259. The Elusive Son | Julian Peterson

[0] Welcome to episode 259 of the J .B .P. Podcast.

[1] I'm Michaela Peterson.

[2] This is a fun episode.

[3] After years spent in hiding, shirking in darkness, he emerges.

[4] The elusive Julian Peterson, my little brother.

[5] I actually interviewed him and dad to have a discussion about Julian's new writing app essay, which he's been developing and testing with dad for years and a more casual conversation with Julian about family and music and his aspirations.

[6] Dad had really interesting things to say.

[7] as usual about the connections between writing and trauma, neuroplasticity and effective communication up and down a chain of command.

[8] If you want to check out essay and learn how to write more effectively, check out essay .app or check the links in the description.

[9] It's good to have you guys here.

[10] Hey, we're pretty happy to be here in Nashville talking about this.

[11] Yeah, pleasure.

[12] Julian, the elusive Peterson, finally cornered into a podcast.

[13] I know, Ed.

[14] It's been a lot of work to corner him.

[15] A lot of work.

[16] I think, yeah, I don't know if this was cornering, I think.

[17] Yeah, the least cornerable Peterson.

[18] Yeah, and that might be saying something.

[19] Who's the most cornerable Peterson?

[20] Elliot.

[21] Yeah.

[22] For now.

[23] For now.

[24] For now.

[25] Yeah.

[26] Yeah.

[27] Definitely.

[28] Yeah.

[29] Okay.

[30] So today.

[31] Yeah.

[32] It's not my dad.

[33] It's not your dad.

[34] No. No. Yeah.

[35] Okay.

[36] Elliot.

[37] It's not Scarlett.

[38] No. It's Elliot for now.

[39] For now.

[40] Yeah.

[41] So today we're going to talk about essay mainly.

[42] And then I'm also going to throw in some questions because I think people are dying to know.

[43] I would like everything about you.

[44] Oh, good luck.

[45] Well, here's...

[46] Good luck.

[47] Yeah.

[48] Well, you're interesting, you know.

[49] Okay.

[50] Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

[51] But for now, uh, we're here to talk about essay.

[52] So let's start off with what is...

[53] What is...

[54] Blush?

[55] Yeah.

[56] Uh, what is essay?

[57] Uh, essay is a writing platform that, I've been working on for the last couple years, that basically turns dad's writing philosophy that he used to teach to his students and continues to talk about into a web app that's usable for the average writer and makes it easier to follow the philosophy and learn to write.

[58] So where did this come from?

[59] You said dad's philosophy.

[60] Where did essay come from?

[61] Yeah.

[62] So there was this document that dad produced for his university students a long time ago.

[63] I don't know exactly when it was 15 years.

[64] Yeah, 15 years ago.

[65] And he would give this to first year and second year students to help them structure their essays because most first and second year university students don't really know how to write very well.

[66] And they've never been taught by someone who knew how to write.

[67] So maybe they're taught grammar in an artificial manner.

[68] But.

[69] I looked at how I was grading essays and then formalized it.

[70] And I realized I was grading word choice, phrase choice, phrase organization within sentences, sentence organization within paragraphs, paragraph organization within chapters.

[71] And then the impact of the whole, I thought, well, that's also how I edit.

[72] And so I wanted to write a practical writing guide, not one that focused specifically on grammar.

[73] And so when Julian and I started talking about this, first we were going to just publish the essay guide, which we did.

[74] We made that available freely online.

[75] But then we were thinking through the problem of how to teach people to write.

[76] And the hard thing about that is that usually people write and then submit it for grading.

[77] And that's extremely expensive and cost and time intensive.

[78] Yeah, so basically we were attempting to turn this document into something that people could use.

[79] And they could improve their writing in a more structured manner, but that it would be more natural than reading a document and trying to do it in that way and taking bits out of the documents and trying to integrate that philosophy into their writing.

[80] And so we did a number of iterations trying to turn it into instead of kind of a step -by -step guide, a more kind of contained application that would integrate the philosophy and the tools that were written in the document into something that you could just use and it felt natural and as you were writing you could kind of integrate these practical tools and it would just come together and improve.

[81] Yeah, instead of writing in a word processor and referring to this document, we just integrated the two so that you can write and focus at different levels of analysis with each tool.

[82] And so there's a tool that is optimized for producing a first draft where you just read what you need to read and take your notes, watching what you think and maybe thinking out loud and trying to capture that loosely as rapidly as possible.

[83] And then there are other tools that follow on from that.

[84] Yeah.

[85] So basically we split it out into the produce tool, the outline tool, the rewrite tool, and reorder.

[86] And basically, the structure that someone's supposed to follow when they're using this app is they outline their essays.

[87] They decide what they're going to write about.

[88] And it doesn't have to be an essay.

[89] It could be a document.

[90] It could be an email to somebody.

[91] And so you basically come up with your main idea and then you break it down into subtopics.

[92] And then you go to the produce tool.

[93] And that's where you're supposed to kind of fill in your ideas in a rough way, which is what dad was talking about.

[94] You just kind of write.

[95] And you're not supposed to edit.

[96] You're not supposed to do anything.

[97] You're just supposed to get your ideas on paper, try to use the research that you've done and produce whatever you're able to produce.

[98] A loose, a loose first draft.

[99] People often try to write a good word and a good phrase and a good sentence in a good paragraph, write during the first draft so that when they're done drafting it once, they're finished.

[100] And the problem with that is it's actually way more work because you can't do all of that at once.

[101] And trying to just makes it almost impossible for you to think.

[102] What you want to do is, well, first, you want to ask yourself a question that you really want to have the answer to.

[103] So you have to be motivated.

[104] And that's an important first choice.

[105] Even if you're writing a document that someone wants you to write, you have to find a handle on it that you're compelled by.

[106] And that should be stateable in the form of a question.

[107] What question are you essaying, which means attempting to answer?

[108] It should be one, you have a reason to answer.

[109] And then you break it down, as Julian said, by the outline, well, what topics are you, sub -topics, are you going to hit, outline topics?

[110] Are you going to hit while walking through this.

[111] That's a preliminary plan, you know, because you're going to reorganize at the level of the outline too.

[112] And then maybe you go do your reading or your thinking.

[113] And while you're doing that, note what you're thinking and write it down.

[114] Say it out loud.

[115] Capture it.

[116] Don't edit.

[117] Capture.

[118] And so maybe you're aiming to produce one and a half or times or two times as much written material as you'll need in the final analysis.

[119] Now, people don't like doing that because they fall in love what they write with what they write and it's hard to do it they think but it's way easier to just give yourself the freedom to jot down and note everything you're thinking and then well then you go into the well the next tools yeah and basically the next tools are editing tools and so the idea that we made or that we tried to capture in this tool is to allow people to produce variations of their writing and to quickly restructure it to like variations of sentences or paragraphs?

[120] Yeah, variations of sentences first.

[121] And so what you do, if you were writing a relatively long piece in this, is you'd go through it sentence by sentence.

[122] And we have a tool that shows you your full documents on one side and then a broken down version of it, sentence by sentence on the other side.

[123] And basically you can go one by one through your sentences, produce as many variances as you want, and then see them in context to your document.

[124] Okay.

[125] So that's a Darwinian approach to creative thinking.

[126] So because in the Darwinian evolutionary process, creatures generate variance, that's mutation and in sexual recombination.

[127] And then the environment selects from among those variants for the most fit, the particulars that are most fit at that time.

[128] So this tool, it'll show you your sentence.

[129] Correct me if I get this technically wrong.

[130] It'll show your sentence.

[131] You click on it.

[132] It'll duplicate the sentence.

[133] Then you can write a variant of that sentence.

[134] You can do that indefinitely.

[135] And then what you want to do, write shorter sentences, longer sentences.

[136] Shorters usually better.

[137] People can improve their essays radically, usually by cutting the sentence length by 15%.

[138] That's a good first pass attempt.

[139] But you look at all these variants, choose the variant that's better and substitute it.

[140] You do that with every sentence.

[141] That's fine -grained editing, not as fine -grained as word choice, but you'd be doing some of that at that point as well.

[142] How much can you put into this?

[143] Like, could you edit a book?

[144] theoretically you could edit a book um it would help in some ways because we have the outline tool which allows you to quickly jump through your document um we've had some so what do you mean well in the outline tool you have written your subtopics and then what it shows under each sub topic is a truncated version of each paragraph that you have within the sub topic and so it'll show like um i don't know a five or six sentence or not even probably four four sentence version so you can quickly toggle through your essay and so it'll get an overview of it get an overview and you can click to scroll and it really allows you to navigate a relatively long document pretty quickly yeah likely what would happen is if you're writing a book you'd use it for each chapter and then rewrite the chapters and then maybe use a standard word processor to move the chapters around depends on how long the book is but for lengthy essays even multi -part essays with multiple sub -talk topics it'll work just fine yeah so wow yeah yeah yeah well you we can return to the original let's call it principles of writing you remember when you're thinking about a document you think you build it word up but that's or do you build it letter up i hope not right right right exactly well by the time you're right you've already automated the letter typing process right so but then you have to think about the word in the phrase and the sentence and the paragraph and the paragraph sequence and the sub -topic sequence.

