EXPERTS ON EXPERT: Todd Rose

[0] Welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert.

[1] I am Dak Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Manika Padman.

[3] Oh.

[4] And today we're going to speak with a gentleman named Todd Rose.

[5] Todd Rose is a professor at Harvard, a very reputable school of learning.

[6] And he has written a book called Dark Horse, Achieving Success through the Pursuit of Fulfillment.

[7] I think this will be a very liberating conversation for a lot of people because what Todd has endeavor to do is look at what success really is.

[8] And he follows a lot of people who have achieved fulfillment and thrown out the conventional past to success.

[9] And it's quite a stimulating conversation.

[10] He's just a sweetheart, too, with a really bizarre story that got him to Harvard.

[11] Yeah.

[12] So please enjoy Todd Rose.

[13] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and add free right now.

[14] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[15] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[16] Todd Rose, welcome to Armchair Expert.

[17] Yeah, thanks for having me. You lied to me on the way in and said that you've listened to this.

[18] And I appreciate that lie.

[19] It made me feel a lot better.

[20] As we're playing this out, I'm going to open up my phone here.

[21] And I'm going to show you my podcast list.

[22] Oh, this should be very telling about you.

[23] Oh, shoot, yeah, that's not good.

[24] My guess is you've got a lot of, like, making a murderer, my favorite murder, serial.

[25] There it is.

[26] Oh, yeah, you can see.

[27] Oh, my goodness.

[28] That's how far I am on this.

[29] Oh, wow.

[30] Okay, you passed the test.

[31] Thank you.

[32] So, Todd, you're in town from Massachusetts.

[33] That's right.

[34] It's exactly how we say it.

[35] Please say it for me because I do notice when I have.

[36] Guess on from, I recognize I'm saying it wrong.

[37] Let me just say how I say it.

[38] Massachusetts.

[39] Oh, you are saying it wrong.

[40] Massachusetts.

[41] There you.

[42] Yeah.

[43] And by the way, I'm a transplant from rural Utah.

[44] So however I say it is probably not right anyway.

[45] What part of Utah?

[46] Hooper.

[47] It's like you go north from Salt Lake and then head toward the Great Salt Lake.

[48] And when there's no more land to be had, that's like where I lived.

[49] Okay.

[50] So I made the mistake in high school on a road trip of swimming in the Great.

[51] Oh, it's terrible.

[52] It's disgusting.

[53] It's absolutely disgusting.

[54] I had read about it in a science book in, like, eighth grade, that the salinity content, yeah, is so high that you just float.

[55] And I thought, well, I must experience this once in my life.

[56] And what they don't tell you in the science book is that there's about a catrillion flies all along the shore.

[57] And it's this putrid, stinky.

[58] It's like brine shrimp smell.

[59] It's a, yes.

[60] Now, I lived with that blowing toward my poor house.

[61] Oh, my gosh.

[62] I mean, it's just living the dream, really.

[63] Yeah.

[64] And there's a human.

[65] I don't know, some kind of facility right by the lake.

[66] And I'm assuming it's processing salt or something.

[67] Exactly right.

[68] It is.

[69] And so you got that too, probably.

[70] It's a nice noise and a great smell.

[71] Yeah.

[72] Did you float?

[73] Could you float?

[74] I'll tell you this.

[75] You do, it was like sitting in this fucking lazy boy.

[76] Really?

[77] It's pretty incredible.

[78] I don't know how one would drown in the Great Salt Lake.

[79] That's cool.

[80] You're so buoyant.

[81] It would, my whole treading water record would be so not impressive.

[82] Do you think that's?

[83] where he treaded water.

[84] Okay, so, Todd, I'm going to bring you up to speed really quick.

[85] Believe me, we're going to talk about your book.

[86] But before we do, we were in Austin doing a live show, and I got it a hair up my ass that I wanted to set like a personal record for treading water, which ended up being an hour in one minute.

[87] And they all observed.

[88] But you treaded water for an hour and a minute.

[89] Yep.

[90] That's pretty.

[91] I hadn't been swimming in a year.

[92] I'll add that.

[93] That's not bad.

[94] Okay.

[95] So I was quite proud of myself.

[96] And then Monica decided to look up what the world record was for the longest.

[97] someone's ever treaded water.

[98] And it was a gentleman in India.

[99] Mm -hmm.

[100] Was it 87 hours?

[101] 80 something.

[102] I fit 80.

[103] It was almost four days.

[104] Wait, when you did it, did you like do the lay backwards with your?

[105] Absolutely not Todd.

[106] That's not treading water.

[107] It's like straight up.

[108] Proper treading water and conversing with the people on the dock.

[109] My kids were jumping in and out and I was having to kind of.

[110] So you're an athlete.

[111] That's what you're telling you.

[112] I don't know.

[113] I've tried to become one in my adulthood, but I wasn't as a, kid but at any rate can 87 hours so maybe he did it in the great salt lake yeah but you are in town and you're i presume you're promoting your book dark horse right absolutely you wrote a book called dark horse achieving success through the pursuit of fulfillment that's a big word fulfillment isn't it yeah how do we quantify or qualify or measure fulfillment well the good news about it is uh we don't quantify it right okay it's completely subjective right it's the sad satisfaction that comes from accomplishing things that matter to you.

[114] Okay.

[115] And the reason I like that is nobody can tell you.

[116] Nobody can give it to you.

[117] Nobody can tell you exactly what it is, but you know what you care about and you know whether you've actually been able to accomplish things.

[118] Yeah.

[119] And are you hip to, I really don't know who the engineer or the first person to come up with this concept.

[120] I learned it through Yuval Harari.

[121] So this concept of your narrative self who's writing your life story and your experiential self who's eating ice cream.

[122] Right, right.

[123] And rarely do those two selves really have the same pursuit.

[124] Yeah.

[125] So when we talk about fulfillment, are we talking about the narrative self or no?

[126] It's got to be the true true you, right?

[127] There's no if you're, if you're the person we're trying to tell everybody else that we are, like that it's toxic to being able to actually live a fulfilling life, right?

[128] Because you're trying to say this who I am and then I'm going to do things that actually reinforce this other view, right?

[129] And it might look good, but it's hollow, right?

[130] At the end of the day, it's hollow.

[131] Yeah.

[132] And this is purely about the ability to be in touch with who you really are and what you care about, even if nobody else cares about those things.

[133] And there's plenty of those folks in the book.

[134] They just care about things that I think are really crazy.

[135] Like I wouldn't, I'm not motivated by them at all.

[136] Yeah.

[137] And yet they turn that into productive contributions.

[138] And they end up having this really interesting balance of being successful and happy.

[139] And I think that that seems simple, but it's something that we all like really have a hard time doing and being.

[140] it's very elusive in my experience i've met a lot of my heroes who have accomplished the things that i thought would would make someone be happy in general and in uh minimally i can say that there's not an increase level of happiness across the spectrum and i i would almost argue there seems to be a bit of you know less than happiness with great i think that's look i think that's it especially when um that success is coming based on what society's told us success is supposed to be right so we're all taught that it's wealth status power it's really about am i better than you yes yes and you think that's right and then we play that game and you know the people who don't win are miserable but then the people who do win are like hold on what the hell is this like this isn't what this is not what what you told me it would be yeah you know and it's um so i was fascinated by like what are there people who seem to like thread this needle who just seem to be able to more often than not be in that sort of like happy and accomplishing things.

[141] And if there are like, could we learn something?

[142] Because there's something we could learn from them that would make our lives a little better.

[143] Yeah.

[144] What you study primarily is education, right?

[145] So I'm, I study individuality, getting away from macro sort of treating everyone is the same and how do you do that.

[146] And that spans everything from personalized medicine.

[147] But I do care a lot about education and I'm housed in the school of education.

[148] Okay.

[149] And what was your, you know, what were your degrees?

[150] So I got a doctorate in developmental science from Harvard.

[151] I got a master's in mind, brain, and education.

[152] And then I got a, my undergrad was from Weber State University in Ogden, Utah in psychology.

[153] Why do you think you were attracted to those?

[154] So my intellectual interest, and I think you'll probably relate to this, given what I know about you, totally personal to begin with.

[155] Right.

[156] My own curiosity about, for whatever credentials I have now, most of my life, I was a complete screw -up, colossally.

[157] I mean, I fell out of high school with a 0 .9 GPA.

[158] Oh, really?

[159] You have to work really, really hard.

[160] Did you have a learning disability, or did you like drugs?

[161] What the fuck happened?

[162] I was in the middle of, in rural Utah.

[163] I couldn't get drugs if I wanted to get drugs.

[164] But like, free basing, brine water out of the yacht.

[165] I was a little, yeah, that's right.

[166] I think I'd take heroin over that.

[167] But it was actually just, I'm a pretty curious person and I'm a little active.

[168] I cannot get to sit still for very long.

[169] And in this.

[170] rural place where I grew up, which was a deeply religious, very conservative, patriarchal, hierarchical, like, it was about obedience, right?

[171] That's the thing that was prized and it was just never going to work.

[172] And basically, I'm this kind of person who's asking why about everything and they're like, stop asking why.

[173] Right.

[174] And so then it just snowballs, right?

[175] Like, you're just, and I was, I think it was a little annoying.

[176] I get bullied a lot and like, it just was a bad.

[177] It was a terrible experience.

[178] I hated school.

[179] Right.

[180] And get, you know, my, year, the principal was like, look, you got to leave, right?

[181] You can't graduate.

[182] You're not even close.

[183] And you're just screwing off.

[184] You just got to go.

[185] Really?

[186] So my parents came and picked me up and they're like, well, I guess you're done with school.

[187] Oh, wow.

[188] And then, yeah, so then, okay, well, and my dad's like, well, you got to get a job now.

[189] And he's like, let's see what you kind of job you can get with out of high school diploma, right?

[190] Right.

[191] So can you handle a mom, son?

[192] That's, that's really, ended up working about a dozen minimum wage jobs.

[193] shortly thereafter my girlfriend found out she was pregnant she's still my wife today oh hot dog yeah yeah wow this is great right this is a good start uh so we ended up with two kids i'm about 20 years old oh my goodness and ended up on welfare trying to get by and it kind of all the rock bottom hits um my wife's donating blood plasma okay at the like legal limit to help us pay the bills and i have this job that i took because it paid seven dollars an hour instead of 5 .50, which was I gave enemas to people all day.

[194] Oh, no kidding.

[195] That was, that was the worst job.

[196] Well, it's, yeah, it's a shitty job, literally and figuratively.

[197] Yeah.

[198] So you were at like at a colonic clinic or something?

[199] Oh, I wish.

[200] No, I had to drive around to people's houses.

[201] Oh, my goodness.

[202] You were like a mole, you were like postmates for enemas.

[203] Yes, right.

[204] Postmates.

[205] Exactly.

[206] I just didn't have the good branding like that.

[207] I was, um, I was a nurse assistant and hold on.

[208] They only paid you $7 an hour to do that.

[209] Right.

[210] That's a bar.

[211] It's a crazy.

[212] It's a pretty.

[213] It's a pretty, These are people who couldn't leave their home, but I don't want to be there.

[214] They don't really want me doing this to them.

[215] And I was like, this cannot be my life, right?

[216] Well, and let's also just think about the mechanics of this.

[217] You're getting an hourly wage, but unfortunately, it doesn't take long to give an enema.

[218] Right.

[219] So you're only logging, what, a few hours.

[220] And you've done the worst thing possible for 21 bucks.

[221] This is bad.

[222] Oh, my goodness.

[223] Okay, so you, I presume, found your way to a community college.

[224] Is that what happened?

[225] So, yeah.

[226] Yeah, so what, like, I remember, I remember thinking, like, something has to change.

[227] Now, also having kids kind of clears your head a bit, right?

[228] But these little kids are just innocent.

[229] And you're like, man, I got to do something different.

[230] I got to do right by them.

[231] And I remember it was my dad, like, he was the first high school graduate in our family.

[232] He went to college, but he decided when we were little, he was a mechanic.

[233] Okay.

[234] And he said, came home one day.

[235] He said, look, like, I think there's something more for me. There's, there's something, one is honest work, but like, and he said, I think I need to go to college, but we didn't nobody in our family going to college.

[236] That's not a thing.

[237] Right.

[238] Right.

[239] So when I was in grade school, he just decided he was going to go to night school and he became a mechanical engineer.

[240] And now he's basically invents like airbags and stuff.

[241] That's what he does for a living.

[242] No kidding.

[243] He's amazing.

[244] But I had watched.

[245] Did he leave the, the backwater, the literal backwater of the Great Salt Lake.

[246] Yeah.

[247] So we moved on up.

[248] We moved to like middle class, Utah, a latent, Utah.

[249] Uh, uh.

[250] Uh, And it was like a nice, you know, suddenly we had, we weren't poor and we, you know, and you could see the power of that.

[251] So I went like, I need to do something.

[252] And, you know, my dad told me something completely transformative.

[253] He said, people were calling me lazy.

[254] And that's fair enough.

[255] Like I was quitting minimum wage jobs.

[256] I worked like Einstein's bagels.

[257] I worked like, like you name and I did it.

[258] And he was like, people like settle down.

[259] You just got to like work hard at this.

[260] And he said, you know, you're not lazy.

[261] He said, you just have to be motivated all the time.

[262] If you're not doing the thing that you care about, then you're not good.

[263] But when you are, you're spectacular.

[264] He said, so you need to figure out what it is that really matters to you and stay close to that the rest of your life.

[265] And I was like, huh.

[266] And he was like, you know, maybe I could be a good businessman or maybe I could like, I had negative $13 in my bank account.

[267] So I wasn't going to start any company.

[268] Right.

[269] And so I was like, I got to go to school, which was weird because it had been terrible up to that point.

[270] Yeah.

[271] So I went up to Weber State, which is a little like open enrollment college.

