Stephen Dubner Returns

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

[1] I'm Dan Rather Shepard, and I'm joined by Mr. Minnika Mouse.

[2] Oh.

[3] We have a returning friend today.

[4] Yeah.

[5] We haven't seen him in quite a long time.

[6] No, it's been a couple years.

[7] Stephen Dubner.

[8] God, we love Stephen Dubner.

[9] He's an author and a journalist.

[10] He's the host of Freakonomics Radio and co -host of No Stupid Questions with another favorite of ours.

[11] Angela Duckworth.

[12] Angela Duckworth.

[13] He's got some very successful books.

[14] Freakonomics, turbulent souls, confessions of a hero worshiper, the boys with two belly buttons.

[15] And his podcast, No Stupid Questions, has a new season out about the seven deadly sins.

[16] And we get into that a bit.

[17] Very fascinating topic.

[18] And of course, they're unique and proprietary.

[19] Look at the seven deadly sins.

[20] He's a party.

[21] Stephen Dubner.

[22] You love him.

[23] We love him.

[24] He'll be back.

[25] We love you, Stephen Dubner.

[26] Please enjoy.

[27] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now.

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

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

[30] He's an armchair expert.

[31] Oh, these headphones will not do anything in this for you.

[32] Although how great are those headphones?

[33] They're the best.

[34] I say this often.

[35] I'm not like an Apple file.

[36] You're not?

[37] No. I like Apple.

[38] I'm not tracking the new products.

[39] I'm not like standing in a line.

[40] But those, those headphones?

[41] Those are really good.

[42] I can't help but stand in all of them.

[43] I sleep with them on half the night.

[44] Really?

[45] Not on purpose.

[46] You just fall asleep.

[47] Well, I listen to a book on tape.

[48] And then the noise cancelling is really nice.

[49] The noise cancelling.

[50] So you set it when you get them, and I set mine to Max.

[51] And now I realize that you cut off the world, maybe even a little bit too much.

[52] Where do you have yours set, do you know?

[53] I don't know.

[54] said, I hope to max.

[55] That's what I would want.

[56] When you're walking on the street in New York, they're so good that you can literally get run over.

[57] Yes, I'm not walking around a city.

[58] I'm like in my house listening to.

[59] Or hiking.

[60] I guess I could get attacked by a cougar.

[61] A cougar, yeah.

[62] Although we just lost P22, so the main threat is now gone.

[63] What's P22?

[64] P22 is a very famous.

[65] You're new to this, but there's a microphone there.

[66] We're going to want to hear you.

[67] Is that the name of a cougar?

[68] Yes.

[69] Mountain lion.

[70] Most famous.

[71] What's the difference?

[72] A mountain lion is a cougar.

[73] And it's also a Puma.

[74] Yes, it is.

[75] But are they all under the Mountain Lion umbrella?

[76] It's also a panther.

[77] A panther is a jaguar.

[78] I'm sorry, a leopard.

[79] Now a jaguar is a South American big cat, the Jaguar.

[80] Is that true?

[81] Yeah.

[82] You know your cats.

[83] I do.

[84] It's the third biggest cat, the jaguar.

[85] I'm about 300 pounds.

[86] Can I tell you the cutest thing about my kid when he was little?

[87] he's old now, he's a college senior.

[88] We found this video recently.

[89] We're at this place that we used to love to go called Mohunk Mountain House.

[90] He read early, so he's little.

[91] He's sitting there reading the newspaper, which is really weird because, like, who reads a newspaper?

[92] Especially a kid.

[93] And he was also a big football fan.

[94] Can I apologize you?

[95] Is this while you were still writing at, like, the New York Times or something?

[96] Because that makes more sense.

[97] This was between the New York Times and Freakonomics, let's say.

[98] I read the paper.

[99] every day.

[100] So if he knows dad's right?

[101] No, no, no. He was really reading it.

[102] He was really reading the newspaper.

[103] Oh, okay.

[104] Okay?

[105] All right.

[106] And I said, for some reason, this little bit was on tape that we just found in some old video thing.

[107] And I said, what are you reading about, Sallie?

[108] His name is Solomon.

[109] He said, Jaguars.

[110] And I said, oh, the football team?

[111] Because he's a sports game.

[112] He said, no dad, the cat.

[113] No dad, the cat.

[114] That's my favorite moment of his childhood.

[115] I want to know what story was in the paper about a jaguar.

[116] I went and I looked at it and it was some, you know, endangered story.

[117] I think he was mostly looking at the pictures, if we're being honest.

[118] Where does he go to school?

[119] He goes to American University, Washington, D .C. studies politics and he's about to graduate.

[120] I got a daughter.

[121] She also is in college.

[122] Wow.

[123] Yeah, when they were here last time, they were like 15.

[124] They were five.

[125] They were five last time you were here.

[126] My daughter is in Paris.

[127] Oh, my gosh.

[128] Semester abroad.

[129] Jay Perri, how does she like it?

[130] It's a big thing.

[131] She lives with a family.

[132] She is also taking her classes in French.

[133] It's tough.

[134] I couldn't go to study college in another language.

[135] No. It's hard enough.

[136] That'd be high on my list of locations, though.

[137] As a married person long retired, having a French girlfriend sounds like an experience I wish I had had.

[138] Wait, a married person long retired?

[139] What's that mean?

[140] Retired from the scene.

[141] Oh, from the scene.

[142] As a married person, comma, long retirement.

[143] tired, comma, from the scene.

[144] Here we go, it's a fucking New York Times writer.

[145] The editor over here.

[146] You would like, you're saying, I'm E. Cummings.

[147] I'll fucking just talk and you'll have to extrapolate.

[148] You're saying you would like to have had French girlfriends?

[149] Why?

[150] Sounds fun.

[151] Well, this is solely how they're represented in films.

[152] No, I actually have a friend too who had a couple who lived there occasionally.

[153] There's some kind of poutiness that seems attractive.

[154] I mean, for a while, I don't want to be married to a pouty person, but like for a couple months in the summer in Paris.

[155] That sounds fun.

[156] I think the source of the poutings that they love you too much.

[157] They're so horny that they're pouting about it.

[158] I think you're projecting on both.

[159] Absolutely.

[160] Yeah.

[161] I think both those were projections.

[162] They love you too much and too horny.

[163] Yeah.

[164] Well, again, this is a fantasy of a study abroad.

[165] How do you feel about the presentation of unavailability like that, though?

[166] That's not my style.

[167] Although you can't really say I feel like it works for some people and it just wouldn't work for other people.

[168] But I love it.

[169] Yeah, that's Monica's bread and butter is unavailability.

[170] You love it in yourself or in others, you mean?

[171] I'm attracted to it.

[172] Right, interesting.

[173] It's bad.

[174] I mean, it's like something to work on in therapy, which I am, but it is real.

[175] That is very alluring.

[176] Did either of your parents present that way?

[177] I mean, emotionally, yeah.

[178] I would go down that path as well.

[179] But interestingly, because we know Monica's path really well, it's not that.

[180] And I don't want to speak on your behalf, but we have a different explanation for it.

[181] Yes, my explanation is.

[182] that everyone was unavailable to me, for real, at one point in Georgia being a young brown girl.

[183] Real and imagined, we'll say.

[184] Real and imagined.

[185] Anyone who I was attracted to, they were not available to me. And that was one type of person.

[186] That was a white man, you know, cute.

[187] President of the football team or whatever they said.

[188] You know, high status for high school, middle school.

[189] And, yeah, they didn't like me. So that became the pinnacle of what I deemed validating.

[190] if I was going to get that.

[191] Can I add a layer with your permission?

[192] Sure.

[193] Also, some self -preservation.

[194] So there was a match.

[195] A boy liked her.

[196] She liked a boy.

[197] When asked why he won't ask her out, he said, I can't her parents work at Dairy Queen.

[198] So this like Indian stereotype, right?

[199] When it happened and he couldn't, out of self -preservation, I think also you said, I'm not going to ever be in this situation again.

[200] I'm going to like people that I know I'll never be in that situation with.

[201] So I can always express who I like.

[202] but the girlfriends won't be like, well, why don't you talk to him?

[203] Because it'll be like, I don't have to.

[204] Clearly, the prom king is out of my league, so I don't have to be pressured into why I'm not pursuing that.

[205] Yeah, that Derrick Queen was the first one.

[206] But then there was a few of those that, you know, then I was like, okay, see what's going on here.

[207] So, yeah, I'm not going to really put myself in that position anymore to be fully rejected.

[208] So I'll probably just pick.

[209] Were rejection is implicit almost.

[210] Yeah.

[211] I wonder how much we all do the calculus, even split second, say, like, Like, I'm not going to put myself in that circumstance even for a moment.

[212] Yeah.

[213] Because there's a good chance I'll get rejected and it's just too painful.

[214] Well, there'll be embarrassment on top of unrequited love.

[215] It's like, why make this thing worse?

[216] Don't you think we all do that all the time still?

[217] Not just on romantic stuff, just encounters.

[218] Well, I wanted that funnel nicely into either fear of failure, fear of success.

[219] I think somehow it would work into that structure.

[220] Yeah, I think it also works into, do you know Robert Sapolsky ever read him?

[221] You would like him.

[222] I know that name.

[223] Yeah, I know the name.

[224] He's a biologist and a primatologist.

[225] Okay.

[226] And he's written some really good books.

[227] And I think of him a little bit as a living modern day Richard Feynman, who's my favorite scientist.

[228] Do you guys like Feynman?

[229] I don't know Feynman either.

[230] We're out of a little bit.

[231] We have so much to talk about at some point.

[232] He didn't write Behave, Sapolsky, did it?

[233] Um, you know.

[234] Because that's my new favorite book and I can't remember the author's name.

[235] But he, too, is, I want to say, as a primanologist book out that I've not read.

[236] He has a famous book called.

[237] something like why zebras don't get ulcers and oh it is oh it is oh look at you okay so behave is my favorite book of last year i talk about it nonstop it is the single most comprehensive book on why we do everything to do polymath doesn't begin to describe that guy first of all it's awesome that you love him the most okay the one tiny thing i mean compared to that what i have to say is just a drop of sand but it reminds me of what we're talking about because he had done this study years and years ago.

[238] It was kind of a goofy study.

[239] It was barely scientific, but he wanted to know how people change as they get older and how they get fixed in their ways.

[240] And he did this study that was to try to find out how people, whether they'll try new foods, go new places, listen to new music, et cetera.

[241] And he found that bottom line to shorthand it a lot that on average, most of us, by the time we get to like 35, we're done.

[242] Oh, wow.

[243] And that's the depressing part.

[244] I think a lot of that is about you develop patterns that lead to results that you can live with.

[245] And that's where I'm getting to these interactions like fear of rejection or thinking that something might not work out.

[246] And so you just stop.

[247] You just do the same thing.

[248] And that's not a great way to live a life, I would argue.

[249] There's a lot of instincts we have that lead us to a place ultimately that don't make us happier.

[250] So I think all that's the illusion of control.

[251] What most people switch to is I don't want to be surprised in a bad way.