[145] And the tool is designed to help you learn to think like that at multiple levels of analysis.

[146] So you don't have to think like that.

[147] That's kind of the point of it, right?

[148] It's to break the thinking out into software so that you naturally think that way when you're writing.

[149] Yeah.

[150] And so that's how you thought writing.

[151] That's how you write, right?

[152] Well, it was an iterative process because well, I was grading and then trying to to teach people to write, I was thinking about, well, what am I doing when I'm grading?

[153] Now, I'd already written a lot by then.

[154] But it wasn't until I wrote this document that I really started to understand this idea of multi -level, simultaneous multi -level processing, which has been very useful for other things I've been thinking through.

[155] It's like, well, where's the meaning when you read?

[156] Well, is it in the words, the phrases, the sentences, the sentence organization, the paragraphs, et cetera.

[157] I don't walk through that again.

[158] The answer is it's all of those simultaneously.

[159] And it's even broader than that because you might think, well, the essay as a whole, that's a level of analysis.

[160] But there's the broadest possible level of analysis.

[161] But it's not.

[162] The question you're asking is broader level.

[163] Because the essay for it to be a real product, a product of your imagination and thought that will be useful to you practically and also psychologically, let's say, it has to address something that you regard is important or the whole bloody exercise is a lie.

[164] And I would recommend if you're bored by what you're writing, then you're not trying to write the right, you're not trying to answer the right question or you haven't formulated the right question.

[165] What do you do, though, this just side note, what do you do if you're in high school or university and you're assigned a topic?

[166] You find an angle that makes you interested in it.

[167] You have to wrestle with yourself to begin with.

[168] Maybe you write something critical.

[169] Well, I think it's a rare teacher that if you suggest something that's similar that you are interested in, they'll say no. You know, I think that's a try that maybe.

[170] I think generally try to write something, you know, approach your teacher and say, you know, I'm actually interested in exploring this topic.

[171] If the teacher says you're not allowed to explore a topic you're interested in, then they're probably not a very good writing teacher.

[172] And maybe you don't care about how they feel about your writing.

[173] Well, yeah, and that's an important point.

[174] Oh, that's a good point.

[175] It is a good point, man. It's like, don't let people mess with your words.

[176] And you don't want to lose the, you know, if you do enjoy writing, you don't want to have that taken away from you by someone who's going to put you in a box that you don't want to be in.

[177] Yeah, and so if you really hate the topic, write something that's subtly satirical or over the top.

[178] Like, you have, look, man, writing is hard work.

[179] It's hard, just like thinking.

[180] But it's not as hard as doing neither because then you're a mess.

[181] you're anxious and you're and you're without purpose and goal and you're inarticulate and you're weak you lose and i don't mean in this you win and someone else loses manner i mean in an everyone loses manner and so when you sit down to write or think you have to be motivated and if you're not you're not doing it right and that's writing teacher should stress that above all else you know they should help their students identify something that they can hardly wait to write about because it's so important to them.

[182] Well, then you've got the motivation, and each word starts to matter because your life depends on it.

[183] And if you think your life doesn't depend on your words, you just don't know anything about words.

[184] And so it is definitely the case.

[185] Let's take a business example.

[186] If you're constantly being forced, forced, to write things that great against your conscience, or that you find yourself bored to death by, then it's either time to stand up and say something, and then you should use the writing program to figure out what you're going to say or it's time to get a new job in which case you should use the writing program to put your CV and your resume together and maybe write yourself something like a statement of purpose like this is no game if writing is thinking which it is and thinking sets your life in order or not then you don't let people mess with your words you want to get them on order like soldiers and that's partly what this writing program is designed to help people do that's not so much we're trying to teach people to write we're trying to facilitate their thought and their clarity of communication and writing this is another thing that isn't taught well to students well why should I learn to write well how else you're going to communicate with people as you ascend up a hierarchy of competence like some of the toughest guys I know jocco willink for example most lays tremendous stress on literacy even as a soldier he had to communicate orders let's say to his to the people that that he was in command of, but he also had to communicate up to chain of command.

[187] And if your words are well structured and inspired and properly motivated and aimed like an arrow, you're unstoppable.

[188] And I don't understand, well, this is so many people are taught to write by people who don't know how to write or why to write or how to think.

[189] And that's partly what we're trying to address here.

[190] So we hope people will find it extremely useful.

[191] It's also like knowing how to write a good email too, even if you're not interested in the essays specifically, knowing how to write a good email can change how a company is run.

[192] Absolutely.

[193] Well, it can change people's lives, right?

[194] You need to write an email to someone you want to get a job from or a landlord to try to get them to not increase your rent.

[195] Or a city councilman to try to get them to do something that needs doing in your neighborhood or a politician to get them to change a law.

[196] You're going to be making your case in front of people badly or well your entire life.

[197] And so I don't know why we don't teach people that this arms them.

[198] Well, we won't use that language, right?

[199] Because we think everyone should be cooperative.

[200] And yeah, it's a complete bloody mess.

[201] But we did decide, though, we've been trying to crack the problem of scaling education.

[202] And we have a bunch of ideas about that.

[203] And Julian and I were working on a broader online university project when I got extremely ill. and it folded back into this writing program, which turned out in some ways to be an okay thing because this is actually, it had, hopefully it will address a very serious issue.

[204] And we could do it instead of the other one, which...

[205] Yeah, yeah, yeah, the other one was pretty broad.

[206] It was, yeah.

[207] It's better break it down.

[208] Which is why it failed probably.

[209] Yeah, yeah, well, part of the reason.

[210] It hasn't failed yet.

[211] It's just being sequenced differently.

[212] Fair enough.

[213] So, so...

[214] So...

[215] The Academy is coming.

[216] Yes.

[217] Yes.

[218] Yes, and we have online courses, and we're working with people in the broader educational sphere, so who knows what will happen.

[219] You should talk about the design a little bit because it's quite elegant.

[220] Yeah, sure.

[221] Yeah, so we spend a ton of time building the design out.

[222] I mean, we did a number of iterations at the beginning that were very, very different.

[223] My wife's a product designer, and I'm a front -end developer.

[224] And so we're both very concerned with UX and making things that people can use naturally and that feel good to use.

[225] And so, you know, a lot of people don't like to write.

[226] And that's an issue, right?

[227] As if we want people to write and we want people to learn to write better and think better, then when you go into a new application that you have to learn, it has to be very comfortable.

[228] And so we wanted to make the design very modern, very clean, very intuitive.

[229] Yeah, self -explanatory, right?

[230] Because a hallmark of good design is that you don't have to refer to a manual to figure out how to use, let's say, the tools.

[231] Well, and these are different things, right?

[232] We're trying to teach people to interact with a word processor differently, which is a big ask in a way to the user, right?

[233] And because, well, because almost everyone writes using something, right?

[234] And people use Word or Google Docs or whatever, whatever they use.

[235] You have to make it easier for them to write using this, at least easier.

[236] Well, the payoff has to be there.

[237] Well, that's the payoff also has to be there.

[238] Because there's a bit more work.

[239] It's not just a blank sheet.

[240] Right.

[241] There's more work to it.

[242] You actually do have to learn to use it.

[243] Yeah.

[244] Yeah.

[245] But theoretically, and from our experience, the tools are worth the learning curve.

[246] And we've tried to make the learning curve as minimal as possible using good design.

[247] Well, right.

[248] The other thing we did, and this is a design element too, is that while you're using, while you're learning to use the tools, you're also learning how to go about thinking at the same time.

[249] So you're not only learning how to use the writing program, you're learning how to think about thinking.

[250] And that's extremely important, just knowing, for example, that you do multi -level processing and that you can edit and reconceptualize at all those levels.

[251] That's extremely useful formally to know.

[252] about how you think and why you think.

[253] Yeah, what's a nice thing about the tools in general is that they're not specific tools to the app, right?

[254] Like, you can use them in context of the app, but if you're writing an email in, you know, just in your, in Gmail or whatever, then you can still go through it and improve the sentences and improve the structure of the paragraphs and you can use the tools that you've built and practiced using the application.

[255] And you can use them wherever and you can use, yeah, when you're thinking you're talking as well, you know, in a sort of faster way.

[256] but they're generally useful things to understand and and right so my impression going through I kind of had to learn to use this app in the last few months because although I was involved in the design to begin with when I got sick I I forgot a lot of what the app did and why it was produced the way it was and so I've had to relearn it learn how to use it over the last couple of months and it was very straightforward to learn but what was what I was even happier about was the fact that learning to use it does not waste effort You know, if you learn a program like Photoshop, you can use Photoshop, the Photoshop skills you've learned on Illustrator and other Adobe products, but doesn't really generalize outside of that domain because these commands are so specific.

[257] With this, you could use essay for a year and then hypothetically never use it again because you could do what in the work processor.

[258] Well, I know, he does that only got a person who he test once.

[259] I'll say never use it in.

[260] Learn it, internalize it, throw it away.