[272] and said I want to enroll.

[273] So it wasn't a community college in that.

[274] It was a four -year school, but anyone could go.

[275] Oh, that's fantastic.

[276] And anyone did go, right?

[277] Right.

[278] It was like, we scraped together my in -laws and everyone pulled all their money together, which was only like $800 a term or something like that, but that was a lot of money for us.

[279] And they said, look, we don't know if you're going to be able to cut this, but like we can all pull together and give you a year's worth of tuition, but that's all we have.

[280] So you got to figure out how to get good grades so you can stay there.

[281] So for me, it was, I got to make.

[282] this work because I can't go back.

[283] Right.

[284] I didn't really know what forward looked like exactly what I wanted, but I went in super curious about why, why did things turn out so poorly for me?

[285] So you were interested in your own psychology and you thought, oh, maybe I could pick up some answers about my own riddle.

[286] That's just the honest truth.

[287] Like I was like, I got to solve me. Yeah.

[288] And so psychology was super interesting.

[289] You know, I did have a professor one time that said, we have the greatest educational system in the world, not because our top universities are so much better, but that we have a system where anyone can enter.

[290] And I was the beneficiary of that.

[291] Like I did terrible in high school and then found my way to community college and went to UCLA.

[292] Like that part, I'm very, very grateful about our country for.

[293] Oh, it's the, at our best, it's opportunity and second chances, right?

[294] And the second chances thing really matters.

[295] And, you know, I do think where we're going as a country in the future, it's going to be on the back of these schools like weber state and the community colleges and stuff that are going to continue to allow those of us that didn't necessarily do well to begin with to say, like, we still have something to offer.

[296] Yeah.

[297] We still contribute.

[298] Yeah, it makes sense given that that's your background that you found your way to the things you have, because you also wrote a book, the end of average.

[299] So just really quick, tell us about your first book.

[300] So this is kind of part of what I discovered on a personal level, and then I realized there was a whole science behind it, which is, that for the last hundred years or so, we've built all of our society around thinking there is like an average person, right?

[301] So everything from the design of things to...

[302] And by average they just mean the mean, right?

[303] Like whatever the mean height is, the mean weight.

[304] That's right.

[305] So if it's body size, there's like an average type, and then you can say like there's small, medium large or whatever.

[306] But we do that in like mental stuff too, right?

[307] So like there's an IQ test that we're going to take and there's an average and that's supposed to represent something.

[308] and the DSM, which to me is a little troubling.

[309] I very much believe in psychology and and I believe in psychotropics and medication, but I also think it's a little dangerous to establish normal.

[310] Absolutely.

[311] And then everything's abnormal.

[312] It's not that.

[313] Yeah.

[314] Yeah.

[315] And then we end up really turning normal variation into pathology, right?

[316] So what you find, though, in the science, which is I think it's so cool is, first of all, there literally is no such thing as an average person.

[317] It seems almost like a bumper sticker.

[318] right but it's it's actually true so we spent all this time in science using like if all of us here in this room now we're part of a study i do i do like brain imaging stuff it would pull you in we put you to scan or do some tasks and then take an average of all of our brains and publish that result and we'd be like yay we found out something now it turns out since we have access to big data now yeah turns out it quite often represents nobody it's kind of embarrassing and so what's happened in the sciences is that now we don't have to do that so now i can actually just look at you and I can study your patterns and I can build up something and I can look at Monica and I can build up her patterns and then see where they relate and where they don't and that approach which we call like the science of individuality has led to like personalized medicine you know a lot of the cancer treatment yeah I work with the prostate cancer foundation and all their breakthroughs have been yeah it's exactly right mapping your genome and then going oh this medicine will work for you nobody is going back to average based medicine like nobody right prostate cancer there's no chance you're like here's gold standard average based treatment.

[319] You're like, nope, map my genome, give me this targeted treatment.

[320] So that applies everywhere where human beings are involved, right?

[321] It just turns out we're just, we're just individuals and that's okay, right?

[322] And that range of normal expands pretty dramatically.

[323] And we can do something about it.

[324] And so the places that are making good breakthroughs like medicine, that's awesome.

[325] And then there's places like education, they're just like stuck, just unwilling to budge off of treating every kid the same.

[326] You know, you come into a classroom, everyone learns the same thing at the same rate and then as long as you don't fail you move on right yeah and like so i got to say though having had children recently um my compassion for what they're up against in the educational system has quadrupled because i can barely manage the two that are in my house right right right and i imagine having to think about and and help 30 kids or 22 or whatever the class size is it's it seems insurmountable as much as there's failings i'm also absolutely amazed that everyone comes out of there learning how to read or do anything.

[327] But first of all, like teachers are amazing.

[328] So honestly, they do unbelievable work.

[329] What we haven't done is build systems that actually support them.

[330] And now we can.

[331] So we can build stuff that makes a classroom really supportive of a wide range of kids and doesn't put that whole burden on teachers.

[332] It's totally doable.

[333] It doesn't cost money.

[334] Give me an example of that.

[335] So here's a simple one, right?

[336] Simple's best for me. Simple's best.

[337] Like right now, education.

[338] is still the last industry that encourages designing on average.

[339] So you get a textbook, you get a piece of curriculum.

[340] It's all designed if it's a fourth grade classroom.

[341] It's what does the average fourth grader know how well can they read?

[342] And then everything's pegged to that, right?

[343] Right.

[344] Well, like, so the kid that is a year behind in reading and it's a math class.

[345] He's gone.

[346] He's gone.

[347] And it's math.

[348] Like, where do you know you're struggling at reading?

[349] So you can build things.

[350] It's actually called universal design for learning.

[351] It's literally in federal law.

[352] We know how to do it.

[353] It's done all over the place.

[354] that's like we can take the range that kids are coming into every classroom and say, wait, you're going to have a six level of reading range.

[355] It's baked into the technology now.

[356] So the kid that's struggling gets support, the kid that can go faster, goes faster.

[357] So there's multiple textbooks?

[358] One digital, as long as you use the text.

[359] Oh, it's digital.

[360] Okay.

[361] That's the secret.

[362] And then does the digital platform actually assess where the student should be?

[363] Yep.

[364] That's bonkers.

[365] And I don't think the public knows.

[366] just how much we can do with respect to personalization now yeah i don't know about that i just remember watching the michael more documentary who to invade next did you see that by chance it's fantastic and he goes to i don't know i always say sweden but some some country north of uh of germany i don't know if it's a denmark sweden finland or norway but um they are now leading the world in math and reading comprehension scores finland you know their thing is no homework that's right And I'm like, oh my God, like, if that's known, well, and if it's known, what are we doing?

[367] Yep.

[368] My kid is in kindergarten and she has homework every night.

[369] Oh, it's ridiculous.

[370] Yeah.

[371] Instead of just focusing on building good environments, you know, trusting your teachers.

[372] The other thing that they do is they focus on mastery instead of grades.

[373] So there's some high standard.

[374] Every kid's going to get there.

[375] If they takes a little longer, that's fine.

[376] But what we do is we say, nope, everyone's on the clock.

[377] When you're done, we're going to go ahead and rank you, right?

[378] we're going to compare you and it's just that it teaches you that the point of life is to just be better than the person next to you yeah in fact i just want to go backwards five minutes because what's funny about what you said about how most of our judgment of ourselves in our happiness and everything else is in relation to someone else and what's funny is i've had enough friends who have gone high enough up the status scale that i honestly had this fear for them i'm like i'm an approval junkie but of course i want approval from people with more status than me right right right so what happens when you're mick jagger like i'm actually nervous for someone who has his seen hit the ceiling of whose approval they could get or or or obama like who who gives Obama a compliment okay he has michel but who is it that he's like shit man if so -and -so thought i was cool i'd feel awesome you know but here's the secret right and i'll say this only because of someone who had to go on this journey of being an approval junkie like crazy too those folks that get to there that really know how to do this they're not looking for approval you know what I mean for me I love like Tom Brady right let's talk about Tom Brady like like like first of all anybody it's like 41 and still playing the top the game and in football we should all like yeah but you watch the guy is so dedicated to football it's not about being the best quarterback compared to someone else he's watching game film all the time he's it's it's the crap it's just getting better at the thing he cares about right from the outside I don't I've never, well, I haven't met him one time.

[379] I don't know anything really about him, but he appears to love the process.

[380] And then the results just are some happy benefit of loving the process.

[381] It's just getting better at the thing you care about constantly.

[382] Yeah, that's really hard and a very goal -oriented.

[383] So what's interesting is when I read the description of the department you work in, individuality, I went to a different place.

[384] Oh, no. Well, I thought, I thought in some weird way, maybe you were just promoting.

[385] promoting individuality in the way that I think is unique in the United States of America.

[386] Like an individualism or a...

[387] Yeah, like, I think it's a required ingredient in the recipe of capitalism and democracy that we all must be individual so that now we need to consume all these different things that make us unique.

[388] And I do think we have like terminal uniqueness in this country too, but this has nothing to do with that.

[389] Okay, I'm really glad that came out immediately.

[390] Me too, me too.

[391] I mean, it is one of the problems, right?

[392] Individualism, I think, is quite bad, right?

[393] It leads us to not care about anybody else, not realize we're dependent on a lot of other people.

[394] The American dream is, is pick up yourself up by your bootstraps and then accomplish something epic, right?

[395] It's not to raise the level of your community.

[396] That's not the American dream.

[397] So this is, you can edit this out if this is not that good.

[398] But like, so I'm actually, I actually care a lot about that concept of the American dream.

[399] So James Trussle Adams, it was written down in the depths of the Great Depression the first time anyone wrote it down.

[400] Like, we tend to think it goes clear, clear back.

[401] Oh, yeah.

[402] And he was trying to figure out after robber barring capitalism and all the stuff, it just decimated everything.

[403] Like, was there something worth preserving about the American experiment?

[404] What he writes down about what the American dream is, you would love it.

[405] Really?

[406] It is not.

[407] He literally says, look, it's not materialism.

[408] It's not, it's not like things.

[409] It's the idea that you can rise and accomplish whatever you're meant to accomplish, unencumbered by things like your bloodlines or your gender.

[410] or things like that.

[411] It's about just feeling like we can, we can reach our full potential.

[412] Yeah, the American Dream's opportunity.

[413] Yeah.

[414] Yeah.

[415] And then.

[416] But what it's used toward, right?

[417] I think it's been corrupted into this ridiculous materialism and sort of like a constantly comparing ourselves to everybody else.

[418] Yeah.

[419] Well, I can immediately think of that horrendous commercial.

[420] I hate to say, because I love the company.

[421] But, uh, but that Cadillac commercial where the guy was, did you ever see that?

[422] Oh my goodness.

[423] Was it repugnant?

[424] It was a dude like in a McMansion.

[425] house with a swimming pool and he's walking through the house and he's like they say we work harder in america than anyone else he's that's damn right we do and it's just all about how he's basically saying i have no time with my children or my wife or my friends but i have this house in a cal like it was it was really trouble yeah so not that we don't mean that right we mean it's it's this there's a dignity to you uh -huh um and rather than ignoring that rather than trying to force you to be just like everybody else.

[426] It's important to understand that, right?

[427] It's funny in medicine.

[428] We don't think, is this individualism in medicine?

[429] No, we think, of course, like, treat me as me. Yes.

[430] And I think if we can thread that needle, we can appreciate the dignity of each person and then also appreciate the fact that we're connected and we depend on each other and we need systems that actually do a good job.

[431] Yeah.

[432] So the Dark Horse is something that you've labeled some people who have accomplished fulfillment yeah so yeah tell me of the definition of a dark horse so you know most people think of dark horses as people who are successful that nobody sees coming right out of the blue um which is technically true um but in this dark horse project that we did and where this comes from um we found pretty quickly that there they're actually people who prioritize personal fulfillment over more conventional notions of success and that is what leads them on this kind of individual path and also ultimately what allows them to be both happy and successful Right.

[433] And in doing that, well, first you talk to some interesting people, right?

[434] Right.

[435] Right.

[436] And is it awkward for you?

[437] That's something like a journalist would have a ton of experience with doing.

[438] Is it awkward as like a professor to actually go be a journalist?

[439] Well, so it was interesting.

[440] So I was trained in, I'm like a numbers guy, right?

[441] Okay.

[442] In terms of the science.

[443] Like this was the first qualitative research we'd ever done.

[444] But I was just endlessly curious about these people that seemed to come out of.

[445] to nowhere, right?

[446] And I couldn't find any studies or anything about dark horses.

[447] And I'm like, let's just do it, right?

[448] And since I had no clue what to expect, I'm like, why don't we just talk to them?

[449] Like, that's a good starting point.

[450] Like, listen.

[451] And it turns out you can learn a lot by just listening to people.

[452] And so actually, my colleague was much better at this than I am.

[453] And, you know.

[454] Ogie Ogus?

[455] Yeah, he's like, what a fucking name.

[456] What a name, huh?

[457] Ogis, I love it.

[458] Computational neuroscientists by training.

[459] So we were just like, let's just do this.

[460] We wanted everyday people that didn't have connections or money or let's just learn.

[461] And it was just fun.

[462] It was a total passion project.

[463] Well, how do you even go about finding that, curating that list?

[464] We did this.

[465] Yeah, that was the big challenge to start, right?

[466] You're like casting a reality show.

[467] Yeah, yeah.

[468] And so we just said we went to all these like professional societies as far away and said, look, find us people in your societies who are accomplished, right, like that you would say are good at what they do but have these kind of interesting backgrounds right and we thought well maybe we'll get some people and they just come out of the woodworks like it's unbelievable and we try to go as far away like all the disciplines we could think of jobs that no one you think who would want to do that and like and then just start talking to him so my hypothesis is completely wrong um good yeah so um i had said like i think what's going to happen is like you're going to find that people who can be dark horses or people who have a certain personality like a steve jobs or richard branson And like, they don't really, they don't care if they buck the system.

