month, you're going to get money back, okay? So that's already pretty cool, hence put your phone down, go out, etc, right? But Andrew, to me, the easiest part and the selling part for me was, I was paying nearly 100 bucks for my Verizon bill, right? So this is 50 bucks a month, so boom, I'm saving over 50 bucks a month to start with. So to that point, look, I'm telling people what it really is, and they're also sponsors, you get it, right? We're being 100% transparent about it, but it's real. So what I don't understand, this is a real question is, how come you guys can do it at $50 and they're charging so much more? It's because it's basically the same service. Yeah, and that's where the dividends come from, Cenk. You know what, it makes me laugh when someone's going to Las Vegas and saying, I'm going to win money. It's like, well, how do you think they funded the casinos? In the case of the carriers, it's like, how do you think they funded the 18 billion in dividends every year? It's because they're charging us more than they have to. The single biggest example of that is when I went to Europe this year, my companions were on Verizon, which I was on for 26 years. They were paying 10 bucks a day on the travel pass. It turns out that Verizon was spending $2 a day putting you on the foreign carriers network. And charging you 10 for no reason anyone can discern. So Noble Global charges five bucks a day when you're abroad and then caps it at 10 days so that the most you can pay is $50. Because by the way, my friend who then got home, they owed Verizon 100 bucks from being abroad, and then they also owed them another 100 bucks on their usual bill because Verizon doesn't give you a break when you're out of country. So the reason why we can do it on 50 is that we're just not extortionate, we're not crazy. We can run a fine, solid business on max of 50 with our cash back component of another 20. Yeah, so look, this is happening in almost all the industries. They become either monopolies or oligopolies. And so once they've cornered the market, they just charge you whatever they want. I mean, the drug companies went overboard and they're like, you're not even allowed to negotiate our prices, right? But here in carriers, at least there's real competition. There wasn't before you had to pay some crazy number no matter what. Now, all of a sudden there's Noble Mobile, etc, and voila, price competition. And that's how a market's supposed to work, and the fat cats, they get too fat, etc. So now- By the way, that's what happened in Europe, Cenk. Prices came down because you had something called competition. And that's why I started Noble, it's like, look, we have to give Americans more choice and get the prices down to what they should be. And so it's a real pleasure. We're going to save Americans billions of dollars and also get people off their phones a little bit. Yeah, so if you want to do it through us, go.tyt.com slash switch. What we're trying to do is gather the good guy companies here, people that are actually looking out for you and actually trying to save you money. So Andrew and I did our first little video together just a couple of days ago. This will be its international debut, so I'm sure everybody's on pins and needles here. Let's watch and have a little fun. Hey, Andrew, what's up? Hey, Cenk, you ready to make the switch? Yeah, I guess. I promise it's easy. Universal, basic, and you get income. Yeah, you keep saying that. But you sure I'm going to have coverage? Of course you will. You think I would have bad service? I'm Andrew Yang. Of course I have good service. All right, let's try it. I'm so bad at text. So, wait, should I do this thing of the hashtag business? Andrew, you're still on, right? Yep. I see it. You correct me. Wait, I don't see. Yeah, I do see it. Here we go. I actually did not realize that you'd be searching in real time, but I love it. How much do people actually normally say? Yeah, the average American is going to say between $500 and $1,000 a year on Noble. Yeah, nope. You know what I'm going to do, Andrew? Are you ready to become a Noble member? The two buttons are do it and go back. There's no going back. We're doing it. Here we go, Noble Mobile. My gosh, I just called you and are you now on Noble and not Verizon? Why didn't you tell me it was going to be super easy? I know, man. Now you just stay away from your phone and watch the money roll in. I can do that. Here you go, phone, yeah. What the? Cenk, you still there? Andrew? Well, at least I got Noble Mobile. It was really just one take. The whole thing is wild. It's in my shoes. Poor, poor Brett. Wow, just the commitment of Brett falling in the pool, that was really next level. That was news to me too. It was a lot of surprises for me. And I was in it. So look, we shot that real quick. But I tell you, I did actually switch in the middle of us shooting that kind of ad. It was kind of breaking news. And it took about five minutes. And I'm a giant tech spaz. And I was like, okay, QR code. Got it. Okay, this. Got it. And next year, boom, I got it. And I'm saving tons of money. So I feel pretty good about it. I was on Verizon for 26 years. And when I realized how much I could have saved by changing, it was invigorating because it's like, shoot, what else can I change my life that might lighten the load or help me save money or help me live better? But there was a lot of anger and frustration too because I was like, gosh, I've been