[261] I wouldn't recommend that because I think that I think that once you use it, this guy's not in our marketing team.

[262] Yeah, yeah.

[263] You'll also find it a good place to keep track of your essays and all of that, to build an essay bank.

[264] And we're going to build...

[265] Oh, that's cool.

[266] That's a good idea.

[267] Yeah.

[268] So we've thought about the, well, the problem of what do you do with what you've written.

[269] And that's also relevant to something mentioned earlier.

[270] If you write an essay and your first draft is twice as long as it needs to be and you cut a bunch of it out, keep what you've cut in another document because I've almost never written anything that was wasted.

[271] It might not have been useful precisely in the context that I wanted it for at that moment, but keeping a log or a collection of written material, especially by topic, is extremely useful as you progress through your life.

[272] And you'll find a use for it, man. It's useful for writers.

[273] It's also, you know, I play music, and I've done that with songs too, right?

[274] You can write song lyrics and just write poetry or whatever you're writing.

[275] And then you can, you know, that's how a lot of great songs been written, little pieces here and there of different, you know, thrown away songs that people still have.

[276] Yeah, the Beatles do that all the time.

[277] but yeah so it's not just not just for writing but for artistic things as well often no genuine work is wasted it just doesn't fit necessarily with exactly what you're doing at the moment but but first of all the skills you learn while you're genuinely working generalize and also the products if you keep them i had a some poems i wrote horrible poems about children um 15 we don't need context for that that's okay yeah they're funny so they're funny so it's funny Yeah, it was when I was doing my clinical work and I needed to blow off some steam about all the awful things I was seeing.

[278] So thank you very much.

[279] In any case, I wrote those 15 years ago.

[280] It wasn't until this year that we started working on having them illustrated.

[281] And a whole sequence of creative projects emerged from that.

[282] So you have to realize that when you're writing, you are literally changing your brain.

[283] So be careful about what you write about as well.

[284] That's for sure, man. Like, truth all the way.

[285] Well, it depends.

[286] your do you want a program in garbage because you're actually producing automated circuits in your brain when you write and so if you write something you don't agree with you can do that as an exercise to stretch out your intellectual imagination right and to develop your argument let's say on the contrary argument as part of thinking but if you write a bunch of lies for someone that you don't trust to do something you don't like that will change you in that direction if you do that a hundred times you'll be way different than the person you were.

[287] And you may be bored, miserable, angry, unhappy, resentful, amotivated, tendentious, inarticulate.

[288] But otherwise, fine.

[289] So don't mess with your words, man. Yeah.

[290] So how does that work for running out trauma then?

[291] Isn't it?

[292] Because it's supposed to be therapeutic, but how is it not strengthening memories associated with trauma if you're...

[293] That's an excellent question.

[294] And there's actually a whole research literature on that, which we drew on when we...

[295] formulated the self -authoring program, especially the past offering program.

[296] Well, James Pennebaker tested that.

[297] So imagine two theories.

[298] One is just write down everything that you can remember about the trauma and cry and be miserable and depressed while you do that.

[299] And that's cathartic.

[300] Okay.

[301] But then imagine that you write down everything you remember around the trauma.

[302] And then you go through a process like you would go through with our writing tool, where you organize it and you reduce it and you make it clear and comprehensible and you weave it into a narrative and you strip the emotion out of it while you're doing that because you start to understand what happened.

[303] And it isn't catharsis.

[304] James Pennebaker tested this.

[305] So he had people write about their traumatic experiences.

[306] It usually made them feel worse for a two -week period afterwards.

[307] But six months later, they had visited the physicians far less frequently.

[308] So it's out of tyranny into the desert and then into the promised land, right?

[309] So there's a cost that you pay when you first confront things that you'd rather avoid.

[310] And that's obviously, because why would people avoid them if there was no cost?

[311] And you might say, well, that's dangerous.

[312] And ruminating involuntarily on traumatic experiences doesn't help get rid of them.

[313] You have to confront them voluntarily.

[314] And then it isn't expression of emotion that cures you.

[315] It's organization of the memories into a narrative that specifies the causal pathway.

[316] Why did this happen when it happened?

[317] Why did it happen to me?

[318] And then is associated with rectification of that vulnerability.

[319] And so Pennebaker tested, did people use more words indicative of expressed emotion?

[320] Or did they use more words that were indicative of cognition and comprehension?

[321] and which of those predicted the best outcome.

[322] So like what?

[323] Understand, comprehend, came to know.

[324] Okay.

[325] Angry, sad, hurt, upset on the other side.

[326] The more their written product revealed the cognitive processing, the better the effect of the traumatic narration.

[327] And you see this, you see this when you talk to people who have had a traumatic experience.

[328] if you if you talk to them carefully and listen carefully as they work through it so they want to know exactly what happened in detail so that maybe they can set up their life so that won't happen again so you know you were traumatized as a child but you're a lot easier to take advantage of if you're a child now you have all those memories about being hurt okay as the person comes to understand their trauma.

[329] The time it takes to recount it shrinks dramatically.

[330] Yeah.

[331] And that means they've, they've pulled out the gist, right?

[332] The central issues from the experience.

[333] And they can use that as a practical guide to the future.

[334] That is exactly what you're doing, by the way, when you're writing an essay.

[335] You think, well, it's not a trauma.

[336] It's like, well, if you pick a question that's interesting to you, it's interesting because the fact that you don't know it is a problem.

[337] And so one of the great ways to figure out what to write about is, well, what bugs you?

[338] Notice that.

[339] That's that involuntary rumination.

[340] That's the manifestation of underlying complexes from a psychoanalytic perspective.

[341] So something's on your mind poking you, bugging you.

[342] It's like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio.

[343] That is really annoying.

[344] That's why I did it.

[345] I knew that would bug you.

[346] So it was supposed to, you know, it was it.

[347] So anyways, you find.

[348] You find something that bugs you.

[349] That's your problem.

[350] You might say, well, why should I have a problem?

[351] It's like, hey, it picked you.

[352] It's your problem.

[353] It's your destiny.

[354] It's something that would compel you to solve.

[355] It's your adventure.

[356] Your adventure can be found in what bothers you and won't go away.

[357] Well, that's your topic, man. That's your life.

[358] Delve into that and use this program because it will help you figure that out.

[359] It'll help you figure that out.

[360] Write about things that matter.

[361] you say well my life has no meaning nothing i write is meaningful well you're not writing about something that matters to you and that first step that we talked about when you specify the question the program says this quite clearly specify the question you're trying to answer you have to want the answer you want to be motivated to write it's like this is a hot question for me man i'm going to go read some things about it because i need to know well that's what you want to write about That's where you find your, find your passion to use an overworked cliché.

[362] Okay, Julian.

[363] Yes.

[364] Why did it take you so long to agree to talk to me over the interweb?

[365] Well, I like, I like my privacy.

[366] I've always liked my privacy.

[367] I think that's most of it.

[368] I don't really have a lot of interest in being a public person.

[369] um if i am public in any way then i generally well i'm quite sure that i prefer it to be about something that i've done and i didn't really feel like i had done anything that was particularly you know useful let's say to talk about to other people um and so you know i i have a really nice life.

[370] And I like my little family and my, you know, the fact that it's relatively contained from the world.

[371] And, you know, I don't really ever want to give that up.

[372] But I do have interest in sharing things that I've done that I feel like are going to be meaningful for other people, whether that is, well, this application, which I'm really proud of or, well, the album that I released last year, although I didn't really talk about that.

[373] We're going to talk about that.

[374] But I think that's why mostly is I'm you wanted to wait till you had something to say yeah yeah well the problem in your position is that people would be interested in you in some sense for peripheral reasons for sure yeah you could certainly yeah for sure and and you could state that demand if you felt like it but it seems to me that waiting until you have something i don't feel like it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Yeah, yeah, no kidding.

[375] And it's been good to see that your life has been protected from all the storms that have gathered around us.

[376] And that was a good decision, I think.

[377] So, and this is a good thing to talk about because this app is.

[378] It helped a lot of people.

[379] Well, and we should talk a little bit about testing, too.

[380] One of the things I realized years ago and had drummed into my head as well by people who have built successful software programs and marketed them is that you should.

[381] should be in dialogue with your audience, your customer base, let's say, while you're building it.

[382] You don't build something and then launch it and hope everyone buys it.

[383] You have to be testing it step by step with the market, with the environment, to see if not only do you have the ideas right, but you have them right at the right time in a way that can be communicated to people that they will want to purchase and will purchase.

[384] And so you tested this with Acton Academy, for example.

[385] Yeah.

[386] Yeah.

[387] So we tested this with like a number of different groups over the last couple years with private groups on Reddit with people who signed up to test it with people with students, MBA students at the Acton Academy using user testing .com groups.

[388] You know, we tested it constantly as we were as we were building it to make sure that our design was consistent that people understood what it was for.

[389] And many times they didn't.

[390] which is, well, often what you find when you test software.

[391] Yeah, well, you get familiar with it and then you think it's obvious because it's now obvious to you, but it's interesting watching people often use a piece of software that you've designed and see where they don't get it.

