Michael Schur Returns

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dan Schur, and I'm joined by Monica Michael.

[2] Oh, man, like what you did there.

[3] Yeah, Michael Schur is back.

[4] Boy, do we love Mike Schur.

[5] Of course, he was the creator and showrunner of The Good Place.

[6] He also created and show ran Parks and Rack.

[7] Producer on Brooklyn 999, The Office, Rutherford Falls.

[8] He has a new book out with the best title I've ever read of a book called How to Be Perfect, the Correct Answer to Every Moral Question, which is out now so scoop it up and Monica you must be noted that 100 % of the proceeds of this book go to charities that Mike is involved with and you know what better reason to buy the book than that yeah but by the way that's just like yeah yeah that's just a side note you want it for you you can be selfishly this thing's a party yeah but if like you want to do one good thing for the year it's like a great double whammy you get to read and then you're gonna get two birds two birds one Stone.

[9] Two words, one check.

[10] Please enjoy my chair.

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[14] So the last time I was here, was it before the Good Place had aired?

[15] No, because we put you a part of Good Place Week.

[16] Yes, but it was still early.

[17] Oh, yeah.

[18] Season one, definitely, right?

[19] I think so.

[20] I was sitting there still.

[21] Yeah.

[22] What is the count right now?

[23] What episode number is this going to be?

[24] Do you know off the top of your head?

[25] 4 .15 -ish probably?

[26] 415, that's crazy.

[27] Isn't that wild?

[28] Isn't it?

[29] Over how many years?

[30] Four.

[31] On Valentine's Day, it'll be four.

[32] Wow.

[33] Yeah.

[34] Did you hear we got rich?

[35] Congratulations.

[36] I should have led you, but congratulations on your rich.

[37] Thank you so much.

[38] It's made me a much better person as you can find it.

[39] As it always does.

[40] And it's actually a very dangerous proposition to even explore because it is the system.

[41] Right.

[42] It's the whole system.

[43] It's what we're trained to think of as important.

[44] And as flawed as it is, I've been to many places in the world.

[45] There also is this huge benefit to it.

[46] So it's so fucking complicated, which of course is the nature of your book.

[47] That's right.

[48] So it's like, what metric do you want to look at at any point?

[49] That is a very important point, though, which is that it's not nothing.

[50] Right.

[51] It is something.

[52] And to different degrees, it's vital and crucial for survival or comfort or safety or whatever.

[53] Like, if it were absolutely nothing, we could all forget about it.

[54] Yeah.

[55] But it's not.

[56] It is something incredibly important for the majority of the people on Earth.

[57] Yeah.

[58] I remember, I read this story.

[59] You remember when Airbus came out with that A380, that giant, that, that, that, the super jumbo jet.

[60] And they maybe let our guy fly it, Travolta.

[61] Did he fly him?

[62] I think he might have been, it was Aquinas maybe bought the first one, and he's got some weird thing.

[63] Yeah, he's an airplane guy.

[64] That's right.

[65] So anyway, so they come out with this, like, it's the first super jumbo passenger jet.

[66] You can fly whatever it is, 800 people or whatever.

[67] And you can custom, you can put a disco club in and a bar and whatever, all this is the point at the time, and it's ironic based on what happened, but at the time, it was like, this is revolutionizing long -scale travel, right?

[68] Like these long flights, It's New York to Singapore and Auckland, New Zealand to Paris or whatever.

[69] So I was reading an article about it in the newspaper and it was like they just debuted the plane.

[70] Here are the companies that have ordered this plane.

[71] And it was Qantas Airlines bought 22 of them and L .L. bought 17 of them or whatever.

[72] And at the bottom of the list, it's just a guy.

[73] It's just some guy.

[74] Oh, my God.

[75] He was a, I think, I believe he was a Saudi oil baron or something.

[76] You fucking racist.

[77] But he was like, he's one of the richest people in the world.

[78] And so, and he was like, well, I'll just buy one.

[79] They cost, what do they cost?

[80] 750 million now?

[81] Like, I don't have one of those.

[82] And I remember thinking, like, when you get to that level, which obviously so few people are, but when you get to that level of wealth, it literally is there are no new worlds to conquer.

[83] I have everything.

[84] I have an 80 ,000 square foot home in the Swiss Alps.

[85] And I have a hundred thousand square foot home in the prairies of wherever.

[86] and what's left.

[87] And then this new thing comes along and, oh, maybe this will be the thing that makes me happy or whatever he's thinking.

[88] Yeah.

[89] And the ironic PS to the story is that that plane has basically been phased out of existence.

[90] Like, no one used, they invented these smaller planes that can be more fuel efficient that can travel, whatever.

[91] So that plane is like on the way out.

[92] It's like, it's an obsolete $700 million dollar toy.

[93] It's so funny.

[94] You would tell that story because I was just with two, friends on vacation.

[95] And we got to talking about yachts and kind of like none of us, none of us, well, none of us knowing what the range is, right?

[96] But I just kind of threw out.

[97] I'm like, no, people build billion dollar yachts.

[98] And my friend Eric was like, I don't think they do.

[99] I don't, I don't think anything's a billion dollar.

[100] Whatever.

[101] Google it.

[102] By God, a gentleman from Malaysia, I believe, has a $2 .8 billion yacht.

[103] Buckle up.

[104] It has 10 ,000.

[105] and kilograms of gold.

[106] Whatever, we did the math.

[107] It has $730 million worth of gold on the fucking yacht.

[108] It has a fucking T -Rex skull in it.

[109] We do want that.

[110] But that's a side note.

[111] But again, yeah, you're like, you're like, you almost feel bad for this guy, because by the way, the yacht is not big.

[112] Like when you look at, like the second place yacht was maybe $1 .2 billion, but you're looking at a princess cruise liner at that point.

[113] But this guy's boat was relatively small.

[114] This guy went for a style over substance or whatever.

[115] Function.

[116] Fashion over function.

[117] Fucking T -Rex skull and gold walls.

[118] Yeah.

[119] I will only say that if you spend $2 .8 billion on a yacht and it doesn't have a T -Rex skull, what are we doing?

[120] It is a weird hitch in the human condition, and it's a double hitch when you're growing up in a Western industrialized capitalistic country because, like you said before, everything you learn about when you're a kid.

[121] is like, here's what success is.

[122] Here's what achievement is.

[123] It's get the best grades in the class, be the fastest runner in the track meet, score the most points in the basketball game.

[124] It's just a series of quantifiable hierarchies.

[125] And then it's like get the best job, make the best salary, get promoted at that job, increase your salary, start with a small house, move to a bigger house, and you keep going.

[126] And at some point, you start to go like, well, what is the terminus here?

[127] The terminus is, I die, and none of this matters.

[128] Unless fingers crossed, we're taking the shit with us.

[129] There you go.

[130] We don't know.

[131] We just don't know.

[132] So it's something that I have thought about a lot in my life of like, I grew up very modestly.

[133] I lived in a suburb of Hartford that had a sort of wealthy part and a sort of more blue collar part.

[134] And I was like right in the middle.

[135] My bedroom was a third of the size of the room we're in now.

[136] But it was this interesting vantage point where if you look to your left, you see enormous homes with enormous yards and people with tennis courts and all that sort of stuff.

[137] Yeah.

[138] And if you look to your right, you see multifamily homes that are run down, ramshackle kind of like need a lot of work.

[139] Yeah.

[140] And so I was very conscious of where I stood in that hierarchy, in the hierarchy of my friends and my surroundings.

[141] Yeah.

[142] So I thought about it a lot in my life of like if you don't learn at some point to replace the concept of advancing through the hierarchy with something else, then you're going to be in trouble because all you'll do your whole life is chase the one step higher on the ladder.

[143] And it's all relative to someone else.

[144] So there's nothing intrinsic about it.

[145] Yeah.

[146] It's all relative.

[147] When you're looking at, okay, what do I focus on?

[148] What do I care about to replace this idea of can I advance more, move higher, get more, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

[149] For people like Gus, at least I'll speak for myself.

[150] For me, it was writing, right?

[151] like if you're writing something it's just you in a script and you're focused on it and you're imagining the characters and it's like a long -term creative project that can really fuel you and at certain important times in my life times of stress or strain or anxiety or anything writing is just the thing that like well this is where I go I do this and sometimes it's with a purpose like it's a thing I'm actively working on and sometimes it's just a private thing that just soothes me and makes me feel better which I have access to and it's beautiful Thank you for sharing this one.

[152] It's all poems about you.

[153] So the tricky thing there is, so I have long been very grateful that I found my thing, right?

[154] Because not everybody does, and it's not clear to people, and sometimes it takes people until they're 75 to realize that they like doing watercolors or whatever it is.

[155] I found my thing very early, and I've been very grateful for it.

[156] The tricky thing is, is that when it's your career, well, now you're being steered back into the hierarchies, the hierarchy of a set, of status on a set, of status in Hollywood.

[157] there are multiple trade publications that every day print articles that make you feel like you're falling behind even when you know all that stuff there's billboards next to your house that's right yes as you drive your kid literally my buddy said he was driving his his kid to school and she was like five and his daughter was like that's nix show that's dance show they like know our kids know this stuff right right so it is inescapable and it really takes a lot of i mean you talk about This is a super privileged conversation for obvious reasons.

[158] But even when you're in this privileged world, it still takes a lot of energy and concentration not to let it ruin your life, not to let it screw you up, you know?

[159] I can tell you, like, we're friends.

[160] I adore you, and you're really close with my wife.

[161] And I remember reading about the last deal you made.

[162] And then I go in my head.

[163] And I know you.

[164] None of this means a fucking thing.

[165] I'm not going to like you more or less.

[166] If you have $20 billion or is it, But I go in my head, oh, I remember Mike and I were talking the first time we interviewed, and I said, does it ever bum you are?

[167] You weren't writing TV in the 80s because you'd own the Red Sox.

[168] That was like one of the conversations we had, right?

[169] Yeah.

[170] And then so like, I read that and I was like, well, it's getting pretty close to that thing.

[171] And that puts him here.

[172] And like, I find myself getting excited for you.

[173] Like, oh, good for fucking Mike.

[174] I'm doing that.

[175] Yeah.

[176] And so God knows how that affects me towards you.

[177] Right.

[178] I don't know.

[179] This is a great way for me to say that I just bought the Red Sox.

[180] Oh, my God.

[181] Congratulations.

[182] And you're moving them to Toledo, which people are really excited about.

[183] No, well, here's the super inside baseball.

[184] But whenever I, not that deal, but a deal I signed, I've been at Universal TV now for 23 years.

[185] I'm coming up on a 25 -year anniversary of being at the same place.

[186] And you're 36.

[187] It's fucking really weird.

[188] I was a child prodigy.

[189] Douglas Houser writer.

[190] But I remember saying to my agents, like, I think it's kind of gross when this news gets printed, I don't want it, don't do it.

[191] And what my, actually, my manager said was, it's not for you.

[192] It's for your agents.

[193] Like, this is about the way this town works is that they trumpet these deals and then people see them and they go, who, that's why it always says at the bottom of those things, he's repped by this company, this company, and this company.

[194] It's not for you.

[195] It's for, it couldn't matter less.

[196] And that that was actually a really good, like, eye -opening moment where I was like, oh, right, even if you were tempted to think this is about you, it is not.

[197] not about you at all.

[198] It's about this, it's about this machine that's in place that has all these other ulterior moments.

[199] I'll go even 20 ,000 feet above that.

[200] It tells me that the television business is profitable and that our industry, no, I mean, really.

[201] You go like, okay, good, it's fun.

[202] Because we're all, we've all been living in a kind of state for 14, 15 years in television of great fear.

[203] If you look at ratings and you chart it, it's in a fucking nose dive.

[204] Right.

[205] It's precarious.

[206] So then when you read that, it kind of makes you feel safer about our industry.

[207] Right.

[208] Companies aren't in the business.

[209] of throwing away large sums of money for no reason, and so this must mean...

[210] Just Malaysian dudes, yeah.

[211] That's their problem.

[212] Just yacht owners.

[213] Oh, my God.

[214] Gold enthusiasts.

[215] If the price of gold goes up, that guy might get the last laugh.

[216] I feel like this ends with him just melting down his yacht and selling it.

[217] Also, doesn't the gold weigh the yacht down?

[218] How is this even functioning?

[219] I made that joke.

[220] I said, can you imagine all these people gathered around?

[221] They spent $2 .4 billion and it goes down the slide into the water as we've been.

[222] seen a million times and then it just fucking is at the bottom of them.

[223] And then in like a hundred years, James Cameron's great grandkids were documentary about the search for the sunken gold yacht.

[224] Oh, my God.

[225] Okay, so your book won't only read the title.

[226] A plus.

[227] Let me tell people the title of your book.

[228] How to be perfect, the correct answer to every moral question.

[229] So it just starts with great humility.

[230] And obviously, it's no surprise to anyone.

[231] You're just a tremendous writer.

[232] And we'll talk about the spoonful of sugar.

[233] Like, it's like every third line is a fucking great joke.

[234] It's like, knowledge, knowledge, treat.

[235] Knowledge, knowledge, treat.

[236] Repeat.

[237] It's so good.

[238] And then call back, call back, call back.