[469] Yeah, they label that, there's, there's like five psychological traits.

[470] And one of them is like disagreeability or something.

[471] Yeah, you'd imagine they're really high on that, right?

[472] Yeah, that's my assumption.

[473] That's what I thought too.

[474] I thought that's what it would be like.

[475] And then I was like, okay, and I want to learn how they get good at things, right?

[476] But it just turned out just not to be true, no matter how much we wanted it to.

[477] After the first couple of dozen, you realized they're personalized, we're all over the place.

[478] And all they had in common, they kept, we wanted to talk to them about how do you get good at things, like, were there tips or tricks or things like that?

[479] All they want to talk about is how they discovered what they care about, what truly motivates them.

[480] And they would talk about fulfillment and meaning and purpose.

[481] And I actually wasn't happy.

[482] That's a squishy kind of idea to me. And I was like, no, no, no, no, this is not good.

[483] But then it just keeps coming up over and over again.

[484] And then you're like, okay, but look, if this is what they want to talk about, let's listen.

[485] And so I thought, as we realized, it was really about fulfillment.

[486] And And then you start really diving into like, okay, well, are you just saying that?

[487] Is this something that's actionable, right?

[488] Is it just like after the fact you're like, hey, I'm fulfilled?

[489] No, they're, they're aiming for that, right?

[490] And if you live in a standardized world where we're all supposed to go down this exact same path, once you choose personal fulfillment, you're going to go off that path at least a little bit.

[491] Yeah, yeah.

[492] The world's not really built for that.

[493] No, it's not built for fulfillment, no. Yeah.

[494] Or this country, minimally, I'll speak about that.

[495] Stay tuned for more armchair expert.

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[508] So what are some of the, well, first of all, as liberating is that, that is as a thought, which is, oh, if you really just discover your passion and you follow that to the ends of the earth with a lot of flexibility in mind that you can re -evaluate, that sounds comforting, but yet at the same time, I think I know a lot of people who, their biggest source of angst in life is that they don't know that what that passion is.

[509] The blessing I feel like I got was just knowing what I wanted to do, failing or succeeding.

[510] It just was comforting to know exactly what I was aiming at.

[511] How do people, you know, what can they nurture to come up with that North Star?

[512] So if you think about it, like, so first of all, our society actually, for all its individualism, does very little to actually cultivate the person, right?

[513] Very little.

[514] Think about all the time you spent in education.

[515] How, when did anybody ever really spend the time to be like, what matters to you, right?

[516] What truly motivates you, right?

[517] We spend a lot of time telling you what should matter.

[518] So look, I think there's a couple of things.

[519] The nice thing about passion, and I think it's like both a blessing and a curse, right?

[520] So when we think about passion, I think we're talking about the right feeling, right?

[521] But what we found with Dark Horse, I think, is really helpful is how you engineer that.

[522] So rather than thinking about one white hot thing.

[523] Yeah, because to me it sounds like the true love, which I don't urge people to sit around and wait for.

[524] That usually ends poorly.

[525] Yeah, yeah.

[526] What Dark Horse was so good at, they, this way we call them micromotives in the book, because it turns out we're motivated by a wide range of things.

[527] And some of them are pretty general.

[528] We could all have it in common.

[529] And some of them are unbelievably specific to me as a person, right?

[530] Crazy specific things.

[531] But they use those, right?

[532] Am I checking more boxes on this or less?

[533] And if you're doing things that are actually engaging more of those motives, it's definitely far more rewarding, right?

[534] So one of the things that we push on a lot is for parents, cultivate the habit, even for young kids of asking them what they enjoy and why they enjoy it, right?

[535] Get them to start thinking about that why question, right?

[536] Because it's like, hey, I like soccer.

[537] Why do you walk soccer, right?

[538] Yeah.

[539] Like soccer is just an activity you're engaged in.

[540] Is it being outdoors?

[541] Is it because it's with a team?

[542] Is it the competition?

[543] And if you get that habit, it's pretty easy to figure out there's a range of things that I care about.

[544] Yeah.

[545] Yeah.

[546] Now, as the cynic of me can't help but go one layer below that, which to me is I've come to realize everything I was motivated to do was weirdly grounded in a fear.

[547] So I didn't have a dad around.

[548] I needed to prove I was manly.

[549] So I ride motorcycles.

[550] I fought a lot of dudes.

[551] I consumed drugs at a scary level.

[552] Like I don't know that I trust a single one of my interests as not being an attempt.

[553] to heal something that was a little bit fractured in childhood.

[554] Sure.

[555] Which may be fine.

[556] I don't know that it's good or bad.

[557] So here's the thing about that.

[558] There's two pieces of that.

[559] One is those things are still motivating.

[560] So in terms of like engaging something that propels you forward.

[561] Yeah.

[562] But what you're also saying is, which is true of all of us, is some of the things when you start looking inside, some of things are the most motivating, you may not actually like.

[563] Right.

[564] And you got to deal.

[565] If you treat that fear, you may find that you don't have this interest anymore.

[566] But you'll have all interest.

[567] Yeah, okay.

[568] So I think the trick is, is it all starts no matter what with truly getting in touch with those things, right?

[569] Yeah.

[570] So that you're not constantly surprised by your behavior.

[571] You're like, no, I know what motivates me. I'm not surprised that I'm making the choices I'm making.

[572] Then if you decide, wait a minute, I don't like the origin of these things, then you deal with them.

[573] Yeah.

[574] And so I still think at the end of the day, you got to know what they are.

[575] Yeah.

[576] I do think it's really fascinating even just to ask your kids like, why you like soccer.

[577] Because it seems to be just a given that you will, you just like.

[578] soccer and you'll be shocked at what even toddlers will say back if you really ask really yeah like we just don't teach kids to think this way right and and look think about right now um and this is i'm going to say this in a way that gets fact checked in a way that make me look good at least a majority of americans are disengaged at their jobs gallop okay a majority of kids are disengaged at school right so we're doing something wrong yeah like we are not in touch with the things that actually matter most with so what truly motivate us.

[579] And we end up making decisions for other reasons that put us into these places where we're living lives where we're just not happy.

[580] Yeah.

[581] And then we're doing a bunch of other stuff to treat that lack of happiness.

[582] Now, all right, last challenge to this, as a cynic, I'll ask, is what do you say about the notion?

[583] Because I sometimes still cling to this in an unhealthy way that, like, for example, when I hear about your childhood and what your dad described you as, my knee -jerk thought is, is, well, today you'd be on Ritalin.

[584] For sure.

[585] You'd be on Adderall.

[586] You'd be on Ritalin.

[587] And now there's a part of me that says, boy, by medicating all these kids, they're not going to really find some alternative route around this problem.

[588] And now maybe I'm only seeing the success stories.

[589] Like, I'm seeing you and I'm thinking we shouldn't medicate kids.

[590] I'm probably not meeting the nine that their lives were ruined by it.

[591] So I probably don't know what I'm saying.

[592] No, no, no, no, you're okay.

[593] So, so since, since I know the podcast that I'm on.

[594] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[595] So I was actually a Medicaid.

[596] Oh, okay.

[597] And it's awful.

[598] I'm sorry.

[599] Like, I get that there are some kids that really do need it.

[600] I would not dispute that at all.

[601] But we use that kind of medicine early on in like the 70s and 80s.

[602] We thought only kids that had ADD ADHD responded to Ritalin.

[603] And so we used it as how to diagnose.

[604] You give the kid.

[605] Oh, if it makes them better, they must have this.

[606] It turns out that's not true.

[607] Right.

[608] And so here's the problem.

[609] make anyone more focused.

[610] I mean, come on.

[611] Every college campus in the country, you can attest to that.

[612] But I stopped because, look, I think that, like I said, there are kids that are going to need that, but it is no replacement for developing a sense of who you are and the skills you need to actually do this.

[613] For me, it is true.

[614] If I am not motivated, I would be, first of all, I'd be a terrible employee.

[615] I've had to pick work that, like, where I'm the boss because, like, I'm just not, it's just comically bad if i'm doing something somebody else wants me to do i'm with you um as long as i get to be which is again it's things that motivate you have some ownership over the direction you're rowing some skin in the game there and yeah um then i i'm not too bad yeah i guess i guess i'm here's what i'm let's say that we have utopia we've designed these um very flexible systems that can accommodate all individuals uh will there be any overcoming like is part of the math of this system is that like if you can overcome it despite its terrible designs you know there's part of my brain that thinks that that's somehow an important ingredient like like chris rock has a joke about bullies he's like we're trying to get rid of bullies he's like you think fucking bill gates wasn't bullied you think you get a mark Zuckerberg without bullies yeah so there is a there's an old man in me that feels like is that relevant so so um i hear where you're coming from okay I'm going to play the back.

[616] The things that don't kill you, make you stronger and you got to overcome.

[617] Except for not really, you have a heart attack.

[618] Yeah.

[619] Your heart is not better off because you had a heart attack, right?

[620] Like, I think there's something about productive challenge that is never going away from life, and it shouldn't.

[621] I think it's actually really meaningful.

[622] I do not think you have to design those things in by, like, making it harder for everyone.

[623] And then, you know, I think we've built a system that assumes half the country is going to fail.

[624] It's crazy, right?

[625] And then we're like, hey, but it's going to be better for you.

[626] And I'm saying, look, we can build systems that it doesn't mean it's so tailored to the point where it's just like you're skating by.

[627] No, it's going to work with you to figure out who you are.

[628] You're still going to have tons of challenges.

[629] That's just life.

[630] Well, again, I can acknowledge I'm probably succumbing to the myth that, that, you know, this system's worth it because, look, you get a Bill Gates.

[631] Like, it ignores the system ignores the 90 % of people that are failing.

[632] And we focus very intently on the people who have succeeded as proof that this is a great system.

[633] And there's a lot of things about the system that are worth preserving.

[634] That's definitely true.

[635] And I never want to live in a system where it's not about hard work and not about, you know, and I believe this is not a handout system we're trying to create.

[636] What I'm saying is as someone who now arguably isn't one of the top universities in the world, but still doesn't have a high school diploma.

[637] It's very curious.

[638] I'm, I've seen, I just think we win so much.

[639] And you're one of 30.

[640] There were 30, there were 29 other guys that had your exact same scenario.

[641] And they didn't find their way to that college and to Harvard.

[642] So, yeah, I would, I can step back and go, no, I think in a utilitarian sense, there's no way that that's the right.

[643] And what was so funny to me is, once you're successful by society standards, then people are like, oh, you're really resilient.

[644] I'm like, shut up.

[645] Like, nobody was saying that.

[646] I was like giving enemas to people for a living.

[647] Nobody was like, man, you're just a resilient guy.

[648] Things are going to work out for you.

[649] I don't know.

[650] Giving an enema for $7 an hour.

[651] You're very resilient.

[652] I love my family.

[653] That was like the things I would be willing to do.

[654] Oh, kids, they can save your life.

[655] Were you so proud of yourself when you graduated from Harvard?

[656] You know, it's funny.

[657] I didn't even, I didn't know where Harvard was.

[658] Okay.

[659] I went there because there was a guy, Kurt Fisher, who was the founder of this new science.

[660] I have to, I want to be around this guy.

[661] I want to learn what he knows.

[662] And if he would have been at Wichita State, that's where I would have gone, right?

[663] It was cool.

[664] I will say, I usually don't care.

[665] When I got in to Harvard, I was really the most proud because, so I was raised by the strongest woman you're ever going to meet in your life.

[666] Well, you got to meet Laurelabo, but yeah, can do you.

[667] I think that I think they'd have good conversations.

[668] Now, imagine a woman in rural Utah in this.

[669] In a Mormon.

[670] Mormon, where women don't have anything who's just.

[671] just like to hell with all of you.

[672] This is going to be the two of us and we're going to fight it out, right?

[673] And she's going to fight anybody, any, anybody that wants to try to take me down.

[674] Yeah.

[675] You know what I mean?

[676] And she got just destroyed for it reputation wise.

[677] The number of times that people told her she was a bad mom.

[678] And then what was so nice is, and again, this is pretty stupid.

[679] Front page of the biggest newspaper in Utah when I get in is a picture of me and my mom and my family.

[680] I was like, that's good.

[681] I like that.

[682] But for me, I like that.

[683] For my mom.

[684] This is good enough.

[685] Yeah, yeah.

[686] But what's funny is, is the graduation part.

[687] So we packed up a little U -Haul in a minivan and just put everything we owned in this thing and started driving across the country, right?

[688] And we ran out of money, but just enough to get by what.

[689] I didn't know there were a thing called toll roads.

[690] Oh, sure.

[691] You're on the 80 and the 90 through Pennsylvania.

[692] I didn't know the little of a thing.

[693] Ohio.

[694] So we're like, wait a minute.

[695] We actually aren't going to make it all the way to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[696] sits.

[697] So I pulled up and when I said, do you, um, do you take checks?

[698] Uh -huh.

[699] And it turns out they did at the time because now they're all automated.

[700] He's like, okay, so I started writing dollar checks all way through, which I don't have any money.

[701] So they all bounce.

[702] That's how I get in.

[703] It's like $35 overcharge.

[704] But like, so we get there, and this is the long -winded way of answering your question about, it was more just a relief to graduate.

[705] I, uh, we get there six days after we arrive, like I might as well be in another country, right?

[706] someone runs red light totals our van my youngest son breaks his femur and how oh my god he's in a full body cast oh man and i'm like what in the world so we had to pay some a bunch of money for the hospital things so i ended up um just dirt poor as we were like just barely getting by on student loans and having to like pay off my you know what they called term bill so i could register the next semester from my whole time through till the only right at graduation luckily they let me walk but instead of my diploma, I opened up and says, you owe us like $28 ,000, you know, you can get your diploma.