[392] Isn't that what they did with one of the first Macintosh computers, right?

[393] They would bring grandmothers, I think, people over 60 to come in and they would just put them in front of an Apple computer.

[394] Right.

[395] And, you know, not tell them anything.

[396] They were just like, use this thing.

[397] Yeah.

[398] And, you know, they'd pick up the keyboard and, like, do all sorts of stuff with it.

[399] Could they figure it out?

[400] They tried to find the any key.

[401] Right?

[402] They do all sorts of things, right?

[403] But that was how they did the testing, right?

[404] Either you're supposed to give people a task or you just want to see they naturally interact with it.

[405] And we did both of those things and made a lot of improvements based on them.

[406] You have to beware of the assumption that people, people should be smart enough to know how to use this.

[407] It's like, no, if they can't use it, it's because it's a stupid design.

[408] Yeah, for sure.

[409] If people were just a little smarter, they could figure this out.

[410] It's like, yeah, good luck.

[411] That's how you fail.

[412] That's how you sell your product to three software engineers.

[413] And yeah, they want to use it just because they want to show us smart they are.

[414] No, that's a very bad design philosophy.

[415] If someone can't use it, it's your fault.

[416] It's the right attitude in business.

[417] That's why it's not so much.

[418] Yeah, it's like websites when every single website has a formula and looks the same.

[419] And one other website is, oh, no, no, that logo or that button should go in this other corner.

[420] Yeah.

[421] Well, and that's the modern internet, right?

[422] Like, is that everything looks the same because, well, then people can use it.

[423] Right.

[424] You build in redundancy.

[425] Yeah.

[426] And, yeah, and you violate conventions at your peril.

[427] You know, we could have insisted that everybody use a Dvorzac keyboard for this writing program.

[428] And that's a way more efficient keyboard because the...

[429] letters, the alphabet letters are spaced for optimal speed when you type, but you don't see people using Dvorzac keyboard.

[430] Well, one of our developers did.

[431] Yeah, what?

[432] What is this type of, I was nodding along, like I knew what you were talking about, but I don't.

[433] There's a keyboard that's more effective.

[434] Oh, way more effective, yeah.

[435] Well, yeah, because at least, we're not telling you about it, because you have to keep using QWERTY.

[436] No, I've Googling it right after this.

[437] The QWERTY keyboard was developed, at least in part, to slow you down when you type.

[438] Yeah, for typewriters, right?

[439] With the old mechanical typewriters, before electric type writers, the keys would jam if people got too fast.

[440] So, they slowed them down.

[441] So now we use a keyboard that artificially makes typing difficult.

[442] So what's the other one look like?

[443] The most common letters are together.

[444] Or where they should be.

[445] Yeah, like on a quarterly keyboard, the most common letters are spaced out as much as they can be.

[446] Because I can type really, I'm very proud of my typing.

[447] I can type really fast.

[448] Yeah.

[449] But do you think it'd be worth of something?

[450] Well, it doesn't look like it because people, people have to struggle at the beginning.

[451] Yeah.

[452] That's right.

[453] You'd have to re -automatize your type.

[454] But yeah.

[455] Yes.

[456] Yes.

[457] Yes.

[458] it would be faster eventually.

[459] Would it save me time if you add up all the time?

[460] You spent learning and then I'm doing it.

[461] Yeah, I think it would.

[462] But can you buy computers like that, like MacBooks?

[463] You can buy keyboards like that.

[464] You'd have to have a separate keyboard.

[465] What's the, what's this called?

[466] Devorzac is one, D -V -O -R -A -K.

[467] Yeah, it just rings off the tongue, you know.

[468] Yeah, V -O -J.

[469] The point you made earlier, hadn't actually thought about this.

[470] I've gotten an issue storing way too many Google.

[471] docs and sheets and Google, Google has a terrible storage Google Drive.

[472] Yeah.

[473] So the fact that you can actually store focus pieces of writing, that's pretty interesting.

[474] Instead of putting all your spreadsheets and everything in one area, you could put everything that you focus on in one area and then look back on it.

[475] Yeah, well, Google Drive is obviously great, but it's because everything is there.

[476] And that, you know, that comes with, if you lose things.

[477] With the cost, for sure.

[478] Yeah.

[479] Yeah.

[480] You lose things all the time there.

[481] Yeah.

[482] Yeah.

[483] And that's not.

[484] something that we've solved completely with this program, but it is a good place to store the things that you've endeavored to write.

[485] So, cool.

[486] There's, we have, what, three patents pending on it?

[487] Yes.

[488] Yes.

[489] So that's fun.

[490] You know, it's, it's a, it's a. So it's still stealable.

[491] It's what we're saying.

[492] It's still sealable, yes.

[493] Well, you know, on that, you know, virtually everything is stealable.

[494] And the way you succeed in the marketplace, it's, it's, it's, is getting there fairly early and then making a product that's better than everyone else's and then keeping it better.

[495] If you want to rely on legal protection, even patents, it'll just wear you to a frazzle.

[496] It's not the, I mean, look, you have to keep people from stealing your intellectual property and patent protection and legal protection can help, but in the final analysis, the way that you remain competitive in the marketplace is to stay not only ahead of your competitors, but ahead of your previous product.

[497] And so otherwise you get into this, defensive mode where you're fending everyone else off trying to protect your thing.

[498] It's like your thing, the thing you developed in all likelihood is alive and you should stay on the cutting edge of its development.

[499] But it's still nice to have the patents.

[500] Yeah, for sure.

[501] So they're hard to enforce.

[502] You have to take them out in all sorts of different countries.

[503] You know, you get tangled up with lawyers, but it's no one wants that.

[504] No one wants that.

[505] No lawyers can use our program.

[506] No, I don't mean that.

[507] Lawyers are very useful in their proper place.

[508] Which is definitely not everywhere.

[509] Yeah.

[510] So you mentioned this album.

[511] You put out an album last year.

[512] Yes.

[513] So what is this?

[514] It's called Sight.

[515] It's a very short album.

[516] Technically, it's actually a single, which I was disappointed about when I read the definition of single.

[517] What?

[518] Apparently, a single is, I think you can have four songs in a single.

[519] Because the definitions came from when you'd put out records.

[520] And a single was just, well anyway it was a certain length of record basically what yeah and so my song I have three songs and I think you have to have five songs or a certain length I can't remember the number of minutes to make it an EP so it's not but it's it's a single and it's a three song single and there were songs that I've written over the last well that I had written between four four years ago up to a couple years ago and I'd been meaning to record them and yeah Eventually, I went to the recording studio and hired some session musicians.

[521] And it was great.

[522] It was a really, really positive experience.

[523] And it's, well, it was fun to put music out into the world that, you know, were a piece of me and that were a piece of my history.

[524] Because that was really meaningful.

[525] And I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

[526] Yeah, it's called site.

[527] It's on Spotify.

[528] I'll link it.

[529] Probably do some music in the background over your talk.

[530] The three of us have been working on a musical project, too.

[531] and with Tammy.

[532] So that's been fun as well.

[533] So more on that later.

[534] Yeah.

[535] Yeah.

[536] Okay.

[537] I'm going to ask some fun questions too.

[538] Are you ready?

[539] It's going to involve Julian talking a bunch, hopefully.

[540] Okay.

[541] Shifts uncomfortably in his season.

[542] I've even made me shift on comfort.

[543] Well, I'm waiting to see what it happens.

[544] I shouldn't make you shift uncomfortly.

[545] Oh, you might say something embarrassing.

[546] What will I do?

[547] I'm actually not that worried about that.

[548] Hopefully you'll do that on purpose if it happens, not accidentally.

[549] Yeah.

[550] What has been the biggest challenge of having dad shoot to fame?

[551] Yeah, well, there have been a ton of challenges, benefits and challenges.

[552] I think mostly, there's a couple things.

[553] You know, it gets you involved in a battle that isn't your own, which is interesting, right, because of the way that that you became popular, which is about, you know, political topics and philosophical topics that were contentious generally.

[554] And so then people start to assume that, you know, you hold the same opinions as your father, which to a certain extent I do, obviously, right?

[555] Like, I mean, there's some things that, and plenty of things that were aligned on.

[556] But there's always, you know, you never have the same views as your father.

[557] I mean, if you do, then you need to think more, probably.

[558] because, well, you're generationally different and all sorts of things.

[559] You know, I think if you thought you'd have my opinions.

[560] Yeah, that's what every father thinks.

[561] This is an essay program.

[562] Essay program, me?

[563] So that was one of the challenges and, well, just being public to a certain extent.

[564] You know, people know who I am, even if I have maintained relatively private.

[565] I've been asked for selfies before, which is very strange because I'm just a rakey.

[566] regular dude.

[567] Are those ussees?

[568] That's a selfie.

[569] An ussy, yeah.

[570] Well, your approach to that, I think, it's been interesting.

[571] You know, people, people get involved.

[572] Random, like, free guy reference, I think.

[573] Yeah, that's right.

[574] Where did I talk from?

[575] It took me aside.

[576] It was like, well, keep up, man. This is a quick moving conversation.