[239] It's a very humble book because I'm sure you struggled with, like, that, that exact thing.

[240] Like, I'm telling people about ethics, but I can't be on top of the world about it.

[241] Well, when I pitch the good place, which is a show explicitly about ethics and moral philosophy one of the things I said to NBC was I promise I won't make it feel like homework yeah because it sounds like homework it sounds like why would anyone watch this now I will say that when you get Kristen Bell and Ted Danson in your show they tend to no longer care at all in the show it's like they're like it's it can be homework it's but the show's called encyclopedia and it starts and they read from an encyclopedia yeah yeah when do you want to start so when I started the project of the book, which is like the sort of my own exit interview from the show and what I read about and learned about for the show, I had the same thought.

[242] It was basically like if this feels like homework, no one, including me, is going to want to read it.

[243] Like it just can't feel that way.

[244] So when I was sort of pitching it to publishers, I used that same line.

[245] I was like, it's not going to feel like homework.

[246] It's going to feel ideally like a conversation that you're having with a guy who, if you watch the show, you get the sense like, I am as annoyed.

[247] by a lot of this stuff as anyone.

[248] And I gave Eleanor, Kristen's character on the show, I gave her my attitude toward philosophy, basically, which is like, this is so annoying.

[249] Why did these people write this way?

[250] Why is it so complicated?

[251] Why can't someone just tell me what to do?

[252] And it's like self -indulgent.

[253] It's classes.

[254] There's a whole lot of things.

[255] A whole lot.

[256] And half of the people who wrote philosophy are either apologizing for slavery or Nazis or both.

[257] It's a mess.

[258] So the goal.

[259] of it was to say like, look, I read all of this stuff.

[260] I understand it to a certain degree.

[261] I have had a lot of conversations with a lot of very smart people who helped me understand it.

[262] And I'm now going to relate it to you in the best way I can.

[263] And what that means is the clearest way I can and the least homeworky way that I can.

[264] And that was the whole idea behind it and hopefully it succeeded.

[265] I mean, you spent six years there, right?

[266] And then you're going to synthesize that for us and condense it.

[267] Yeah.

[268] I do want you to tell the story because even though I'm married to the star of your show, I didn't know the inception of this, the fender bender.

[269] There's basically two things that led to the show.

[270] One of them predated the show by a decade, and one of them was the thing that sort of made me decide to do it.

[271] So the thing that precedes it by the decade was in 2005, my wife was in a literally a one mile an hour fender bender.

[272] And the reason it happened, ironically, is because both, or at least she was rubbernecking at an accident that had happened on the road and didn't see that the guy had stopped in front of her, whatever.

[273] So because there's an accident right there, the cop comes over, looks everything over, says, I don't see any damage here.

[274] Being conscientious people, my wife and this guy's trade information, whatever.

[275] A couple days later, we get a claim from the guy that says that his fender needs to be replaced, the entire fender, and it was $836.

[276] dollars and pause for a second this was literally during hurricane Katrina Sean Penn is pulling people out of the water in a rowboat as this is happening I think that's probably true yeah we're all watching yeah not Sean Penn get down there Brad Pitt is getting ready to go down there and build houses right so I love the city of New Orleans my wife and I had gone there for a vacation a year earlier and I loved it one of my best friends in the world lives there and his father had just passed away and they had they had to like hustle to make the funeral happen and then flee.

[277] It's something about it just, even though I'm not from there or anything, I just was like so sad about that.

[278] That really hit me hard.

[279] So I found a guy replacing an entire fender after a one mile an hour fender bender to be absurd.

[280] And also pause for a second.

[281] I'm not a car guy.

[282] I know you are super intensely car dude.

[283] I have never cared about cars.

[284] But to me, they're a metal box that brings you to...

[285] You said enough about cars.

[286] Your position's very clear.

[287] Do you want me to talk about motorcycle?

[288] So I go and I look at the car, and if I got down as close as I could to the fender and shined my flashlight on the banner, I could see there was a little L -shaped scratch or indentation.

[289] I think basically...

[290] I think he described it as a crease at one point.

[291] A crease.

[292] My wife's license plate holder had essentially just...

[293] So I said to the guy, angrily, under control, but like annoyed, I said, I think this is ridiculous.

[294] I think this is the reason car insurance rates are so high in this city.

[295] I think that you should not care about this.

[296] I basically judged him for everything that he was doing.

[297] Because you don't care about cars.

[298] Yeah.

[299] Right.

[300] We'll get to that in a second.

[301] But I said, how about this?

[302] I will donate $836 to the Red Cross for the Katrina Relief Fund if you agree not to file this claim.

[303] And he was like, all right, I'll think about it.

[304] And I left.

[305] I was working on the office at the time.

[306] I went back to work.

[307] Not an office.

[308] No, the show, yes, thank you.

[309] Yes, yes, yeah, that I got a little murky.

[310] So I told the story, and everyone starts jumping in.

[311] Everyone's like, I'll add a hundred bucks to it.

[312] I'll pledge 200 bucks.

[313] I'll pledge 50 bucks, whatever.

[314] So in 30 seconds, suddenly now the amount that would be theoretically donated to the Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund if this guy doesn't fix his bumper is like $2 ,500.

[315] But this is the early days of the internet.

[316] So I start a blog.

[317] I tell the story.

[318] I don't name the guy.

[319] I don't put up a picture of his car or his license player.

[320] anything, which I later very much was grateful for.

[321] But I just, I told the story.

[322] And while, like, the first time I was aware of the concept of something going viral.

[323] Yeah.

[324] So pledges come in, emails, like, I'll give 25 bucks.

[325] I'll give 50 bucks.

[326] I'll give 100 bucks, whatever.

[327] In 24 hours, it was at like $15 ,000.

[328] No. I got phone calls from NPR and Good Morning America and all these places.

[329] It's spread like wildfire.

[330] And now, at this point, one day in, I'm thinking, I am a genius.

[331] Yeah.

[332] Because, first of all, I'm raising all this money for charity.

[333] It's an incredible move by me. And second of all, I am, like, writing a moral wrong, which is that people care about their cars too much, and the people's value systems are upside down and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[334] After two days, it goes to, I think, $27 ,000.

[335] I'm home with my wife.

[336] I'm excitedly telling me. telling her about the latest developments.

[337] And we both, she actually said at first, she was like, this is wrong.

[338] And I was like, yes, it is, it's bad.

[339] Why is it bad?

[340] What have we done?

[341] Why is it wrong?

[342] And she was like, I don't know, but this is wrong.

[343] Like, it hit us at exactly the same moment.

[344] And I started to panic.

[345] Like, I've never had an actual panic attack or anxiety attack.

[346] But well, can I just, this is completely out of your control at this point.

[347] The horses are way the fuck out of the barn.

[348] I am there people are waiting for me to get back to them to schedule national news interviews sure sure Oprah wants to talk about this so all that night I stayed up until like two in the morning and I was just Googling or probably like Yahooing like like basically trying to figure out what am I doing wrong what is this yeah the next day I looked up a bunch of philosophy professors because I was like I think this is a philosophy thing and philosophy professors it turns out love talking about philosophy.

[349] So, like, I sent, like, unsolicited emails to random people, like UCLA and Stanford and Boston University.

[350] I'd basically Googled or researched, like, anything that I could think of that seemed close to this, like about shame or about public humiliation or whatever, found people who had written about that and reached out to them.

[351] I ended up talking to, like, four or five different people, and they started to walk me through what was happening.

[352] Like, this is what, here's what Aristotle says about shame.

[353] And what you're doing actually might be good because Aristotle says that a person who has no sense of shame has no sense of disgrace.

[354] And I was like, well, that's interesting.

[355] Okay.

[356] And then someone else would go, no, what you're doing is wrong because the moral calculation you're making about solving the issue that arose has nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina.

[357] That's an entirely separate issue.

[358] You can't conflate these things.

[359] And if you did, we would be living in a world where every time there was a dispute about something small, the person who had caused the injury could just say, how dare you care about this?

[360] there were people starving in sub -Saharan Africa and that world would be madness we live in that world but continue that's true that's what i write about in the book is like this is the world we live the world of what aboutism is running rampant right now at the end of the day i was like i land there one of the philosophy professors actually said i explained the whole thing and he said like this isn't a philosophy question you're just being a jerk to this guy like you don't need philosophy to tell you not just self -righteous it's just you're being a jerk yeah yeah and he actually used the word jerk which was great yeah so sometimes we need to hear that word yeah yeah it's so much more powerful than like asshole yeah oh i'm being a jerk like it sucks there's an intention there if they want to hurt your feelings they'd call you an asshole right but if they just want to tell you what's happening you're a fucking jerk you're just a jerk you're being a jerk so i was like i gotta face the music here and i called the guy by the way he knew none of this was happening he's completely in the dark so i canceled all of the interviews the only one that i couldn't get out of was one I had already done in the middle of my panic and spiral.

[361] I got a phone call and it was the New Yorker because the guy who did talk of the town wanted to do a piece about this.

[362] And I forgot that I had agreed to it.

[363] And I picked up the phone and I didn't recognize the number.

[364] And suddenly I was being interviewed by the New Yorker about this thing that I was miserable about and felt terrible about.

[365] And confused.

[366] Yeah.

[367] So, but I got out of everything else and I called the guy and I told him everything that had happened.

[368] It was like being in confession.

[369] Wow.

[370] I said, like, I'm going to tell you the entire story, and I'm going to preface it by saying, I've written you a check, and the check has been mailed is on its way to you for the full amount of the money.

[371] And now I need to tell you about this whole thing.

[372] And I told him, and in a moment that really made me happy, he was incredibly understanding.

[373] He did not yell and scream.

[374] He didn't lash out.

[375] I remember he said something like, wow, you really kind of stirred up a hornet's nest, huh?

[376] And I was like, yeah, I did.

[377] Thank you for.

[378] Did you hit a guy from Oklahoma?

[379] wife in a guy.

[380] I don't, he was just a very level -headed guy.

[381] And so, anyway, I told him the whole story, the check it was in the mail.

[382] He said, you know what, maybe I'll donate some of that check to the Red Cross.

[383] And I said, that would be wonderful, but you're under no moral obligation.

[384] That's up to you.

[385] It's up to you.

[386] So it was just this thing that obsessed me. And I remember around that time, I couldn't not talk about it.

[387] I obsessively pulled my friends and my family and anyone I talked to it drove my wife crazy because long after this has been resolved we were like at a wedding and i would be at the wedding table going like okay and then here's what happened and she would be like will you let it go but for whatever reason it really stuck in my craw i couldn't stop thinking about it and so that story really was the 10 years before i wrote that pilot was the beginning of this process for me well you also because i read the version and there's there's a part of it that you left out is that i want you to make the case for the guy because i i found that very powerful well you mean for from his point of view yes well this is part of the calculation right when you really investigate this you're like okay he is driving along a person bumps into him he cares about his car that is not a thing i do but that's a thing he does and if you just leap outside of your own ego for one second and i remember it really humanized him for me where he said look i've got kids my kids have ruined everything that i own the one thing that I have that isn't kidified is my car.

[388] So from his point of view, and this was the key to unlocking what I had done wrong to me, because I was like, oh, right, I'm this guy now.

[389] I'm driving along.

[390] Someone bumps into my fender.

[391] I care about my car.

[392] I look at my fender.

[393] It's got a crease on it.

[394] I go to the guy.

[395] He said, how much to fix this?

[396] And they said, it's $836.

[397] Now, is that a ridiculous amount of money to pay for an entire fender?

[398] I think so.

[399] He didn't set that price.

[400] That's not his fault.

[401] Right.

[402] Right.

[403] So from his point of view, a woman bumped into him in traffic caused some damage to his car he got the reasonable legal correct estimate and then he sent that estimate to the family that bumped into him and as soon as you leave your own headspace and like what I think of the world what I think of Hurricane Katrina what I think of car culture what I think about insurance rates in Los Angeles California whatever and you jump into that person's point of view suddenly the idea that someone wouldn't just pay for the damage becomes outrageous because it's what did he do wrong exactly nothing and so so much of the show and then so much about this book is about the places in the world where human beings just mill around and then bump into each other in these tiny ways it's not the big picture stuff everybody knows that you shouldn't murder people or commit arson that's not hard to figure out what i really tried to do with the show was to say like when you share the earth with other people and you mill around and you bump into them in a bunch of different ways that are usually pretty mundane and not that exciting that the key to understanding them is to get outside of your own perspective see the interaction from the other person's perspective and then say all right where do these two things meet how do we reach a reasonable compromise how do we both act in a reasonable way to just soothe this to just make this little bit of friction mend it a little smoother exactly like repair this tiny wound and then go about our days like we were before yeah so that's really the origin story of the good place and it's also the origin story of the book that's such a great story i know and then there's another there was another incident well this is when you killed the guy yeah i get at arson and yeah yeah but you didn't really know that he was learning zippo tricks you know where you can pop that thing open and click it's tricky stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare We've all been there Turning to the internet To self -diagnose our inexplicable pains Debilitating body aches Sudden fevers and strange rashes Though our minds tend to spiral To worst -case scenarios It's usually nothing But for an unlucky few These unsuspecting symptoms Can start the clock ticking On a terrifying medical mystery Like the unexplainable death Of a retired firefighter Whose body was found at home by his son Except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[404] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[405] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[406] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[407] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[408] Prime members can listen early and ad -free on Amazon Music.