[707] So, okay, at least I'm done, but I got to go, I got to, um, it was a little bit more of a, um, and truthfully, like it was this incredibly humbling experience.

[708] Um, because look, I had a lot of holes in my education.

[709] I mean, yeah, I did find that we were state, but you arrive at the, the, the first class I took was from it, this giant in the field who I, I really admired.

[710] And, uh, the first paper he, he gives back to me, he literally wrote, um, judging by your work.

[711] here.

[712] I do not believe you to have the writing ability to succeed in graduate school.

[713] Oh, wow.

[714] I was like, oh, that's demoralizing.

[715] Why did I take all my, I thought I realized I took my family out here just for pride.

[716] Yeah.

[717] Yeah.

[718] And I was like, I'm going to quit.

[719] This is like, what am I doing?

[720] And then I, then I harness my own, my mother's kind of like, no, you're not like kind of thing.

[721] Yeah.

[722] Well, I'm not going to go to like the grad school and tell them I don't know how to write because those are like my peers.

[723] Yeah.

[724] So I went to the undergrad and I snuck in this, uh, the library where they have these riding workshops and this this 19 year old young woman and she's like can i help you i said like i need some help writing she said i'm sorry are you you're obviously not an underground yeah i said this is just for undergras i said no please i really i can't go there i need you're helping she says okay i'll tell you what i'll help you at the end of every one of these sessions you just come and wait and she did and she taught me how to write and um it was fantastic life's kind of littered with these little angels aren't they that around like yeah we all love to get up and like take take ownership over accomplishments and then you're like just ignore the fact that some out of the goodness of their heart taught you out of right um okay so there are some some there's four principles four what do we want to say four qualities that these people had that helped them find fulfillment what what are they so the first thing we tell and these are things that made fulfillment actionable rather than like follow your bliss off a cliff right like right um and the qualities they had and we called this elements but you know whatever um the first thing we're First was knowing your motives, right?

[725] Knowing your microatives.

[726] And again, it seems obvious that you should know what motivates you.

[727] But look, it's just most of us, when we think about these things, our identity is never even based on motivation.

[728] It's usually like what we do for a living or what we're good at, which is not a good foundation for who you are.

[729] Dark horses, they focus really in on their motivations.

[730] As I was saying earlier, they go beyond that sort of broad ones like, oh, I'm competitive.

[731] They dig into these details, which are just remarkable.

[732] Like I yeah like tell me like a jennie mccormick you talk to her yeah and what were her motives so for for folks to know i mean first of all she is like i just admire the hell out of her here's someone who is a is a globally respected astronomer mm -hmm discovered a planet and an asteroid never ever went to college high school dropout really um and she was dropped out of school she was a single mom i think by 20 working in a fast food joint.

[733] Wow.

[734] She happens to go out into in New Zealand and the rural part of New Zealand to a family member's home for some event where you could actually see up into the sky.

[735] And they said, hey, look, you got to check out this thing.

[736] Like check this out and they gave some binoculars.

[737] And she was like, there's this world up there that didn't know.

[738] And I'm just like this ridiculously curious.

[739] I want to know about this.

[740] And it was like so drove her.

[741] So she starts trying to figure out, how can I learn about this?

[742] And she can't go to, I go to college.

[743] And so she starts learning all these things she can.

[744] She goes to, like, talks at the university and we'll sit there as if she's a student just like, like, learning a lot.

[745] Yeah, yeah.

[746] Finally, one guy's like, well, wait, what, what year are you in this?

[747] And she's, oh, I'm not a, you know.

[748] And he's like, well, this is, you know, astronomy, you can make lots of contributions without getting a PhD.

[749] So she figures out that if she can convince people, they start sending her parts to her house.

[750] She starts cobbling together, this observatory.

[751] herself and she turns out to be really good at it's um it's gravitational lensing you can it's weird it's like you can use how gravity bends light and stuff like that and anyway she's awesome at it right but she's been this endlessly curious about like the unknown it's a huge motivator but she also loves she wants to make a contribution she wants something that she gives back to people um but she's not even so that's a that's a standard one kind of right like like we talk to people who were no kidding like we're motivated by aligning physical objects with their hands like in an ocd way well i mean or in a look how look what you can become as an engineer way right like right okay okay just you know you can imagine it manifesting in well my mother if i when we used to go to mcdonalds when i was a kid she spent the whole meal rearranging my tray like the tray had to be all the items had to be in parallel with some part of the tray or or uh people that love literally organizing people's closets.

[752] They love organizing like that.

[753] Yeah, I read about her.

[754] Was that Corinne?

[755] Yeah, yeah.

[756] Yeah, so she was successful by all standards.

[757] He was a political operative.

[758] I mean, she had worked her way up from local state and even had a job at the White House.

[759] And she quit.

[760] She was like, wait a minute.

[761] Like, this is not making me happy.

[762] She loved organizing her own closet.

[763] And she was like, but what do you do with that?

[764] And she said, wait a minute, there's a whole thing called professional organizers.

[765] Yeah.

[766] She's like really sought after all over New York and Florida and happy and like what's her motivator?

[767] Because I'll say my wife had one once and I thought this would be a perfect occupation for me as a nosy person because you really get to go through everyone's shit.

[768] I mean, you're you're open in every drawer and every every house.

[769] Yeah, no, I'm, I'm, is she a lawyer?

[770] No, she's not.

[771] She's not like she'd realize even in in politics, I think she loved the most for the time she got to organize like she didn't like to do legislation.

[772] She didn't like ring.

[773] It wasn't, and it wasn't the thrill of winning or beating someone.

[774] It was actually, can you organize to make people's lives better, right?

[775] And as she rose in the ranks of politics, those jobs aren't available anymore.

[776] Those are what you do as like grunt work.

[777] Right.

[778] And she was like, wait a minute.

[779] Like, this is the thing that I care the most about, my ability to bring order on behalf of somebody else.

[780] Uh -huh.

[781] And it is just so motivating to her.

[782] And by the way, that's exactly the person I want helping me out.

[783] Yeah.

[784] What's the second one?

[785] The next is knowing your choices, but what dark horses were so good at is recognizing the small choices in front of them all the time and knowing how to make choices, the decision between those choices that maximizes fulfillment, right?

[786] It gives them the best chance at it.

[787] And sometimes they're really big, like bold moves.

[788] One guy literally just like sold everything and moved to rural England because he wanted to learn about plants and horticulturens.

[789] there's only one place that actually taught people the old -fashioned way.

[790] So he went there by himself and lived in a shack and then came back a master at this thing and like is now this phenomenal, you know.

[791] So their ability to evaluate the choices.

[792] To know they exist.

[793] If you think about it like most of us in our lives, like on the commercial side, we almost have too much choice.

[794] That's like the capitalist kind of like.

[795] Yeah, if you go to the grocery store.

[796] Yeah.

[797] But in the meaningful parts of it, you think about like most of what we try to do in standardization is take away those choices right you might maybe i'll choose the major i'm in in college or whatever but but what was so fascinating is dark horses they it's like they know that choices like the lifeblood of fulfillment it's how you're going to create purpose for yourself and they're active at it all the time and they'll make choices they'll make things available to them that i i can't believe they they sniffed out right right because we we think right if i understand you correctly like you enter primary school and you're not making any you're actually not making a single choice till you're in like junior high they'll let you choose a handful of electives and then you go to high school and you're not doing a lot of choosing there again make you pick from these five electives and then you just enter college you got to pick your major and you're making that pretty early on in the process and then now you just end up with this degree and then you're like I got to do something with this and then you're suddenly you go get one of the of the handful of jobs you can get with that degree.

[798] That's right.

[799] And then all of a sudden you wake up in your 80.

[800] That's right.

[801] And then most of the time we're looking back going, what the hell happened?

[802] How did I get here?

[803] How did I get here?

[804] And I think if you discovered earlier, it's usually like a midlife crisis.

[805] Wow, whether I'm successful or not, I'm certainly, this is not the life I wanted to live.

[806] And then you usually do some kind of crazy thing, like blow it all up.

[807] And you're like, that's probably an overreaction, right?

[808] But what's so interesting is just realizing, like, it's one thing to know who you are and know what matters to you.

[809] But putting that into play in terms of making, that the thing that's going to drive most of your just choices yeah and isn't part of the problem is we have a a checklist of things that are supposed to make us fulfilled so it's economic security job security all these things right and if you're if you somehow have the the wherewithal to go oh those are false profits they're they're not real then the stakes of not choosing those i would imagine get a little easier yes for sure um and i will say as an aside we have we've been doing a lot of research like I started a think tank as well and it's like trying to figure out like where is the public on all this like we live in a democracy in a market economy whatever the public wants they're going to get right right so we're discovering about fulfillment with dark or something maybe that's just so far like ahead of things that you know like most of us still love the kind of zero -sum you know comparative view of success that we've built our society around after a bunch of national surveys and focus groups all over the country 60 % of the public absolutely rejects this old view of success they don't want it anymore younger people or all people it's crazy it's across the board it is I thought it would be like a millennial kind of thing sure it does it does skew that a little bit people are just fed up like they they and they want meaning and purpose and fulfillment they just don't know quite how to get it yeah there's something string and one of the things the most fascinating to me and and why we've got to do something is that 60 % when you ask them what percentage of their fellow citizens also wants fulfillment as the view of success, they think it's 5%.

[810] They think they're a 5 % minority in terms of what they want.

[811] I think 95 % of their fellow citizens love the way we've done things right now.

[812] Well, yeah, and it's only, I believe, compounded by this recent invention of social media where you're now actually observing other people's curated lives.

[813] and you're certain that they're feeling wonderful and that the promotion of manager did result in happiness for that person.

[814] So you've got a country right now where a solid majority wants something different.

[815] They want to be able to pursue fulfillment.

[816] They want systems that support that.

[817] But they're not even willing to tell their best friends how they feel because they think that they're just this weird, small little group.

[818] Yeah, that's fascinating.

[819] Okay, so knowing your motivation and then being mindful about the decisions that are in front of you.

[820] So the third thing is about knowing your strategies.

[821] And here's the thing.

[822] In our society right now, we spend a lot of time thinking about things we're good at, right?

[823] Our strengths, right?

[824] We have lots of tests that will tell you what you're good and bad at.

[825] And then we think in terms of how you get good at something, there's like one right way.

[826] In fact, we don't even talk about strategy sometimes because there's like a thing that you do, right?

[827] Whether it's learning math or hell, learning to do the Rubik's cube.

[828] There's like instructions on the back and this is how you do it.

[829] It turns out that that's not true that for anything that you want to get good at anything at all there's always multiple ways to do it always always always it's like a guarantee even from the science man part of it's called equifinality that's a fancy word for there's always more than one way to do it and what dark horses are phenomenal at is spending a lot of time thinking about okay this is the thing I care about that I need to get good at now what's the right strategy for me and they will sit there try a strategy and it won't work try another strategy and it won't work and they'll just keep cycling through until they hit the strategy that works and then they take off and they look really really inefficient while they're doing that right but if you buy into this idea that there's one right way to do something most of us do we plug along and then we get ranked and they're like oh you're not very good at this I guess I don't have the talent for it right and I'm done right so this idea of focusing on strategies and knowing that and trial and error and trial and error it's you know it's it's it is the way forward and what's so fascinating is that like for most of these folks that we studied, like if they would have stopped after the first time they're not good at something with the wrong strategy, they're done.

[830] Yeah.

[831] And instead it's like they just keep looking like we studied Somaliays, right?

[832] These people who are phenomenal at wine.

[833] Right.

[834] It's like the hardest test there is.

[835] There are more people that have gone to outer space than our master smallies in the United States.

[836] You're kidding.

[837] It's so hard.

[838] And all it is is one test.

[839] I want to be that.

[840] It's amazing.

[841] But what's so cool is there's no college program.

[842] Yeah.

[843] You just have to pass.

[844] this test.

[845] I mean, again, I'm having a hard time acknowledging that's a real thing, but yes.

[846] And by the way, they make good money too.

[847] They make good money.

[848] This is a person that can like smell a glass of wine and tell you stuff.

[849] And they can tell you everything.

[850] It's like, and I thought it must be the biggest con job.

[851] Like it's like, yes.

[852] That's what I'm thinking.

[853] I drink.

[854] I'm like, I don't know.

[855] It burns.

[856] Right.

[857] And after a couple of glasses, they all taste good.

[858] That's my point is like, if you want to get drunk, just get drunk.

[859] We don't need all the pageant.

[860] Just get drunk.

[861] That's what we want.

[862] We don't charge you like $500 a bottle.

[863] You need the pageantry.

[864] No, but it turns out they're ridiculously good at this.

[865] I bet.

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

[867] Oh my goodness.

[868] We studied so many people that have done this, and each one of them has this weird, unique strategy for getting to this.

[869] One guy literally just has this, he has to fill the wine.

[870] Oh, with his fingers.

[871] It's unbelievable.

[872] And then some people can, like, sense it through their whole body.

[873] It's crazy, except for they're really good at it.

[874] They can actually tell you these.

[875] things.

[876] It's like, you know, half a dozen ways that people are doing this.

[877] So if you wanted to be a small, like there's a way forward, but you really better figure out the one that fits you.

[878] Yeah.

[879] Yeah.

[880] And I will say since we're in this sort of like full disclosure thing, like I had a personal experience with this.

[881] I didn't realize that I was being smart at the time.

[882] But so when I was at Weber State, you know, I'd get in good grades and I would decide I was going to go to grad school.

[883] And this was like really exciting.

[884] And I had to take the GRE, which is a star, and I'm terrible, to this day, terrible at Tess.

[885] It's awful.

[886] You know, my SATs were like, you know, on a very low end of the bell curve, right?

[887] And I, and I, so I paid to have this, like, practicing every Saturday.