[577] So, you know, one of the things that's been, that your situation has really highlighted for me is the danger that's posed to people mental health and maybe even to social stability when people get fixated on things that are too abstract you know you say well we should only pay attention to the important issues climate change for example which is about everything why aren't you worried about everything all the time and that's what you would be worried about if you were a good person it's like well no you need to parcel off a part of your life that's private that consists of the specific things that you're involved in your specific wife, your specific children, the specific projects like this essay.

[578] Wives always like to be referred to that way.

[579] Now, this is my specific wife, yeah.

[580] Generic ones are a good idea.

[581] Don't ask me any more questions.

[582] But it's a strange thing because you could be more concerned with generic wives than actually having one, you know?

[583] Yeah.

[584] So, and you, you've, you've maintained that specificity.

[585] And that's made your life comparably much more peaceful and productive.

[586] Yes, for sure.

[587] Yeah.

[588] So it's easy to get dragged out into the general fray, and it's hard to protect yourself once that's happened.

[589] So, okay, here's another one.

[590] So when, how old were you when you got married to jail?

[591] 25.

[592] And then when did you have Elliott?

[593] 26, I guess.

[594] Yeah.

[595] Okay, so I'd say compared to the, 27 maybe.

[596] General debauchrous population, you've, even compared to me. definitely compared to me you've had your you've organized your life so it from the outside anyway so well that it's hard it's hard to believe thank you that's a really nice compliment you went to a bunch of educate what was your what did you do in university i did a bachelor of arts which everyone thinks is the best thing to do yeah that's uh no but i did a i did a cool one it was uh i went to the University of King's College in Nova Scotia.

[597] Highly recommended place, by the way.

[598] Great university and did a great books program called the Foundation Year program.

[599] There's a one -year program where you read kind of the history of great Western thought.

[600] Yeah.

[601] And so I did that to begin with.

[602] And then I did my general degree in philosophy and music.

[603] And you wrote your thesis on Heidegger and the psychedelic experience.

[604] Yeah, that's right.

[605] Yeah.

[606] But that was a common topic among students.

[607] Yeah, of course.

[608] You know, one of the things that's interesting, I worked with a lot of high -performing lawyers, and this was especially true of the women.

[609] They were hyper -conscientious, and they were overachievers, which is a horrible word, in junior high and in high school.

[610] I think that's two words.

[611] No, it's one word.

[612] It can be.

[613] It can be hyphenated.

[614] Anyways, they were the top of their high school class, then they were the top of their undergraduate class, then they went to law school, and there were the top of their undergraduate class.

[615] of their class.

[616] And then they got picked up by a big law firm and they shot up through the ranks and became senior partners.

[617] It's one word.

[618] Oh, wait.

[619] No, wait.

[620] No. Yeah.

[621] Yeah.

[622] And then when they got to be senior partners, they generally concluded that they didn't want to work 60 hours a week, like all these other guys.

[623] And although they were women.

[624] And they wanted a more balanced life.

[625] But they had never really stepped outside of this single -minded track, you know, and it wasn't until they hit the pinnacle of what they were aiming at that they sort of woke up and realized, well, maybe this isn't what I wanted to be doing all along.

[626] And the interesting difference with you, I think, is that while you've been organizing your life in a pretty consistent manner, and in a traditional manner, I would say, you've also pursued your artistic pursuits simultaneously.

[627] And that makes it different because that's a place where you can have freedom within the context of discipline and where those things actually work very well together.

[628] You told me that we were walking the dog in the park like a couple of months ago and you were like, what, you know, what do you want for yourself in five years?

[629] And I was like, well, I want to have, you know, a good family life and I want to have a career that's meaningful and, you know, good generic answers.

[630] But you I was like, I guess.

[631] Yeah, well, well, that fits very well with the story I just told them.

[632] My high achieving woman.

[633] Yeah, well, that could be worse.

[634] Yeah, I know.

[635] I'm happy about it.

[636] I wasn't offended.

[637] I just was a little surprising.

[638] Well, I mean, time will tell.

[639] Well, if you do, please keep that private.

[640] Well, yeah.

[641] I won't be keeping that private.

[642] That's funny.

[643] Anyway, my point was, I guess, do you have advice for younger people about how to, like, are you happy that you're settled down now with a kid and?

[644] Yeah, for sure.

[645] There's, well, I wouldn't really have it.

[646] Freedoms or anything?

[647] Well, yeah, obviously, in some ways, it's limited freedoms.

[648] But, well, I feel like when you get into your late 20s or even mid -20s, you've probably been artying and doing random stuff.

[649] living with roommates for quite a few years already.

[650] You know, I mean, it doesn't, I don't think it remains interesting for that long.

[651] And even with, you know, people I know that are around the same age, everyone at around this age, or not everyone, but a lot of people end up settling down to a certain extent.

[652] And whether that's, you know, it's needing a change of some kind, whether it's deciding to travel the world or switch careers or go back to school or something, you can't just stay on the same kind of young person schedule forever.

[653] And, well, I found someone who I fell in love with, and I always was attracted to women who wanted a family, and I always wanted a family.

[654] And so it fit in well for me, and I think that's fairly uncommon with young men.

[655] Well, do you think, do you mean, one of my observations of you, and now you were very private, so I don't know all the details, thank God, is that you tended to mostly have long -term, pretty, committed relationships.

[656] Yeah.

[657] And do you know, that was the case with me, too, generally speaking.

[658] Do you think that was associated with this conscious desire to have a family?

[659] I don't even know if it was.

[660] I think that I, well, I normally just chose women, girls, that I liked.

[661] Plus, what do you want to go out with a girl is like, I hate children?

[662] That's super attractive.

[663] Well, I'd never want to be like, I'm just, that just shouts infertile.

[664] Yeah, well, it's not so bad if you don't want children and if you only regard them as an impediment.

[665] But if you're shouting it, that's definitely a problem.

[666] Yeah, that's a problem.

[667] Yeah, yeah.

[668] If you're shouting that on the street, probably, you should be best avoided.

[669] But I don't know.

[670] It was just kind of how it worked out for me. And, and, oh, I was really lucky.

[671] You know, I met someone who I was extremely compatible with very young and our relationship has only improved with time.

[672] How did you know, how did you know that that was going to work out?

[673] Well, I didn't.

[674] And we had ups and downs, right?

[675] Like, we...

[676] Well, yeah, we had our ups and downs and I didn't, yeah, I didn't know until, really until we were married, I guess, weirdly enough.

[677] Like, maybe not.

[678] Well, maybe that's fairly normal.

[679] But even when we were engaged, you know, I feel like we were still kind of feeling each other out to see if it was really the right path.

[680] And, you know, we went through growing pains and all sorts of things that all couples go through.

[681] we fought a lot at times and but the the thing that I guess made me realize that it was you know a relationship that was built to last was that every time we did our relationship improved right and then it was happening less and less whether you fight it's whether you reconcile yeah for sure that's what it's all about right it's all about finding someone that is willing to put in the effort to improve the relationship you know over the years because people change and their needs change and their interests change.

[682] And you have to have a partner that's willing to listen and keep up with you, right?

[683] Are you good at negotiating?

[684] Yeah, I'd say so.

[685] I mean, that's one of the things that we practiced a lot as kids, right?

[686] And that was one of the things that made our childhood somewhat unique, I would say, was that we spent a lot of time being taught to negotiate.

[687] And so, yeah, it's definitely one of my, one of the skills that I'm, that's very useful in relationships, I guess, that I have.

[688] And useful in other ways?

[689] No. We did.

[690] I've got a question.

[691] A curse leaps to mind.

[692] When you have arguments and negotiate, we had a podcast last year with an FBI negotiator.

[693] And his take was that, you either agree to something and the other person kind of meets you there, but you don't meet in the middle.

[694] What's your take on that?

[695] Like when you guys have disagreements, are there things where you like, okay, I'll give a little and she'll give a little and then...

[696] Yeah, I think eventually that's what happens.

[697] But I think that when you...

[698] I think it's a Higalian synthesis.

[699] Yeah, I also don't know what that means.

[700] Well, how does you know?

[701] Antithesis.

[702] Right.

[703] Synthesis.

[704] Okay.

[705] Not negotiated metal.

[706] Yeah.

[707] Okay, okay.

[708] Yeah, and that's what I was going to say.

[709] Obviously.

[710] I was going to use exactly the same words too.

[711] Hegelian synthesis?

[712] And there's no way of knowing that I wasn't going to.

[713] But yeah, basically, you know, I feel like one person has to basically give in a little bit at the beginning.

[714] And then the other person will meet you somewhere along the way eventually once the, once the negativity or the emotion goes out of the situation, right?

[715] I think it's very uncommon that people reconcile it exactly the same time, right?

[716] It's almost always one person decides that it's, you know, either understands what they've done to contribute or is willing to put that aside in order for, you know, to have a real communication with the other person.

[717] And then, you know, and then once the, once the emotion calms down and people can see more clearly, then you meet somewhere down the road, I guess.

[718] Down the road.

[719] Yeah.