[252] so I'd rather just get rid of surprise because my fear of it being bad that's why you wouldn't try a new menu item all these different things and I think as we get older and we get a little more control over our life and maybe we live in the house we want to live in and we can buy the groceries we want to and we have more say over everything we're consuming and doing we just tend to sit in a pattern that we know won't disappoint us yeah so for someone who's hearing you say that and says themselves self I don't want to become that how do you do that It's like many things, a marriage being one of them, your physical fitness, all of these things are going to require way more work and consciousness than anyone wants to acknowledge.

[253] We have a fantasy.

[254] You and I were just talking about it before we started recording, which is like you've built a fairy tale in your life, and that's the thing you're pursuing.

[255] Phil Stutz calls it the snapshot.

[256] And in the snapshot, there's no wanting, craving anything.

[257] And if we're lucky enough to capture it, then we find out, A, it's static.

[258] It's not life.

[259] and it's not permanent, and it was a fairy tale.

[260] So you have to have a game plan in place to not fall into that.

[261] Right, but it sounds like you're saying you have to not only put yourself in a position to occasionally, but also be willing to be surprised because the nature of surprise is you don't know whether it's a good outcome or a bad outcome.

[262] Yeah.

[263] And even if 50 % of them are bad, to leave 50 % on the table that are good.

[264] Yeah.

[265] That's terrible.

[266] Yeah, it is.

[267] I mean, I think definitely people have higher or lower baselines of novelty they want or stimulation.

[268] I happen to be very arousal sensitive.

[269] You want a lot.

[270] Yeah, I want a lot of stimulation.

[271] And that can lead to excess.

[272] It can end you in rehab if you're not.

[273] Right.

[274] Yes.

[275] It all comes down to moderation, obviously.

[276] Do you know Angela Duckworth?

[277] Yeah, we had her on.

[278] We interviewed her.

[279] You're co -host.

[280] She's absolutely amazing.

[281] She taught me something so good.

[282] years and years ago, I think the first time I ever really talked to her, interviewed her, which is why I just fell so in love with her brain is she's just really good at analyzing, sorting, and then expressing.

[283] And we're talking about grit, her book, and how a lot of people get bored.

[284] Even if you're really good at something, even if you're good at something that you've been gritty with, it's always tempting to, like, say, okay, I've been doing this.

[285] It's working.

[286] It's thrilling, da, da, da, da, but I want to do a new project because it's new.

[287] And it's that search for the novelty that we were just talking about.

[288] And then she said, yes, but you can substitute nuance for novelty.

[289] Ooh.

[290] And that just got me. You give me a practical example.

[291] So like, okay, in my life, I love doing what I do, but I would also like to change occupations every six months because I love the thrill of new, of learning, of being around different people.

[292] Of accomplishing.

[293] All those things are amazing.

[294] On the other hand, that'd be stupid.

[295] So an economist would look at it one way to say, well, there's a sunk cost and there's a sunk cost fallacy, too.

[296] So maybe you should give up.

[297] What's sunk cost?

[298] The sunk cost is this idea that comes from economics, which essentially means everything that you spent on something, you treat as an investment that you can't abandon because it's valuable.

[299] If I've spent 100 hours trying to do something and I'm either unhappy or not very good, I think, well, I got to spend another 100 because, you know, I already spent the first 100.

[300] This would colloquially be known as throwing good money after back.

[301] Exactly.

[302] It's kind of easier to see the problem in money.

[303] It's harder to see the problem in your life with time or a relationship.

[304] Yeah, personal resources.

[305] Oh, there's so many people, yeah, that are together with somebody.

[306] And the only explanation they can give you is like, because we've been together for X amount of years.

[307] We put it in the work.

[308] Yeah.

[309] That's it.

[310] That's the number one reason.

[311] So as tempting as it is to always jump to something new, you know, there are potential upsides or potential downsides.

[312] but what Angela was saying for me, and I actually took this to heart.

[313] It's the reason I'm still doing Free Economics Treaty after 13 years.

[314] And honestly, before I came here, I was up at Caltech in Pasadena meeting with some people who knew Richard Feynman, the physicist, who was one of my all -time heroes, who was, quote, just a physicist, right?

[315] He did physics.

[316] He didn't do politics.

[317] He didn't do sports.

[318] He didn't do government.

[319] He didn't do economics.

[320] But he was, I would maintain one of the most valuable public intellectuals in the world ever because he was so driven by wanting to know stuff that he became a model for the kind of person that I think we should all be, which is having very little reverence for tradition and institution and BS and working really, really hard to find out stuff that's true, understanding how hard it is to find out anything that's true, and whereas most people in the world are just making stuff up and selling you their propaganda, he had an entirely different approach.

[321] And the reason I was up there and I want to make this series about Richard Feynman now for Freak Radio is because I believe the world needs that now.

[322] We need public intellectuals who will stand up to whether it's politicians, business people out and say, listen, what you're talking about is good for you, I understand that.

[323] I understand that it makes sense in the tradition of how you've always done it.

[324] But let's just be honest.

[325] There's no real proof that this is good for anyone other than you.

[326] Can you tell me one of the headlines that Feynman was great at pointing out?

[327] When the Challenger space, shuttle blew up.

[328] They didn't know what happened.

[329] There was a commission in Washington.

[330] I haven't made the series yet.

[331] I may be getting stuff wrong, but I think I have it roughly right.

[332] They put together a commission that was some politicians, some people maybe from NASA, and one scientist.

[333] And that's one scientist was Richard Feynman.

[334] By this point, he was getting on in years.

[335] He was an elder statesman.

[336] He'd won a Nobel Prize already.

[337] By the way, when he was like 22, he helped build the atomic bomb.

[338] That's where I recognize the name.

[339] So the Challenger space shuttle disaster happened, and Feynman had a theory.

[340] And his theory was that the O -rings did not react well to the cold temperatures the day of the launch, but that the people on the ground experience what they sometimes call go fever.

[341] When you're ready to go, launch that mother.

[342] Yeah, light the fuse.

[343] And so he started participating in this report.

[344] He concluded that the cold temperatures at the launch were, what screwed things up.

[345] If I have it right, they didn't want him to testify at the congressional hearing and or wanted to leave that part of the report out.

[346] Long story short, he did testify.

[347] He brought in on, I think, live television, a glass of ice water and some O -rings and dunked them in and then demonstrated that science is real.

[348] And no matter how much BS you're going to shovel at us, there are such things as true things in the world.

[349] So one way to sell.

[350] it to America was like defective o -ring great so that's an equipment failure issue and we can all live with that no one's culpable if it's a o -ring failure due to known weather variables that should have been accounted for now it's human error that's the huge difference for us and even worse than human error it's the error of humans who were smart enough to know better yeah well we just had someone on i can't remember who that was talking about one of these disasters was some of the manufacturers are using metrics and some of them are using standard.

[351] That was on flightless bird.

[352] Oh, no. Oh, it was.

[353] Yeah.

[354] Okay, yeah.

[355] And it was a conversion issue between a supplier.

[356] We're building this thing.

[357] We're still using two different fucking measuring systems, which is almost hard to believe.

[358] For the most part, I feel like everyone's out here kind of declaring these facts and I don't think they know.

[359] A, I don't think it's known, period.

[360] Forget them.

[361] I keep harping on this.

[362] We've now interviewed 300 experts in their field, the best in the world.

[363] I think my conclusion at the end is like, you know, some people are 68 % right.

[364] And that's incredible if you get the 68%.

[365] This binary and the definiteness and the appeal of definitiveness is just so dangerous.

[366] We don't really know nearly as much as we think.

[367] Medicine's so accidentally discovered.

[368] All these things are presented to us as definitive and factual are not.

[369] But then I read something like that.

[370] And I look at the system in place at the FAA to figure out what goes wrong.

[371] And then I'm really encouraged by it.

[372] Like, oh, we can figure out what goes wrong.

[373] wrong.

[374] What you're saying reminds me that the smarter the person is that I talk to, the more likely they are to admit what they don't know.

[375] Like Feynman, I mean to keep going back to find me, but Feynman was literally the smartest guy in any room he was ever in.

[376] And yet, he was always a guy who was asking questions, often very childlike questions.

[377] Seemly rudimentary.

[378] Yeah.

[379] In fact, I have a cheat sheet of interview questions on my computer.

[380] I do a lot of interviews of people who, you know, a lot of stuff about things that I often don't know very much.

[381] Yeah.

[382] And my job is to represent the listener and try to gain knowledge from them.

[383] So sometimes you're like these first principal questions you want to ask.

[384] So I keep a list of ones that I think are good.

[385] And a lot of them come from Richard Feynman, questions that he would ask in a scientific setting where he was outside of his domain.

[386] Here's a very basic one you could ask in any domain, doesn't have to be a science.

[387] Someone will make an argument and you'll say simply this.

[388] What would you say is the best evidence?

[389] that you're right.

[390] Like, give me a piece of evidence.

[391] Or you'd say, like, in a given system, what is very abundant and what is very scarce?

[392] And what do you do about both those things?

[393] So he's thinking like a scientist, but he's asking questions like a kid who just wants to figure out the way the world works.

[394] Part of the problem is it takes so much work to learn a lot.

[395] You're mostly off just doing the work.

[396] You're not spouting on TV all the time.

[397] It takes a lot to know a little, and we hear way too much from people who don't know very much and they're really good at getting attention and that's the problem for humankind.

[398] It's the Dunning Kruger effect.

[399] But I like that you say that you're encouraged too because we're still moving in the right direction.

[400] Yes.

[401] But you know what it is?

[402] I think that we are so impressive.

[403] Monica and I were just talking about it.

[404] Wait, I was just the two -y.

[405] Well, yeah.

[406] The monkeys, the bipedal monkeys are so fucking impressive.

[407] I was just saying to Monica the other day, I was driving the kids at school.

[408] We were stuck at a light on overpass over the 101.

[409] And I was just looking at the expanse of the 101 and all the buildings built on the side of it and the thousands of cars traveling.

[410] And I was like, one of the animals, could have been zebras, happened to be us.

[411] They took all this stuff that wasn't even visible.

[412] What is all this stuff?

[413] What is cement?

[414] I mean, again, I know what is steel?

[415] What is rubber?

[416] Look at the shit the monkeys built.

[417] It's fucking overwhelming.

[418] So in some way, you're right to be very impressed with us.

[419] We're so fucking impressive.

[420] It's when you get down to how did we figure that out where the illusion starts to crumble a little bit.

[421] You know, why do we have this great medicine for prostate cancer?

[422] Well, because we were trying to fix hair loss.

[423] Well, vice versa.

[424] But, you know, half the stuff we have that works really well, no one had the theory it would work really well.

[425] It was an unintended consequence.

[426] That's okay.

[427] Because that's what science is meant to be.

[428] Sure, but it does change the lens a little bit of, we're brilliant, and we're stumbling into a good chunk.

[429] of what we know.

[430] But, you know, what you're getting at is something I've been thinking about a lot.

[431] And I don't know how to get at it in writing or radio whatever.

[432] Although, we're actually doing a series right now on airline travel.

[433] I'll give away the thesis.

[434] And maybe you'll disagree with me. Okay.

[435] There are certain people or things or institutions in society that it becomes just like not only easy to hate on, but like if you don't hate on it, you're a moron.

[436] And to me, airline travel is one of those.

[437] Like, if you're not complaining about your flight while you're in the middle of it, What kind of moron are you?

[438] Some of the memes are old, airline food, and then can't check a bag.