[409] What's up, guys?

[410] It's your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season.

[411] and let me tell you, it's too good.

[412] And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest, okay?

[413] Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[414] And I don't mean just friends.

[415] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kell Mitchell, Vivica Fox.

[416] The list goes on.

[417] So follow, watch, and listen to Baby.

[418] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[419] The other thing is far less interesting.

[420] But I also write about it in the book.

[421] I shouldn't say it's far less interesting.

[422] It's also fascinating.

[423] It's not worth it.

[424] It's in the book.

[425] It was simply that I used to go to the same Starbucks every day and I would buy a medium coffee and the medium coffee was $1 .73 and I would throw the 27 cents into the tip jar except I realized one day that I don't just do that.

[426] I wait until the barista has actually turned all the way back around to face me to see me do it.

[427] So I was like, what is wrong with me that I need?

[428] So it was a real like, what am I doing?

[429] What am I doing and why am I doing?

[430] Those are the two most important questions in the world.

[431] And so I said, like, why am I doing this?

[432] And what is it about this act that I feel like it needs to be seen by another person?

[433] What does that say about me?

[434] What does it mean when people donate money to charity and either say anonymous or leave your name on the wall?

[435] Like, it opened up this whole basket of questions that I thought were really interesting that I had never sort of interrogated myself about.

[436] Well, yeah, you start the book with four questions.

[437] Yeah.

[438] As a starting point to evaluate maybe something, which is, what are we doing?

[439] Why are we doing it?

[440] Is there something we could do that's better?

[441] And why is it better?

[442] Yeah.

[443] And then for me, three and four are where the astrophysics comes in.

[444] Like, so we were just talking about it, right?

[445] So we interviewed Bill Gates about his book about the environment, how we got to get to net zero, right?

[446] But he is a very special human being.

[447] Like, he is in a position that no one on the planet is.

[448] Yeah, except for that gold yacht owning guy.

[449] But not even that guy.

[450] If that guy wants to talk to Kissinger, he can't talk to Kissinger.

[451] You can't name a guy that Bill Gates can't call and ask for advice from.

[452] Right.

[453] And so his thing is like, progress, progress, progress.

[454] We can't step the machine down.

[455] We have to add jobs and education and all these things.

[456] And so we must start with that that is a necessity.

[457] And now how do we work backwards from there?

[458] And I just kind of really appreciate that point of view, which is we've got to at least.

[459] in reality.

[460] Yes, we cannot suddenly all stop using electricity.

[461] Right.

[462] There's no snap your fingers way to change everything.

[463] So it's like make this year or this month or this day or this hour a tiny bit better than the one that came before it for whatever it is that you're trying to do.

[464] When you ask those four questions, what are we doing?

[465] Why are we doing it?

[466] Is there something we can do this better?

[467] Why is it better?

[468] Those are questions you can apply to anything you're doing.

[469] Yeah.

[470] Why am I eating this food?

[471] Right.

[472] What am I eating?

[473] Why am I eating it?

[474] Is there something I could eat that's better?

[475] Why would that be better?

[476] And by the way, that also doesn't mean that you then have to do that thing to eat that food.

[477] It just means that if you pose those questions, you will at least come to understand the ways that you can marginally increase anything that you're trying to get at.

[478] It's basically Moneyball.

[479] If you remember Moneyball, it's like Moneyball was like the Oakland days lost a great hitter, Jason Giambi, who did everything well.

[480] There was no way with their money that they could get another guy who did everything.

[481] thing as well.

[482] So what they said was we're going to take five or six guys and improve them a little bit.

[483] We're going to find a guy who's 8 % better at getting walks than the guy we currently have.

[484] We're going to find a guy who's 12 % better at hitting home runs than the guy we have with that position.

[485] And we will replace this one guy with like seven other guys.

[486] So the rising tide will lift the boat.

[487] And that's sort of what we're talking about here, right?

[488] It's like move forward, keep going, find innovative ways to make whatever you're doing a little better than the way you were doing it before, that's the path.

[489] Yeah, and I think one of the conclusions is a tenant that we share, which is in my pursuit of happiness, I have learned that the only person I'm allowed to compare myself to is a previous version of myself.

[490] It's the only relevant thing for me to ever compare myself to.

[491] And if I can remind myself of that and try to live that way as much as I can, that's my best approach.

[492] I don't know.

[493] Well, that's escaping the hierarchy.

[494] You're replacing the potential external hierarchy of success with just measuring yourself against yourself.

[495] And that's a much healthier way to try to judge how you, how you're doing in anything.

[496] Yeah.

[497] In your career, in your happiness, in your marriage, whatever it is, if you compare yourself only to yourself and you say, am I better right now than I was or am I worse than I was?

[498] Yeah.

[499] That's a healthier approach, I think.

[500] And that's a good way to do it.

[501] But it gets kind of existential because it's like, what does better mean?

[502] Sure.

[503] Is it happier?

[504] Is it safe?

[505] Like, you know, it can, it's tricky.

[506] And that's where some of the stuff breaks down, right?

[507] And the part of the project of the book was to say, look, the point of the title is to say, it is impossible.

[508] It's not, it's a fool's errand.

[509] It's a fool's errand to even consider this.

[510] In fact, there's a whole chapter in the book.

[511] This woman named Susan Wolf wrote this wonderful paper called Moral Saints, where she imagines what it would even look like to be a perfect moral avatar on earth.

[512] She's a wonderful writer, and she basically points out and explains how it is both impossible and a terrible goal because the kind of person who is in theory perfect is super boring because you can't ever make a joke that might offend anyone or say anything and also is constantly abandoning projects in favor of trying to complete projects that might be better or create more moral good.

[513] So you're not also spending any time learning how to cook or playing tennis or hanging out with your kids because you're making this moral calculation of like, I could be doing more good than the good I'm doing right now.

[514] And that person becomes annoying and boring.

[515] And not content.

[516] Yeah, miserable.

[517] Exactly.

[518] It's self -defeating.

[519] And I'm going to add to it, useless to everyone else.

[520] You know what story I love about yours?

[521] That you fucked up that whole bumper incident.

[522] That's how I can learn from you.

[523] You seen on a stage fucking holding an Emmy?

[524] I don't know.

[525] Oh, cool.

[526] I learned from people's failures.

[527] I learned from my failures.

[528] Of course.

[529] And that, when embraced in the right way, is incredibly powerful.

[530] That's why all these 12 -step groups work.

[531] It's why the first step toward progress in any way, shape, or form is to examine a failure.

[532] It's the only way you do that.

[533] Like, if you are born into a world somehow where there is no friction, no pain, no suffering, no ability to fail, then you will never learn what the difference is.

[534] You can't grow.

[535] Exactly.

[536] People don't grow as a hobby.

[537] People grow generally out of necessity.

[538] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[539] Yeah, the thing I write about, literally in the introduction of the book, is you're going to fail, we're all going to fail, even trying your hardest, you will fail constantly at whatever it is you're trying to do.

[540] You learn more and those failures have more value if you have decided to just try to understand ethics and what makes for ethical people and what doesn't, because if you know, if you have a wealth of knowledge or understanding, or even a basic knowledge or understanding about ethics and about what people have said about ethics, when you fail, you get to go like, okay, let's dig in.

[541] What happened here?

[542] What was my failure?

[543] Why did it happen?

[544] What decision did I make that led to this?

[545] Replace shame with curiosity.

[546] Right, yes.

[547] Because shame does not lead to much growth.

[548] Shame is a good, like, punch in the gut, though.

[549] I think guilt, as we would define it, and obviously this is a semantics thing, but as I would define, guilt is I did something terrible.

[550] Right.

[551] And shame is, I am terrible.

[552] Right.

[553] And I am terrible is not a place that's going to benefit anyone.

[554] No. And the way I talk about the difference between shame and guilt, too, to me. there's also a public -private thing going on.

[555] Guilt is you're alone in your house and it's dark and you're like, oh, God, I feel so bad.

[556] Shame is like you're walking through the streets and people are throwing tomatoes at you and they're literally saying, it's like the in Game of Thrones.

[557] Yeah, shame, right?

[558] So the amount of guilt that I think can help us, I believe you're right, is higher than the amount of shame.

[559] People tend to recoil from shame and get angry and lash out and get defensive.

[560] Guilt is like you're sitting with yourself.

[561] You're confronting a sickness in your own stomach that you just know is just you feel bad about what you did.

[562] Well, you can confront the guilt of that situation you created with the guy.

[563] Right.

[564] That there are actionable steps.

[565] You did them.

[566] You called the guy.

[567] You told them everything that happened.

[568] There are no actionable steps for, I'm a piece of shit.

[569] What are you going to tell your, you know, you can call yourself and say, I'm a piece of shit?

[570] Yeah.

[571] That's not an action.

[572] There's no path that's described by that.

[573] Yeah.

[574] So there is some amount of guilt or shame that I think is very useful.

[575] and helpful.

[576] It by itself doesn't do anything.

[577] It's how you understand it and how you hear it as like a call to some kind of other action that I think can benefit people.

[578] Yeah, I just would hope, again, this is just from my experience, I would hope that when people are feeling those lows and I've had many of them, that they remember that there aren't good and bad people, that there are good and bad actions.

[579] I was going to ask you, do you agree with that?

[580] Oh, 100%.

[581] You do.

[582] Okay.

[583] Yes.

[584] And importantly, I believe that the majority of the people that I know at least are either good people on balance or would like to be good people.

[585] I think more people think of themselves as good and are trying to be good than a glance at the news might suggest.

[586] I think too if you've had a child that reframes everything.

[587] And my mother always used to say this.

[588] And it's my favorite thing she always points out is like there would always be a tragedy in my town.

[589] There'd be two teens driving drunk.

[590] And one, you know, the driver would kill the passenger and the town would hate the driver.

[591] And my mother always, her first reaction was always so sad.

[592] They handed out cigars when both those little boys were babies.

[593] Yeah.

[594] And they celebrated.

[595] Yeah.

[596] And here they both are.

[597] Everyone's a victim.

[598] That's the heartbreaker is that everyone comes out and everyone passes out cigars.

[599] And when you have a child, you just start seeing that.

[600] So you're like, 100 % see that.

[601] Now, there's fucking psychopass and shit.

[602] And we acknowledge people eat other humans.

[603] But let's rule out via.

[604] Slicing off the far ends of the bell curve in terms of people.

[605] Yes.

[606] And I think also importantly, we're not all running the same road race here.

[607] Like there are people who are born into much tougher circumstances than some.

[608] There are people are born into much easier circumstances.

[609] This is a thing I talk about in the book, too, is like, I was born a white dude in America.

[610] Both my parents went to college.

[611] We could go to the doctor.

[612] You're in the shadow of fucking Harvard.

[613] Yeah.

[614] You know.

[615] I didn't wonder where my next meal was.

[616] is coming from, all this basic stuff that it's very easy to take for granted.

[617] Like, the majority of people in the world don't have air conditioning.

[618] And if you have air conditioning, that puts you immediately in, like, the top 20%.

[619] So when you're talking about this stuff, about what actions people take, how their lives turn out, how they develop, some of it is just luck.

[620] It's just good or bad luck that you can't avoid.

[621] I'm going to add to that that the socioeconomic part is one of the least significant parts of your childhood you never watch your father beat your mother until she was unconscious right you never watch your uncle rape your sister you know there there these things is horrifying realities of the basic existence of a lot of people like if just by escaping those through nothing but luck it's just pure luck yes yes you know who talks about this a lot is warren buffett warren buffett is fond of saying that he won what he calls the ovarian lottery which is basically just that the circumstances of his birth where he was born who his parents were he didn't have what he control over that.

[622] And he actually, because he's an analyst, he'll say, like, the odds of me being born in America at that moment, we're only one in whatever it is, 47 or something.

[623] It really struck this cord with me because there's a belief, and this goes back to what we were talking about before, in a country and a species that values this, like, where are you on the hierarchy, right?

[624] Yeah.

[625] There's a way in which people at the top of the food chain are incredibly reluctant to ascribe any of what they have to good fortune.

[626] They are deeply invested in the idea that the only reason they're there is that they're special and amazing and brilliant and smart and better than everybody else.

[627] And that is true of people in every industry.

[628] And what Buffett is giving voice to there is this idea like, so go back to Bill Gates.

[629] So Bill Gates grew up in Washington State.

[630] When he was a freshman in high school, his high school got like the first computer terminal that ever existed in a It's really close.

[631] It's the library and his town happen to own a fucking mainframe.

[632] It was like one of 20 in America.

[633] Right.

[634] And no one there wanted to use it.

[635] Because everyone was like, what is this giant machine that takes up a whole room in this library, right?

[636] Yeah.

[637] So Bill Gates is a genius.

[638] And if Bill Gates doesn't discover that computer and get all that time on it, it's very likely that he becomes whatever.

[639] A lawyer, an astrophysicist, a biochemist, something and achieves great heights.

[640] And it's probably very wealthy and comfortable and happy.