[720] Well, I think that initial willingness to give in isn't that.

[721] It's, I'm willing to change as a consequence of this conflict.

[722] Now, that means I haven't specified the direction of change, but you would do that, hoping that you could both attain something better as a consequence of the negotiation.

[723] And you can, almost inevitably.

[724] And that's what you can aim for.

[725] It's like, let's make this better, not average, not, you know, miserable in the middle, but better for both of us.

[726] That's the point of a successful negotiation.

[727] It also means that the negotiated agreement will be stable because if you have to give in, let's say, and compromise, well, then you're not really pursuing what you want to pursue.

[728] And so you're going to work at a counterposition to that subtly and maybe not so subtly.

[729] But if you see, oh, this is this solution that we both generate is way better than either of the things we were doing before.

[730] That'll just sustain itself.

[731] One person has to trust that the other person is going to do the same thing, right?

[732] think that's where it is because people fights like an actual fight in a relationship when the trust disappears about something right yeah either you know you you assume that the other person isn't going to be able to move past it in some way or isn't going to be able to apologize in a meaningful way or whatever they were motivated in a way that wasn't right it was untrustworthy in some way that's right that's right and then you know it's one person at least has to decide that there's a you know a spark of trust that will come back right in that area the other cheek yeah exactly and you don't have to think that the other person's right or anything, you just have to think that they are willing to actually come to a compromise of some kind.

[733] Yeah, yeah, a solution.

[734] And to go, yeah, certainly, I mean, one of the things that your mom and I have going for us is that fundamentally we trust each other.

[735] Like I really trust her to do her best to do the right thing, you know, and that can be rocky on the road there.

[736] But I know she's, she's working, man, she's working.

[737] And hopefully she feels the same about me. And so, you know, we decided when we got together, I had already decided that I was going to try to not live by lies, let's say, at that point.

[738] And I'd made a concerted effort to do that for a number of years.

[739] And when we first got together, that was part of our agreements, like, no lies.

[740] And I don't, I don't, I don't think your mother's ever lied to me. So she really stuck to it, man. Once she said that was what she's going to do, she.

[741] she was impressive yeah yeah it really is it's when she commits to something she's committed and that was so useful especially when things got really rocky in our lives when you were sick and when I was sick and when she was sick because because we could trust each other you weren't sick what the hell is wrong with you anyway like I'm not sick look at me over here we don't have time to look at you that sounds about right yeah no I told you that I told you that when you were, I don't know, how old you were 10, something like that.

[742] When Michaela got so sick, I remember talking to you and saying, look, kiddo, we're up to our neck here and you're going to have to be sensible.

[743] And you were.

[744] Because it was cool.

[745] We almost got a tear.

[746] Well, I wouldn't be, you know, if you got a tear.

[747] Me and my feminine temperament.

[748] My feminine goal is your feminine temperament.

[749] yeah yeah yeah wow i'm sitting out of the out of the pokes for this podcast sit here quietly uh i guess we i think you were too hard on yourself about relationships there kiddo earlier comparing yourself with julian that seems like a backhanded compliment toward too i feel like i just i just met in comparison to me i didn't I'm not hard on my, I don't think I did something necessarily.

[750] I think I did my best.

[751] Yeah, I think you did too.

[752] There were some extenuating circumstances over here.

[753] So I'm like, it just didn't turn out.

[754] Well, you also had good relationships in the past.

[755] It's not like you've had terrible relationships.

[756] That's not how it's going.

[757] No, no, no, it was hard.

[758] So.

[759] It has been hard.

[760] Yes.

[761] I think we should wrap up.

[762] So I've just got one more question.

[763] And I'm going to post all the like relevant links and things below.

[764] So that'll, anything you're interested in.

[765] Oh, I have another question, too, though, before we close.

[766] Okay, you go first.

[767] Well, you did, the most protracted writing you did was your thesis.

[768] So why did you pick the topic?

[769] And what did it do for you to write that?

[770] And what did it teach you about writing?

[771] Yeah, well, when I was in my fourth year of university, I was pursuing a music minor and writing my thesis.

[772] I was actually taking, I think I was taking six courses, working two jobs and writing my thesis.

[773] That was too much.

[774] But it was interesting, right?

[775] I mean, and one of the things that, you know, one of the things that you always say to people, but you said to us as kids was, you know, it's useful to see how far you can, you know, see how much you can work, right?

[776] And see where your limits are to a certain extent.

[777] And that was one of the things that it did to me that or for me that year was that I was really going at full, full capacity doing all those things and well it was great writing a thesis was definitely the most meaningful part of my university experience and I chose the thing that I did partly because it was very interesting to me to go back to what we were talking about earlier about finding a topic that compels you I thought it was I'd been reading a lot of Heidegger because that was part of the degree that I was doing was focused on kind of that era of philosophers and I found his philosophy extremely interesting.

[778] And then I was also reading Terrence McKenna at that time.

[779] You would give me a few books that were about the psychedelic experience.

[780] Like fathers do.

[781] Yeah.

[782] That's a normal thing.

[783] And I kept seeing parallels and maybe that was the psychedelics.

[784] But in any case, I decided they were really.

[785] there.

[786] And so I just wanted to explore that because I didn't feel like it had ever been explored properly, that relationship between, you know, a fairly mainstream, I suppose.

[787] Well, yeah, mainstream philosopher and kind of out there thinkers like Terrence McKenna or like, yeah, the other, the other thinkers that I integrated into that paper.

[788] And it was just, you know, I wanted to do something unique.

[789] Yeah, we're going to get about 50 books on that.

[790] So is that paper, like, could that paper be put up online so people could read it.

[791] It could.

[792] I'll put it in the essay app.

[793] Yeah, that I think you should put it in.

[794] Didn't we decide that you're going to put it in the essay app?

[795] Yeah, that probably needs to be edited.

[796] Oh, God.

[797] Well, use the essay to use essay.

[798] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[799] It's pretty good.

[800] Yeah, it turned out quite well.

[801] I was, I was proud of it.

[802] And yeah, for sure, I could put it up so people could read it.

[803] Yeah.

[804] So what does the act of writing that, a thesis is a capstone, right?

[805] So you move from your undergraduate degree to mastery, mastery.

[806] what did the thesis do for you psychologically the fact that you went through it well it was my greatest accomplishment at that time right i mean it it was wasn't it was just a the ability to complete something that major that's major just a major project in anything but especially one that is unique and you put a lot of thought into a lot of yourself into um well that's why they put it at the end of the degree right and so you can use everything that you've captured while you've been learning and put it into something that's a that's creative and new and hopefully teaches yourself what you've learned and can teach other people as well so if you do a phd thesis it's usually something approximating the length of a book and then you go for your defense it's mine was like the length of a dr seuss but yeah a long dr seuss so how long was it i was i think it was 29, maybe 30 pages.

[807] Right, right, right.

[808] And so a PhD thesis.

[809] Which is a normal like philosophy, undergrad philosophy thesis.

[810] Right.

[811] History thesis are generally like 70, 80 pages.

[812] Right, right.

[813] So a PhD thesis would be, for a research scientist would be 150 pages or something like that.

[814] And then you go for your defense and there's a few people on the committee, maybe five, your supervisor and an outside reader and a couple of people from the department.

[815] And they're really the only people that read it.

[816] Now, sometimes if your thesis is particularly good, it's a research thesis, you can break it up into papers and they're published and far more people will read it.

[817] But often not even that many then.

[818] And you might think, well, why write it if no one will read it?

[819] Because it's a lot of work, three years of work.

[820] But the answer is, well, you wrote it.

[821] Yeah, that's the whole point for sure.

[822] Yeah, and that trains you.

[823] And plus, like you said, it's a capstone.

[824] You know, one of the reasons, it's really useful to finish something that you started is because then you see someone, then you see yourself as someone who can finish what they started.

[825] And you might think, well, what if I change my mind halfway through?

[826] That's a good question.

[827] But the answer to that should be, don't switch courses halfway through unless what you've switched to is somewhat more difficult.

[828] Because you want to check yourself against the tendency just to bail out and rationalize when things get difficult when you're moving forward.

[829] And you do have to reward yourself with completion for your effort because it's really punishing to not finish something.

[830] Yeah, for sure.

[831] You don't attain the goal.

[832] You don't move to consummation of the experience.

[833] But it's not if what you move to is harder.

[834] Well, that's a good check against your own internal tendency to rationalize.

[835] It's like, okay, I'm going to aim at this.

[836] I'm going to work towards.

[837] completion.

[838] But what if I find out along the way that I'm wrong?

[839] Well, yeah, what if you find out along the way that it's difficult and you're not very disciplined and you're pretty whiny and you turn away in the face of difficulties, right?

[840] Because that's the opposite of that.

[841] Well, one check against that is don't switch courses unless you're sure that what you switch to is more challenging.

[842] And then you're acting as your own check against the potential that your weakness your moral weakness fundamentally will compromise your move forward.

[843] I would also say, too, that another aspect of moving towards completion that's useful is that you really learn at the end what it is that you've just done.