[888] And there were three sections, the verbal, quantitative, and they had this thing called analytical reasoning.

[889] And it was that kind of test where they're like, Farmer John has four rows of things.

[890] And there's corn and peas and beans and beans can't be by corn and something.

[891] And they're like, what's in the only ones I like.

[892] So I was, so I was practicing and all the time I was getting better at the verbal and quantitative.

[893] I'm like, okay.

[894] But I'm like literally had never, after 10 weeks of practice, had never gotten higher than the 13th percentile on this analytical reasoning, right?

[895] I'm like, holy shit, I'm going to be done.

[896] Like this is it.

[897] Like no school is taking me, right?

[898] Yeah.

[899] So I, um, I'm, I happen to be studying at my parents' house because we lived in a 400 square foot apartment with two kids.

[900] And, um, and I just couldn't do it.

[901] And I got so mad, I literally tossed a pencil across the room as my dad walked in.

[902] If you know him, he's not going to put up with any of that, right?

[903] I was like, what's wrong with you?

[904] I'm like, I just, I don't understand how this works.

[905] And he happened to walk over and he was an engineer, right?

[906] And he said, look, this is a degrees of freedom problem.

[907] And he's like, I think you're doing it wrong.

[908] Like, what do you mean?

[909] He's like, you have terrible working memory.

[910] Like I do like verbal stuff, I cannot keep in my head.

[911] Like, if you told me something and said, remember it, but I'm going back to the hotel, forget it.

[912] Not happening.

[913] But I'm decent at visual stuff.

[914] And he's like, why are you holding this in your head?

[915] That doesn't seem like a good strategy.

[916] I'm like, well, that's how the professor is telling us to do it, right?

[917] And he's like, let me show you.

[918] And he draws a grid.

[919] He's like, look, just do this.

[920] And you'll be able to solve this every time.

[921] I'm like, it can't be that easy.

[922] Sol the first problem, second problem, third problem.

[923] I go back to my professor.

[924] I say, look, my dad showed me this way.

[925] He's like, oh, that's a fine way to do it.

[926] Like, what do you mean?

[927] Like, why don't you tell me that to begin with, right?

[928] Yeah.

[929] But this guy's like a genius in the verbal stuff and he can just hold it all in his head.

[930] so flash forward it turns out i scored the highest score i got on any section on that a week and a half later no kidding but what's funny is is like you could think do i have high like analytical reasoning skills i mean or did you find out the right you get the perfect tool yeah and it always makes me wonder how many other things in our lives we just feel like we're not good at but it's just the lack of the right strategy for you well it's weird because in my profession acting if you're on a set and you're in a scene with like on parenthood there'd be 14 of us sometimes there's literally 14 different approaches to acting going on.

[931] And we're all in the same scene and the same reality.

[932] And I just assumed, oh, well, yeah, this profession acting lends itself to these many different approaches.

[933] But it's maybe more universal than I would have guessed.

[934] It's, it's, it's, it's we there, there's literally not a profession we found that doesn't have that.

[935] And what we're not doing is we're not telling people about that.

[936] We're not making people realize like when you can't do something the first time, it's not necessarily about your lack of talent.

[937] spend the time figuring out different strategies people have used and get the one that fits you and you'll be shocked at what you're capable of.

[938] Yeah, that's really fascinating.

[939] Monica, you need to do this.

[940] For what?

[941] Everything?

[942] To be a semoye.

[943] Oh, yeah, I do.

[944] I do want to be that.

[945] I do.

[946] I will.

[947] Yeah.

[948] This is very elite.

[949] My strategy is going to be drinking wine every day.

[950] Yeah.

[951] That's pretty good.

[952] You're going to have to do that.

[953] Yeah.

[954] I think an incredible example of all this is Marconi.

[955] I don't know.

[956] I read this book by the guy who wrote The Devil in the White City, and it's Marconi wasn't a scientist by any stretch.

[957] And yet he did create the radio transmitted ham radio or whatever the hell you call it.

[958] And there were professors who had, they knew the science behind it.

[959] They knew the physics.

[960] And they weren't as focused as he was or they were distracted by other things.

[961] And he just trialed and aired his way, I mean, in a very inefficient way, by comparatively of what the people who understood the physics but fuck it he beat them to market yeah and he was just a guy who like he was fascinated by that and he just was willing to try a trillion ways and what i love about this is have any of us ever half asked anything we care about not really right when you really care like you're putting the time in you're putting energy imagine a society where we're actually trying our best to help people live that kind of life right to find the things that truly motivate them and let's turn that into productive and contributions for the rest of us What is the fourth?

[962] So this is, which is ignore the destination.

[963] Okay.

[964] So in our society, we spend unbelievable amounts of time telling people to figure out where it is they're going to end up.

[965] And I mean, we do this to kids all the time, right?

[966] What are you going to be when you grow up?

[967] And like, if you get to high school and you don't have an answer to that, like, we start to get nervous.

[968] Sure.

[969] So here's the problem is that when you start overly obsessing about what that destination is, which is so far off and has contingent on a bunch of other things being true.

[970] It takes the focus off of the things that you really need to spend the time on, which is like, who am I?

[971] What truly motivates me?

[972] And you start ignoring the decisions that you have right in front of you, right?

[973] Or worst case, it actually corrupts them.

[974] So your kids are younger, but when they get to high school, you'll start to know this.

[975] And I have two kids that are past high school now, you know, because.

[976] Because you started so early.

[977] You're so horny when you're young.

[978] That's right.

[979] But I remember when my oldest son, he was taking.

[980] making classes that mattered to him.

[981] Even if he wasn't going to do well at him.

[982] He's like, this seems kind of interesting.

[983] I'm going to try this, right?

[984] And I almost from, I want to say I remember the day, but it's probably not that specific.

[985] When suddenly it became what looks best on a college application.

[986] Oh, right, right.

[987] Yeah.

[988] And you're like, wait, what do you mean?

[989] And then it's like, oh, I can't take this like French literature class because what if I'm, what if I don't really like it?

[990] What if I don't get a grade in it?

[991] And like, this won't be good.

[992] And suddenly you're, you're making choices against this thing that you've decided you have to be.

[993] Yeah.

[994] That isn't this.

[995] And it's just toxic for fulfillment.

[996] So what you see with Dark Horses, I think is so fascinating is they're really obsessed about goals.

[997] They set goals for themselves, but they're actionable things, right?

[998] But it's always oriented to like, this is who I am.

[999] This is what matters to me. This is the thing I'm doing next to get better at something, right?

[1000] And so it may end up, say, you say, I'm going to be a lawyer, maybe.

[1001] Right.

[1002] But that same combination of things might take you to a dozen other places that are going to be every bit as fulfilling to you.

[1003] Well, yeah.

[1004] And in fact, we've had a lot of people.

[1005] in this attic who um hey i like how you say that finally i know i thought i thought the same thing you do listen wow even as i was saying it i had a mini panic attack you did a good job i even considered saying podcast instead of attic do it again no you did you're doing good try vietnamese i i really dig this now here's uh what you are critical of of these tests I wanted to wonder aloud is so a couple things what's being spouted everywhere right now is that we're we're spending more than we ever have and we're getting less back from education is that is this true this is true here's what I want when I hear that I do wonder is that actually is that a misleading statistic is that more representative of how the demography of the countries change and how many students are Spanish -speaking, first language, English.

[1006] Like, are those, is that data skewed or is our education system really gone downhill?

[1007] I don't think it's got.

[1008] So I actually think that part of this is the misleading aspect of using averages.

[1009] So even when we compare ourselves to other countries, there's a thing called the Pisa test, which they come out every once in a while and we're like, oh, look, we're, we're so far behind everybody.

[1010] It's always Japan.

[1011] It's like all these people that are just crushing it, right?

[1012] In Germany.

[1013] You know, we've been saying this for like 40 years.

[1014] Like how awful this is going to be.

[1015] And then it's like, at the end of the day, when it comes to innovation, it comes to these things, we do pretty well.

[1016] But what's interesting at those, that international data is that if you disaggregate it based on poverty.

[1017] Yeah.

[1018] So free and reduced lunch.

[1019] Okay.

[1020] So some of the top performing countries, first of all, kids aren't showing up Hungary.

[1021] They actually like, they don't even have that.

[1022] Yeah.

[1023] So like a Finland, right?

[1024] So if you take in the United States, if you take just the schools that have, you know, 10 % or, or less free and reduced lunch, right?

[1025] So kids are actually showing up.

[1026] They're not hungry.

[1027] Those schools are better than basically anybody else in the world.

[1028] Like, we're really good.

[1029] Right.

[1030] And then if you go to like the 25th, 25 % to 10%, we're like second or third only to like Finland and a couple of, it's just that we have schools where kids show up where you've got 75, 90 % poverty.

[1031] Yeah.

[1032] And those schools rightly are struggling, right?

[1033] Because we're not resourcing them the way that you need to.

[1034] What always makes me think of this is often I'll see California.

[1035] compared to some other states, and I'm shocked that those states have are testing higher on all these tests.

[1036] And what I think is, oh, well, but 40 % of our populations, Latino, many of them are English as a second language.

[1037] Like, we have a much different makeup that is skewing that.

[1038] And so it's like we're pretending the house is on fire, but that's not really the case.

[1039] No, look, I think the trick is, we've got amazing people in the system working really hard.

[1040] I think the thing that's changing is it's designed to produce an outcome that we actually don't want anymore.

[1041] It's designed to make people into interchangeable widgets.

[1042] The people we know now you're saying 60 % are saying, I don't like this.

[1043] I don't like this.

[1044] And by the way, it's not even good for our economy anymore.

[1045] If the best you are is trained to basically plug and play in a few jobs, a machine will be doing that job.

[1046] Do you know quite soon?

[1047] Yeah, so I just think it's more about our expectations of risen and we want something different.

[1048] We have all these tests that are telling us like, how well we're sort of preparing widgets for a system yeah and now as a parent i can really relate to this and this is another question i want to ask you is um aren't the markers we set for children as much about our own selfish desire to make sure we're doing a good job as it is to measure their progress on some oh for sure right because i for sure i have anxiety as a parent like most people do and it's like she should be reading by what grade i want to make sure i'm doing that like it's really a test for me yeah and so i buy into this thing it's really to alleviate my own anxiety yeah don't you think that's part of this problem oh for sure so in the science i'm a part of we study actually how kids develop both physically mentally and stuff and what you realize is a lot of these like oh by this age they should do this those are all averages and it turns out they're just they're not normal it doesn't work that way right like right um we even studied how kids learn to walk and forever we thought it was like you know you kind of start scooching you have to like be able to crawl walk turns out crawling's just made up like lots of kids just completely skip crawling and just go to walking or backtrack and like the truth is it doesn't matter when you learn it doesn't have any real relationship to anything else yeah there's i've never been to an elementary school where one of the kids was still refusing to walk right right i've never seen so like they're carrying their their six year old said i'm gonna just like pump the brakes like as a parent like let's spend the time enjoying like as someone who's now kids are based are in college and beyond like it just went by so fast yeah like man I wish I wouldn't spend even a moment thinking of anything other than let's enjoy this time we have together yeah instead of are they hitting all these markers look there can be some dead ends there can be some problems but guess what like those will be flagged and you'll figure those things out yeah you don't need to be panicked about them all the time all right now the last cynical thing I'm going to ask awesome okay I read all your stuff and I've I've heard you you speak and there is still part of my brain that's going okay great but our society will collapse if everyone feels entitled to make their own timeline because you're big on bucking the timeline right yeah i mean i would say we can have more flexibility in a timeline than we do right now okay i guess what i what the cynical side of me says uh can our system accommodate everyone being filled is it antithetical to this thing we've created which is capitalism and someone Look, the vast majority of jobs in this country, they fucking suck.

[1049] Like, that's just the bottom.

[1050] No one's going to assess their passion and discover its toll booth operator.

[1051] I mean, or not, again, never to be disparaging about toll booth operators.

[1052] But there's a ton of jobs that are mindless, they're mind -numbing, they're hard on your body, they're unhealthy.

[1053] And they need doing.

[1054] So what do we, what do, how does that?

[1055] all worked.

[1056] So let's step back and say, look, it wasn't that long ago that we thought that we, you know, we don't live hand to mouth anymore.

[1057] And it wasn't that long ago that we thought feeding a society was naive, right?

[1058] It was as late as the 70s.

[1059] People theorize that it was too many people.

[1060] You couldn't possibly feed everyone.

[1061] We had written off India.

[1062] We'd written off Mexico.

[1063] Like literally, like, nothing they can do.

[1064] They're going to die.

[1065] Until our scientists made breakthrough discoveries and things like wheat and other things.

[1066] And suddenly it's like the U .S. is an exporter of food, right?

[1067] So I think it is entirely possible for us to see a day where most people live fulfilling lives in this country if they take the right steps.

[1068] We're not going to snap our fingers and suddenly everyone's fulfilled, right?

[1069] Yeah.

[1070] But the world has changed and is changing enough that we can at least ask some different questions.

[1071] Questions about like in a democracy, in a market economy, what is it that we really want as a people, right?

[1072] Let's think about our view of success.

[1073] Let's think about what we might expect from our public institutions.

[1074] if we want to make fulfillment the sort of lifeblood of who we are, right?

[1075] Yeah.

[1076] And I actually, I also think just pragmatically, we may not have much of a choice because if you look at what's coming with AI and automation.

[1077] Well, just truck driving alone.

[1078] They're saying it's like the number one employer in America and that's going away.

[1079] And the truth is first year when you graduate law school, most people are getting paid to like do this basic case stuff.

[1080] IBM's figuring out, oh, we can put AI on this.

[1081] and save millions of millions of dollars, like that's going to go away, right?

[1082] The truth is, is most, I feel like if you're not equipped to know who you are, know what matters to you, be able to put that to work in some constructive way, you're really not prepared to thrive in a world where these jobs will come and go so fast.