[641] he happened to fall into that moment in that space and he happened to go to Harvard where Harvard was an early adopter of computer terminals too and then he's Bill Gates.

[642] So when you're thinking about Bill Gates's life, it seems bananas to say he doesn't deserve what he has.

[643] And that's not what you're saying.

[644] When you say he's lucky, you're just saying he's a genius.

[645] And a bunch of rolls of the dice in the universe led him on this certain crazy path that made it line up perfectly for him to maximize his abilities in this particular way.

[646] It's okay to say that he's...

[647] It doesn't take anything away from it.

[648] No, exactly.

[649] It doesn't take any...

[650] It doesn't reduce the amount of impressive that he is.

[651] Yeah.

[652] To say that he's also incredibly fortunate.

[653] But you would know better than any person in the world why that is, which is we are storytelling creatures and we are the hero and the protagonists of our story.

[654] And if there's not struggle and if it's not us against the world and if we don't overcome things, we don't have a story.

[655] Right.

[656] And that's all we want.

[657] And in this country, especially, some of the most famous stories are like the lone wolf hero who, against all odds, triumphs over adversity.

[658] So in the good place, we had a character named Brent in the final season who was the opposite of this, was a guy who did believe that he was amazing and special and great.

[659] We talked a lot in the writer's room about how he's just a guy, who was described at one point, I think by Kristen, as born on third base, thought he invented the game of baseball.

[660] And so we talked all the time about how his defining characteristic is that he did not understand that he was the beneficiary of good luck.

[661] One of my favorite jokes that we wrote for him, which I think about all the time, is he's being interviewed by Kristen on this sort of, if you haven't seen the show, this won't make any sense, but he's being interviewed in this kind of talk show format.

[662] And she says, tell me about yourself.

[663] And he says, you know, I went to Princeton University.

[664] And then he says, no handouts, by the way, I earned my spot.

[665] just like my father and his father before him.

[666] It's such a good joke.

[667] It really nails that thing where like a person who understands good fortune would say like, God, how lucky am I that my grandfather went to Princeton, that my father went to Princeton, that I have this genetic line that gave me this leg up, that we have money to go to.

[668] They have a legacy thing.

[669] Yeah, there's so much.

[670] Right.

[671] And so the anger with which he defied the idea, it's not just that he doesn't recognize it.

[672] It's that he sees it and he thinks it's something else other than good for.

[673] That's what we really sort of...

[674] But again, it's not a good story for him to acknowledge that.

[675] Right.

[676] In his defense, it's a shitty story.

[677] If some dude tells me with the Yale third generation, fucking, of course you do.

[678] That's why Buffett is remarkable in this case.

[679] It's because he has the ability to get outside his own ego and to see the bigger picture.

[680] I believe I know this about us is that if we were on the spectrum politically, I am a bit right of you.

[681] I'm still liberal progressive, but I'm also like a staunch capitalist.

[682] I really do think we've yet to see a better system.

[683] I'm as flawed as it is.

[684] And so Andrew Yang is somebody I was threatened by, this UBI, right?

[685] We're going to hand out $1 ,000 a month to everyone in the country.

[686] And then my mind goes to, well, then everyone's going to be lazy and blah, blah, blah, blah, and all those fears.

[687] Sure.

[688] But when we interviewed him, what he pointed out, which I think is so true, is Apple is an incredible company.

[689] They deserve to be worth a trillion dollars.

[690] And you cannot start Apple in India.

[691] So fucking Apple owes America.

[692] Right.

[693] Apple owes America a good chunk of that because they could not have done it.

[694] That system that we have, that we all pay for, that we all, the social contract, that is the system by which they started this company that is that powerful.

[695] And that does hold for me. It's like, you've got to pay what you received.

[696] Well, forget about Apple for a second.

[697] You and I couldn't do what we do in India.

[698] We couldn't do what we do in a large number of countries.

[699] There are very few countries where we could make a living, a good living, an incredible living by any standards.

[700] Yeah, yeah.

[701] Yeah, this podcasting or writing for TV.

[702] It's so unethical.

[703] And so I think all.

[704] Talk about luck.

[705] Yeah, yes.

[706] Talk about luck.

[707] And I don't love paying taxes in this city, in this state.

[708] I take home like 40 cents on the dollar.

[709] Sure, sure.

[710] And it's painful.

[711] And I have moments where I'm like, wait a second, I earned this.

[712] Right.

[713] And then I, every single time I think like, well, I also like am safe.

[714] and the streets around me are pretty safe.

[715] And when Universal says they're going to pay you that money, you have a recourse if they don't.

[716] If they don't, there's a government that will enforce a part of a labor union that will help me if there's a dispute.

[717] There are also public beaches here that are among the most beautiful and incredible of vistas you've ever seen in your life that I can go to literally whenever I want.

[718] And your shows are largely great because of you and largely great because of Steve Carell and fucking Kristen Bell.

[719] And a hundred other people.

[720] About 500 technical masters who are making props and costumes.

[721] And by the way, those people need firefighters and police officers and paved roads to get to work every day.

[722] And so if I have those instincts, and I do from time to time, I then run down a really quick checklist of what I get for my money.

[723] And look, government in many ways, state government, local government, federal government, are there wild and embarrassing inefficiencies and waste?

[724] Of course there are.

[725] Also, my line is I want to contribute.

[726] I've gotten way, way, way more than anyone should get for a share.

[727] Right.

[728] Also, you don't get more than I get.

[729] Like, fuck you.

[730] Like, I can go to 50 -50, but the notion that you're going to get more than I do is hard for me. Listen, I hear you.

[731] How do I get the small piece of the pie that I fucking made?

[732] Well, look, go back in history.

[733] It was up at 75, 80%.

[734] We're not worse off.

[735] now than a lot of people in this country in the 50s at a time of enormous economic boom and in a flourishing economy the tax rates are higher than they are now so it's not historically wildly out of whack at all again I have to step back and say is 40 % of that money enough money for the thing you do and when I ask that question it's about 6 ,000 times more than I deserve yeah you're saying the slice of the pie your pie is like yeah A swimming pool.

[736] It's a huge ass pie that no one can eat.

[737] That's right, that's right, that's right.

[738] That is, of course, the right way to look at it.

[739] And, again, the right way to look at it for me is when I'm paying taxes is I get stuff for this.

[740] A guy comes to my house every Friday and picks up my trash.

[741] Yeah, lovely.

[742] That's not a thing that happens in a lot of places.

[743] And I don't think twice about that.

[744] You flush your toilet.

[745] You're pretty sure it's going to go somewhere.

[746] It's going to disappear.

[747] Yeah, yeah.

[748] And of course, is it annoying?

[749] when the federal government spends money on things that I don't think we should spend money on.

[750] Those fucking jets, yeah.

[751] Yeah, of course it is.

[752] The F -35 project, I rant and rave, and I have the instinct of like, well, that I don't want to pay these taxes.

[753] And then I remember something.

[754] And what I remember is, I'm not the only person in America.

[755] There are a whole lot of people in America who might want that program.

[756] And the whole point of this is no one gets everything they want.

[757] That's not how a country works.

[758] That's not how a society works.

[759] It's not even how a town works.

[760] Like with a town I grew up and had 60 ,000 people in it, not 335 million, at any given moment, large swaths of them were probably annoyed as something the mayor of West Hartford, Connecticut did.

[761] That's the deal.

[762] You're going to be happy about something else and I'll be annoyed.

[763] And for this to hold together, for this to just function as a unit in any way, shape, or form, we have to get over the idea that we all get everything we want.

[764] It just never works that way.

[765] And by the way, every time any group of people has tried to establish any kind of perfect utopian island or whatever, it immediately dissolves into chaos.

[766] There's a sweet spot.

[767] Like when I watch Wild Wild Country and they're all dancing and fucking wrestling and screaming, I'm like, sign me up.

[768] Oh, you can hold it together for about 48 hours.

[769] But then when the busloads of homeless people come in, they have to drug, I'm like, oh, wow, that went sideways.

[770] Yeah.

[771] Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare.

[772] This will make Monica nervous, but I would like to take this really pleasant and productive conversation in a very interesting direction.

[773] But I want to start by Adam Grant taught us this fun thing that's been useful for Monica and I, which is when he wants to have some playful debate with people, he first has learned to say, do you want to dance?

[774] Let's do it.

[775] And I was like, that is so cool.

[776] And sometimes Monica and I will like go, do you want to dance?

[777] And we're not in the mood.

[778] You're like, I can't.

[779] Not today.

[780] I'm not in the dancing mood.

[781] Yeah.

[782] So I guess I want to preface it with, would you like to dance?

[783] I would love to dance with you, Dad.

[784] Okay.

[785] This is going to be a lot for you.

[786] Great.

[787] I've been with Kristen for, I guess, 15 years or something like that.

[788] Oh, no. She's in love with me. Oh, yeah.

[789] You can all dance together.

[790] Oh, no. I did nothing to encourage this.

[791] She is in love with you.

[792] What a funny joke for him to make?

[793] Okay, so in the 15 years, I have so many character defects.

[794] I mean, it's endless.

[795] I'm a very flawed human being.

[796] Sure.

[797] I am not a jealous person.

[798] I was gifted somehow with an arrogance in relationships that I'm just not that worried.

[799] I don't think about it.

[800] If you're going to cheat on me, you're going to cheat on me. I'm not spending any time.

[801] I know for sure, if I'm worried about it and I start getting jealous, I'm going to drive you to that position.

[802] That's just always been my stance.

[803] That's a great superpower.

[804] I have been jealous of a single human being in 15 years.

[805] Who's that?

[806] You?

[807] Get out of it.

[808] of here.

[809] Yes, 100%.

[810] You're a soft spot.

[811] Yeah.

[812] Are you serious?

[813] I'm saying that with someone who, look, I love you.

[814] When I go to your house and I get to talk to you, I feel grateful.

[815] Like, I love how your brain works.

[816] I love how articulate you are.

[817] I want your approval.

[818] Like, I really, really look up to you.

[819] I love every time we interact.

[820] And I know you have something I don't have that my wife loves.

[821] And it is, in general, I'm not philanthropic.

[822] There's a lot of things I'm not morally.

[823] And ethically that she is, and she holds you to be on the very peak of that.

[824] You are someone she admires in a way that would probably blow your mind.

[825] I mean, the way you work with people and the way you're a leader and your benevolence and your commitment to not being misogynistic and your commitment to this and this and I want to fucking puke at some point.

[826] He's like, this guy, fuck this guy.

[827] This fucking, this is horseshit.

[828] He wants to fuck Angelina Jolie.

[829] Like, I have said out loud to her, this is horseshit.

[830] And what's really funny about it is, it's like, of course you would be the person I would, like, let's just put it this way.

[831] I do believe if my wife would have had a little brief affair with TI, I don't think she's ever coming home and telling me she's moving into TI's house.

[832] I don't have one fear that that's ever going to happen.

[833] Sure.

[834] But there is a double digit percentage that she comes home from work and says Mike and I have decided that we would like to be together.

[835] That is the most plausible person I've ever met in her orbit that that that.

[836] That would be plausible.

[837] This is both incredibly flattering and also a little creepy.

[838] Sure.

[839] Mostly flattering.

[840] I hope your wife's hot for me because this could really work out.

[841] So it's philanthropy is a part of this specifically?

[842] Well, let's put it this way.

[843] The first time you were on you and I got into a little debate over Andrew Dice Clay, that would sum it up perfectly.

[844] Like I have a position on that that's different than yours.

[845] And then although she loves Andrew Dice Clay, you'd be disappointed and know.

[846] But in general, that type of thing, right?

[847] She would be aligned with you, and I'm probably more aligned with other people.

[848] Gotcha.

[849] Right?

[850] Yeah.

[851] And I can't be that.

[852] I'm not going to be that.

[853] Like, nor should I be.

[854] Our wives, our partners are these people with 10 ,000 interests.

[855] And at best, you could hope to give them 70 % of what they're looking for, you know?

[856] And it is very clear to me that that 30 % that I will never be able to give her is the 30 % that she adores about you.

[857] Right.

[858] So it's an interesting dynamic.

[859] And it has made me at times.

[860] defensive.

[861] Monica, you take over.

[862] No, go ahead.

[863] You're doing great.

[864] Okay, great, great, great, great.

[865] So you write this book on philosophy.

[866] My wife doesn't fucking read books.

[867] I don't care what she tells you.

[868] She listens to some shit.

[869] He's never read a book besides this one.

[870] So your book comes along and boy, she is flipping through that fucking book.

[871] She's reading it to the kids.

[872] She is reading it to the kids at night.

[873] It's like the King James Bible has just been fucking printed and she's reading it.

[874] And so So my first reaction to that with full disclosure and honesty is, fuck this guy, I can disprove everything you like about this.

[875] Sure.

[876] Defensively.

[877] Right.

[878] And so in doing that, I prepared a few arguments.

[879] Great.

[880] Okay.

[881] But I want to own that I don't even believe in these arguments.

[882] I'm going to make.

[883] I'm trying to set this up in a way that's like as transparent as it could get.

[884] Listen, before you give me them.

[885] and I can't wait for this.

[886] The only way that any intellectual discipline ever improves is by stress testing it like crazy.