[439] It's a sign of a hack comedian.

[440] There you go.

[441] So I'm looking at this.

[442] And then I've been watching the traffic fatality data worldwide and in New York City and especially pedestrians, which is going up, by the way.

[443] And watching the airline fatalities, which just goes down and down and down.

[444] And so basically, if you fly in a commercial airplane in the U .S. or many other countries, you have.

[445] zero chance of dying anymore.

[446] Yeah.

[447] You walk on the street or drive on the street, you have substantially more than zero.

[448] The thrust of this series is a little bit like, how did that happen?

[449] And why do we complain about the food and the crampedness and the baggage when this miracle is happening every day?

[450] So it's a little bit like what you're saying of driving down the 101 and saying, that's the miracle.

[451] Now, on the other hand, psychologists call that habituation, right?

[452] You get used to something, you move on, you want more.

[453] It's why vaccines stop working.

[454] They're so effective.

[455] People are like, what do I need a meal?

[456] vaccine for.

[457] Exactly.

[458] So on the one hand, you could say that's terrible.

[459] They're like, why don't we appreciate all this amazing stuff that we monkeys have done?

[460] On the other hand, I think about this from like the Jewish perspective, there's this phrase called Tikun Olam, which means to heal the world.

[461] And the notion is that no matter what good stuff happens, there's always going to be all kinds of suffering and broken stuff.

[462] And so really, the obligation of a right -minded person is to keep trying to make things better.

[463] And if their life is good, I'm so happy for you, now you can go on to making other people's lives better.

[464] And so as much as I'm frustrated by the habituation that we take things for granted, I think it's great that we complain and get frustrated about things because that's what keeps us all collectively wanting to make it better.

[465] That's the way at least I do the calculus of my head to sleep at night.

[466] Don't you also think part of that psychologically is just people think they can connect over negativity?

[467] I mean, we've talked about this for so long, but that's the easiest way in.

[468] Yeah, hating a mutual other is a fast track.

[469] It's how people in high school bond.

[470] It ends quickly.

[471] There's nothing much more to say other than, yeah, the food was gross.

[472] But you think that's the fastest way.

[473] Back to the airline thing and the Jewish way of looking at it.

[474] To me, that immediately filters into the anthropological lens, which is we have a vestigial hardware that we can't escape, which is we're not content to animals.

[475] That's why we have these cars.

[476] it is what kept us alive and made us proliferate and now we're stuck with it so i actually see being content and grateful for the airline is aspirational and maybe something that should be pursued but i think we have a ton of hardware and several million years of evolution that are making that very hard to do i mean that's too heavy for right now no you want to do this little later can i come back after lunch that kind of It kind of gets to the essence of how happy you will allow yourself to be in your life.

[477] Because we all want to be content.

[478] We want to be satisfied.

[479] We want to be adored.

[480] But then a lot of us, the minute someone adores you, you're like, whoa, back off.

[481] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[482] Let's be even more specific.

[483] We want to be adored by high status people, as we deem them high status.

[484] Can I say, I don't love that statement.

[485] So my friend Angie Duckworth says that a lot because she's a psychologist.

[486] And she knows it's true and I know I'm wrong.

[487] Yeah, it's true.

[488] But I don't embrace it.

[489] It sucks.

[490] But again, Anthropos.

[491] It's apological.

[492] We are a social primate.

[493] Hierarchy is absolutely everything.

[494] To be adored by the Zeta male in a group means nothing if the alpha male takes a shine to you, your rights of everything goes up.

[495] You're going to have more food, more sex.

[496] Look at all the other vestigial stuff we've outgrown.

[497] I mean, that's the whole point of civilization.

[498] Look at all this stuff that we no longer do that we consider absolutely repugnant.

[499] We don't own people anymore.

[500] We did that for 99 .9 % of our human history.

[501] Then we thought, you know what?

[502] We don't want to be that kind of animal.

[503] And so we collectively, it took a long time and it was bloody and there are still vestiges of it for sure.

[504] But we stopped.

[505] Plainly, we can supersede vestigial instincts, vestigial institutional hierarchies and so on.

[506] So I don't think it's too much to say that we can overcome.

[507] But now we're having a debate between, which happens nonstop.

[508] I wonder if this happens to you all the time on your show.

[509] It's something I'm increasingly trying to figure out, which is you're having our argument.

[510] with people about what should be versus what is.

[511] What should be?

[512] Yes, you should feel just as flattered when the homeless person says nice suit as when the woman from Vogue tells you.

[513] Right.

[514] You should.

[515] They have equal value on planet Earth.

[516] What's her name?

[517] Anna Wintour.

[518] She deserves to be named in a fashion conversation.

[519] It should make you feel just as good that the homeless guy told you that as Anna Wintur.

[520] But it doesn't.

[521] Can I just say I'm trying to picture both of those scenarios.

[522] First of all, Anna Wintor would never look at me. and say...

[523] Well, any of us.

[524] Maybe you.

[525] Oh, I'm waiting for the day.

[526] I'm just saying I don't like it.

[527] Yeah, that's all I'm saying.

[528] I don't like it either.

[529] And the reason I don't like it is because if you accept that it is path dependent, then there's no incentive to change.

[530] There's no possibility of a snowball effect of like, oh, I just saw that person treat a person of much lower status very well.

[531] And hey, I might give that a try too.

[532] So somebody's got to start.

[533] Yeah.

[534] And there's plenty of examples of it.

[535] A lot of people work against that, but you've got to be conscious of it.

[536] I just think you've got to be honest before you can hope to transcend it.

[537] You have to first understand what you're up against.

[538] Both things have to happen, right?

[539] You have to accept it and then say, okay, but I don't want that to be true.

[540] So how will my actions defy whatever this thinking is?

[541] Well, back to what you were saying, I think a system has to be in place to counteract it.

[542] It won't happen on its own.

[543] It won't happen because you decide.

[544] I don't want to be different.

[545] You actually have to have some kind of actionable plan to avoid that.

[546] Yeah.

[547] Then if you're in a position of making policy, let's say, it becomes a different.

[548] You know, early in COVID, Republicans and Democrats in D .C. decided that children, especially children and low -income families, were going to be so vulnerable to so many terrible things that let's just put a bunch of money out there.

[549] Okay?

[550] So they jacked up the earned income tax credit.

[551] They did direct aid, which has been talked about for a long time and never done.

[552] And then the evidence showed quite quickly that it worked.

[553] The child poverty rate in the U .S., which is criminally high for a wealthy country, was cut roughly in half in a year.

[554] Why?

[555] Because money actually works.

[556] And then it didn't get renewed.

[557] So now we're basically reverting.

[558] And I don't want to blame the Republicans for it and say that they're the bad guys and the Dems are the good guys, although in this case, that is pretty much the way it works out.

[559] want to make it a binary political thing.

[560] But when you see a piece of evidence of something like that and then you are somehow able to persuade yourself that now there's still something better to do, that's the kind of inability to change that frustrates me. And that's where I feel a little bit guilty if I accept these personal behavioral things that are vestigial and that are true and that are natural and instinctive.

[561] And you're never going to get in trouble for following them.

[562] Right.

[563] That's the thing.

[564] People understand.

[565] But you know what?

[566] At a certain point, it's like the after -school movie where like the new kid comes to the school and everybody's ignoring it.

[567] Finally, the one nice kid goes over and says, hey, do you want to come camping with us?

[568] Somebody's got to do that.

[569] Okay, but I got to, and this is not even the side of the aisle I'm on, but I'm going to be forced to at least challenge that a little bit, which is there's no doubt at work.

[570] The data shows it works, great.

[571] The result of which, the huge infusion of the $2 .5 trillion or whatever the total number was caused dramatic inflation.

[572] So now we've had to jack up fucking interest rates to 7 %.

[573] People can't buy homes.

[574] People are laying off hundreds and hundreds of thousands.

[575] It'll be up in the millions.

[576] We're going to have a forced recession as a result of it.

[577] Suffering will return.

[578] So I think the counter argument would be, well, it's not that we turned it off because it didn't work.

[579] It's that when we turn it on, we're going to deal with shit down river that is just as bad and tanks the economy just as much.

[580] And I think that's a fair criticism of it.

[581] I take your argument.

[582] say, first of all, it's looking less and less like that forced recession is really going to happen, for one, just because the economy is complicated and all the predictions in the last 12 months have not yet panned out.

[583] So it may, but it may not.

[584] Well, inflation is in it less like to the thing we know about.

[585] Absolutely.

[586] But I will say this, if you're going to say, if there's one population of human that you think probably deserves the benefit of the doubt and the financial doubt, it's kids.

[587] And the reason is they have no choice, no control.

[588] They didn't asked to be here.

[589] And by the way, one reason they don't have any leverage is because they don't vote.

[590] Thank God.

[591] My kids would elect like a Paw Patrol member.

[592] Was that ship they were naming Boady McBoatface?

[593] There's some new ship from the, I don't know, Sierra, I don't know, somebody, but they did a public vote.

[594] That's what they came out.

[595] Boaty McBoat Face.

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

[597] we've all been there.

[598] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[599] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing, but for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[600] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

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

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

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

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

[605] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon Music.

[606] What's up guys?

[607] This is your girl Kiki, and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you, it's too good.

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

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

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

[611] I mean the likes of Amy Polar, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

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

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

[614] The amount of money that went to child poverty that declined the rate 50 %, it's a drop in the bucket.

[615] Compared to many, many, many other things that we are good at spending money and I'm not saying it's in either or look a lot of money went to the airlines people didn't like that well you know what I'm really grateful that the airlines were kept going I have frustrations on both sides enormous frustrations I think there's some notion that the economy in humans are two different things and I think that's really short -sighted and silly I bet this book would interest you greatly have you read the warburgs the banking family warburgs yeah by ron churnow no I haven't it's great I'm in the probably last two -thirds of it right now so You're very productive, I have to say.

[616] Well, Insomnia has brought me to many great books.

[617] He wrote this a while ago, right?

[618] Before Hamilton even, probably.

[619] Yeah.

[620] You know what this tells you is I'm out of churnout books.

[621] I finished.

[622] I don't know if that makes me an anti -Semite, but I finished.

[623] George Washington was the last one, which is incredible.

[624] All of his books are fucking incredible.

[625] I don't know if you read any of them, but so good.

[626] George Washington, who I had no interest in.

[627] Now I think it's one of the coolest guys ever.

[628] Tell me something about George Washington that you didn't know and that we should know.

[629] Okay.

[630] And I hope this will speak to.

[631] to you as it spoke to me. What I came to really admire about him is his quietness.

[632] And the fact that he was arriving at the Continental Congress and you had all these 30 -year -old geniuses.

[633] I mean, the people we still talk about, some of the brightest people to ever live, all pontificating and bragging and showing off and grandstanding.

[634] And he never really spoke.

[635] And all those people like you and I, this is where I'm going to ensnare you into what I think my personality type is.

[636] The noisy people?

[637] Yeah.

[638] They were like, well, this guy must be.