[1083] If you just show up and play through, a machine's going to do that job.

[1084] Yeah, well, I think I read you said like the average person changes jobs 12 times or something.

[1085] And so the question is, are you going to know how to make those choices.

[1086] Right.

[1087] They're coming your way.

[1088] They're coming your way.

[1089] Before you may, maybe I lock into one job and I get a goal.

[1090] My grandfather worked one place, his whole life got a goal watch at the end.

[1091] Right.

[1092] He happened to get something he liked, right?

[1093] Even if you land on the thing you love, odds of that sticking around are slim to none.

[1094] So who's going to do this for you?

[1095] And it ultimately comes down to, are you going to be in charge of what a successful life is for you?

[1096] Are you going to be equipped to make those choices?

[1097] Or are you going to give that to somebody else?

[1098] I have to imagine a ginormous a part of fulfillment is your own physical health.

[1099] I think it would be very hard to be fulfilled when you're battling a lot of different issues.

[1100] So what role does, I happen to have this perverse obsession.

[1101] Like I've said on here before, if I have a single thing I'd want my kids to leave my house with, like it's one thing I got to pick that I taught them, it would just be to exercise religiously.

[1102] That's it.

[1103] Like if I, they did nothing else but exercise and got those endorphins that we need to be happy.

[1104] They can get through a shitty job or they can get through this or that.

[1105] But like you got to feel good physically.

[1106] Yeah, if you're unhealthy, this is, and I also think what's interesting to me about this is this push toward fulfillment.

[1107] Because again, by the way, if our numbers are right and this is where the majority of Americans are, this is the side we're going to have as soon as they figure out they're an actual majority, right?

[1108] So, we got to figure out how to make this work.

[1109] This is what people want.

[1110] I think it's going to start to challenge some basic things because it's not just about a job, right?

[1111] Right.

[1112] So if you get a great job and it turns out that's like only 40 % of what was going to make you fulfilled, it's not going to do it, right?

[1113] Totally.

[1114] But being healthy and well is going to be really important.

[1115] I think it's going to start pushing on things that will cross political boundaries like crazy where capitalism drives a lot of options that I think we're going to want, but things like universal health care and stuff like this where it's like, people have to have a right to be healthy because they can't even get on a path.

[1116] of fulfillment right yeah and so i think it's going to be interesting the way this is going to shake a lot of stuff up and and look as parents let's make this let's make this next generation the ones that aren't carrying the burden that we've been having to carry where we've been taught to compare ourselves to everybody and taught that these things are going to bring us happiness that never do right yeah we don't have to impose that on our kids no my my my saying here is the only person you should be comparing yourself to his previous versions that's right it's about self -improvement that's it yeah if you stay in your lane focus on yourself you know you got a shot that's right well professor rose Todd whatever you want to call him thank you so much this has been very fascinating and I appreciate it and I think this is an amazing book that people should I mean minimally if you have children you should be thinking about this stuff you know even if you're not going to be a radical and quit your job tomorrow and I'd say look there's in closing that I think the stuff in the book like I think it matters as much or more for people who are stuck in jobs but don't have a big safety net, right, that are trying to figure out, look, I can't quit my job, I can't go do, I can't go rogue, but there's a lot in your life that you can actually change that will bring you immense fulfillment and you just need to know a few things to get started.

[1117] And I think Dark Horse can help.

[1118] That's fantastic.

[1119] Yeah, everyone needs tools.

[1120] I think a lot of these self -help things, they're like lofty aspirational goals and people generally, well, there's statistics that will say that people feel worse after reading self -help books in general i actually i hate that stuff in my head i was like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna put something out that wouldn't have been useful to me after i decided i'm not i'm not doing animas anymore for a living yeah i have no money i have no but i want a better life what is it that i need to know that i can actually start making better choices yeah and get me on a path yeah taking that first step up the hill well you're awesome thanks for taking the time i'm so grateful there's people in in massachusetts and all over the world like actually committing brain power and brain imaging to figuring out how we can all be just a little bit happier and more fulfilled and it was great to be in your attic oh thank you and that's really well said yeah pronounced it perfectly all right well i wish you good luck on your tour and thanks for coming and come back the next time you write a book thanks for having me and now my favorite part of the show the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[1121] Monica, welcome to the fact check.

[1122] Welcome to the fact check.

[1123] Are you going to tell me about Todd Rose?

[1124] Yes, I am.

[1125] Todd, he really didn't want to have any facts.

[1126] Oh, he didn't?

[1127] No, he didn't.

[1128] He didn't want to make any errors that would need to be correction?

[1129] Correct, yeah.

[1130] That's a hard target to hit.

[1131] Although, I think he did pretty good.

[1132] Yeah, I think he did pretty good.

[1133] There's some stuff here, but.

[1134] Just mostly on my side?

[1135] Pretty much.

[1136] Oh, okay, good.

[1137] Yeah.

[1138] That's great.

[1139] By the way, we have a new chair in the studio.

[1140] Oh, yeah.

[1141] And you might even see miniature mouse in it from time to time because we are trying to fix the dynamic where people are forced to turn their heads, 180 degrees to interact with Monica.

[1142] And so our solution is to do a triangle.

[1143] offense, much like the Chicago Bulls offense, and then later made famous by the Lakers.

[1144] And maybe pop Monica in this cute little chair.

[1145] Oh, I've been dying to get this off my chest for all the people who tweet and Instagram message, buy Monica a mic stand or by Monica a footstool.

[1146] These things have been offered to Monica many times.

[1147] And Monica, she don't want no footstool or mic stand?

[1148] Well, it just wouldn't really work in this space.

[1149] It's more of a feng shui thing for you?

[1150] Well, yeah.

[1151] I don't think a footstool would look nice.

[1152] Our space is small.

[1153] It would take up a lot of it.

[1154] I don't think anyone wants that.

[1155] And then the mic stand I could go for, but it's not a priority.

[1156] Well, and in fact, we have one.

[1157] We have an extra mic stand.

[1158] There's one in here.

[1159] We could definitely be using.

[1160] But maybe we'll give it a shot with this new beautiful chair, which is from one of our sponsors.

[1161] Joybird.

[1162] Yeah.

[1163] And it's yellow for armchair expert, and it's really nice.

[1164] Yeah, it's quite comfortable.

[1165] The proverbial catbird seat.

[1166] Okay, back to Theodore Rose.

[1167] Todd Rose.

[1168] Yeah.

[1169] I'd just like to pretend people's names are longer, like Jason.

[1170] But wouldn't that be Teddy?

[1171] It would.

[1172] A lot of times it doesn't even make sense because what would be the long version of Todd?

[1173] Yeah, I don't think there is one.

[1174] Todd Effony.

[1175] That's kind of feminine.

[1176] Oh.

[1177] Kind of nice.

[1178] Fluid.

[1179] Todd, I feel like everyone knows a Todd from their childhood.

[1180] Like a very specific Todd.

[1181] Can you hear the name Todd?

[1182] Do you don't have that?

[1183] I don't know that I knew a Todd.

[1184] What it makes me think of is I one time had a sketch.

[1185] with Nat Faxon and Pat Devine.

[1186] And it was a sketch about triplets.

[1187] And two of the members of the triplets, Pat and Nat, wanted to break off from me. They no longer wanted to be triplets.

[1188] They wanted to do like twin commercials, like double -ment commercials and stuff.

[1189] And their names were Timmy, Tommy, and Todd.

[1190] You were Todd.

[1191] I was Todd.

[1192] It didn't work lyrically.

[1193] And we often would say, Timmy and Tommy, Todd.

[1194] I try to kind of make it sound like their name.

[1195] That's funny.

[1196] Yeah.

[1197] That's fun.

[1198] Cool.

[1199] Cool story, bro.

[1200] I like that.

[1201] Anyway, well, I guess my theory doesn't hold.

[1202] There's a Todd from my high school that I immediately think of when I hear Todd.

[1203] Was he a big boy?

[1204] No, no, no. He wasn't.

[1205] He was very fit.

[1206] No, I don't mean excessive in weight.

[1207] Like a large gentleman?

[1208] He was tall, but not too tall.

[1209] He was very average.

[1210] Oh, great.

[1211] Very on story, because as we know, Todd Rose is destroying the fallacy of the average.

[1212] That's right.

[1213] He doesn't even believe in it.

[1214] He doesn't believe in the average.

[1215] Well, he clearly never met my friend Todd.

[1216] Right.

[1217] He's dead average.

[1218] Well, because wouldn't you hate to be described as average?

[1219] No, but I don't mean average, like, I meant average build.

[1220] Like, if you were drawing a picture of a man, you draw a picture of Todd.

[1221] Like, he's just proportional, not too tall, not too short, blonde hair.

[1222] Right up the middle.

[1223] Built not too skinny, not large.

[1224] Yeah, just right down the average.

[1225] Did I bring this up in the interview with Todd that the one time in my life I felt completely average was when I was walking the streets of Stockholm, Sweden.

[1226] You didn't know.

[1227] I was walking the streets of Stockholm, Sweden, probably 23 years old, 24 years old.

[1228] And I was dead average height, dead average eye color, dead average hair color.

[1229] I was just right in the middle.

[1230] And it felt very weird to me, because I'm used to being taller than everyone.

[1231] Yeah.

[1232] And I believe blue eyes are a minority eye color in this country and blonde hair.

[1233] I don't know.

[1234] Maybe I'm out on a limb.

[1235] But I got to tell you, I blend it right the fuck in.

[1236] If I was ever going to commit a bank robbery and then wanted to jump out on the street and blend in, it'd be Stockholm.

[1237] So batting down the hatches when I come back, boys, because I'm looking to knock off a bank.

[1238] Oh, wow.

[1239] You heard of here first.

[1240] You know, it is one of my longstanding obsessions is I wanted so bad to try to rob a bank.

[1241] I thought about it so much.

[1242] I've written three screenplays about bank robberies.

[1243] Yeah.

[1244] I'm obsessed with trying to get away.

[1245] with it.

[1246] This is like the ultimate challenge.

[1247] Can you get away with it?

[1248] Are you smart enough?

[1249] Are you fast enough?

[1250] Do you think it through good enough?

[1251] Sure.

[1252] I don't want to hurt nobody.

[1253] Okay, I was going to say, you're not really thinking about all the pain you're causing.

[1254] I do not want to hurt anyone, but I want to get a big duffel bag full of money.

[1255] I want to get into the vault and I want to get out of there.

[1256] And I want maybe even a little bit of a high speed pursuit on my departure.

[1257] Sure.

[1258] Outrun them.

[1259] You think you can do this without causing any trauma or pain.

[1260] That's the goal.

[1261] Now, these things often go sideways.

[1262] I'll tell you that when I worked somewhere, a homeless man came in, pretended to pull a gun on us for money.

[1263] He was robbing us.

[1264] And it was incredibly traumatic.

[1265] It was.

[1266] No one got hurt.

[1267] Yeah.

[1268] Well, okay.

[1269] Well, now you're making it sound a little less fun.

[1270] Sorry, but I am telling you.

[1271] What if when I case the bank, I do a really deliberate job of making sure that all the people there feel physically quite confident and brave?

[1272] I guess why don't you just do it after hours when no one's there?

[1273] That does also appeal to me, but not nearly as much as the high stakes of all the variables, people scattering and running and trying to control this large crowd and, you know, like basically heat, the scenes from heat, you know, although they were pretty rough and tumble with their approach.

[1274] They got in that big firefight with LAPD there in downtown L .A. Yeah, I never saw it.

[1275] Automatic weapon fire.

[1276] Well, what was crazy is that then that almost exact bankruptcy happened in San Fernando Valley before you lived here.

[1277] Really?

[1278] Yes, and there's a couple documentaries about it.

[1279] What was so fascinating when I watched the documentaries, these guys were in full body armor.

[1280] There, I think, was four of them.

[1281] They were in a huge standoff with the LAPD.

[1282] They had much more powerful guns.

[1283] The LAPD had to go buy different guns during the whole thing.

[1284] But that wasn't the fascinating part.

[1285] The fascinating part was these dudes had the foresight.

[1286] They took beta blockers before they robbed the bank.

[1287] And I was like, that's brilliant.

[1288] And if you don't know what beta blockers are, they keep your heart rate low and they keep your thinking calm.

[1289] What a, what a, it was the, when you're watching it, it is exactly like the scene in heat.

[1290] You think there's no way that could happen in real life.

[1291] There it did.

[1292] They added one guy had hit out in a house.

[1293] He'd gotten away.

[1294] He'd in a house.

[1295] They took that battering ram vehicle and drove through someone's house to get at them.

[1296] Sounds like people got hurt in this scenario.

[1297] Well, the guys did, yeah.

[1298] Most of the guys got shot ultimately, I believe.

[1299] Oh, I meant innocent people.

[1300] I don't know if any innocent – well, police officers got shot, which is tragic and terrible.

[1301] That's terrible.

[1302] And I guess they're driving through someone's house.

[1303] I'm going to guess that – I hope they hadn't just remodeled.

[1304] If they drive through your house And you've been wanting a remodel It's like a gift from the gods Well, yeah If you just remodeled And then they barrel through there And some amphibious vehicle Rough Stink City Yeah, that's not good Well, it was my first fake fart on this program Do you think that triggers anyone's misophonia?

[1305] Oh It might Sounds real I don't do I don't think farting Do you think farting triggers misophonia?

[1306] Well, it's kind of your butt chewing air.

[1307] Wow.

[1308] I never thought about that.

[1309] You know, think about it.

[1310] Wow.

[1311] I don't want to think about that.

[1312] Your butt chewing ears.

[1313] Do you remember that I'm Saturday Night of sketch with Fred Armisen?

[1314] And it was basically the breathy strips, but for your butt cheeks.