[887] Like that's what you have to do.

[888] This is what people are constantly doing is they're bringing up, what about this, what about this, what about this?

[889] It doesn't matter if you believe it or not.

[890] It's stress testing these theories is the key to making them better.

[891] Yes.

[892] And now I want to own one other insecurity that you trigger in me, which is I was dyslexic, didn't learn to read for a long time.

[893] I've always felt stupid.

[894] You went to Harvard.

[895] You're a very respected writer.

[896] People hardly know I write.

[897] There are other things.

[898] that I get insecure about.

[899] Sure.

[900] With you.

[901] But with that said, would you like to dance?

[902] Does dance?

[903] Did you like that set up or is that...

[904] Do I know you need to apologize?

[905] No. I thought it was good.

[906] Well, we had BJ on.

[907] At one point, you came up or maybe I brought you up for a second.

[908] And I was like, well, Dax is really insecure around Mike.

[909] And then he, like, stopped me from continuing.

[910] And BJ was like, well, everyone's insecure around Mike.

[911] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[912] Okay, so here's the line of your book.

[913] book I love.

[914] Yeah.

[915] Failure is guaranteed.

[916] In fact, even getting like a C plus often seems hopelessly out of reach, all of which can make caring about what we do or in the modern parlance giving a crap seem pointless.

[917] Okay, so this is my thought, and I have to read it, because I don't think I'll be able to concisely say it.

[918] Yeah.

[919] I don't ever read out loud in my own writing, but I'm going to read it out loud to you.

[920] I want to add the layer here that if the majority of adults you live among are not engaged in the social contract, that in fact most people are in breach of it, is it even responsible to make yourself the martyr in support of a principle that doesn't exist?

[921] What I'm arguing there is, or what I'm saying there, is it's a temptation to give up, right?

[922] The temptation to give up is because we fail so often at trying to do the right thing, whether because we just blew it or because there was some unintended consequence to what we did.

[923] So you're saying if you're in a world where big or small, where no one is caring, then what is the value of caring yourself and trying to actually do the right thing?

[924] And literally failing in the system because that's not how the system actually works.

[925] It's a theoretical principle you've decided to commit to that isn't based in reality whatsoever.

[926] And this is again, I'm going to own it right now.

[927] Even though you didn't grow up rich, I have this class thing with you.

[928] because of Harvard.

[929] Oh, okay.

[930] Okay.

[931] And I have a big chip on my shoulder, which I'm really, really trying to confront because who am I fucking kidding?

[932] I'm the guy I hate.

[933] So I recognize that.

[934] But there is part of me that looks at you and says, yeah, the parents you had and the siblings and the community you had, this is a belief you can hold.

[935] Sure.

[936] It's a belief of great privilege.

[937] And I would argue that the family I grew up in and the town I grew up in, it's fucking horseshit.

[938] And if you play that game out of the principle, you will not survive.

[939] So the morality question is a really lofty bullshit question.

[940] Sure.

[941] No, look, there are a number of people who write about exactly this issue.

[942] And one of them is quoted in the book.

[943] Her name is Julia Ennas.

[944] So here's what she says, right?

[945] She says there are a large number of people in the world who, because of the circumstances of their life, cannot be asked to be moral.

[946] There are people whose greatest fears from the moment they wake up to the time they wake up to the time they go to bed are so overwhelming and instantaneous and all encompassing and real it's literally like you're going to be shot you're going to be kidnapped by paramilitary troops your car is going to be blown up there's no food there's no running water whatever it is right and what she says is we cannot ask them to care as much about this as we do it's it's unreasonable it's a luxury that that was going to be another one of my points yes no it's a huge luxury it's an enormous luxury and i do talk about this in the book.

[947] And the thing that I say is, basically, when you're doing any kind of moral accounting of a person's life, I should be held to a far higher standard than a lot of people out there because I don't wake up and wonder if a mortar shell is going to land on my car or my house.

[948] And so if I make a bad decision, I use the example of in Les Mis, a guy steals a loaf of and then he gets arrested and he's going to spend 15 years in jail, 20 years in jail, whatever it is, right?

[949] So, if I stole a loaf of bread, a lot of philosophers would look at those two crimes and say, same thing.

[950] You made a choice, it was a bad choice, you stole something that didn't belong to you, you should be punished, right?

[951] Worship.

[952] When he stole a loaf of bread, his kids were starving, and he didn't know how to feed them.

[953] When I stole a loaf of bread, I was a rich asshole who stole a loaf of bread for no reason.

[954] You want a little charge.

[955] Yeah, or whatever, or just I was bored or whatever.

[956] Sure, sure.

[957] So I think it's vital to understand that my crime in stealing that loaf of bread is way, way worse because the circumstances under which my daily life unfolds are so much easier than that person's.

[958] And so what you're saying is there should be a sliding scale for how much we care about this.

[959] I 100 % agree.

[960] There's no question that there is a difference between Prince Andrew committed.

[961] a certain crime and a random subsistence farmer in Guatemala committing some kind of crime, right?

[962] And to think about them the same, which a lot of philosophers, I think, to their great detriment, do.

[963] Yes.

[964] Emmanuel Khan says there is a right thing and a wrong thing.

[965] Yeah.

[966] You figure out what the right thing is.

[967] You act out of a duty to follow that rule, end of story.

[968] If you blow it, you blow it if you don't.

[969] The ends does not justify the means.

[970] It doesn't matter.

[971] It couldn't matter less.

[972] And by the way, if you do the thing that you reasoned out, that was the right thing to do and something terrible happened, doesn't matter.

[973] You're clean.

[974] You're clean.

[975] So a lot of philosophers take the position that there is a right and a wrong, a good and a bad, and actions are actions, end of story.

[976] And I think that is the incorrect way to look at this.

[977] And I think that this is part of the problem with something like in this country criminal justice.

[978] You have three strikes laws.

[979] A person sells weed three times.

[980] They go to prison for 25 years.

[981] What is the difference between a person doing that literally to survive to get through.

[982] food.

[983] It's the literal only job opportunity in the community they live in.

[984] Correct.

[985] And a rich dude who goes to Yale and whose dad owns like seven businesses and is doing that just to make a little extra cash on the side.

[986] You cannot tell me those crimes are equal.

[987] Right.

[988] So if you're saying, and I think you are, that context matters, a hundred percent.

[989] I mean, more than almost anything else, it's the problem with certain philosophical beliefs.

[990] is that they are arguing in this abstract universe where it's just about these rules we can discern and call down from the ether and then institute on Earth.

[991] Earth is a messy, weird place and no one's lives are exactly equal.

[992] And to not take that into consideration, I think, is a huge failure of a lot of philosophy.

[993] And I also recognize the enormous logistical issue with trying to rule society that way.

[994] of course i mean how what the fuck does a court case look like how do you make rules that take those things into account you're making one rule when you pass a law that rule applies equally to you and me and also to a unhoused person who's living under a bridge on vine yes and that is a really dicey thing to do and so when it comes to the law and justice and philosophy all these things to me the biggest deficit that we have when we apply these things is understanding context i think it's i think it's the i think it's the number one thing that should improve.

[995] That was an awesome answer.

[996] Do you like that?

[997] You're horny, right?

[998] Yeah, fuck.

[999] Both the women in my life are in the world.

[1000] But you know what's even more fucked up is like, it's not even that the person who has to feed their family has the same repercussion as us, which is already a problem, is that we don't even have a repercussion.

[1001] Right.

[1002] Nothing bad will happen to me if I steal a love for a problem.

[1003] Yeah, so it's even so skewed the opposite way.

[1004] Yeah, I mean, the justice system is unique.

[1005] bad in this country for exactly that reason, which is not only that context has been largely removed, but actually for various reasons, institutional racism, a bunch of other stuff, the laws are actually more punitive for the people in the lower degree of latitude and understanding.

[1006] Yes.

[1007] And that's where it really gets rough and why Biden took it on the chin for supporting the laws that he supported when he was in the Senate in the 90s.

[1008] It's because those laws did more to rip communities open and destroy them than almost any other.

[1009] Yeah, you've got like a double -digit percentage of black males who grew up with a father in prison.

[1010] Right.

[1011] There are people who are still in jail with 30 -year sentences for selling weed.

[1012] Weed is legal.

[1013] When I drove over here, I passed 110 billboards.

[1014] Sure, sure, sure.

[1015] He said, will come to my house.

[1016] In between the shows that are on the air from your bribles.

[1017] That was a great.

[1018] answer.

[1019] This is one I don't believe in.

[1020] Okay.

[1021] But I'm going to make the case anyways, because I bet someone else might think this.

[1022] Evolution and our natural world that you may think we have transcended does not reward favor or propagate morality.

[1023] It has but one singular truth.

[1024] The animals and trees and people on this planet are survivors.

[1025] We are the product of the selfish genes that provide to be more fit through natural selection or sexual selection, period.

[1026] That is the only true reality we know.

[1027] You can make an argument that group cooperation has been evolutionary beneficial for many species, us included, but within those cooperative groups, individual genes still end up being more or less successful, and morality is not within that equation.

[1028] so I could see someone having to acknowledge that this pursuit is anti -evolutionary and it's a fairy tale because we wouldn't be here if this is how we lived okay yeah I would say a couple things to that first thing is there are I believe biological and evolutionary arguments or understandings of altruism you are a cave man and you kill a tiger and you eat all the meat, great.

[1029] Congratulations.

[1030] You're a caveman, you kill a tiger, you eat some of the meat, and you look over at the caveman next to you, and you say, hey, buddy, share my meat.

[1031] And then, hey, remember this.

[1032] If I'm hungry tomorrow and you kill a tiger, maybe you'll share some with me, right?

[1033] You can imagine evolutionary.

[1034] Reciprocity, yes.

[1035] And then the very famous, I'll just add, the very famous example of it is many, many different primates have calls for different predators.

[1036] And when you make that call, what you're doing is exposing yourself to that predator.

[1037] Right.

[1038] Potentially to save others from this, from an evil fate.

[1039] Yeah.

[1040] That's right.

[1041] So there are these examples, but within even that group, that is true.

[1042] And also what is true is those genes might not get passed on.

[1043] So the free riders in that group and the dominant male who got to fuck all the females genes, but you know, like there is only one reality on this planet as we know it.

[1044] And it is that.

[1045] So I would only argue that we should separate and examine individually the truth of the way that alpha people operate and the way that dominant genes are passed down and stuff from the fact that the way that we have gotten where we are, the reason we're not still in small tribes of 110 or so hunchbacked primates in caves using fire to cook our food.

[1046] is because we have learned over time that there is a next level benefit to things like cooperation, society, sharing resources, being people who care about other people or creatures that care about other creatures.

[1047] So right now, I would say in our evolution, we are at this crossroads, which has been going on for God knows how long and we'll continue to go on for God knows how long, where we are fighting.

[1048] Those two things are fighting.

[1049] Yeah.

[1050] We're like on the verge of transcending.

[1051] but we're not there.

[1052] But we're not there.

[1053] So we are still guided by alpha superiority, hierarchy, all that stuff we were talking about at the beginning.

[1054] But we have also formed cooperative enterprises for mutual benefit.

[1055] John Rawls talks a lot about this.

[1056] Like this is what a society is.

[1057] A bunch of people get together and they say, we will mutually benefit if we can figure out a way to make this work.

[1058] It's a mutual society for mutual benefit.

[1059] And that the battle that we're fighting constantly is all of our progress, really, in terms of cooperative society, comes from things like feelings of empathy, mutual admiration, all that sort of stuff.

[1060] A lot of the progress we make as an economy or as a superpower comes from Elon Musk going, like, I've got a better idea for a car and I'm going to make a billion -dollar company, a trillion -dollar company, right?

[1061] So those two things are mutually exclusive.

[1062] as you can tell by Elon Musk getting sick of paying taxes in California and moving to Texas because he's like, I'm a genius, I don't want to pay this money.

[1063] He's like a deity to a lot of people.

[1064] I'm impressed by this thing he built, but I don't see him as a deity, whatever.

[1065] You can trick him into shit because he did just pay the biggest tax bill that's ever been paid in the history of planet Earth as a fuck you.

[1066] Yeah, as he put it up on a Twitter poll.

[1067] Yes, it's like whoever started this thing did trick him.

[1068] Well, to be fair.

[1069] to be fair.

[1070] And who knows what's really going on.

[1071] If you're Elon Musk and you own 38 % of Tesla and Tesla's stock has been going up forever and ever and ever, it's prudent of you to sell some of that stock and diversify your portfolio.

[1072] And I a little bit think this whole thing was just him trolling people because he publicly left California, moved to Texas where there's no state tax.

[1073] And I a little bit think he was always going to sell this Tesla stock.

[1074] And he was always going to have to pay that capital gains tax or whatever.

[1075] And he just wanted to kind of like make a big show because he's a showman he is well what i love is he's so human oh i mean you want to talk about flaws of humanity yeah all the seven deadly sins all everything is found in that one guy he is fascinating he is i would love to talk to me so i guess what i would say to this and i've sort of already said up i'll reiterate is like yes there's no question that the dominant thing that has caused us to get where we are throughout history from time immemorial is natural selection and all that sort of stuff.