[639] fucking genius because he's not even trying to get anyone's approval they elevated maybe his intellectual abilities but he then managed that really well he was a genius leader he also i think when you learn the history of how tenuous the fucking post -revolutionary period was and how narrowly we almost didn't get a president he was the one human being on planet earth that everyone could agree on i think without him we probably don't have the country that those people fought for wrote about and all that stuff a friend of mine who's religious i'm not said providence is that the right term yeah yeah he's felt like he was divinely sent and i aspire to have an inner confidence and not have to show off and tell everyone what i know at all times do you think your behaviors changed even one percent in that direction since reading that yes but it's in conjunction with also being in therapy for a year for the first time my therapist said in a great way you can sometimes watch the show it's a good show i'm not telling you to not be the show as much as you want but try to watch the show more don't miss it but when you watch the show are you constantly wanting to put yourself back in it initially yeah it's like quitting anything right like habitually i see the in mark i see how i can pit these two i can see i can amp this up and initially it's painful and then as i come to trust the show is good and goes on without me it goes on without me it it's easier to just witness.

[640] I'm not at the goal.

[641] It's something I aspire to me. Hey, let me ask you a different question.

[642] Back to George Washington.

[643] So what you're describing is very compelling to me. And I'm not saying I don't believe it either, right?

[644] I mean, we all know that most revolutions don't end well.

[645] Almost none of them.

[646] Like none.

[647] You go through history.

[648] So the fact that we are the beneficiaries of this crazy amalgam of good luck and all these other things, we should be thankful for that more than we are.

[649] So you're saying that Washington was the one guy on earth.

[650] And I believe that one could make that argument.

[651] Can I add one thing?

[652] You can add a hundred things.

[653] He didn't want the role, which makes me like him a lot.

[654] He answered a call of duty that I personally wouldn't have.

[655] So I'm impressed by that as well.

[656] That deserves to be in this.

[657] What it reminds me of is, so there was this Scottish philosophy named Thomas Carlyle.

[658] Do you ever come across him?

[659] I'm not going to recommend him.

[660] I don't like him for a lot of different reasons.

[661] but he was very well regarded for a long period of history.

[662] Was it a booklet he wrote called The Great Men in History?

[663] I think it was.

[664] I remember reading this book, whatever it was called.

[665] But anyway, Carlyle is known for creating what's called the Great Man Theory of History.

[666] And Carlyle was a very religious person, Scottish, I guess, probably early to mid -18th century, is my guess.

[667] And he had the view that every few generations or so on, there came along a man, and yes, they were all men at the time, who was ordained by God and Providence to come in and save our shit.

[668] I think there was Jesus in there.

[669] I think maybe Moses.

[670] Muhammad, I know, he wrote about, and on and on.

[671] Charlemagne.

[672] Probably, I'm sure if he'd lived long enough, Hitler would have been his guy.

[673] No joke.

[674] Hitler had the kind of temperament of like, y 'all clear out of the way.

[675] Let me take care of the mess now.

[676] I read that book when I was working on a book.

[677] of my own about hero worship.

[678] I was writing a book years ago about my childhood football hero.

[679] I never met him.

[680] So it was right after my dad had died.

[681] And I had this childhood football here named Franco Harris, who died recently.

[682] He's played for the Pittsburgh Steelers for many years, Hall of Fame.

[683] And I was trying to sort out why it is that we have heroes, essentially.

[684] And I think there's a lot of upside.

[685] And then there's potentially some downside.

[686] The downside to me being that you abdicate some responsibility.

[687] And so when you're talking about George Washington, I think of Thomas Carlyle and the parts of the theory that I don't like are this idea of the embrace of the hero so that we can all be saved or rescued or protected.

[688] It's really just like a father figure thing, right?

[689] Where I think it gets dangerous is how we think about the president in this country.

[690] So every time there's an election, if your guy gets in, you're like, thank God, now everything's going to be okay because he's a great man and things are going to be run fine.

[691] and if the other guy gets in, it's going to be a total disaster.

[692] I think the very idea that we still think about presidents and political leaders as these sort of superheroes, the way Thomas Carlyle did, is sort of terrible.

[693] I do too, but don't you think both parties just had an experience where they didn't think the best person got there?

[694] The last two elections, you mean, the state of the union itself?

[695] I didn't make myself go through that.

[696] It was the lowest rated state of the union a long time, unfortunately.

[697] I think a good percentage of Republicans wished they had a different candidate when they elected Donald Trump.

[698] I know a lot of Republicans that were like, yeah.

[699] And say for Biden, you're saying.

[700] For me, I voted for Biden.

[701] The whole time I was like, really?

[702] This is the best we've got in the country.

[703] This is not the best we've got.

[704] And I voted for them.

[705] And I think a lot of people on the right had that experience.

[706] So I do think it's been demystified a bit.

[707] I do, but I think that we still all like to sit back and say, okay, like Washington, for instance, We think a lot of what they do is stupid.

[708] We think a lot of what they do is counterproductive, but they're kind of running the show.

[709] That's, in my view, a little bit of the subscription to the great man in theory history, which is we put people in power and those people have a lot of power.

[710] I think the president has so little power over our daily lives, but if you give a person in power, that power, not only will they use it, but then you stop using yours.

[711] Like, make your life.

[712] I think we've transferred that to our tech billionaires, really.

[713] I think the amount of, hero worship around Elon Musk, which I have a neutral opinion on personally, represents more that in my mind.

[714] Don't you think it's faded in the last five years, let's say?

[715] I do think it's cooled.

[716] Nobody likes Zuck anymore.

[717] He's out.

[718] Elon seems to be sliding a little bit.

[719] No one ever really embraced Bezos, in my opinion, in the way that they deified Musk or Steve Jobs.

[720] I mean, I'll still hear people talking about Steve Jobs.

[721] I quoted him earlier this morning.

[722] Oh, you did?

[723] What did you say?

[724] When you were standing in line to buy your Apple product?

[725] No, is that line he said that I thought was really good.

[726] I was talking to someone who runs a media company, and he's trying to pivot and figure out how to make themselves more relevant than they are at the moment.

[727] And Steve Jobs famously says, you know, you can't ask people what they want.

[728] They don't know what they want.

[729] If you make something that's amazing, then they want it.

[730] I agree.

[731] Yeah.

[732] I agree.

[733] All you can find out is basically what everyone wanted yesterday.

[734] in your market research.

[735] You can't find out what they want tomorrow.

[736] Also, you're not going to go to market yesterday.

[737] People aren't honest in surveys.

[738] No. Do you guys ever do surveys?

[739] It's part of your...

[740] No. Every one in them, we'll have a guest who has got a questionnaire.

[741] Like, you're going to have one.

[742] We fill them out sometimes, but we don't ask other people to fill out surveys on us.

[743] No. In the comment section is kind of that these days, I guess.

[744] I think I'm stuck in a writer -director paradigm, which is I can't begin to make a movie.

[745] I think you're going to like.

[746] My only shot in the world is to make.

[747] the one I want to see and pray other people want to see.

[748] I just don't know how to reverse engineer one everyone's going to like.

[749] And this show for me is I have the same approach.

[750] It's like, I'm making the show I'd want to listen to.

[751] Whatever the outcome is, we'll see.

[752] But I'm not going to try to figure it out.

[753] You just described, you know, the maker manager construct?

[754] Do you ever run into that?

[755] No, tell us.

[756] I think it's a computer scientist that writes really well for normal people, not just for computer scientists.

[757] He wrote this essay once that I read and that a lot of people read.

[758] And it's about the maker -manager conflict, basically, which is that if you're a maker, if you're a creative person, a maker can be anyone, can be a parent.

[759] If you're animating presence in your humanity is to create, is to shape things, is to interpret, is to be proactive, et cetera, et cetera, then you probably don't have a lot in common with the manager type, which is, you know, the ones who will organize and get the best out of other.

[760] people, and there are huge benefits to both those types.

[761] They need each other a lot, but one of the biggest problems that happens in the world that we're all in is if you're good at being a maker, then you get turned into a manager.

[762] Exactly.

[763] And they're very different skills.

[764] And then you're screwed.

[765] Well, a director has that paradox, because a director has to be a creative visionary, yet has to be a general of a hundred -person battalion, ultimately.

[766] They have to set everyone off in a direction every day.

[767] And those two things are often not in the same person.

[768] It happens a lot in any creative endeavor.

[769] It's exactly that.

[770] Then you start having people under you.

[771] It's just a much different thing.

[772] The reason that I know that it came from this guy as a computer scientist is one of the few realms of life that's dealt with this problem well is computer science and software engineering.

[773] So the standard progression is if you're a really good programmer, you get promoted and promoted into management.

[774] And then you're, you.

[775] You don't get to program anymore, and then you're a shitty manager.

[776] So what they've done in that field, and in a few other places, is create a third track, which is I see.

[777] What's I see?

[778] Independent creator, independent contract or whatever.

[779] But it's basically like saying, we're going to find a way to keep promoting you and paying you more and making you more senior while still just being the creator.

[780] And that's, I think, a good way to think about even in your personal life, the people that you know who are really good at something, don't try to make them.

[781] Just because they're good at being a friend doesn't mean that they're also, or just because your accountant is a great accountant, et cetera.

[782] Yeah, I agree.

[783] Wait, real quick, because we have one piece hanging and I would be remiss if I didn't say.

[784] I do think if the president didn't have, quote, hiring power for the Supreme Court, they would have really very little power in this world.

[785] But that's a huge piece.

[786] Until, like, 15 years ago, that argument wasn't as significant because the process was was so much less political.

[787] Yeah, that's a new problem.

[788] It is a new problem.

[789] Or if you listen to More Perfect, have you ever heard listening to the podcast?

[790] It's so great.

[791] I mean, it's like, they used to do nothing to Supreme Court.

[792] They were kind of an insurance policy.

[793] They were, yeah.

[794] They're in the basement.

[795] They didn't have to schedule shit so people could travel.

[796] It was a joke.

[797] They're Congress in many ways now.

[798] And then the thing I want to tie up that was hanging is I brought up the Warburgs.

[799] We went off on a George Washington tangent.

[800] But I was saying that people seem to think the economy and humans are different.

[801] But I will point.

[802] to World War II, which is without the economic collapse of Germany, I don't know that you can say Hitler has the sway he has, mobilizes people the way you did.

[803] So that's a point where it's like, you must always protect your economy, even if you're a liberal, because in the wake of a collapsed economy, almost anything's possible, which we've seen thousands of times in history.

[804] So there's no like Wall Street versus us.

[805] It's a quintessential ingredient to stability.

[806] Okay, so I want to talk about no stupid questions.

[807] Is it season seven?

[808] I don't know.

[809] We just make it every week.

[810] I don't think we have seasons.

[811] I don't know what the seven is.

[812] Deadly Sins.

[813] Oh, I know what that is.

[814] Explain that.

[815] Like the seven deadly sins.

[816] Sloth, gluttony.

[817] I love this.

[818] We love seven.

[819] It's one of our favorite movies.

[820] Of course it says seven deadly six.

[821] Season seven makes a lot of sense.

[822] No stupid questions, colon, seven.

[823] Oh, is it season seven?

[824] No. Okay, yeah.

[825] The seven deadly sins starts February 26.

[826] And this interest.

[827] me greatly.

[828] So you and Angela, who we had on and we absolutely love, are going to go through the seven deadly sins.

[829] And then you're going to let the listeners vote for what the eighth deadly sins are.

[830] I'm not sure we're actually going to let him vote.