[1315] And you'd say for your butt cheeks.

[1316] And they had all these dumb diagrams, and it pulls your butt cheeks apart.

[1317] So that doesn't make a noise.

[1318] Oh.

[1319] And it was just people like basically passing gas, like, very peacefully.

[1320] It was making no noise and they were so happy about it.

[1321] That's so funny.

[1322] For your butt cheeks.

[1323] Okay, so Todd is from Utah and this great salt lake comes up and you said you floated in it.

[1324] And then you were wondering if anyone had drowned in it.

[1325] Yeah, people have died in it.

[1326] It's hard to say, it's hard to know if they like fell in and then drowned.

[1327] I think probably something else happened and then they ended up in the water and then died.

[1328] That's my guess.

[1329] But one of the first, if not the first recorded drownings in the Great Salt Lake, happened on Sunday, August 5th, 1882.

[1330] And it was a guy named J .D. Farmer, and he was a businessman, and he drowned.

[1331] What business did he have in the Great Salt Lake?

[1332] Selling his wares?

[1333] Was he a haberdasher?

[1334] What was going on that he was maybe just, he was luxuriating, I guess, relaxing.

[1335] He was not a swim instructor.

[1336] Clearly.

[1337] No. But apparently he was a quote, well -known businessman.

[1338] But that doesn't.

[1339] A pillar of his community?

[1340] Yeah, sure.

[1341] It doesn't give us much.

[1342] But anyway, it's happened.

[1343] Okay.

[1344] So it can happen.

[1345] It can happen.

[1346] So don't be reckless the next time you're swimming in the Great Salt.

[1347] Like, it is so gross getting out into the water.

[1348] I'm sure I talked about that.

[1349] There's so many flies.

[1350] Yeah, yuck.

[1351] Weird little bugs, yeah.

[1352] That would be hard for me because I'd want to experience that floating, but I would not want to experience the flies.

[1353] The move would be to parachute into the middle of the lake.

[1354] Oh.

[1355] Then get picked up by a jet ski that could then travel towards shore so quickly that you could pass all the bugs on shore and make it up onto the beach.

[1356] Okay, you're right.

[1357] That's the answer, I guess.

[1358] Or a hot air balloon.

[1359] We were just talking about hot air balloons.

[1360] Yeah, you really want to go to New Mexico during the hot air balloon festival, which happens in October, you told me. I think it happens in October, and I'd really like to go.

[1361] And I told you, my mom went this year.

[1362] Yeah.

[1363] By herself, it's so cute, she road trip there.

[1364] Yeah.

[1365] She should have taken you.

[1366] She should have, but she didn't know.

[1367] She didn't know.

[1368] It's not her fault.

[1369] It's your fault.

[1370] It's my fault, clearly.

[1371] We talk about treading water, and we couldn't remember the example.

[1372] exact amount of hours that that guy treaded water.

[1373] From India.

[1374] Yes, and it's 85 hours.

[1375] I just don't.

[1376] 805 hours, three and a half days.

[1377] He was 19.

[1378] It was only 19.

[1379] I didn't remember.

[1380] Now I'm sorry to think he didn't even intend to do this.

[1381] Well, how could he not have to...

[1382] You're like 19 and he...

[1383] It's just hanging out in the water for three and a half days.

[1384] Talking to a couple buddies and then they perished and he just stayed in there.

[1385] confused.

[1386] No, no, he did it, 85 hours.

[1387] I was telling you, I couldn't, for real, for $250 ,000, I couldn't sit on a couch in the same position for four days.

[1388] I know.

[1389] My body would start aching.

[1390] Also, I'd have to move my bowels, you know?

[1391] I can't go three and a half days without moving my bowels.

[1392] I think he would.

[1393] I think he did.

[1394] He must have.

[1395] Yeah, he was in the water.

[1396] And he was eating and drinking, clearly.

[1397] You can't go.

[1398] That's what I don't understand.

[1399] I guess someone was throwing him gushers or something.

[1400] Like, how could he even do this?

[1401] I don't understand.

[1402] I don't know.

[1403] He couldn't have used his hands to eat.

[1404] Oh, he could use one.

[1405] Because you remember when I set my really impressive record?

[1406] Yeah.

[1407] I was often having to, like, grab the kids as they were jumping off that little mat.

[1408] So I was often not using my hands so I could throw them back up on that mat.

[1409] It was all somehow working.

[1410] I could have probably taken a little bite of a dagwood.

[1411] Sure, sure.

[1412] Interesting.

[1413] All right.

[1414] Well, you know more than me. I had to do it for two minutes once, and it was very hard for me to do.

[1415] I'm really sorry.

[1416] That happened to you.

[1417] Thank you.

[1418] It was a cheerleading camp.

[1419] That wasn't one of these hazing things, was it?

[1420] No, we just had to pass a swim test.

[1421] Fucking two minutes of treading.

[1422] That was the test.

[1423] No, there was more.

[1424] You had to like swim across, you had to do some stuff.

[1425] But at the end, you had to tread water for two minutes.

[1426] Okay.

[1427] And maybe it was 10 minutes.

[1428] I hope so.

[1429] Two minutes is not a test.

[1430] Two minutes doesn't sound long now that I'm saying it out loud.

[1431] Yeah.

[1432] Whatever it was, it was hard for me to do.

[1433] You can't even cook a bag of popcorn in the microwave in two minutes.

[1434] Should we have your cheer squad on here, like a reunion show?

[1435] I'm dying to have a reunion with that squad.

[1436] You have a platform.

[1437] Set this up.

[1438] Throw it into the universe right now.

[1439] Would you like to have it in Georgia?

[1440] I would like to have it in Georgia at Christmastime.

[1441] Let me tell you something right now.

[1442] Let me tell you what I'm offering you right now is your 2019 Christmas present.

[1443] Okay.

[1444] I will rent a house anywhere in the country so that you can have this party.

[1445] That's nice of you.

[1446] That's my offer to you.

[1447] Thank you.

[1448] Take it or leave it.

[1449] Okay.

[1450] I'm probably going to leave it.

[1451] Well, you know, my plan was, and I think you were even maybe a part of it, or maybe Carly was, I really, when I missed the window, I got too busy last year, but last year would have been the 20th anniversary.

[1452] No, the, geez, I'm so old.

[1453] The 30th anniversary of seventh grade.

[1454] Your best year.

[1455] Of my life.

[1456] And I found out that my middle school, Muir Jr. High, you can rent it.

[1457] And I really wanted to throw a big mixer for everyone in that class, 88, 89.

[1458] I love that idea, yeah.

[1459] I did wonder if someone would try to kick my ass.

[1460] I'm pretty sure someone would.

[1461] There's a little, you know.

[1462] Animosity.

[1463] Well, I'd bring Aaron.

[1464] That'd be great because Aaron's very tough.

[1465] But let's just say I would not walk into that scenario unarmed.

[1466] And I don't mean with a gun.

[1467] I just mean unprepared.

[1468] Why are these adults wanting to fight?

[1469] I mean, what is wrong with all these people?

[1470] I'll tell you, there is certainly someone from my junior high who feels like I was mean to them or that I made them feel a certain way and they've been lifting weights for the last 30 years and maybe they're pissed too that I ended up on TV and that would be their opportunity to tell me, you know what, I always fucking hated you and then here's this knockout punch.

[1471] Enjoy.

[1472] I bet no one would do that.

[1473] and people are happy for you that you had some success.

[1474] Some of them got to be mad.

[1475] I'd be mad.

[1476] If there was a guy in my junior high didn't like, and then on top of it, he ended up on TV, I would be mad.

[1477] Well, that'd be a waste.

[1478] I mean, not now because I've done some work on myself.

[1479] But I certainly, 10 years ago, would have been frustrated if Sean Castle, the kid who punched me on my friend's couch 20 times in the face, that dude then also grew up and, you know, married Scarlett Johansson, was on TV.

[1480] Mm -hmm.

[1481] You know?

[1482] Sure.

[1483] I feel like he had been rewarded by the universe for his dastardly deeds.

[1484] Well, that's true.

[1485] But I think most people grow up and they have their own lives and their own issues and they're probably not all that concerned about.

[1486] other people's stuff.

[1487] Aaron thought it might be a good idea to hire like an off -duty cop who's armed just to be around in case something got crazy.

[1488] All right.

[1489] Well, that's good.

[1490] All right.

[1491] Okay.

[1492] You said there are five psychological traits and one of them's disagreeability.

[1493] Yeah.

[1494] So the big five personality traits, also known as the five factor model and the ocean model.

[1495] one openness to experience two conscientiousness three extraversion four agreeableness five neuroticism neuroticism yeah it's so close to eroticism which is positive but neuroticism sounds very negative does it is there a definition attached to neuroticism I'm sure okay I did not look it up um I mean I think a neuroticism Being neurotic is like kind of being anal or overly fastidious?

[1496] Yeah, or maybe just like nitpicky.

[1497] Yeah, meticulous.

[1498] Yeah, probably.

[1499] I'm not very neurotic.

[1500] Am I neurotic?

[1501] I don't think I'm too neurotic.

[1502] I wouldn't say so, no. I wouldn't say you're neurotic.

[1503] Although you have things that you are neurotic about, like the sponge and stuff like that.

[1504] Yeah.

[1505] Yeah, I'm weirdly type A about some things.

[1506] Oh, I should tell people about the sponge.

[1507] You just really care about the sponge, never being in the sink, always having it being, always have the person ring it out before they put it back in a sponge holder.

[1508] Because if you don't, it gets that horrendous smell.

[1509] It does mold.

[1510] And when you fucking touch it.

[1511] And it's not like the first thing you just bend down and sniff it to see if it's all right to pick up.

[1512] You pick it up to smell it.

[1513] and then it's too late.

[1514] Your hand stinks like that for two hours.

[1515] I agree.

[1516] I don't like it.

[1517] I hate it.

[1518] You know, it's funny.

[1519] I think of myself as being easygoing about a lot of things.

[1520] Smells is not one of them.

[1521] Yeah.

[1522] And it's not the conventional smells you might think.

[1523] Like, if you were to toot in here, great.

[1524] You know, but that sponge smell.

[1525] Ooh.

[1526] Yeah.

[1527] I don't like it either.

[1528] I mean.

[1529] Or sharp halitosis.

[1530] Ooh.

[1531] Well, I mean.

[1532] Some people seem to not care because I see them married to people who have like, really rough, sharp halitosis, and I think, well, that person clearly doesn't care because they're around it all day.

[1533] I couldn't be around it.

[1534] No, me either.

[1535] I put a rag in my partner's mouth.

[1536] That probably makes it worse because then the smell, the natural smells of the cloth get mixed in with the halitosis.

[1537] Fermentation.

[1538] If I told you this about my father, you know, he'd been in so many car accidents and he had his nose rebuilt.

[1539] Could not smell.

[1540] Yeah.

[1541] That's lucky.

[1542] I used to fart around him like we'd be watching TV together and I would just it was very comforting I would just fart with reckless abandon just go like oh he'll never be bothered by this yeah that's nice and I have to imagine his girlfriends over the years put two and two together and they thought oh this is a very safe place for me to fart as well which probably was a very attractive quality of his that is nice it is right to have safe yeah you don't have to brush your teeth really oh wow yeah also could he it's okay that's really ironic because you said your dad loved food but how do you love food and have no sense of smell it's all connected it explains to me why he was dumping a gallon of tobacco on everything he ate and he was trying to turbo charge every meal with all these toppings and everything just to squeak out some taste I think oh man yeah it's what a bummer what a what a what a sentence to perceive to be a food addict yet you can't taste food I also want to say I love my dad a lot God I always hate that I always bring up these things That's how negative about him What's negative about this?

[1543] I don't know just we were just talking to Jeff Garland I said we had a strained relationship But we also but also he was a beautiful person I really loved him and he was a sweetheart too So I just want to throw that out there Okay that's good Yeah I always imagine his friends like hearing this going What up ungrateful little shit he is He's so critical I'm also really critical of myself So I'm just extending that to him but at any rate i love him and he was a real sweetheart and he was so crazy instrumental and probably saving hundreds of lives over his 29 years in sobriety he was so generous with his time and took so many people under his wing in the program and it showed when he died you know the his his hospital room where he was at for three months was just 24 hours a day there there yeah that's that's kind of a good it's a good test of how you lived your life yeah Are a majority of Americans disengaged at their jobs?

[1544] CBS News said of the country's approximately 100 million full -time employees, 51 % aren't engaged at work.

[1545] So that's a lot of people.

[1546] That's a bummer, man, because you're spending...

[1547] So much of your life there.

[1548] 30 of your life there.

[1549] I'm actually, I'm kind of surprised because even at jobs that I have not liked, I feel like if you find, like, I don't know.

[1550] I just like, I have such a positive opinion of all the jobs I've had, even when they weren't very good jobs.

[1551] Me too, but for me that the reason was is I, like, found friendships at those jobs.

[1552] That's what I was about to say, because you find, yeah, because there's always at least one buddy that you make at these jobs end up being like a buddy for life.

[1553] Yeah, but think about how many jobs are kind of solitary in nature.

[1554] Whether you're on an assembly line, it's noisy in there and you're not talking.

[1555] Like, there's a ton of jobs where there's really no socializing, which I could not do.

[1556] Yeah, that's hard.

[1557] Yeah.

[1558] I wish everyone could have a buddy.

[1559] Or more.

[1560] I mean, that's why I washed cars for 14 years.

[1561] Yeah.

[1562] And I loved it because I worked with six of my best friends.

[1563] Yeah.

[1564] We could have been shoveling shit.

[1565] I didn't care.

[1566] Yeah.

[1567] Yeah, having a blast.

[1568] Yeah.

[1569] Oh, how much do Somaliers make?

[1570] The average salary for a master's Somalié is $150 ,000 compared to $78 ,000 for an advanced Somali.