[1076] And I also think that the best chance we have to progress as a society is by curbing that stuff and hemming it in and saying like, look, it's not that this doesn't exist.

[1077] And by the way, so Rawls' thing, Rawls' thing is great.

[1078] Can I just talk about this for one thing?

[1079] Please.

[1080] Yeah.

[1081] You can talk about it all night.

[1082] Okay.

[1083] Rawls created what he called the veil of ignorance.

[1084] So here's what he says.

[1085] We're forming society, the three of us in this room.

[1086] We're going to form a new society.

[1087] Well, let's let Rob in, too.

[1088] Sure, Rob, you're up.

[1089] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, four of us.

[1090] So us and our friends, let's say there's 100 people, we're going to form a society and we know we'll have a limited number of resources.

[1091] We have a limited amount of food, money, whatever.

[1092] So we're going to make rules for how our society divvies up the limited resources we have, but we're going to do it before we know what jobs we're all going to have, before we know what role we will play in that society.

[1093] So we sit around and we say, okay, Formula One Drivers, what a fascinating career, such danger in their jobs.

[1094] One of 20 human beings on planet Earth.

[1095] Literally.

[1096] There's not a more finite group of people.

[1097] Right.

[1098] And so they have a rare skill that is highly valuable.

[1099] People fly in from all over to see them race.

[1100] They go to Austin and they go to Berlin and they go to England because they love this thing so much.

[1101] We should make sure in our society that the people who have that job have a high ceiling for how much money they can make, right?

[1102] Because it's a rare skill highly valued.

[1103] And we either live in a market or we don't.

[1104] Right.

[1105] And so we're going to say, in theory, if one of us becomes a Formula One driver, there's value there.

[1106] However, we also need teachers.

[1107] We need a lot of teachers.

[1108] We're going to have a lot of kids.

[1109] That's going to be a much more common job than Formula One driver.

[1110] So while we're dividing up the pie of what we have and saying like, whoa, a big slice of that pie should go to Formula One drivers, we also need a lot of teachers.

[1111] And they play a really crucial role in our society.

[1112] So we should make sure that the floor for teachers isn't so low that all the teachers are miserable and living below the poverty line just so this Formula One driver can make a billion dollars.

[1113] Or if you're a selfish piece of shit like me, too, you can't de -incentivize this job to a level that no one's going to fucking pursue it.

[1114] Right.

[1115] And so what we say is let's make sure not only that the teachers are paid some amount of money that values them, even though their skills aren't as greater.

[1116] Also, we should make sure when our government spends tax money, that schools have enough money to buy books and rugs and chairs and projectors and stuff.

[1117] He doesn't say, hey, we're all equal.

[1118] Everybody's the same.

[1119] And we're going to treat everybody the same because it's nonsense because of evolution and natural selection.

[1120] So what he says is we figure this out and then we walk through like a basically a magic portal and we're ascribed a set of attributes, genes and hand -eye coordination and intellectual ability.

[1121] and also flaws, dyslexia, or a clubbed foot or whatever.

[1122] And you don't know what you're going to get.

[1123] And so you make the rules.

[1124] Assuming you could be the best or worst.

[1125] So you think to yourself, man, it would be awesome if I were a Formula One driver, but it's actually more likely that I end up a teacher.

[1126] And so let's make sure before we know who we're going to be in a society that we take care of everybody to a certain degree.

[1127] And it's really cool.

[1128] I like that a lot.

[1129] So that, to me, is what this natural selection or genetic thing is sort of getting at, right?

[1130] It's like, yes, this is real.

[1131] Certain people, look, Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt.

[1132] There aren't very many Brad Pitt in the world.

[1133] Can you imagine?

[1134] We wouldn't no one get anything done if everyone could have their own Brad Pitt, man. No one go to fucking work, I'll tell you that.

[1135] So when Brad Pitt gets paid a ridiculous amount of money, everyone kind of goes, I get it.

[1136] Look at that guy.

[1137] I mean, it's literally the most handsports on a planet earth.

[1138] Watch Fight Club, look at his abs and tell me he doesn't deserve that money.

[1139] I think he was underpaid.

[1140] We're also saying that when we reward the rare, unique, individual people who hit that genetic lottery and are great at acting and are smart and interesting, hard work or whatever, that we haven't left everyone else behind while we value that person.

[1141] Yeah.

[1142] It's a really interesting theory, and it was an answer to essentially to utilitarianism, which is kind of trying to treat everyone the same and everyone's happiness the same.

[1143] And as Rawls puts it, it doesn't take seriously the distinction between people.

[1144] Yes.

[1145] So what you're bringing up here is there is a distinction between people.

[1146] We have to acknowledge that.

[1147] Right.

[1148] It's just reality.

[1149] It's just reality.

[1150] It's where we live.

[1151] You walk out your door and you see it.

[1152] So when we design our society and we decide how to treat people, let's make sure that while we're allowing for and even celebrating the distinction between people and among people, that we're not saying some of these people we're just going to leave them behind and not care of them.

[1153] Right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right.

[1154] Right, because I might be one of those people.

[1155] Yes, you might walk through that door and be a subsistence farmer in Guatemala.

[1156] And then if you made that rule where you were like, let's roll the dice and hope I'm a Formula One driver.

[1157] You're going to be really sad that you made that rule.

[1158] It also takes into account luck what we were talking about.

[1159] It's luck the traits we've been given and the family you were born into and all of it.

[1160] And Dwayne Wade sitting in the seat you were sitting in three weeks ago I'm looking at this guy and I'm like this human is much more valuable than me I mean as a as a fucking human being I mean the beauty the physical prowess the intelligence I'm just looking at him like yes this human is more valuable than me by like if an alien was looking at us yes they're like oh yeah that guy's way more valuable he walked through the magic portal came out the other side Dwayne Wade and was like all right let's do this let's have some fun that's great and then you already said they only other point I wanted to say, and I just wanted to reiterate that.

[1161] I think this is what in the past has angered people about Gwyneth Paltrow, and I'm a great defender of Gwyneth Paltrow.

[1162] I really like her, and I think she is in pursuit of being a good person and being a healthy person.

[1163] Sure.

[1164] And I think she sometimes leaves out the disclaimer, I have the bandwidth to do this.

[1165] Sure.

[1166] Right.

[1167] And so I think a book like this could potentially be off -putting to people who would probably say, you cannot ask me to worry about the fact that in 2050, it's going to be 1 .6 degrees warmer here.

[1168] I literally can't heat my fucking house.

[1169] Right.

[1170] And I have children.

[1171] And so, but you already address this.

[1172] But I just want to acknowledge, like, it is a huge luxury and it's a bandwidth thing.

[1173] And it's a being safe first.

[1174] I mean, it's the fucking airplane.

[1175] Put your mask on them.

[1176] put a mask on someone else.

[1177] Even Bill Gates says that at the beginning of his book, which is to get to zero emissions.

[1178] He's like, the people who have the ability are much more responsible than the people who aren't.

[1179] Like, no one's saying we can all do this equally.

[1180] So I have two things to say about this.

[1181] Okay.

[1182] My favorite theory, which we talked about on the good place a lot, it's called contractualism.

[1183] Okay.

[1184] Here's what contractualism says.

[1185] This guy named T .M. Scanlan.

[1186] He was a contemporary of Rawls's at Harvard.

[1187] I was there when he was there, never took his classes.

[1188] I'm furious about it.

[1189] So here's what it says.

[1190] Forget about us forming society, the four of us.

[1191] Now we are fighting.

[1192] We're at war.

[1193] Rob and I are on one side.

[1194] You two are on another side.

[1195] You guys are fucked, by the way.

[1196] We are fighting.

[1197] It's a trench battle.

[1198] Our trenches are 50 yards apart.

[1199] We've been firing our guns at each other and launching mortar shells and throwing grenades for three years.

[1200] It's freezing cold.

[1201] We have no food.

[1202] We're out of fuel.

[1203] We're about to die.

[1204] We call a truce.

[1205] We get together.

[1206] We say, we have to figure this out.

[1207] We've got to figure something out.

[1208] we have to figure out a way to live together or we're all going to die here's how we do it we sit around a table we start pitching rules for our society everyone at the table gets a veto if anyone vetoes the rule it's not a rule so we start with we should all not murder each other anyone veto that rule no why would anyone veto that rule of course we shouldn't murder each other none of us should break into the other's house at night and steal all the stuff in their house would anyone veto that rule no and we just brick by brick We just build up brick by brick.

[1209] What can we agree to?

[1210] His thing is, if everyone is being reasonable, if everyone is a reasonable person, which we probably will be because we just all almost died in a trench, we will find the minimum that we need to survive.

[1211] So he basically is setting up, not like let's make a perfect utopia.

[1212] Let's just find what's the minimum that we can just agree to so that I leave you alone and you leave me alone.

[1213] And when we need to, we help each other in certain ways.

[1214] I have to make minimum sacrifices.

[1215] Yes.

[1216] You are giving up the least amount that you are willing to give up, and I am giving up the least amount that I'm willing to give up, and that's where we meet, right?

[1217] Yeah.

[1218] So on the book, I asked this question, should you return the shopping cart to the rack after you go grocery shopping?

[1219] I don't have the answer to this.

[1220] I've been in a three -year debate about this.

[1221] So sometimes there are employees walking around the parking lot, and you're like, well, that guy, that seems like that person's job, and sometimes there aren't, and then you're like, what do I do now, right?

[1222] the rules are very unclear here's why I end up arguing essentially let's say you go grocery shopping you unload your groceries and it's really hot you're miserable and it's a crummy day and you think like I'm just going to leave this thing here and disappear sure it'll leave it in the in the parking spot and then I'll just leave and like is the world going to come crumbling down no of course it isn't but then you imagine contractualism right just think about contractualism for one second we're all sitting around the table this topic comes up after after months and months of more.

[1223] You're really down to the nitty -go.

[1224] So you say, well, what would a contractualist say?

[1225] And it's like, okay, well, if the rule we're proposing is something like, after we go grocery shopping, we should return the cart to the front of the store so that it's convenient for other people.

[1226] Or fucking mentally, man, they put like four other turnstals or whatever, corrals in the parking lot.

[1227] That's right, yeah.

[1228] You'd never have to walk more than 20 feet.

[1229] And I think you would say, okay, well, I guess we do return it unless the grocery store has employees who are walking around, whose job it seems to be to collect them in which case it seems okay to leave it there.

[1230] We would probably all agree to that.

[1231] That seems pretty reasonable, right?

[1232] But then you think if you're me, if you're me, Mike Shore, you think my grandfather always told me to put stuff back where I found it right?

[1233] And I also think I'm really lucky that I have the money to go to Trader Joe's and spend $216 on a bunch of weird cheese.

[1234] And like weird tortilla chips and stuff without it affecting my life in any way.

[1235] That puts me in the top 10th of a percent of humans on earth who can afford to do this.

[1236] And then I think the job of collecting these carts is a crappy job.

[1237] Like it's people are outside, they're on their feet, their shifts are probably eight hours long, they're probably not paid very much.

[1238] If I return my car, I'm making that employee's job one percent easier.

[1239] And then you think, if I return the cart now, someone's driving in behind me and they have to go shopping and they might be in a hurry and it will be more convenient for them to find a car right at the front of the store instead of walking through the parking lot.

[1240] Or there's no fucking space is open because every asshole left the cart.

[1241] Or you try to pull in and there's a cart there or you try to pull in and the cart that's still wobbling for me leaving it there dings their car and they have to spend $836.

[1242] Then you've got to write a goddamn TV show again about it?

[1243] So basically, the amount of difficulty to my life is minuscule to just run it back over.

[1244] There's 20 yards away.

[1245] Run it back over, put it away.

[1246] And the amount of potential happiness that it could add to the world is pretty substantial in a weird way.

[1247] And then you think the final thing is I have the luxury of even asking this question.

[1248] I have a car that has gas or electricity in it.

[1249] I bought these groceries without thinking twice about it.

[1250] There are so many people for whom that is not the case.

[1251] So if I even have the luxury to mull this over, and by the way, I'm thinking about philosophy that I studied when I was at Harvard.

[1252] Like the amount of stuff that's gone right for me in this moment is self -evident.

[1253] Yeah.

[1254] So I should probably run the cart back over, regardless of whether there's an employee walking around in the parking lot.

[1255] Now, the key and the reason I bring this up is, for another person in a different set of circumstances, that is not the case.

[1256] That person is an ER nurse who's been dealing with COVID patients, 18 hours a day, six days a week for two years and is miserable and is underpaid and exhausted and has kids at home and is run to the grocery store in the six hours that he has off from his shift as a nurse to just barely get home and feed his kids and go to sleep and wake up and do the same thing tomorrow.

[1257] See, that was textbook Mike Sherry.

[1258] I know he made it a heat.

[1259] Yeah, fuck him.

[1260] That's the exact fucking thing.

[1261] Fuck you.

[1262] That's exactly what Kristen would be changing her pants over.

[1263] Fuck you.

[1264] Oh, the male nurse.

[1265] The point is, Dax, that that person doesn't get to do whatever he wants.

[1266] Right.

[1267] He doesn't get to run wild and steal the groceries and steal the car and the key or car for no reason.