[831] We're just starting to make the series.

[832] So we've been thinking about the series for many months.

[833] The seven deadly sins come from the Catholic Church.

[834] And they shifted over the years and there were virtues to counter the sins.

[835] So honestly, one of the big questions is going to be, are we sure these are sins?

[836] Or on what?

[837] What dimension are they sins?

[838] Yeah.

[839] Feynman.

[840] What is the evidence that this is a...

[841] Yeah, exactly.

[842] Thank you.

[843] How do we define it to begin with?

[844] Thank you.

[845] But it's interesting because the seven deadly sins are like old memes, basically.

[846] Can you remind me?

[847] Or let's see how many we can name.

[848] Sure.

[849] Gluttony.

[850] Envy.

[851] Lust.

[852] I'm going back to the movie seven.

[853] That's what I'm doing.

[854] Wrath, wrath, wrath, wrath.

[855] Yeah.

[856] Not vengeance.

[857] And that would be wrath.

[858] Vanity?

[859] No. we already somehow vanity's one yeah because of the guy with the ear the woman wait what is vanity can we say vanity sure yes vanity no no no we need the real word okay we'll cut out all this we we got it perfect and we'll keep the same because we're flawed and everyone to know it's stupid oh sloth there you got sloth that's the last one i can remember so the seventh none of us can remember and what is it with herman melville he just wrote a lot about the deadly sins did he's so yes in the movie seven i never saw the movie oh my god how could you do a fucking show i guess i have to see it between now and we start recording.

[860] You have to.

[861] I didn't even know that seven was about the Seven Deadly Sins.

[862] It's one of the...

[863] I don't know movies.

[864] You're literary.

[865] Not really.

[866] I like sports.

[867] But we're actually also getting ready to do a series on whaling, believe it or not.

[868] And we're going to re -examine Moby Dick, which is going to be lowercase F fun, I think.

[869] You have to watch something.

[870] It's the best movie.

[871] Okay.

[872] So I'm going to watch it tonight.

[873] Okay.

[874] We've been gearing up to record this for the last few months.

[875] It came from Angela because she's working on a second book.

[876] to follow grip.

[877] Here's the way I like to think about it, but how the podcast actually comes out is hard to say because they're fresh baked.

[878] We'll sit down with a question and then we both go off and do a bunch of research and then we bring the research back and then we just talk to each other so we don't really know where they're going to go.

[879] I'll tell you what I'm thinking on, for instance, sloth, which you got to, it was considered obviously a sin and this whole idea that if you're not industrious, if you're not productive, et cetera, it's a bad thing.

[880] Now, one can obviously see why that's included.

[881] On the other hand, I want to share with you one of my favorite submissions from listeners so far about what should be the eighth deadly sin is basically the opposite of sloth and it's productivity.

[882] Uh -huh.

[883] Like hyper -productivity.

[884] You could say slash consumption maybe even.

[885] Consumptions, I think, easier than productivity.

[886] Consumption is greed.

[887] Greed.

[888] Greed is one.

[889] There you go.

[890] That's the one we would say.

[891] I hate to say it.

[892] You could almost argue that there are components of all the bad things that are good.

[893] You could argue there are cases in which you you want to have pride, in which you need to exercise anger.

[894] Vanity.

[895] Vanity, even if it's not one, or greed.

[896] Yeah.

[897] Because we're not.

[898] We've taped like 12.

[899] But the one that nailed me on the head from listeners was productivity, because I love being productive.

[900] I love being efficient.

[901] I love the feeling of accomplishment.

[902] And then when I read that, I thought, oh, boy, is that the trap that I've fallen into, believing what all the smart people around me have been saying for 20 years that there's nothing negative essentially about productivity.

[903] And I think that's something that I'm going to spend some time examining over the next couple weeks.

[904] That output equals success or happiness or whatever.

[905] No, I think it was pitched in definitely the Protestant way as it was ethically incumbent.

[906] I think Mormons really embraced this as well.

[907] I think industriousness as a virtue is key to several Christian offshoots.

[908] It is.

[909] And I have many Mormon friends whose attitude toward that I love.

[910] The Protestant work ethic, the notion I love, it's also been shown empirically by researchers to be actually good for society, the Protestant work ethic.

[911] So I'm not anti -productive.

[912] I'm not anti -industrious at all.

[913] What I'm saying is that if you like me have gotten caught up in these last many years of believing that my highest purpose is to be productive because it will have this sort of network effect.

[914] or it's good for me and good for the world.

[915] Recently, I've now stood back and thought, you know what, maybe that's all BS that I tell myself because it's exciting to feel accomplishment.

[916] But don't persuade yourself that you're changing or fixing the world.

[917] The other thing is it's contagious.

[918] Because like Angie and I, we try not to brag, but we brag to each other.

[919] About how much you're doing?

[920] Yeah.

[921] Yeah.

[922] It is contagious.

[923] Because then you feel like you have to keep up.

[924] Like if one person does it, you have to prove that you're also doing it so that you're not lesser of the two or not pulling your weight or something, especially if you're in a partnership.

[925] And she has bad insomnia and she'll say, you know, I woke up at two in the morning, but I got half a paper written, so it was awesome.

[926] I'm neither as productive nor as ambitious as her.

[927] Well, so part of the reason you guys are doing Seven Deadly Sins is that her new book she has is looking at self -control based on the research conducted with.

[928] psychologist Eli Tsukyama on individuals who seem to exhibit incredible self -discipline in certain areas of life but totally blow it up in others now this is a sweet spot for me I mean truly truly truly truly spot for you personally of interest yeah especially the way addiction has been framed historically not anymore people get it now but for years in the 50s when you had alcoholics littering the streets and people were like well that's someone with bad willpower that's someone without integrity.

[929] I always was like, I'm fucking crushing UCLA.

[930] I'm making it through the groundlings.

[931] The fact that I don't have willpower or that I don't have self -control, let's measure each other against that.

[932] But no, you put alcohol in my body and you won't see me for three days.

[933] That's so curious to me. I think that's fascinating.

[934] What a great book I want to read.

[935] It is weird to have inconsistency.

[936] I almost compare it to dyslexia, right?

[937] So to be labeled dyslexic at UCLA, you've got to go through like 10 weeks of testing.

[938] They're not doling it out willy -nilly and letting people use a spell check for the test.

[939] They're looking for a baseline of intelligence with a huge valley in one area.

[940] That's how you're seeing a learning disability.

[941] It's like you have this pretty standard level of intelligence and then nothing in this pocket.

[942] And I would say for the addictive person, it's often like that.

[943] It's like, no, I have this kind of exemplary willpower and all these areas of my life, and then you turn on this little mechanism in my head, and it's fascinating to me. I never thought about the parallel between a learning difference, but it makes a lot of sense.

[944] And also, it's rarer, but then there are those with a nonverbal learning difference where there's a spatial part, which is really confusing, because this is someone whose language is excellent, you know?

[945] Yeah.

[946] So first of all, I'm super psyched we're having this conversation before I record all this with Angie, because I'm going to fucking smoke her.

[947] Greg, Greg, great, great.

[948] And please feel free to use me as a resource.

[949] You're giving me an amazing way of thinking.

[950] All right.

[951] So what you're saying is that the notion that you can be self -discipline, let's say, in most areas of your life, let's say your work life and your family life, but then no discipline in another you relate to fully.

[952] Yes.

[953] And the example in the blurb about this is Tiger Woods.

[954] So Tiger's thing was he called himself a sex addict.

[955] I don't know if he actually was.

[956] I believe it.

[957] We could have a two -hour conversation on why people don't want to accept that.

[958] Oh, really?

[959] Let's have a three minute.

[960] I'm curious to hear you take.

[961] Okay, people said that's an excuse.

[962] He was not saying I don't deserve the consequences of this.

[963] He was saying, here's the explanation.

[964] I am using sex addictively.

[965] I'm regulating my internal emotions with this external object.

[966] I'm addicted to it and I've ruined my whole family over it.

[967] That's not saying not my fault.

[968] Okay, but let me ask you this.

[969] With drugs and alcohol, because there is such a complicated physical component to it, Do you see the use of drugs and alcohol as the same type of absence of discipline as it would be for work and commitment to family and so on?

[970] Or do you see it as a different category because it's a physical substance?

[971] Personally, as an act, I'd say it actually has nothing to do with discipline.

[972] And in fact, you might be very disciplined about using the thing you need to use to regulate.

[973] I think what that points to far more is that somebody's internal resting state, state is so unpleasant that any other version's worth it and that consequences be damned, I'd rather feel okay and have nothing than have everything and feel terrible.

[974] So it's like this isn't willpower.

[975] This is like an internal state, the belief you could regulate that state with these external things.

[976] That's the fallacy.

[977] But I don't think it really even has to do with willpower.

[978] I think it's always been framed as wellpower, but I don't think that's what it is.

[979] I almost wonder if this gets back to what we were talking about before, weirdly, with airline travel and habituation, which is when you get used to a level.

[980] So this is just a theory that I've had.

[981] It's not original to me. But my first life and career was playing music.

[982] I was in a band.

[983] And I stopped not long after we got our record deal, which looked really stupid.

[984] But one of the reasons I stopped is I essentially didn't trust myself to live the life that I wanted to live because I never did a lot of drugs.

[985] I drank some, but not even a lot.

[986] They were incredibly fun.

[987] And when you're in an environment then, when they're A, available in free, by the way, But then this is the theory that I want to get to and I want to know what you think about it.

[988] One argument that's been given for why a lot of creative people have done drugs and alcohol over the year, not saying that it's way out of proportion with non -creatives, but there's a lot of evidence that it's high, is that when you're in a band standing on a stage and playing or I've never acted in a movie like you have and I realize every situation is different because the audience is maybe not there in the present but there are so many ways that you're getting high doing what you're doing.

[989] Oh, yeah.

[990] And then when you're not doing it, the next hour when you're not doing it, I miss being high.

[991] Dopamine deficit.

[992] That was when I was 22, what I told myself was the reason to stop.

[993] But it always felt like a childish explanation.

[994] And really I thought, well, maybe I just thought we wouldn't make it.

[995] Maybe it was a fear of failure.

[996] Yeah, right.

[997] So you tell me, I want to know what you have to say about that.

[998] Well, first, there are many roads to addiction, but I'll just use two.

[999] I think there are people that are hardcore born to be addicts.

[1000] And then I think there's people that are in the perfect situation with the right accessibility, and the right environment, in the peer pressure, and the power of your social group.

[1001] And people who are prescribed opiates during the heyday of it would have never been X. They drank normally.

[1002] They did everything else normally.

[1003] that no propensity to addiction.

[1004] So I think that totally exists.

[1005] But the example I'll give you that I think best explains addiction is my best friend since I was 11, who's still my best friend, got sober three years ago.

[1006] We're talking a lot about it now.

[1007] Recalling that when we were in eighth grade, he was addicted to huffing gas, okay?

[1008] Now, have you ever huffed gas?

[1009] No. It's the worst high.

[1010] It's worse than what you feel normally.

[1011] And what I really gleaned from that is, God, his resting state and his, environment with the fucking abusive animal stepdad that the gas high was preferable that tells me everything just that one thing i'm like fuck man that poor kid that's how he felt and so that's what i think addiction is and i don't think you probably were having to use something just to keep yourself from committing suicide i don't think that was the version you might succumb to no no no but then i go back to what we're talking about before of whether that's in any way reflective of a lack of discipline.