getting gouged by these guys for 26 years and I did some math and it adds up to something like $15,000, not including opportunity costs and compound interest and all that the rest of it. I was talking to an executive who said that this is a way Americans can actually fund their retirement. Because if you start doing the math on how much extra money is heading to the carriers, it adds up in a very serious way. But yeah, man, 26 year relationship broken up within five minutes and they just sent me a text message. That's all I got. No, but like seriously, you do the math on it. Let's say that I only save $50 a month, right? Which I think I say way more than that, but that's times 12 is $600 a year. Whether it was the last 20 years or the next 20 years, that's $12,000. So- Plus interest, compounding, opportunity costs, etc, etc. Yeah. Or you could spend it on yourself, obviously. But yeah, man, I mean, it's real money and that's the minimum. And because that's the 50 bucks you can see very clearly, you're going to end up saving more than that. Yeah, and look, guys, I get it. It's about Noble Mobile and we're doing this partnership together, but it's really about all the industries. All these industries need much more competition because we're paying 500 more to this guy, 800 more to that guy, 2,000 more to that guy. And when you add all that up, my God, it's a robbery. So, all right, but let's talk a little bit of politics, right? So you got the forward party, you're an independent, just like Kareem Jean-Pierre. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Don't take offense. Sorry, way to hurt a guy. Okay, so, all right, I'll start out super broad, then we'll do a little bit of New York, a little bit of national, okay? So what do you make of politics these days, Andrew? It's very, very disheartening that millions of Americans don't know when they're going to get their SNAP benefits. I mean, that stuff infuriates me. If I was a Democratic officeholder or Republican officeholder, I'd be like, look, guys, we've gone way too far when Americans are starving because we can't get our acts together and land where we know where we're going to land anyway. I mean, realistically, so that stuff is infuriating and heartbreaking. That's how I feel about politics nowadays. Yeah, I mean, especially when Trump then goes and does a great Gatsby-themed night out, right? And brother- I can't stand this crew. I mean, people sometimes ask me about running, and you ran too, Cenk. It's like, why did we run? Because we'd be much, much better than what we're getting right now. So it does make me sad just how egregious it all is. Yeah, it's because we're two real people, and those guys are not real. They're just all the different machinations and the money and all that stuff that's going on behind the scenes. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about New York. So obviously the mayoral race is in a day. So what do you make of the candidates? I mean, you ran for mayor of New York. You know how hard it is. So A, let's start with what you think of the candidates, and I'll ask what you think of the race overall. Sure, I met with Zoran, who I actually knew before this race even began. And I did have lunch with Andrew Cuomo. I'm not endorsed in this race. I'm someone who really appreciates Zoran's affordability message a great deal because it's so similar to why I ran for a public office in the first place. And so it's awesome also to see how many people Zoran has brought out. I do think the polls are tightening in a very real way, as folks are reckoning with the fact that either Zoran or Andrew Cuomo is going to be the mayor. And I mean, I've honestly been getting it from all sides. And I am rooting for the person who wins to succeed for the sake of New York. I mean, I'm a parent. I've got a family here and just want the city to succeed. So how about the media? That's what I meant by how the race is going. because so Mamdani is constantly being asked about different countries. He's being attacked in 8,000 different ways. When you ran, you had an interesting interaction with the media in New York. And you were, for a while, you were the frontrunner, so then you got attacked even more. So what was your sense of running for that position? Interesting is the euphemism in terms of characterizing the media and the relationship. I told my wife, Cenk, I'm not sure I've ever shared this publicly. But when you're the frontrunner, you feel like you're just getting pelted all the time. And I'm sure that Zoran is going through some version of that. It is, if you're a human being. I mean, it's a very uncomfortable feeling. I mentally had this checklist about how many days are left in the race so I could run through the tape. And in many ways, the days just felt very, very long, in large part because of the media. The media, I don't think anyone thinks is playing it straight. And it's one reason why politics are so nasty in New York, that the media often feeds the nastiness. Yeah, it's interesting, I had a similar experience. When you run, it's so stressful, and there's so many nonstop attacks. That you, at some point, are hoping to get to the end, right? And be done with this thing. And you want to believe the best of people, but then after a couple of reporters put out unflattering pieces or hit pieces, you start to be, because you're a human being, you're like, and then when the next reporters are asking you questions, you