[1268] He has to fall back to that contractualist rule that we all agreed to.

[1269] And if he follows that rule, that minimum rule that we all agree to, that is fine because the circumstances of his life and his surroundings are so much harder than mine.

[1270] And this is a very long -winded way of saying we all have to agree to certain things just to keep this society chugging along.

[1271] And then what you should do scales up depending on how lucky you are, how fortunate you are, and how much extra time you have to even care about this.

[1272] And so this is the second thing I was going to say, did you see Don't Look Up?

[1273] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1274] I really love Don't Look Up.

[1275] I'm not sure it's controversial.

[1276] Some people didn't like it, but I really loved it.

[1277] I thought there was one thing that I would have added to it.

[1278] and it's exactly what you brought up.

[1279] What I would have added to it is a moment where either Leonardo DiCaprio or Jennifer Lawrence was yelling and screaming.

[1280] There's a meteor coming towards Earth.

[1281] It's going to hit us in seven months.

[1282] And I would have had one person say, what do you want me to do about it?

[1283] I can't do anything about that.

[1284] I have to get my kids to school and I can't afford a babysitter.

[1285] They're going to be hungry whether the thing's hit and...

[1286] Right.

[1287] And so it's not that I don't believe you.

[1288] it's that I don't have the bandwidth to care because I think that with something like global warming when you're talking about oh 2 .1 degrees in 50 years or whatever I don't think that a lot of people straight up don't care we have seen too many fire tornadoes and hurricanes almost everyone's been affected yeah yes and I don't think that a lot of people don't care I just think they don't have the bandwidth to factor that into their daily decision and they don't have the resources and they don't have the latitude to make different financial decisions and whatnot.

[1289] So I love your explanation of how you work through this shopping cart thing.

[1290] And I want to pitch my version of it.

[1291] Because what I really love is when we talk to Adam Grant, they'll say, people are born this way.

[1292] There's sections of people.

[1293] There's satisfizers.

[1294] There's maximizers.

[1295] Like, people have different dispositions, okay?

[1296] And so that one that you just described makes total logical sense to me. And I think it's rad that that's how you get there.

[1297] I am very selfish.

[1298] Okay.

[1299] But this is potentially not a problem And I'm talking to everyone else Who would be listening who is like me Sure I don't necessarily really care If the guys bringing five cards or six cards I don't care Like fuck I had shitty jobs I was a fucking roofer and a car washer But I'm writing a story of my life And the thing I want most in this story Is self -esteem I want to like me I want to like the person The lead character right And it's as simple as this When I leave the cart I drive away feeling one way.

[1300] And when I walk it back, which was inconvenient and I didn't want to do it, I'm fucking proud of myself.

[1301] And I gave myself some esteem.

[1302] And I'm in search of esteem.

[1303] Right.

[1304] So I do it for me. I want to be a person I like in the story.

[1305] And very simply, if I drop the minuscule piece of trash on the ground, I fucking stop.

[1306] I got a goddamn work through it.

[1307] I mean, it's literally, it might take me five minutes.

[1308] And then I go back and I go, because I know tonight, I'll remember I didn't pick it up.

[1309] And I have the type of conscience where I will not like myself as much.

[1310] So you can also just go about it selfishly and go, like, what character do you love in movies?

[1311] Which one do you want to be?

[1312] Which one will make you feel more like the hero?

[1313] Yeah.

[1314] And by the way, that is not a bad reason to behave ethically.

[1315] It's a perfectly fine reason.

[1316] Like, yeah, I don't even think of it as selfish.

[1317] What you're saying is, I like myself better.

[1318] I feel better about myself when I do the tiny right thing instead of the tiny wrong thing.

[1319] Yes.

[1320] It's more fun to feel good about yourself instead of like sitting at home thinking like, I'm such a lazy asshole.

[1321] Why don't we just pick that thing up?

[1322] Like, I legit haven't littered in like seven years.

[1323] And it feels great.

[1324] Thank you.

[1325] Thank you.

[1326] Yeah, yeah, good doctor.

[1327] It feels great.

[1328] I didn't think that was in me. When I was a kid, I tell this all the time.

[1329] It's like, I don't think young people understand when we grew up.

[1330] My family, once a year we'd drive to Toronto.

[1331] And so the tradition was you would cross the Ambassador Bridge and you'd go directly to McDonald's because they had Canadian bacon.

[1332] This wasn't available in the States.

[1333] So my mom and the three of us would get a big old meal of McDonald's.

[1334] McDonald's, right?

[1335] The bag was huge back then.

[1336] Everything was wrapped in tons of styrofoam, right?

[1337] Yeah.

[1338] And we would chow down, and it was great.

[1339] And then right around London, Ontario.

[1340] We had finished that meal, we'd put it all in the back, we'd roll the window down and just shove the whole fucking thing.

[1341] And I'm telling you, it never crossed anyone's mind that there was anything wrong with it.

[1342] That's what you did.

[1343] It's one of my favorite moments in Anchorman.

[1344] Oh, it's the best moment.

[1345] They're walking along, eating the burritos and stuff, and they just throw it in the crowd.

[1346] It's like, it's a pristine, like San Diego.

[1347] go on and they just throw, I'm with you.

[1348] It's a learning curve, man. Yeah, there were signs that said no littering, and it was like, it was an option.

[1349] It was like, well, we could just litter.

[1350] Well, what they, a sign says don't.

[1351] But now, like.

[1352] I guess just by the sign?

[1353] Yeah, like one little, one little area.

[1354] There's me a turtle over there.

[1355] I don't know why I feel the need to add this, but I will also say, even you, Mike, who's privileged and should put the cart back, if you are on the way to the hospital and have to run in and have to do you also can leave the car 100 % yeah yeah like it's all malleable context context context like if i'm running to the store really quickly and i need to get home because my daughter is is going to get dropped off and if there's no one there she'll be whatever yes of course it comes back to the idea of failure right when you care about this stuff and really the book is just an argument that you should start caring it's not you have to be perfect it's not you have to nail it it's just just just start caring but as soon as you do you are going to realize that you're going to realize is how often you fail and how often you blow it.

[1356] And sometimes it's for a perfectly legitimate reason.

[1357] Sometimes you are going to not return the cart, even though there's no employee walking around collecting them, because you just can't in that moment.

[1358] And that's okay.

[1359] It doesn't undo your project of trying to be a good person on earth when you fail.

[1360] The way I write about it in the book is get the receipt for that transaction and pin it up on your wall in your cubicle.

[1361] And just a reminder, like, oh, I remember that.

[1362] I blew that.

[1363] I'll, next time I'll try to do better.

[1364] That's all that's really all that can be asked of anyone.

[1365] Well, that's a big A -A saying is we claim progress, not perfection.

[1366] Yeah.

[1367] And it's key.

[1368] I always think about it at the airport when putting the bin, when the bin goes through with your purse and then they're just stacking up.

[1369] And I'm always like, who are all these assholes not putting the bin back in the little holder?

[1370] But then I'm like, yeah, maybe they're late for their flight.

[1371] I'm like, I'm flying to Hawaii and first class.

[1372] Like, yeah, I should be putting the bin in and I can also maybe put some other people's bins in because who knows what their situation.

[1373] No, look, human beings are very good at giving you reasons not to like them.

[1374] They just really are.

[1375] Like, we are so good at this, like in public, in the places where we meet in movie theaters and in restaurants and in public spaces, almost always a person will do something that makes you not like them even though you don't know them.

[1376] And it feels wrong to ask yourself or anyone, you know to look beyond their behavior and try to find a reason to think well of them instead of ill of them.

[1377] And it is a daily struggle.

[1378] I struggle with it constantly.

[1379] There are people who drive me to the brink of insanity on a daily basis in tiny ways, in big ways.

[1380] I'll tell you one more story here.

[1381] Yeah.

[1382] I was fucking your wife just after I think it was season three.

[1383] I'm going to tell you two stories.

[1384] I'm going to tell you two stories because I'm sick of this.

[1385] Let me just first of all tell you a An unrelated story.

[1386] The unrelated story is, I met you at Will Arnett's house in 2004 playing poker.

[1387] It was Will and Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes and you.

[1388] The reason I'm even bringing this up is because I was new to L .A. I had just come off of S &L.

[1389] I moved out here to work on the office.

[1390] And I knew Will through Amy.

[1391] And he said, hey, a bunch of guys play poker at my house.

[1392] Didn't tell me who it was.

[1393] A bunch of people play poker at my house.

[1394] If you want to play poker, I said I'd love to.

[1395] I drove to Santa Monica or Venice.

[1396] Venice, yeah.

[1397] And I walk in and it's, it's very famous people.

[1398] It's you and Shauna is and Jason Bateman and Will.

[1399] And I think Bradley Cooper, like, lived next door at the time.

[1400] So on the way in, he like let me in.

[1401] And I was like, that was Bradley Cooper.

[1402] Like, so I've never been more nervous and intimidated in my life than that night.

[1403] I swear to God.

[1404] Even after 60 and a half years at S &L, because S &L is, you're meeting a new famous person every week.

[1405] But it becomes walking.

[1406] But you have an identity there.

[1407] Right.

[1408] This is my home.

[1409] turf, right.

[1410] Suddenly, I'm in a private arena with five people, only one of whom I know is a friend of mine, but all of whom I know from entertainment.

[1411] And the five of you were the funniest, most intimidating people in your natural habitat that I have ever seen in my life.

[1412] I was terrified.

[1413] I barely spoke.

[1414] I didn't, I barely said a word.

[1415] I at one point tried to like make a bet and then got too scared and just folded.

[1416] Like I, it was, so when you talk about, being jealous of me, let me return the favor, my friend, and say that I remember, I still remember whole bits and riffs that you guys did that night that were so funny.

[1417] Bateman and Arnett are all over each other and just like, they give each other about an inch of space before they're attacking like rabid dogs.

[1418] And so I have similar feelings about you.

[1419] I really do.

[1420] You represent something for me that was very intimidating in my life.

[1421] Thank you.

[1422] Was that the night that I did donuts at the end of the street?

[1423] It is indeed, yes.

[1424] Yeah, that's one of my moves to just really try to rub it all in in a very tight intersection.

[1425] You also walked in like in a big leather jacket, I remember.

[1426] And I was like, Jesus Christ, this guy.

[1427] Six -three.

[1428] His motorcycle jacket?

[1429] Yeah, it was rough, for me, personal.

[1430] All right.

[1431] So that's the, now I'm clearing the deck.

[1432] I like that story.

[1433] I was new to that circle.

[1434] Will and I were really good friends, but Bateman and I weren't.

[1435] Yeah.

[1436] And Bateman is very famous, you know, since I was a kid.

[1437] And famous since we were children.

[1438] That's right, silver fucking spoons.

[1439] And so yeah, I'm telling.

[1440] That was the original title, wasn't it?

[1441] Silver fucking spoons, yes.

[1442] But yeah, I tap dancing my ass off hoping Jason Jason Bateman likes me. Yeah.

[1443] That's so funny, because I never would have guessed that that's true.

[1444] Oh, wow.

[1445] You guys seemed so at ease and so in your element and so, like, relaxed and funny.

[1446] And I felt like my heart was racing.

[1447] And I was desperately trying to keep up.

[1448] It's hard to believe, yeah.

[1449] I want to take us out with a blurb that was written for your book.

[1450] Great.

[1451] Also, the audiobook version of your book has a lot of awesome people.

[1452] Including your wife.

[1453] Yeah, you should mention that.

[1454] We both love Amy Poehler.

[1455] I'm fucking loving Amy Poehler.

[1456] This is a blurb for your book.

[1457] Read how to be perfect and laugh while you learn how to be a better person.

[1458] And imagine what a great passive aggressive gift this book would make.

[1459] Hand it to someone and say, I saw this and thought of you.

[1460] Then they say, oh, did you read this?

[1461] and you smile and say, I don't need to.

[1462] It's so great.

[1463] The most Amy Polar thing.

[1464] So great.

[1465] It's just so, it's so one.

[1466] It made me so happy.

[1467] I know.

[1468] They're all good.

[1469] They're all so good.

[1470] But I read that one.

[1471] I was like, oh, fuck.

[1472] Amy sent me like five potential quotes, and I was like, it's got to be.

[1473] It's just the most polar thing ever.

[1474] It's so wonderful.

[1475] Well, Mike, I fucking adore you, man. I could talk to you for 26 hours straight.

[1476] Yeah, you got to come back more often.

[1477] Yeah.

[1478] Anytime.

[1479] Listen, I love this podcast.

[1480] when my wife and I drive, this is our podcast of choice.

[1481] This is the one we listen to.

[1482] That makes me so happy.

[1483] And now...

[1484] Well, wait, I said this before we recorded, but I want to say it out loud on here.

[1485] And this is part of the reason everyone's in love with you is the first time we took a group picture that included me was the first episode with Mike and it was his idea.

[1486] And he said, no, come in here.

[1487] And then we started taking pictures with me and it's just like, it's just to me encapsulates you so perfectly, inclusive.

[1488] And I'm going to add on to that.

[1489] and you're not going to like this, but I told my thing about being jealous of him.

[1490] That was the first time you left and Monica was in a pretty bad mood.

[1491] And I said, I could feel something was going on.