[1012] I don't think it is.

[1013] I think it's somebody who found a medicine as flawed as it was that kept him semi -functional for some period.

[1014] So then if you want to take a step back and say, let's look at not only your friend, but multiply that by 8 billion people and like a lot of people suffer all the time and you don't want to have to treat them all with drugs so that their resting state is manageable, palatable.

[1015] What does that make you think of in terms of societal choices societal changes do you have any thoughts yeah big time so that option's untenable it's diminished returns it's a very clear path we know where it all goes and again this gets back to explanation versus excuse i'll give you another great example with lane norton this nutritional scientist on he's like you know people that are obese have to recognize the difference between it is likely not your fault we know now statistically the percentage of people who are obese that were sexual assault survivors, all these different factors, their environment.

[1016] Although it's not your fault, it is your responsibility.

[1017] And I think people get hung up on, well, it's not my fault.

[1018] Yes, it's not your fault.

[1019] It's not my fault that was an addict.

[1020] It certainly wasn't Aaron's fault he was an addict.

[1021] But unfortunately, it is his responsibility.

[1022] He's the only one that's going to come in and intervene.

[1023] It's no one else's responsibility.

[1024] Yes, we have all these people who are justifiably addicts, but we, of course, must figure out the thing that would raise their internal well -being enough that the altered state isn't preferable and there's a lot of ways to do that i have a system right i think exercise is something everyone has to do and has to be seen as like eating you got to exercise you know this has to be a cultural acceptance that the body was designed to move and when you don't move it you're depressed you know there's a lot of things i can point to so many things cognitive skills sleep too by the way but your friend he just got dealt a bad hand he had a shitty parent what do you do exactly what do you do you have sympathy etc yeah but then do you think as a government I want to make a lot more money available for the treatment of that kind of scenario and how do you even begin to do it this is where I'd make the argument to the conservative which is yeah that's going to be hard to get them to sign up to spend 80 billion dollars next year and identifying people with massive trauma in elementary and getting them some help early.

[1025] But again, I would argue the fiscal advantage of it downstream is enormous.

[1026] This is all so well known.

[1027] You can give right now $5 ,000 to some kid with trauma, or you can spend $32 ,000 a year to keep them incarcerated at infinitum.

[1028] What do you want to do finance?

[1029] That's what frustrates me in this left -right bullshit.

[1030] It's like so many of these things that the left would love to do, the right should be embracing because it's actually much, much cheaper in the long Ron.

[1031] Mitt Romney was a big proponent of aid to children.

[1032] Now, partly that's because he also wants to incentivize bigger families.

[1033] But you know what?

[1034] That's his thing.

[1035] Fine.

[1036] Sure, go crazy, Matt.

[1037] Yeah.

[1038] Have a football team.

[1039] He has like 195 million grandchildren alone.

[1040] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1041] Yeah.

[1042] Very fertile man. He is virile, virile, man. Real good.

[1043] What would you say is the eighth deadly sin?

[1044] I find that's so interesting.

[1045] I think it's judgment.

[1046] I like that.

[1047] And it's tied to hypocrisy, I'll say.

[1048] I just think judgment.

[1049] You said hypocrisy or hypocrisy?

[1050] Hip -hip hypocrisy.

[1051] I just want to make sure.

[1052] Hypocrycy.

[1053] You know another word I always fuck up is apocryphal.

[1054] That's a tough one.

[1055] I want to say hypocroful, but it's apocryph.

[1056] Do you have a list of all the words that you said wrong for many years?

[1057] It would be too long.

[1058] Monica's half her efforts are pointing out how many words I'm saying incorrectly.

[1059] Well, for your own good.

[1060] Yeah.

[1061] Give me a for instance.

[1062] Oh, geez.

[1063] Where would we start?

[1064] What's the one that we...

[1065] Vietnamese.

[1066] Oh, I mean...

[1067] Can't say it.

[1068] Vietnamese.

[1069] That's what it is.

[1070] Yeah.

[1071] Substantative.

[1072] But what is it, Philadelphia?

[1073] Philadelphia.

[1074] You just said that beautifully.

[1075] Oh, thank you.

[1076] Caught you off guard.

[1077] Substantive?

[1078] Yeah, we can't say that.

[1079] It's a tough one.

[1080] How did you know that?

[1081] No, she just said it.

[1082] Oh, you said it.

[1083] Oh, my God.

[1084] It's like, how do you guess that?

[1085] I'm in your brain.

[1086] That's the one that we practiced.

[1087] It's hard for me, too.

[1088] I can't.

[1089] That was hard.

[1090] Yeah.

[1091] You know, so one thing you could say is that when you mispronounce words, it's the sign of you're a good reader.

[1092] Like, you know all these words.

[1093] You don't know how they come out, right?

[1094] Or it could just be a sign of whatever.

[1095] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[1096] When I was in the band, there was this cool guy that ran a record store.

[1097] He was the judgmental guy in our whole music scene.

[1098] He was an older guy.

[1099] It's a good player.

[1100] He had a band.

[1101] But he was always judging everybody all the time about whether they were good enough as a player whether they're cool enough and I walked into his record store one morning and he was trashing some guy and he said oh yeah man that guy is the epitome of stupidity Are you sure Are you sure he's the epitome of stupid Oh that's perfect That's you could write that I think it might have something to do with hero worship circling back around I think that would be like idolatization Yeah, idolatry.

[1102] Again, see, we don't know.

[1103] Yeah.

[1104] Idolatry?

[1105] Well, which is ironic because since this came out of religion, that would never have been put.

[1106] Yeah, but let's not forget the commandment, which, you know, obviously the precursor was thou shalt have no false God before me. It's like you can have gods as long as it's the me one.

[1107] But no, I like what you're saying about hero worship because, well, I already told you I'm a believer that if you put too much of your agency in other people, then you naturally withdraw.

[1108] draw.

[1109] And if we're looking at social media right now, I mean, I guess we'd say the vanity that we don't know is one that might be one is a piece of it.

[1110] But the hero worship is the other piece of it.

[1111] It's what makes these influencers looking up and thinking that's perfect and putting people on pedestals is actually the crux of the problem, not the people even doing it.

[1112] That goes back to our status thing.

[1113] I got a few soap boxes, as you've heard now.

[1114] Luckily, we've stumbled into almost all of them.

[1115] but yeah my other one is we have accepted across the board that we were designed to eat as much food as we can put in our mind we accept it we have a knowledge of it we are conscious of it and i just don't think people realize that the dogs they know how to train you can train a dog quite easily because they are always going to respond to these laws of the pack and we're not different and we will worship alphas there's these great fucking rhesus monkey experiments right where they can either hit a button and they get juicy juice you their favorite thing or just stare at a picture of the dominant male and they'll all pick to just stare at this picture and not get their favorite thing.

[1116] Is that true?

[1117] Yes, yes.

[1118] It's so powerful.

[1119] And I think we all need to just have this corrective factor at all times of I'm a fucking primate.

[1120] I'm probably worshiping this person.

[1121] I probably want them to lead me. One prescription that smart people would say, especially smart religious people or good people, you don't have to be religious to be good plainly and a lot of religious people aren't good and there are a lot of other ways to be good but there is the argument that whenever you're feeling insecure anything any of these bad things comparing yourself to other people feeling like you're getting entrapped by something or someone that you know is not good for you that the best way out of it is not just to look within yourself but just to go do stuff for other people simple as that and it almost doesn't matter what it is now maybe that's got the diminishing returns of the other stuff I don't know I haven't done enough good stuff for people to know if it wears off.

[1122] What do you think of that?

[1123] It's a primary tenant of AA, of which I'm a member.

[1124] So service sponsoring somebody.

[1125] And with the admitted truth that it's a selfish act.

[1126] So when you call me with your problem with your wife and you want to go to the bar to deal with it, whatever obsession I had about Dax and what Dax needs to buy or where Dax should be on the status ladder, I can't actually do both at the same time.

[1127] So it's a break and a reprieve from my self -centeredness.

[1128] I don't have the bandwidth to do both.

[1129] And so I think it is very healthy for you.

[1130] And then the accidental consequence is someone else benefits.

[1131] So it's like it's crazy win -win for both people.

[1132] Okay, but that's waiting for someone to create the opportunity for you to do service, right?

[1133] What do you do about being proactive?

[1134] Yeah.

[1135] So I have a whole list of people in my life that I'm regularly checking in with.

[1136] How do you feel, let's say not the immediate aftermath, but how do you feel like, you know, later that night, if you start to get down about something, do you think on a day when you've been of service, it changes the longer term feeling for you?

[1137] My list happens to be like five things.

[1138] And if I'm feeling depressed and I am honest and I go through if I done these five things, the answer is never yes.

[1139] Again, I'm probably not stricken with as biochemically as an issue as other people.

[1140] So whatever, I'm not saying that they should.

[1141] But, yeah, if I journaled in the morning, if I meditated, if I worked out, if I was of service to somebody else, and I ate right, odds are I'm fine.

[1142] Gotcha.

[1143] Have you ever been just in the goddamn dumps and you, like, force yourself to take a one hour walk?

[1144] Yeah, this morning.

[1145] There you go.

[1146] Do you tend to be melancholy in the morning versus that in the evening?

[1147] No. It was weird because I'm traveling, so I'm out of my routine.

[1148] I was also sick recently, you know, when you're sick, you can't even imagine what it's like to feel healthy.

[1149] And then I only got well about three days ago and I was so grateful to just like have my limbs feel normal and everything and then this morning I like didn't feel grateful anymore and I had to kind of kick myself my dad had a lot of depression and a lot of physical health issues he got involved in this program his name I can't remember now it wasn't big men and it's even smaller now but it was essentially a sort of cognitive behavioral therapy before we had that title.

[1150] My first book was about my family, including my dad, who died when I was young, so I was recreating his life.

[1151] So I was finding all these books he read, these journals he kept, and so on.

[1152] Well, specifically, right, mom and dad had converted from Judaism to Catholicism.

[1153] You only had mom's version of why dad had converted.

[1154] As it turns out, you know, I learned his whole story of his conversion, but what was even more interesting for me was like the story of his life because I didn't know it and why he died at 57 of physical stuff, but also, like I said, a lot of really difficult mental health things.

[1155] And this movement that he was involved in, I remember the name of the psychiatrist or psychologist who ran it named Abraham Lowe out of Chicago.

[1156] It was a lot like AA, actually, and that it was very democratized.

[1157] It was decentralized.

[1158] You would go to local chapters and meetings.

[1159] But I think for him, it was incredibly helpful.

[1160] And the first step at the top of every list when you were deep in a place was move your muscles, period.

[1161] Didn't matter what.

[1162] Laundry, wash dishes.

[1163] So, like, we've known this, right?

[1164] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1165] What's your list?

[1166] Do you have a list?

[1167] I use that a lot.

[1168] So I don't like the phone very much.

[1169] I love email.

[1170] I spent a lot of time by myself and I like it that way.

[1171] That's why I became a writer.

[1172] But the first thing I do is pick up the phone and just call somebody anybody and not asking for, hey, I'm down, talk me through.