start trying to figure out how they could spin it negatively, which is a very, very bad feeling. If you're someone who wants to believe the best of people or think that professionals are just going to call it like they see it. Yeah, in fact, I remember when I ran for Congress, people would have these reporters would have great conversations with me. And they'd be like, I loved what you said in the debate, and I'm a Bernie guy, blah, blah, blah. And then they'd go and write a giant hatchet piece, and you're like, what? And so, you don't know what to believe anymore. It's a weird game that they put you in. So- It puts your faith in human nature to a real test, it's put it that way. Yeah, unless you've dealt with it, it's hard to understand what monumental liars some of the folks in mainstream media are. And then they pretend to be objective, it drives me crazy. But what do you think, what was your sense in New York, what their real purpose was? Of the media. Did you say the purpose of the media? Yeah, so they're not being straight with people, so what do you think their real games? They often have an agenda. They often have someone, let's say the publisher, who's like, look, we're going to try and make one candidate look lousy, and the other candidate look good by comparison. And so that's what you see. Very often, a lot of the stories are generated by other campaigns. And when I was the front runner, other campaigns really seemed to have very little else to do but to try and plant negative stories because their candidates weren't getting as much attention. So in a way, you feel like, okay, I guess that's what you do. Though when I was an underdog candidate, it's not like I was running around planning negative stories about the front runners. But in New York City, that's definitely one of the standard operating procedures. So what was tougher, running for president or running for mayor of New York? They were kind of the opposite, Cenk, in that when I was running for president, I was always trying to generate energy so I could get to the next debate stage, like make the next poll, hit the next threshold. So we used to joke on the trail that I was the grim reaper of lesser presidential candidates. Because as soon as I passed you, you dropped out. That was like the joke where it's all fun and game until Andrew Yang passes you in the polls. In the mayoral, I was the front runner, and so just got exposed to negativity just about every day because there were maybe a half dozen other candidates whose job it was to pass me. And thus, the easiest thing to do in any given day would be to try and drag my numbers down. And that was not happening on the presidential because folks weren't worried about me. They were worried about trying to stay above me and attacking me was not wise. I remember there was one time I got into it with Bernie on a debate stage, and then Bernie just moved off of it immediately. And I realized it's like, his team told him, there is no upside to tangling with Yang, so just ignore it. And every candidate who was the level above me had that attitude towards me during the presidential debates, Elizabeth Warren, others. It's like, there's no upside in being negative with Yang, but that was the reverse in the mayoral where there was all upside to being negative towards me. And so I would go to each debate just expecting to get attacked over and over again. Yeah, so you don't really envy Mamdani's position over the last couple of months, right? Yeah, I mean, he's just gotten attacked all the live long day, and I'm sure it wears on him because, how could it not? Yeah, for sure. So you were in the 2020 race, and Biden was in the 2020 race. So did you have a sense back then that he was too old? Biden was comparatively with it in 2020, I think being president really aged him a lot. I saw him in 2024 in South Carolina, and he seemed like a different man. No, that four years might as well have been 14 years. And so you can, by the way, look at Joe Biden's speeches, let's say 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024. And then you see there was a very steep decline post 2020. Now he wasn't that dynamic or energetic in 2020, but he was also not giving you doubt about his faculties in the same way that he would several years later. All right, last couple of questions here. How about Kamala Harris? because she started out super hot in that 2020 race. A lot of people were talking about her being the front runner, and then she tapered off in a massive way. So having interacted with her, having run against her, what was your sense of Kamala Harris? Were the word sounds back, were they around back then? Did you get a sense of competence, incompetence? What was your take on her? I spoke directly before or after Kamala a dozen times during the 2020 cycle. And it was not a strength of hers to go into like a union hall in Iowa and knock it out of the park, get support and grow. And by the way, that showed up in the numbers. Where she campaigned, her numbers did not improve. And then she ended up dropping out before the vote started in 2020. It's one reason why I was nervous when there was no process in 2024. I said, has she gotten phenomenally better at doing these interviews and live events? I think when she gets asked a question, she seems to have this process around, what should I say here? What should the answer be as opposed to what do I think or what do I believe? And that showed up in 2020 and 