[1492] And she just said, I don't think I talked once in the whole thing.

[1493] And, you know, I really want Mike to like me. I mean, it was the first time that we had had a guess that she cared so much about.

[1494] Approval.

[1495] Yeah, that it was a breakthrough again.

[1496] It was like, I have to get out of my own way a bit.

[1497] I want your approval too.

[1498] And so it's a competition, right?

[1499] And so that became a really kind of integral deviation.

[1500] Yeah, in our show.

[1501] And it's made it infinitely better.

[1502] That's so sweet.

[1503] I want both of your approvals.

[1504] Oh, you got it.

[1505] That's great.

[1506] You have it.

[1507] Also, by the way, in case you're wondering how I feel about you, Didn't you literally just appear on Rutherford Falls for the like third, second or third time?

[1508] I did.

[1509] It was so fun.

[1510] She had a really good time that time.

[1511] Yeah.

[1512] I'm glad.

[1513] All right.

[1514] I love all you guys.

[1515] Everybody should read your book.

[1516] Once again, it is humorously titled, How to Be Perfect, the Correct Answer to Every Moral Question.

[1517] And it is fucking funny, man. Above all things, it is hilarious.

[1518] Even if you hate the topic, you're still going to love the book.

[1519] All right.

[1520] Be well.

[1521] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Badman.

[1522] Michael Scher, what a wonderfully fun debate.

[1523] And it wasn't even a debate.

[1524] A conversation.

[1525] Yeah.

[1526] So impressive.

[1527] He's so great.

[1528] And I feel like you got to let go of your stuff with him.

[1529] Yeah.

[1530] Yeah.

[1531] How amazing that he said as a joke, your wife's in love with me. That was one of the most epic, felt like it was set up.

[1532] Yeah.

[1533] Like I nudged him before and said, Say this.

[1534] Yeah.

[1535] Boy, that was incredible.

[1536] What a moment.

[1537] He's one of the people I just love listening to talk.

[1538] The way he construct sentences real time, the way, you know, he doesn't really ever talk about something he doesn't know about.

[1539] Yeah.

[1540] Ding, ding, ding, like me. And he is just so pleasant to listen to talk.

[1541] You feel safe when he's talking.

[1542] Yes.

[1543] Couple fackies.

[1544] We're on a little bit of a time crunch.

[1545] Did John Travolta fly the big airbus when it first came out?

[1546] I'm seeing, does John Travolta own a 747?

[1547] Nobody's rated to fly a 747 on his pilot's license through Qantas.

[1548] He also owns a Boeing 707, which isn't much different.

[1549] Mm -hmm.

[1550] What was the name of it?

[1551] The Airbus.

[1552] Airbus.

[1553] Did John Travolta fly the Airbus 380, question mark?

[1554] The first non -test pilot to fly the Airbus A30.

[1555] There you go.

[1556] First non -test pilot.

[1557] Yeah, I think Qantas was the first to get one.

[1558] one of those.

[1559] And he has this relationship with Qantas.

[1560] And yeah, I think he was the first.

[1561] There you go.

[1562] What is that?

[1563] The biggest plane on the planet, I think, or passenger plane.

[1564] It's enormous.

[1565] Oh, wow.

[1566] There's a picture.

[1567] Yeah, like the windows look like a joke, the front windshield.

[1568] The Qantas A380 Dallas arrival introduced by John Travolta.

[1569] This was in 2014.

[1570] Yeah, here we go.

[1571] Has accomplished many things in his life, but it's interesting to know that he was also the first non -test pilot to fly the Airbus A380, according to business jet traveler.

[1572] The publication asked him how this came about, and Travolta said that Kwanis chairman of the board asked him, if I could finagle a test flight for you, would you want to do it?

[1573] I said, are you kidding?

[1574] She wasn't.

[1575] With an exclamation point.

[1576] Wow.

[1577] Yeah.

[1578] You know he lives in this, he lives in like central Florida, I believe, in an airport neighborhood.

[1579] Everyone in Such a thing?

[1580] Everyone in the neighborhood is a pilot and everyone has a hangar at their house.

[1581] And then there's a community air strip.

[1582] And I think they complained a bit that he was flying way too big of airplanes in and out of there.

[1583] Of course he is.

[1584] I think as he was probably landing, he's like, I got chills the most of flying.

[1585] Oh, you know, I do not like grace.

[1586] Yeah.

[1587] I do not.

[1588] Yeah.

[1589] It's not for you.

[1590] No. It's pretty dated, too.

[1591] Yeah, I bet.

[1592] Did she put up a fight?

[1593] Oopsies.

[1594] That's not great.

[1595] I never liked it.

[1596] My brother, when he was little, loved the soundtrack.

[1597] Grease lightning.

[1598] Oh, the soundtrack.

[1599] So much.

[1600] And we did one road trip.

[1601] I don't remember where maybe Asheville, we're going somewhere, and we had to listen to this one song because we didn't have, like, headphones at the time.

[1602] So it just had CD player in the car on repeat.

[1603] It wasn't Greece Lightning.

[1604] It was like, um.

[1605] That's what got me through Greece as a kid is there's at least a car chase scene, car race.

[1606] Oh, he'd never seen the movie.

[1607] Oh, just love the...

[1608] It was just a soundtrack and it really was just this one song.

[1609] That's me in singles.

[1610] Favorite soundtrack of all time, a 90s movie.

[1611] I think Ben Stiller might have directed it or something.

[1612] Never saw the movie.

[1613] Favorite soundtrack to ever exist.

[1614] Wow, there you go.

[1615] Yeah, it was like a great crash course in the early grunge bands of Seattle.

[1616] Oh, neat.

[1617] It's tremendous.

[1618] Cameron Crow.

[1619] Cameron Crow.

[1620] There we go.

[1621] Oh, Neil.

[1622] Ding, ding, ding, ding.

[1623] Neil.

[1624] So I dropped something off at Parry's house yesterday.

[1625] Yeah.

[1626] And his son, Neil, was there to help.

[1627] Oh, he has a son named Neil?

[1628] Yeah, and I said to Neil and Pari, every Indian boy, huh, named Neil?

[1629] And Neil said, yep, I got five cousins named Neil.

[1630] Yeah.

[1631] I love it.

[1632] It's because it's easy to pronounce.

[1633] It's American and it's Indian.

[1634] And so people do want to want to.

[1635] But in Germany, his name would be...

[1636] Nassel.

[1637] Elia.

[1638] So that's out of order.

[1639] That was from the last fact check, right?

[1640] Yeah, but that's fine.

[1641] No, I don't know.

[1642] But this will come up first.

[1643] People are like, what is he referencing?

[1644] Then you'll find out the next fact check.

[1645] Okay.

[1646] I'm trying to find.

[1647] Okay.

[1648] What did you find?

[1649] I'm trying to find what's it called the grocery cart place.

[1650] You called it a corral, and that seems right.

[1651] Oh, great.

[1652] But it looks like you can buy one.

[1653] Sure.

[1654] I kind of want to.

[1655] I would make one.

[1656] One only needs a pipe.

[1657] They're very simple in design.

[1658] They're incredibly simple.

[1659] I can't make that.

[1660] If I got you a pipe bender, you could.

[1661] It's a 90 -degree angle that you've run it through that.

[1662] I'm not very good at stuff like that.

[1663] Okay.

[1664] Have you practiced a lot at stuff like that?

[1665] No. So can you say you're not good at stuff like that?

[1666] Yep.

[1667] Okay.

[1668] I can buy it for $633.

[1669] We could make it for about $40.

[1670] I guess we could also probably rent a pipe bender.

[1671] I bet they're for rent.

[1672] There's a lot of tool rental places.

[1673] We could probably get one made for you for under $100.

[1674] and spend three or four days doing it and breaking the machine and then I'm going to return it.

[1675] You know, it could be a real thing.

[1676] The whole thing.

[1677] Like my fence painting project.

[1678] Oh, yeah.

[1679] Oh, yeah.

[1680] Oh, sure.

[1681] Yeah, okay.

[1682] So we will call it a corral because that's what global industrial .com calls it.

[1683] Right.

[1684] Which is a $633.

[1685] A division of Band -Aid Corporation, which, again, is a Easter egg.

[1686] This is a, there's a lot of hidden gems that will come back.

[1687] around next week.

[1688] Right.

[1689] If ever you were going to take notes on a fact check, this would be the one.

[1690] Oh, my gosh.

[1691] Okay, who are the other actors who read audio version of Mike's book?

[1692] I don't know everyone, but a lot of people from the good place.

[1693] Yeah.

[1694] And by the way, I didn't go through all of them.

[1695] I think I read Polars.

[1696] You love Ted's.

[1697] Teds.

[1698] Teds is fantastic.

[1699] Let me see if I can find out.

[1700] One need only buy the book for the actual blurbs.

[1701] They're the best blurbs I've ever read.

[1702] Let me see if I can pull those up.

[1703] I have it in my...

[1704] In your doo -Doo Brown?

[1705] Yeah, my poop.

[1706] Oh, my God.

[1707] You get an infection.

[1708] Okay.

[1709] I'm going to read all of them, okay?

[1710] Okay.

[1711] First, how to be perfect is a kind, thoughtful, incredibly funny reflection on what it is to be a good human being.

[1712] As a human being myself, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[1713] I am certain that other human beings will enjoy it as well.

[1714] Steve Correll.

[1715] Mm -hmm.

[1716] Top dog.

[1717] Have you ever wanted a friend to explain ethics so that you could understand the subject completely with minimal effort on your part?

[1718] Well, meet your friend Mike Scher.

[1719] This book will help guide you through the thorniest moral conundrums with clarity and hilarity.

[1720] And it will greatly up your chances of ending up in, dot, dot, dot, the good place.

[1721] Kristen Bell.

[1722] As someone who worries that a deep dive into morality will ruin my fun and problematic life, I was certain this book wouldn't be for me. Boy, was I wrong.

[1723] It's so brilliant and funny and warmly written and you don't realize you're becoming a better person just by reading it.

[1724] Mindy Kailing.

[1725] God, all these people.

[1726] All your heroes.

[1727] Yeah.

[1728] Well, here we go.

[1729] Read how to be perfect and laugh while you learn how to be a better person.

[1730] And imagine what a great passive -aggressive gift this book would make.

[1731] Hand it to someone and say, I saw this and thought of you.

[1732] And then they say, oh, did you read this?

[1733] And you smile and say, I don't need to.

[1734] Amy Poehler.

[1735] Here's a pop -out.

[1736] Hilarious, thought -provoking and ridiculously silly.

[1737] How to be perfect is a great read for anyone who loved the good place or anyone who wants to be a good person.

[1738] And as a bonus, once you've read the book, you become perfect.

[1739] Jake Tapper.

[1740] My new friend.

[1741] CNN.

[1742] Oh, I didn't know that.

[1743] On my summer trip, I spent a good deal of time with Jake.

[1744] Oh.

[1745] And we kind of fell in love.

[1746] We went whitewater rafting together.

[1747] I think I told you the story because my whole preoccupation was screaming at Jake to dig harder, to paddle harder.

[1748] Oh, I thought that was Adam.

[1749] No, no, no. I would never yell that Adam.

[1750] I always got Adam's back.

[1751] But Jake and I were in a new friendship, so I was trying to make him laugh.

[1752] And there's many pictures of me not paddling at all.

[1753] I'm just screaming at Jake.

[1754] Dig, dig, dig.

[1755] That's funny.

[1756] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1757] Oh, well, then.

[1758] He's lovely.

[1759] He's a funny dude then, I guess.

[1760] Oh, yeah, yeah, he's wonderful.

[1761] When I was asked to write a blurb about Mike Scher's book on ethics, I thought, no sweat.

[1762] I'll just skim a few chapters, make something up, and then lie about having read it.

[1763] After reading a chapter or two, I realized I had missed the point of the book.

[1764] So I read the whole thing, and I can honestly say it's brilliant.

[1765] How to be perfect takes the delightful, funny lessons of the good place and applies them to everyday life.

[1766] Hop a Ted Danzy.

[1767] An enjoyable, boisterous guide to the moral life.

[1768] If you want to become morally better and don't mind being entertained in the process, you've picked the right book.

[1769] Jeff McMayhan.

[1770] Mick Breer?

[1771] Nope.

[1772] Philosophy professor at Oxford.

[1773] Oh.

[1774] Heavy hitter.

[1775] Heavy hitter.

[1776] It's worth repeating that 100 % of the proceeds of this book go to charities.

[1777] That is lovely.

[1778] God bless him.

[1779] He didn't even say that in the episode.

[1780] He said it after.

[1781] Right.

[1782] You're right.

[1783] So.

[1784] Very Rockefeller -esque of him and not put his name on something.

[1785] But I know it means a lot to him to give to these charities.

[1786] So I hope you guys buy that book.

[1787] Me too.

[1788] That's all.

[1789] Yeah, he's top -notch.

[1790] I hope he comes back a third through 10th time.

[1791] Me too.

[1792] Yeah.

[1793] Love you, Mike.

[1794] Love you, Monty.

[1795] Love you, Wobby.

[1796] Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[1797] You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app.

[1798] or on Apple Podcasts.

[1799] Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondry .com slash survey.