[1173] What's going on with you?

[1174] Anything I can do.

[1175] I do try to say, I know your mom's been sick.

[1176] How's that going?

[1177] Just reach out like that.

[1178] I feel like it puts me at the other end of the telescope, if you know what I mean.

[1179] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1180] Like I've been looking at me, me, me, me, me, change the perspective.

[1181] Did you read The Broken Ladder by chance?

[1182] It's about income inequality.

[1183] Keith Payne.

[1184] Keith?

[1185] No. Good job, Monica.

[1186] Thank you.

[1187] Thank you.

[1188] You have been slam dunking the names lately.

[1189] It's so impressive.

[1190] Fuck, my envious.

[1191] I would have said jealous, but I wanted to be a deadly sin.

[1192] If you admit your sin, is it still a sin?

[1193] Great question.

[1194] Or it has it been absolved.

[1195] I mean, I used to be an altar boy, so I could.

[1196] Yeah.

[1197] You could.

[1198] I could wash us up.

[1199] Absolutely.

[1200] Alter boys do a lot of absolving?

[1201] Very little.

[1202] Okay.

[1203] Once in a while, if the priest is, you know, incapacitated.

[1204] In the bathroom.

[1205] I'll sneak into the confessional there.

[1206] Give me 10 Hail Mary's and 50 push -ups.

[1207] Push -ups are involved.

[1208] I like this church.

[1209] Anyways, a book about income and equality.

[1210] You know all this shit.

[1211] You're so immersed in the social sciences.

[1212] But what's really interesting is that feeling poor, in relation to neighbors versus being objectively poor and everyone's poor has a worse outcome.

[1213] Educational attainment, early death, all the stuff, right?

[1214] Just feeling poor is the most powerful thing.

[1215] I almost brought this book up when you're talking about airplanes.

[1216] I am curious how much the airplane experience would be hated if there were no classes.

[1217] Yeah.

[1218] Like, why do you think the seat sucks?

[1219] Well, it's because you just walked by better seats.

[1220] If you hadn't walked by better seats, would you hate the seats so much?

[1221] Hey, you remember when JetBlue first happened and everybody was like, oh my God, this is the best airline ever.

[1222] There was not even extra leg room then.

[1223] Yeah, it was just all equal.

[1224] Get on the bus, man. Let's go to where we're going.

[1225] Yeah, so there are cultures who, by nature, down compare.

[1226] In a capitalist society, where the ultimate up compares, and we feel terrible in the wake of having compared ourselves to someone higher than us.

[1227] So I do wonder, could you have capitalism and a real hardcore agenda in public schools to teach down comparing?

[1228] I don't think so.

[1229] If we're being honest, a big component of capitalism is selling.

[1230] A big component of selling is advertising.

[1231] A big component of advertising is showing people happier than you, you know.

[1232] Exactly, yeah.

[1233] I mean, there was that study done years and years ago.

[1234] It was just a survey, so it's hard to say how believable.

[1235] But they basically ask people, would you rather have a job where you're making $50 ,000 and everyone else around you is making $47 or where you're earning 52 and everyone around you is earning 55?

[1236] Oh, wow.

[1237] Now, again, this is not real evidence.

[1238] It's a survey.

[1239] But even in a survey, people said, yeah, yeah, give me the 50.

[1240] In other words, people are willing to give up $2 ,000 theoretical dollars just to be better than the other people.

[1241] I would add, too, our guest that came out today is Tess Wilkinson, Ryan, and her whole book is about the sucker narrative and how powerful the sucker narrative.

[1242] So that would even be explained by like, well, I'd be a sucker if everyone was making more than me. Absolutely.

[1243] Yeah, forget that objectively you'd have more money.

[1244] You'd be a sucker.

[1245] I'll pay anything to not be a sucker.

[1246] I'll pay you $50 ,000.

[1247] Yeah.

[1248] There was something my mom used to say that the older I get, the more awesome I think it is.

[1249] And this is when you ask if I have a list, I don't have a formal list, but I have things that I say to myself a lot.

[1250] And this is one of them.

[1251] I looked it up years later, and it was from literature.

[1252] I don't know when she read it.

[1253] But her saying was, enough is as good as a feast.

[1254] And when I was a kid, she would say that I was like, shut up, mom, I want more.

[1255] Like, no, everybody else has new sneaker.

[1256] made the basketball team, can I get the converse now?

[1257] No, no, no, no. We're still going to get you the Kmart, whatever, right?

[1258] The Tom McCann.

[1259] But as it turns out, enough is as good as a feast is, I think, an incredibly powerful, useful idea of thinking about the world.

[1260] Don't be greedy.

[1261] That is a sin.

[1262] Yeah, I think there's a Swedish word that everyone knows.

[1263] Schmorskenhengel.

[1264] Is that what it is?

[1265] No, I just made it.

[1266] But yeah, it's, it's, um, Will Ferrell is talking about it?

[1267] It's like a cultural edict.

[1268] He's not Swedish, is he?

[1269] He lives in Sweden, half the year.

[1270] He does?

[1271] Yeah, you married a Swedish woman.

[1272] Lucky guy.

[1273] He's very Swedish.

[1274] And his favorite thing is they have a saying that everyone knows.

[1275] And it's like just the right amount.

[1276] I'm seeing a Swedish friend right after this.

[1277] And they're like that, the L .A. Swedes.

[1278] So it's a little different.

[1279] But they also do have that kind of democratic.

[1280] Like in the summer, everybody goes to their wooden cabins and they're just, you know, eating their stinky fish and everything's cool.

[1281] Can I just say this, though?

[1282] America's also awesome.

[1283] I agree.

[1284] Let's not forget.

[1285] I agree.

[1286] Every time you're pointing out the flaws of capital, You see that we brought to market three of the best vaccines in two seconds, and you go, no, that's why you have it.

[1287] You know, there's so many bigger ticket items that I still want this system, which is not to say it couldn't be improved a little bit.

[1288] But yes, there's no place I go.

[1289] Even if I like it for a couple weeks, I'm like, yeah.

[1290] Also, when you visit someplace, you're always staying like in the best neighborhood and you're not working.

[1291] Seeing their greatest offerings.

[1292] And you're eating the good restaurants.

[1293] Come back on a Tuesday night in February when the holiday inn is the only restaurant open.

[1294] We're the most broken down building in town, not the museum or the monument.

[1295] Yeah, and that's the other thing.

[1296] They always compare to Europe.

[1297] Everyone's always like, oh, it'd be so good if we could be like Europe and Europe.

[1298] I keep hearing that.

[1299] And I'm like, Europe's such a small piece of the world.

[1300] It's tiny.

[1301] You're not saying India or China.

[1302] You're using this very specific place as an example.

[1303] And I think about it surprisingly a lot.

[1304] And then also, what does Europe mean?

[1305] We were in Italy and we were in Austria.

[1306] But it's like romantic.

[1307] Also, white, and I do think a lot.

[1308] I'm one generation away from not being American, and I'm so grateful that I am.

[1309] I get to have that sort of gut check a lot of like, that almost wasn't your life.

[1310] Do you have that conversation with your parents?

[1311] Yes, I've thanked them.

[1312] Yeah.

[1313] What do they say to you when you thank them?

[1314] Fuck off.

[1315] They don't know how to accept compliments.

[1316] I like that characteristic in people.

[1317] I know it's not a good thing necessarily, but I think it betrays a real humility.

[1318] It does, but it's also like too vulnerable and emotional.

[1319] I hear you.

[1320] Look, they're your parents, but I can love them.

[1321] Okay, great.

[1322] Go ahead.

[1323] Same, same, same.

[1324] They're very lovely.

[1325] I'm always on the outside going like, oh, God bless these people.

[1326] This is great.

[1327] I love talking to you.

[1328] I'm so glad you came back.

[1329] And before you go and we might cut this out, this might be too dicey, but it has occurred to me, I think you're the only person I can ask about this, or at least the only person I've felt inclined to ask about this.

[1330] It's a tricky one.

[1331] Is it a Jewish thing?

[1332] Is it a golf thing?

[1333] It's involved in there.

[1334] Is it a Jewish golf thing?

[1335] It's a golfing with Jews.

[1336] It's a book I want to pitch you, like golfing with Dorff or whatever that old series was.

[1337] But it is about Judaism a bit and Catholicism.

[1338] Okay.

[1339] This is what it appears to me and I'm not immersed in any one of these religions.

[1340] But from the outside, I feel like if you plotted how literal the practitioners of religions are to the text, it appears to me that Jewish folks are the least literal, and then Christians are in the middle, and Muslims are the most literal of the three.

[1341] And if that is the case of my observation, my anecdotal observation, is accurate, it seems quite evident that this is a time thing.

[1342] It's like, well, one's...

[1343] It's a longer year round.

[1344] One's 4 ,000 years old.

[1345] One is 2 ,000 years old, and one is 1 ,400 years old.

[1346] And as you get further from the text, it gets less and less literal.

[1347] I told you last time I was interviewing you, forced that gunpoint to join one of the three.

[1348] I'm going to join Judaism, I think, mostly just because it's really become more about the traditions for many of the folks I know than it is about the literal creation in seven days by this guy.

[1349] Do you think there's any credence to that observation?

[1350] I see why you say it.

[1351] It makes sense on certain dimensions.

[1352] But first of all, this is an empirical question, as my scientist friends like to say.

[1353] We could actually measure this to some degree.

[1354] I have a feeling that if you measured it, you would be shocked at how similar the three groups are, honestly.

[1355] And the reason I say that is because in Judaism, there is a huge branch of fundamentalism.

[1356] Oh, God, yeah.

[1357] If you don't live in that world, however, you only see it flash across the TV screen once in a while in B 'nai Barak, this neighborhood...

[1358] If I take Fairfax to the 10th.

[1359] Okay, the amount of literalism in that community is still, let's call it 100%.

[1360] The Christian world is, I would say, more diverse than the Jewish world, not because it's more diverse, but because it's bigger.

[1361] So the numbers are so much bigger.

[1362] Also, way more factions.

[1363] They can have a lot more factions because there are a lot, lot more Christians than there are a lot, Jews, and there are a lot more Muslims than Jews.

[1364] I think with Islam as well, it's very easy to see the noisy part of the spectrum, which is the people who seem literalist and unloving, because that's such a bad combination when it turns into something powerful.

[1365] Fomence.

[1366] Yeah, but I mean, if we want to look at it statistically, the vast majority of Muslims and Christians and Jews are way more just.

[1367] just human than they are Muslim, Christian, and Jewish.

[1368] By the way, we've been around 5 ,800 years, roughly, not four.

[1369] You only gave us four, so you owe me 1 ,800 years at that point.

[1370] Yeah, 3 ,000 BC, I fucked that up.

[1371] I like the theory, because it's a smart theory, which is that if you have a sacred text or group of sacred text, the longer they've been around, the more you kind of learn to imbue them rather than like, let me go back to the rulebook and see what it says.

[1372] And as much as I want to side with your argument and say, yeah, Jews, you know, we're people of the book, we read the book, and then we kind of.

[1373] to help interpret law and medicine, things like that.

[1374] But no, I have brethren.

[1375] I have literally blood relatives who are as fundamentalist about their beliefs.

[1376] That would be my answer to the question.