[844] And then you can use that information to retool your next goal because you could say, well, when you finished your philosophy degree, what did you do?

[845] I worked at a bar.

[846] Okay, you worked at a bar and then and then you went to a boot.

[847] camp.

[848] Yeah.

[849] Okay.

[850] So how did that come about?

[851] Why did you work in a bar and why was that useful or not?

[852] And then why did you move to the boot camp and how did that work?

[853] Yeah.

[854] So when I first started my undergrad degree, I was, uh, I was actually going to do computer science, uh, at UFT.

[855] that's my plan.

[856] I was going to do this great books program.

[857] I was going to, it people often do this program as a one year program and then they go off and do something else.

[858] Um, it's - You do that online?

[859] Uh, a syllabus anywhere.

[860] The syllabus is probably online, the reading list.

[861] Yeah.

[862] Uh, It would be online.

[863] Yeah, you could, I'm not exactly sure, but we could probably find a link to it.

[864] Sounds like a Peterson Academy project.

[865] Yeah.

[866] And anyway, so I was planning to do that.

[867] I was going to go to UFT or somewhere else do computer science because I was always a computer nerd.

[868] And turns out that I was, well, I met a lot of good people, including my wife.

[869] And so I did the degree.

[870] And that turned out to be exactly the right thing to do.

[871] But at the end of it, I, you know, with a Bachelor of Ruff, arts.

[872] I mean, how many people have bachelors of arts and don't exactly know what to do when they're done, pretty much all of them.

[873] And so I spent a little bit of time working and figuring out what I was going to do.

[874] And while there were software boot camps, which was an extremely straightforward way of getting into that industry.

[875] And so I went to Lighthouse Labs and learned to program in a more standard way and came out of that and started building.

[876] user interfaces for racing yachts.

[877] Nice.

[878] Because that always happened.

[879] And when was it that we started talking about the online education project in relationship to your programming?

[880] It was while you were working, designing the user interface for these navigation systems.

[881] Yeah, for sure.

[882] You refer like high -end carbon fiber racing yachts.

[883] Yes.

[884] So it's a rather niche market, you might say.

[885] That is niche as it gets.

[886] Yeah.

[887] They race and no one watches.

[888] Yeah.

[889] And you worked in the bar for how long?

[890] Oh, I worked in a bar all the way through my undergrad, pretty much, from second year until, you know, about 10 months after I'd completely...

[891] And why did you do that?

[892] And why was it useful apart from the money?

[893] Well, the money was great.

[894] That was obviously why it was a great job for, to have as an undergraduate, you know, you get...

[895] It's a social job.

[896] You get to work in a restaurant, which it's kind of...

[897] And from my perspective, it's the best job in a restaurant because you get to have a social life while you're doing it to communicate with people at the bar.

[898] People want to talk to you.

[899] You have a lot of responsibility.

[900] You can also serve tables.

[901] Why did you like the responsibility?

[902] Well, I think when you're working in a restaurant, it's nice to have a position of some authority, I guess, right?

[903] And the bar that I ended up working at, it was a bar at a bar at a restaurant.

[904] best Western.

[905] And they were just opening the bar.

[906] So I was the first bartender there.

[907] So I got to kind of organize the way it ran.

[908] And so that was a, that was a useful, that was a useful to do.

[909] Adopting that responsibility gives you decision -making power and freedom as a consequence of that.

[910] Although I worked 14 -hour shifts for the first like three months because they were like, we're going to have an 11 a .m. to 11 p .m. bartender.

[911] What?

[912] And so that's what I did.

[913] But then it took like two hours to, because people would stay late obviously because it's a bar and then you'd have to clean up and so yeah 14 hours that was that was a little much oh yeah yeah if you know if you got if you went over for your weekly yeah yeah i did i got overtime sometimes why don't they just hire more people they did eventually but they didn't know what they were doing yeah yeah and they didn't know how busy was going to be or anything and and so yeah so did you what you ended up doing something practical yes engineering essentially practical engineering what do you think was the utility of having the great books context and because you look back and that you think it was worthwhile?

[914] Why was it worthwhile?

[915] Well, I mean, the biggest thing was that you are in a community of people who are reading things that they would never otherwise read that are extremely valuable, right?

[916] I mean, you're never going to read the epic of Gilgamesh out of the context of that sort of program if you're well you just won't and so and it was cool it was kind of a boot camp of its own right you have you know a couple hundred people all reading the same book and writing papers at the same time living in the same uh residence area and so it was a real community of yeah for sure well it was designed after oxford yeah and that's designed on the monastery tradition.

[917] Yeah.

[918] So it is a monastery.

[919] It essentially is.

[920] Yeah.

[921] And so that, well, it was a fantastic community and gave you the opportunity to do something that you'd never otherwise get to do.

[922] And, you know, in terms of the value that it gave me, I mean, there was the value of completing a degree.

[923] That's, that, that's valuable essentially no matter, it's personally valuable, no matter what degree you complete.

[924] And then it taught me to write because you wrote research paper about these books every couple weeks.

[925] It's pretty much the most intensive writing program that you can do at an undergrad school in Canada.

[926] It's also related to this issue of the structure of essay that we started this conversation with because you know, while you're programming, you're typing and you're moving your fingers.

[927] This is how I programmed.

[928] Yeah, it's like this, sort of randomly.

[929] It's very concrete and you're actually building something.

[930] Right.

[931] But it's nested inside an entire value structure.

[932] Because there's a reason for what you're doing and there's a reason for the reason that you're doing that and et cetera all the way up to the highest level of analysis and if you study philosophy you study the great books tradition the canon then it allows you the opportunity to organize your goals and your values at the highest and broadest sense and that means that you can orient the practicalities towards a high end and for us the practicalities of your profession are oriented towards facilitating people's use of words.

[933] And there isn't a higher purpose than that.

[934] And so you get organized the advantage of doing an undergraduate.

[935] I would say in conjunction with a practical apprenticeship is that you get good at what you're doing at every level all the way up to the highest level.

[936] So what about would you describe yourself as religious or not?

[937] Not particularly, no. I mean, I think that I have a lot of appreciation for religious tradition and I've read a lot of religious text because of the degree I did.

[938] Well, I don't know.

[939] It's a complicated question to answer it like you do.

[940] Yeah.

[941] Yeah.

[942] But I usually say more than that.

[943] Well, sometimes.

[944] Well, you studied these great traditions and the great books.

[945] Yeah.

[946] I don't think that I've fully, I guess, yeah, I don't think that I've fully I don't think I have a complete understanding of my own religiosity, I guess.

[947] I don't think that I do.

[948] I think that that's a work in progress for me and for my family.

[949] You know, it's something we talk about fairly often.

[950] It's like, how do you, I mean, we live in downtown Toronto and, you know, there's not an excellent religious tradition among young people in downtown.

[951] So that's just not something.

[952] So the community aspect isn't there.

[953] The traditions aren't like obvious.

[954] and so how do you integrate that, the value that comes out of that, right?

[955] Like the community and the tradition.

[956] Right.

[957] So it's missing the monastery element.

[958] Yeah, it's missing that.

[959] And so trying to figure out how to incorporate that into your family as a young person is, takes a lot of effort.

[960] And it's something my wife and I do talk about fairly often.

[961] And we've talked to our friends about it.

[962] And I feel like a lot of people struggle with how to incorporate the positive elements of religion of that tradition into their lives.

[963] And what do you make of the fact that these religious, more religious ideas that I've been discussing, let's say, primarily from a psychological perspective, what do you make of the fact that they've been of interest to young people?

[964] Well, I think it's exactly the sort of thing that I just described.

[965] And people have a yearning for tradition and for meaning.

[966] And, you know, I think that I obviously was privy to a lot of these thoughts growing up.

[967] And so it, you know, I was already asking these questions and, and it was already interesting to me, but I think you just opened a lot of people's eyes about the sorts of value that they can get from old ideas, right?

[968] Old and meaningful ideas, but ideas that are very abstract.

[969] And so, you know, you were able to turn them into less abstract ideas like we did with the essay app.

[970] Yes, exactly.

[971] So I think it made a lot of sense.

[972] I wasn't particularly, I mean, I was surprised on the scale of it, but I wasn't.

[973] surprised that people were interested in that.

[974] That's what people have always been interested in people who can articulate religious ideas out of abstraction.

[975] And what do you think, what ideals and values do you think guide you if you had to make it explicit?

[976] What do you aim at at the highest level you think?

[977] I mean, and you, you talked about trust in your relationship.

[978] What do you aim at in your in your day to day life?

[979] And well, I think I try to, I try to do the thing.

[980] I try to do the thing that make me feel well it's I mean it's a complicated thing to answer right you you follow the things that make you feel strong I guess or I mean but I don't really even feel like strong is the right word necessarily but well strong is not a bad things that make you feel positively about yourself in the long run I guess and and I don't know I've always I've always struggled with setting long -term goals I guess right I I don't think that's ever been one of my strong suits.

[981] Like, you know, when I'm going to, I was always interested in being all sorts of things.

[982] And I was, well, I wanted to be a professional hockey player.

[983] But I was like, I was this close, you know.