[1571] That's a lot.

[1572] I'm impressed.

[1573] I think I'm going to get into that industry.

[1574] You know, you know, you know how I feel about that.

[1575] I'm so put off by the notion of a semi -e.

[1576] And people who like collect $2 ,000 bottles of wine.

[1577] I think the whole thing is so, again, it's my class warfare thing.

[1578] It is.

[1579] It's like, just fucking get drunk.

[1580] Well, they like.

[1581] Stop fetishizing it.

[1582] It's bringing them joy to care about it and to know stuff and be knowledgeable.

[1583] And why do you care?

[1584] Well, I think it's people that are attracted to that are just in general.

[1585] like repugnant no -it -alls to begin with.

[1586] I'm like, oh, here's another thing I can be lofty about.

[1587] Oh, did you feel?

[1588] Oh, the tannins were so oaky.

[1589] It's like, oh, my goodness.

[1590] There must be another topic for you.

[1591] Oh, I just got this beautiful 1968 from the Provence area of France.

[1592] The guy only wanted 3 ,200.

[1593] I was laughing because it's valued at $6 ,000.

[1594] The tannins were so, so oaky.

[1595] Yeah.

[1596] I think it's great if you're into it.

[1597] And if you've decided to devote some time and energy to something that you find interesting.

[1598] I agree.

[1599] This is my issue, not yours.

[1600] Enjoy, Semoyez.

[1601] Yeah.

[1602] I feel less than around classiness.

[1603] It's my fault, not yours.

[1604] I know.

[1605] It's not your fault, but you do.

[1606] You do.

[1607] You do.

[1608] It is.

[1609] It is your fault.

[1610] I told you one of my biggest pet peeves is like when the waiter acts like I'm not fancy enough to be at the restaurant they're working at.

[1611] Oh, that gets me going.

[1612] Yeah.

[1613] Even though there's no such thing as that.

[1614] What do you mean?

[1615] What is he doing that you're reading as he doesn't think you're fancy enough?

[1616] Well, like what do you call?

[1617] Dress codes, right?

[1618] They're pointing out your dress isn't up to their high standards.

[1619] you pronounce something on the menu, and then they, they, like, correct your pronunciation.

[1620] And there's just this kind of erudite, kind of condescending way that will explain the food to you.

[1621] It's all in my head.

[1622] Yeah.

[1623] Yeah.

[1624] But those are the things I'm being triggered by.

[1625] Well, your favorite restaurant has a dress code.

[1626] Your favorite restaurant in the whole world has a dress code.

[1627] What restaurant?

[1628] Houston's.

[1629] Yeah, and I think it's horse pocky.

[1630] And you still go.

[1631] When you make ribs that good, girl, I'll fucking put on a bow tie.

[1632] Yeah.

[1633] Yeah.

[1634] That's a good restaurant.

[1635] That's a good, good restaurant.

[1636] Oh, the PISA test is the worldwide exam that's administered every three years.

[1637] It measures 15 -year -olds in 72 countries, and it measures math reading and science.

[1638] In 2015, about 540 ,000 students took the exam.

[1639] Because you said that Japan and in Germany always win those things.

[1640] And Singapore was the highest in all three.

[1641] Oh, okay.

[1642] Math reading and science.

[1643] Congratulations, Singapore.

[1644] You know, there's an awesome, is it Planet Earth?

[1645] There's a really cool animal series.

[1646] And one of the episodes is called Cities, and they open up in Singapore.

[1647] Now, I went to Singapore in 1996.

[1648] Oh, you did?

[1649] Uh -huh, with my mom and my stepdad, my sister.

[1650] We went to Bangkok, Hong Kong, Singapore, Quantum Malaysia.

[1651] Bali, Adelaide, Sydney, Perth, Melbourne, Tanzania on a 21 -day cruise.

[1652] Wow.

[1653] It was spectacular.

[1654] That's awesome.

[1655] My mom's big indulgence.

[1656] I like that.

[1657] Yeah, it was awesome.

[1658] And Singapore was cool, but in this documentary, it's gotten significantly cooler.

[1659] They have that gigantic tree they've built.

[1660] It's a fake tree, but within the fake trees, all these different floral things.

[1661] It's so beautiful.

[1662] I really, I have a hankerun to go back.

[1663] My mom really wants to go to Singapore.

[1664] I'll take her.

[1665] Yeah, you should.

[1666] She's been wanting to go there for a long time.

[1667] Oh, well, done.

[1668] Okay.

[1669] Well, you're doing your cheer reunion.

[1670] Great.

[1671] I'll take your old gal over to Singapore and buy her some shoes.

[1672] I'll do like a pretty woman trip.

[1673] Although I was offered a house anywhere in the world, so maybe the reunion could be in Singapore.

[1674] Boom.

[1675] And we could all be there.

[1676] Done.

[1677] What percentage of California's population is Latino?

[1678] You said 40%.

[1679] And you're right, 38 .8%.

[1680] Oh, you're right about that.

[1681] Thank you.

[1682] Is truck driving the number one employer in America that you said it was in 2015?

[1683] It was.

[1684] Oh, man. Two for two.

[1685] I mean, it's state by state, but when I looked at the map, most of the states were truck driving as the Primo common job.

[1686] So, yeah.

[1687] And if you own your own rig, you can make a good deal of money in that occupation.

[1688] Yeah.

[1689] If you own your own setup, most of the drivers don't.

[1690] But the drivers that have their own tractor trailer, they're doing well.

[1691] That's good for them.

[1692] Yeah, we worked with this company when I did car shows, reliable.

[1693] And a lot of those guys owned their trucks, and they had really great lives other than the fact they were on the road all the time.

[1694] Yeah, that sounds really hard, actually.

[1695] Again, to your point, about camaraderie, not a lot happening in the cab, unless you drive with a team.

[1696] Because the rules for truck driving are you're only allowed to drive 10 hours a day unless you're a team.

[1697] And then you can drive 24 -7.

[1698] Because you can just go back and forth.

[1699] One guy's sleeping in the sleeper, and then you bounce back and forth.

[1700] So it's still not fun because someone's either you're sleeping.

[1701] Well, they're popping in amphetamines.

[1702] No one's really sleeping.

[1703] They're just driving the shit out of that big rig.

[1704] I'm teasing.

[1705] I'm sure a lot of them are popping amphetamines, but that's neither here nor there.

[1706] But the problem with this impending AI and automated driving is not just that gigantic group of drivers that are going to be out of a job.

[1707] The infrastructure to support those drivers is a huge chunk of our economy.

[1708] So the hotels along the highways, the restaurants, the gas stations, all that stuff.

[1709] It's like a really big chunk of the economy that's in jeopardy.

[1710] Yeah, I think we take for granted just how much of a domino effect everything is.

[1711] You know, remove one thing and a lot of it collapses.

[1712] That's the fun turn that's happening on the good place, where they're actually talking about the complexity of our society.

[1713] And when you buy a tomato, it's got these like 10 down river consequences.

[1714] And how on earth could anyone live?

[1715] a moral life when you're so complicated.

[1716] I like that question they're posing.

[1717] Me too.

[1718] Me too.

[1719] Like it's impossible at this stage and time to be perfect, whatever that means anyway.

[1720] But do people feel worse after reading self -help books?

[1721] There's been some studies that, well, there's nothing super conclusive, but it said results show that reading self -help books did not correlate with qualities like self -discipline, emotional stability, and self -esteem.

[1722] So even if reading those kinds of books isn't making things worse, it certainly doesn't seem to be making things better.

[1723] The self -up book generally outlines a way of life that you then fail at executing.

[1724] So it's like you're worse off than you started because you also failed at the thing.

[1725] Yeah.

[1726] But I think they were also saying that like people who are prone to reading it often already have anxiety and depression and they already are.

[1727] Yeah, they're on the road of looking for a. Yeah, sort of a chicken or the egg situation.

[1728] Yeah.

[1729] Oh, the turkey's back, the Thanksgiving turkey.

[1730] Well, that's the other thing, too, about parenting books, that there's no conclusive evidence that any of the parenting books approach is good or better than any other one.

[1731] But just the act of being a type of parent that would make time to read a book to be the best parent you could be.

[1732] sure is what makes you a good parent yeah yeah yeah not the book itself yeah i have not read many parenting books so i might be doing it wrong i started reading a parenting book and i'm not even a parent which one brains for babies no the uh one of the ones christin really liked um oh the danish approach or something something i forget yeah the danish method the danish something like that Yeah.

[1733] I have a romantic thought about Denmark in general and all of Scandinavia.

[1734] Like they do this, they let teens like cohabitate and stuff.

[1735] There's a lot of communal living going on.

[1736] I know.

[1737] I really like that.

[1738] Yeah.

[1739] And they're always scoring really high on these happiness tests.

[1740] Right.

[1741] And we talked about it on this, like Finland, there's no homework.

[1742] Yeah.

[1743] You know.

[1744] Fuck school.

[1745] Fuck homework.

[1746] Yeah.

[1747] I mean, it's so weird.

[1748] Because I agree with so much of this, but the idea of not giving homework, I just feel like you have to learn how to be responsible.

[1749] It has nothing to do with, are you getting the math problem right?

[1750] But you have to go home and you have something you have to accomplish for the next day.

[1751] You're learning tools to combat procrastination.

[1752] And like when you're, to be a, oh, a hardworking person, you have to have self -motivating skills.

[1753] And I think you learn those through homework and through the practice of going home and doing something you don't want to do and getting a good outcome.

[1754] Like, you have to see that whole thing through to then later in life apply it on your own.

[1755] So I agree with you, but I do think you'd be weighing that one virtue it could bestow onto you against.

[1756] what in my experience was I didn't know a single student of the thousands I knew that was on fire for learning.

[1757] People just had to do it.

[1758] You got to take every fucking subject and you got to do homework and all those things.

[1759] So it's like you're weighing it against a system that is not producing people who love to learn as a hobby.

[1760] And so I wonder what one's more valuable.

[1761] I was in the unique position so grateful for it that I took time off.

[1762] I realized I was super uneducated.

[1763] I was embarrassed by that.

[1764] I wanted to become educated.

[1765] I did not have to pick a major that was going to result in a career because I was already trying to be a comedian.

[1766] So there was no pressure to be responsible.

[1767] So I literally studied what interested me. And I loved it.

[1768] But I recognize what a bizarrely unique situation I was in, where my mom could afford to send me to college and pay my rent, and I could just go for the joy of learning.

[1769] Yeah.

[1770] Most people are trying to enter a trajectory for income.

[1771] Of course.

[1772] Yeah.

[1773] Yeah.

[1774] Which is necessary currently to.

[1775] But I wonder.

[1776] I do wonder, because most of the people I know who are making a living in jobs, rarely are the people doing the thing they majored in.

[1777] I don't run into that a lot other than lawyers, but almost everyone I know has got an English lit degree, you know.

[1778] No one's doing proofreading.

[1779] Yeah, I have, I have some examples, but...

[1780] Like, you're a media mogul.

[1781] You didn't major in that.

[1782] Well, one of my majors was PR.

[1783] Okay, public relations.

[1784] And you are relating to the public.

[1785] Yeah.

[1786] I guess you're right.

[1787] And acting was my other.

[1788] major and you act yeah and see i you know i i i felt like majoring and acting was her theater or theater mine was yeah i felt unethical about that i know it's very weird how like how punk rock i am about some things and then how completely conventional and sure stupid i am about other things that's one of them You shouldn't major in acting.

[1789] That's a fucking joke.

[1790] What does that mean?

[1791] Like, study something.

[1792] You know what I'm saying?

[1793] I do, but there are things to study in theater.

[1794] I mean, there's techniques.

[1795] There's all kinds of stuff, obviously.

[1796] Sure.

[1797] I enjoyed it.

[1798] I'm glad you did it.

[1799] Yeah, I'm glad I did it too.

[1800] I had so much fun doing it.

[1801] I'm much more fun than my PR major.

[1802] Yeah.

[1803] And did you ever think?

[1804] think you were going to work in PR?

[1805] No. Okay.

[1806] Well, I didn't know.

[1807] I just needed a little backup.

[1808] Yeah.

[1809] A little safety net?

[1810] Yeah.

[1811] I thought that would be.

[1812] Mom and Dad feel okay?

[1813] Yeah, and me. Yeah, and you.

[1814] It wasn't just for them.

[1815] The big one at UCLA was calm.

[1816] Everyone's trying to get into calm.

[1817] Yeah.

[1818] PR isn't the communication school.

[1819] Yeah, I just was shocked.

[1820] Everyone, like, when you'd go around the room, like, what are you majoring?

[1821] That would be like a first day of class.

[1822] That was a question the teacher would ask quite often.

[1823] Yeah.

[1824] And everyone was like, fingers crossed, calm.

[1825] I mean, like, people were like, it was like getting under the basketball team.

[1826] I couldn't rent my head around it.

[1827] Like, oh, well, I'm trying for calm.

[1828] I thought they offer so many different majors here.

[1829] Yeah, but if you want your livelihood to be something in that area, yeah, then you need to get into calm.

[1830] Eddie comedy comedy you need to get into comedy everyone should have gotten into comedy anyway that's all do you enjoy talking to me on here more than in real life no no do you what I really trapped yourself no I didn't what I get in here talking to you is not unlike when my addictive quality is triggered like when I'm enjoying something I don't want it to end.

[1831] I never have that panic in real life because it doesn't have to end in real life.

[1832] But in here, I want it to go on forever.

[1833] So in that way, I like it more, or it feels like I like it more because I'm trying to, I want it to go on forever.

[1834] Sure.

[1835] I understand that.

[1836] Okay.

[1837] Well, I guess let's just do it again tomorrow.

[1838] Yeah, that sounds like a plan.

[1839] Okay.

[1840] I love you.

[1841] Love you.

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