2024 in my opinion. Yeah, it certainly looks like it did. All right, one last question, Andrew. So why not stay in the Democratic Party? Why did you form the forward party as an independent way to go? I did the math, Cenk. I looked up and said, according to the numbers, the two party system is going to get increasingly polarized and dysfunctional. And that Democrats are going to have a very hard time passing laws because they're not going to be able to get 51 Senate votes, as an example. And it's going to get worse, not better. And the only way out would be to have some movement outside of the two parties that tries to advance policies that have majority support. But also is able to compete in places where the Democratic Party brand or the Republican brand are deeply, deeply unpopular and underwater. And by the way, that now applies to a majority of the country where right now, what's the approval rating of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party nowadays? Maybe 29%, 25%. You could call something, I mean, we obviously called it forward, but you could call something completely neutral. Like the purple, I mean, purple party might actually have some weight to it. But anything Americans haven't been trained to hate would be an improvement for a majority of Americans. And that's where I think the future lies. I think the future lies in positive independence. I'm someone who just wants good things to happen for people. And I'm indifferent as to how we get there. But I just became convinced that the two party system was not going to result in good things. Yeah, actually, if you Google who would give you free money, Andrew shows up at the top of the listing. I am fond of that. I wish I had more money to give to folks. But if Noble Mobile spreads like wildfire, then everyone will have more money. And then we can all give each other some more money because we'll be flushed, and we won't be flushing money down the toilet to Verizon and the gang. Yeah, so what a beautiful specialty to have for people to know you as, yeah, that's the guy who gives away money, all right? I tip well as a result too, Cenk, because I don't want that. One, it's the right thing to do. And my first job was as a bus boy at a Chinese restaurant. But two, I don't need a social media post being like, look at this guy, wants to give everyone money and he only tipped whatever, 10%, so I'm a fat tipper. I like how the crowd control there a little bit, like, all right, people might be watching, all right, I'm going to tip. That's what I need because historically, I used to be a terrible tipper. You know why I was a terrible tipper? Because I was poor. But anyways, I've gotten better. I've gotten better. So, okay, look, guys, Andrew said that the Democratic and Republican Party brands would become toxic. Did that happen? Well, yeah, kind of. Andrew said that AI might do a lot of damage and we might need universal basic income. And AI has begun to do some significant damage. And now, Andrew's saying, hey, why are you paying your carrier all that money when you could just get this almost the same exact thing? Which by the way, I've had nothing but terrific service so far. So the phone works everywhere, you don't have to worry about that, etc. And he's saying he can save you hundreds, maybe thousands of dollars a year. There's some chance he's right. Okay, and if there's one thing I know about you, Andrew, you've done the math. Yeah, the math checks out. I was worse than you, man. I was paying Verizon 140 a month. And so that extra 95 a month is coming in pretty handy. It means I can tip better. Okay, now I see that. Now I got no excuse. Now that I am noble mobile, now I got to tip really well. It's going to make you more noble, Cenk. It'll allow for abundance. And that to me is the struggle that most Americans are living every day. It's between abundance and scarcity, between optimism and pessimism. And I'm someone who really wants abundance to win. We are the richest society in the history of the world. AI should be putting more into our hands instead of taking it away. And one of the things I was joking about, and you referenced it earlier when you said, hey, drug companies and whatnot. I joked like, is it possible that Americans are paying more for something than people in other countries? And I got a laugh at this crowd because it's something of a habit for us because we have these companies that are very extractive. And I'm pumped to try and get more money into people's hands because that's what it's going to take. It's going to take some well intended entrepreneurs like Mark Cuban and cost plus drugs, which was one of the inspirations for Noble Mobile. We can do it with data, which is something that people use every day. Yeah, for sure. And that way we could always, we could all pay it forward. Pay it forward party, something along those lines. All right, I'm always combining these things. All right, Andrew Yang, everybody, we're going to see him more. Hopefully, maybe he'll stop by the studio. We'll do a show together. Love it. Welcome aboard, brother. Great to have you. Thanks, Cenk. You'll be seeing more of me for sure. I'm going to come visit you in LA. All right, I love it. All right, everybody, check out Noble Mobile. Save yourself a lot of money. Andrew, you're awesome. We'll see you soon. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets a swings. Totally not true. But it does keep you updated on our live shows.