[984] Yeah, well, that's a problem of being interested in many things, too.

[985] For sure.

[986] And, but that's worked in my favor because I do get to do a lot of things now.

[987] Right.

[988] And so I think that, I guess that's my long -term goal is to do a lot of interesting things and have a varied life where I have a feminine goal thing.

[989] Yeah, well, I think I actually was like, yeah, that sounds about right.

[990] Men aimed at perfection and women aimed at completeness.

[991] Right.

[992] Or wholeness.

[993] And I think there's truth in that that instead of becoming absolutely perfect at one thing, which is a really useful practice if you want to move up a given competence hierarchy, in the broader context of your life, I mean, I certainly wouldn't have sacrificed my family for my career.

[994] In fact, if push came to shove, I would have done the opposite, even though I really loved my career and loved my career now.

[995] And so it is necessary to arrange an optimal balance.

[996] And that optimal balance is the highest unity towards which people can strive, right?

[997] You have to wander around through those diverse areas to figure out how to integrate them.

[998] But you, you aren't everything you could be unless you flash out your life.

[999] One, I've also been fortunate in a lot of ways to be able to explore all these things that I like to be able to go to a undergrad and do that and be feel like, feel free to explore producing an album.

[1000] That's your privilege.

[1001] Well, I think it is.

[1002] Absolutely.

[1003] Okay.

[1004] So I have a question for you related to that.

[1005] So you had privileges that other people don't have.

[1006] how do you think you best atone for your privileges?

[1007] Well, by taking advantage of them in a way that benefits other people as well as yourself, right?

[1008] I mean, that's the only way you can do it.

[1009] You have to use your opportunities in a positive way.

[1010] I think that's, yeah, because people are going to have different levels of privilege.

[1011] But it's easy to that and feel guilty about it.

[1012] Yeah.

[1013] It's not very helpful.

[1014] Yeah, and guilt might be a decent motivator for some people.

[1015] Yeah, and it's necessary, but it's easy to be overwhelmed.

[1016] by it, you know, because...

[1017] Yeah, one, and it isn't necessary.

[1018] That's a Hedegarian throneness.

[1019] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[1020] And I do think the answer to that isn't to feel so guilty and terrible about the fact that you have some gifts and other people don't.

[1021] You have some burdens and other people don't, too.

[1022] So it's hard to judge that.

[1023] But, well, it's just not, I mean, it's not useful.

[1024] It's not, you can't really throw away your privilege, right?

[1025] I mean, Bruce Wayne doesn't like, stop being Bruce Wayne when he goes off and, and stop and, you know, becomes Batman eventually.

[1026] he's always the same guy he can't you can't get rid of your past and your opportunities very easily yeah and it's foolish to throw them away right exactly so it's you know i mean the goal is benefiting that's a good question yeah agents of mayhem and chaos fundamentally and hopelessness yeah no you have to tone for your privilege and that that doesn't mean to be guilty by taking advantage of your opportunities in a positive way and that's yeah and so that's what i that's what i try to do as much by making the most of them.

[1027] Yeah.

[1028] Mm -hmm.

[1029] And I think that idea of doing that in a way that benefits you and everyone else simultaneously, that's sustainable in the highest possible sense.

[1030] Okay.

[1031] So I think we should wrap it up.

[1032] Although I'm definitely going to convince you to talk to me again when we're, yeah, it's going to happen.

[1033] But what's the piece of advice dad gave you that's really stuck with you?

[1034] You have one?

[1035] Well, the one I always liked best was the don't follow stupid rules one.

[1036] Yeah.

[1037] That's a great piece of advice that comes in handy, you know, all the time.

[1038] Yeah, well, I remember, I think when we discussed that to begin with was in the context of your school's no snowball policy.

[1039] Oh, yeah.

[1040] So Julian and Michaela went to a school very nearby that was run by a benevolent fascist.

[1041] She was horrible.

[1042] She was evil.

[1043] She was quite the creature.

[1044] anyways.

[1045] Yeah, she was quite the creature.

[1046] Anyways, they had a no snowball.

[1047] No, no. It was actually it was worse than that.

[1048] It was no picking up snow.

[1049] Right.

[1050] You couldn't even pick it up.

[1051] Yeah.

[1052] Well, you might.

[1053] And so of course, none of the children did.

[1054] Yeah.

[1055] Of course.

[1056] So that made all of them instantly criminals by pursuing their own.

[1057] Anyways, I told them they could pick up snow if they wanted to and even make a snowball.

[1058] And if they wanted to hit the odd teacher who might deserve it in the head and snowball, that probably be okay too.

[1059] But that you have to pay.

[1060] The PTA loved this guy.

[1061] You had to be willing to pay for your crime, right?

[1062] Yeah, yeah.

[1063] Yeah, and so there's that one.

[1064] And then probably the advice that stuck with me most of all is one from mom, though, because she told me when I was caught smoking weed in, like, middle school.

[1065] And she said, she basically said that you can, you know, you can explore.

[1066] the world, but you have to do it carefully and, and, you know, in a cautious way and not go too far.

[1067] And that one always really stuck with me because I always told me that.

[1068] You were there.

[1069] You just, you just weren't listening.

[1070] Yeah.

[1071] Well, the way that your mother and I formulated it, because we talked about this, we'd live through the just say no to drugs push from the Regans.

[1072] And it was no. Well, it just didn't work very well.

[1073] Well, it just doesn't work.

[1074] And I also knew from the psych literature that kids who never explored and experimented were actually as bad off as those who did too much.

[1075] Right.

[1076] And so then the question is, it's like this compromise ideal in some sense.

[1077] Well, is there a golden mean?

[1078] And part of what your mom and I worked out was, and I think we told you this explicitly, too, if you were going to smoke pot, for example, we didn't want to be able to see that you were stone.

[1079] Right.

[1080] So, like, if you couldn't handle it, you were doing too much.

[1081] Yeah.

[1082] And I think that's, I can't see how you can come up with a doctrine that's better than that.

[1083] It's like, well, if it's interfering with your life, your social function, that's diagnostic criteria for abuse.

[1084] Yeah, exactly.

[1085] And yeah, that one always stuck with me. I don't know.

[1086] And, well, that's, I feel like it's a philosophical, I guess, idea that works in pretty much every area.

[1087] of someone's life.

[1088] And I think that's part of the reason why I do have the goals that I have is because I feel, well, I do feel like, you know, the best sort of life is one that is complete in, you know, a variety of areas.

[1089] And that's the same thing as as not going too far, right?

[1090] Well, in the self -authoring suite, in the future authoring program, we have people write about desired career or job.

[1091] Like, you're lucky if you have a career, but at least he could have a job.

[1092] That can be a career if you do it properly.

[1093] So I like working in bars and restaurants, you know, because those are way more complicated jobs than people think.

[1094] So are you as educated as your intelligence might require, right?

[1095] Do you have friends, at least one friend that you actually see now and then?

[1096] Do you have an intimate relationship?

[1097] Are you working towards it?

[1098] Can you govern your alcohol and drug intake?

[1099] What do you do to optimize your mental and physical health?

[1100] And do you use your time outside of your obligated?

[1101] productively and meaningfully.

[1102] And that's sort of seven dimensions.

[1103] And, you know, maybe you can't function optimally on all seven, but zero is the wrong number.

[1104] And four might be enough.

[1105] And one person might picks one set of four and another, another set of four.

[1106] But it's a good practical place to start.

[1107] And I think you're much less likely to be miserable and resentful and unhappy and anxious and hopeless if you're firing on all seven.

[1108] That's what they say, right?

[1109] Fire on all seven.

[1110] Yeah.

[1111] What about with regards to your son?

[1112] What principles do you use disciplinary principles?

[1113] And how do you negotiate that with Gillian?

[1114] Well, we talk about it a lot.

[1115] That's the main thing, is making sure you're on the same page as your partner when it comes to discipline.

[1116] Otherwise, you end up disciplining each other instead of the kid and the kid gets nothing.

[1117] And so that's been the main thing.

[1118] But, you know, the idea.

[1119] that you want to make sure at every level that your kid is being the kid who will turn into the adults that you want them to be, right?

[1120] I mean, that's the idea.

[1121] You want to watch for behaviors that aren't going to serve them well.

[1122] And then, you know, in as careful and productive way as you can, you discipline, whether that's just taking them aside and talking to them or...

[1123] Yeah, discipline doesn't mean punish.

[1124] No, it just means mold into an ideal.

[1125] attention and and, you know, well, it basically means paying attention and then acting on it.

[1126] So that's what we try to do.

[1127] And, you know, he's one and a half.

[1128] So he listens perfectly.

[1129] Yeah.

[1130] Yeah, he's doing all right.

[1131] Yeah.

[1132] He's doing all right.

[1133] Okay, well, cheers, guys.

[1134] That was fine.

[1135] Cheers.

[1136] You bet.

[1137] And here's to finally having this conversation.

[1138] Yeah.

[1139] And being able to have it.

[1140] Yeah.

[1141] Thank God.

[1142] Thank God.

[1143] We're I'm going to be.