[1377] I think it's an awesome question.

[1378] We would first need to know if even the first part of my hypothesis is even correct, if there is a more literal interpretation or not.

[1379] That's just me guessing, really.

[1380] Yeah, I mean, it manifests itself differently in the different religions.

[1381] But, you know, look, like the infighting within Judaism, there are Orthodox Jews who would look at a reform.

[1382] you and hate them more than they could ever hate any non -Jew.

[1383] So then you say, what kind of religion is that?

[1384] What kind of peoplehood is that?

[1385] What is Judaism?

[1386] It's hard to say.

[1387] Is it a nation?

[1388] Is it a people?

[1389] Is it a religion?

[1390] Is it an ethnicity?

[1391] Is it a cult?

[1392] Yes.

[1393] It's all of those.

[1394] It's all of those things.

[1395] But the fact that you can have that much disdain among people in the same group, you know what it really is?

[1396] It's like family.

[1397] Like family can be kind of anything.

[1398] You can be closer to no one in the world ever than someone in your family.

[1399] and you can hate someone.

[1400] And be cruel to them.

[1401] Yeah.

[1402] I mean, it's the human condition.

[1403] And so it's fun to, like, look at the human condition within the construct of family or society or religion.

[1404] But really, it comes back to what we've been talking about, which is what's it like to be a human, and how do you sort out your own crap?

[1405] And if you get good at that, and theoretically, you can lay it off on the others.

[1406] I acknowledge it's a dicey question, because I don't want to imply or perpetuate some stereotype that Muslims are more fundamentalist by nature.

[1407] We had this great guy Rami Yusuf on.

[1408] I watch this show Rami if you don't watch it.

[1409] But if you did watch shit, I'd really urge you to watch it.

[1410] It's incredible.

[1411] It's a really great glimpse into what's like to grow up Muslim.

[1412] And he is still very actively Muslim, and he's a comedian.

[1413] I know him.

[1414] I watched a little bit.

[1415] He's special.

[1416] Yeah, he's really special.

[1417] And the way he's showing us all is a really cool and privileged view into it and authentic, it seems.

[1418] But you're aware of the structure.

[1419] Even when I learned it, right?

[1420] It's like five pillars and it's twice a day prayers.

[1421] And it's just, it's more active, minimally, even if you're kind of a loose observer of it, the repetitive nature of how often you're bringing up God in normal speech.

[1422] It's like, I might ask you for the keys of the car.

[1423] I'm also throwing him praise the God.

[1424] Like, seemingly it's much more present.

[1425] So that just interests me, again, not in a judgmental way or they're this or they need to be less that.

[1426] It makes me curious.

[1427] Yeah.

[1428] And I do wonder if the timeline is at play.

[1429] My son, whose name is Solomon, so pretty Jewish, he's taken to saying lately, I don't know where he picked it up, but I love it.

[1430] He says, inshallah all the time.

[1431] I translated as God willing, or as God said, you know, insula, would it be so?

[1432] I love that.

[1433] Can I tell you my favorite thing?

[1434] So when we interviewed them, I'm an atheist, so right?

[1435] So we're getting into it.

[1436] And I'm just saying like, oh, man, it seems like a lot for me. Dedicating that much of the day to something that at best hope is real, scares me. But look at what you're dedicating so much of your day to.

[1437] You just have a different set of rituals and beliefs.

[1438] Totally.

[1439] It just for me would feel.

[1440] Well, that's because it's additive.

[1441] You can't do those five things that you do.

[1442] Yes, it's too much.

[1443] It's too much.

[1444] But anyways, one thing he said, which is incredible, he said the Arabic word for human, which I can't remember what that word is, the Arabic word for human is X, and it literally translates to forgetful.

[1445] In the Islamic view, man's singular identifying characteristic is he's forgetful.

[1446] And I was like, A, I agree with that, right?

[1447] That's really cool.

[1448] And he's like, so if you recognize that our fundamental belief is that we're forgetful, then we believe that you need a lot of tools to keep reminding yourself.

[1449] Nice.

[1450] And I was like, that's fucking beautiful.

[1451] I'm so in.

[1452] I'm glad I got to hear that.

[1453] When I come back in a couple years, I know I'm going to find you with your prayer rug.

[1454] You will?

[1455] Racing that way.

[1456] Exactly.

[1457] Maybe you'll be the recipient of my alms.

[1458] I'll give you a little money if I determine you're in need.

[1459] Absolutely.

[1460] If it's good for you, Dax, if it will help you.

[1461] Oh, Stephen Dubner, you're the best.

[1462] I want everyone to listen to both.

[1463] both No Stupid Questions with you and Angela Duckworth, who we love.

[1464] She was a fantastic guest.

[1465] And, of course, Freakonomics Radio, 13 years in, chug -a -lug -lug.

[1466] It's an impressive body of work.

[1467] You may be addicted to productivity.

[1468] It's intimidating.

[1469] I'm very excited to watch you guys explore Seven Deadly Sins, especially with this lens of self -control, self -will.

[1470] That's an incredible topic.

[1471] I can't wait to listen to it.

[1472] That'll start February 26th.

[1473] I love talking to you guys.

[1474] This is a special room, special people.

[1475] It's not work.

[1476] It's not work.

[1477] I do have to pee really bad.

[1478] Yeah, that'll happen.

[1479] It's a good conversation.

[1480] It's shocking no one has yawnated on that.

[1481] They might have.

[1482] That's true.

[1483] Oh, great.

[1484] Now you tell me, I remember Seinfeld was his name, the guy with the restaurant.

[1485] Poppy, remember Poppy's restaurant when he pissed on the couch?

[1486] No. I'm a friend's girl.

[1487] Are you really?

[1488] Yeah.

[1489] I'm a Seinfeldian, but I don't know.

[1490] All right, be well And now my favorite part of the show The Fact Check with my soulmate Monica Padman Okay, so update We went to dinner on Friday We had a blast Did you have a blast?

[1491] I had a blast It was really fun First of all we all rode together It's been a long time since we all rode anywhere together We got in the Raptor R Uh -huh, your new truck You, Eric, Kristen, and I...

[1492] Yep.

[1493] The Google Maps estimate said we were going to arrive at 605.

[1494] Yeah.

[1495] So it was going to be 43 minutes.

[1496] We pulled up at 5 .50.

[1497] I beat the estimate by 15 minutes.

[1498] Yeah.

[1499] I was making that thing move.

[1500] You are...

[1501] Not too abrupt either.

[1502] It was kind of silky.

[1503] Kind of silky.

[1504] I was disco dancing in that thing.

[1505] I didn't notice.

[1506] There's so much suspension gobbles up the bums.

[1507] But two things.

[1508] Okay.

[1509] Your map did.

[1510] I feel like a note's coming.

[1511] Well, no, but your map did estimate much higher than mine, which was weird.

[1512] Because you did Waze?

[1513] No, I did Apple Map.

[1514] I mean.

[1515] Yeah.

[1516] Yeah.

[1517] I hate Apple Maps.

[1518] I love it.

[1519] Oh, I hate it.

[1520] Well, mine was right.

[1521] Righter than yours.

[1522] Well, I didn't follow that direction, no. I followed the Google Maps.

[1523] Okay.

[1524] What I've found that I hate about Apple Maps, especially when we're in cities.

[1525] We've had this before.

[1526] We've been together.

[1527] It happened once, yeah.

[1528] It's like can't find itself.

[1529] I never have that problem on Google Maps or Earth or whatever it's called.

[1530] Right.

[1531] Look, everyone has their own camp, and that's fine.

[1532] Everyone can do it.

[1533] You also don't use Gmail app.

[1534] This is another difference between you and I. I don't.

[1535] I'm more in the Google world, I guess.

[1536] You love your Apple products and the Apple.

[1537] suite of products.

[1538] It's not even because I have an allegiance.

[1539] It's just, that's what's on the phone.

[1540] Yep.

[1541] It's the simplest.

[1542] It was easy.

[1543] Yes.

[1544] Same why I used the podcast app for so long.

[1545] Uh -huh.

[1546] Exactly.

[1547] That's what I'm fighting against.

[1548] Yeah, I know.

[1549] Spotify app.

[1550] Now I use the Spotify app.

[1551] Yeah.

[1552] Spotify is superior.

[1553] By the way, when I first, look, when I first went over to Spotify, I was like, okay, I got to start using Spotify for music now.

[1554] I just was so used to using Apple Music.

[1555] Yeah.

[1556] And I had all my shit there.

[1557] right like I'd curated all this stuff saved yeah and I thought it was something within I don't know a week of listening to music on Spotify I find it to be so superior of a platform to listen to music on yeah I enjoy it and I discover so much more music on it through it it's like the the algorithm that'll build the stations and stuff is so much better yeah I found a few podcasts what what happened there where is there something spilled yeah chewing tobacco Yeah, you were here last week.

[1558] I don't remember.

[1559] Yeah, and I tried to dab it up.

[1560] I don't want to talk about it.

[1561] I'll do something.

[1562] It's fine.

[1563] I just didn't.

[1564] I got to get a vacuum and get the de bris.

[1565] There's some tobacco de bris.

[1566] Oh, my God.

[1567] Okay.

[1568] I feel like a dirt bag now.

[1569] Well, and I am.

[1570] I deserve to feel like a dirt bag.

[1571] When you spill your chewing tobacco, you know what?

[1572] You've earned feeling like a dirt bag.

[1573] Your spit bottle of chewing.

[1574] Hey, well, I was trying to euphemize it a little bit.

[1575] Spatoon.

[1576] Spatoon.

[1577] There we go.

[1578] That's like historic.

[1579] Um, okay.

[1580] So we went to dinner downtown.

[1581] We rode together.

[1582] We got there fast.

[1583] We had stimulating conversation on the way.

[1584] A debate ensued.

[1585] Yeah.

[1586] It sure did.

[1587] Yeah.

[1588] A dance was had.

[1589] Yeah, because the night before I went to a screening hosted by your old co -star.

[1590] My ex -wife.

[1591] Your ex -wife, Lake Bell.

[1592] Your other Bell.

[1593] Yeah.

[1594] And really exciting because few previous guests were there.

[1595] Crazy.

[1596] Lennon, Parham.

[1597] Oh, we love Lenin.

[1598] Just love her more than anything.

[1599] It might be the sweetest actor I've ever worked with.

[1600] And she's so funny.

[1601] Talented, incredible drummer.

[1602] Drumline.

[1603] Yeah, exactly.

[1604] Exactly.

[1605] And then old playful eyes himself.

[1606] Malcolm Gladwell was there, but he had his mask on, but didn't matter.

[1607] I still knew as him, spot him anywhere.

[1608] Those playful eyes and that playful hair.

[1609] Yes, but I did not get to say hi.

[1610] And it's a big regret.

[1611] It's a life regret.

[1612] Okay.

[1613] So I went to a screening and it was called Deconstructing Karen.

[1614] It was a film about this organization called Race to Dinner, these two women who host dinners across the country and talk about race and racism with mainly white liberal women because that's sort of their take is.

[1615] white liberal women are a problem, a big problem, because they feel like, well, I'm liberal, so I am not racist, or I'm liberal, so I don't fall into any of these categories or I'm liberal.

[1616] And it's just not true.

[1617] And so it's like getting those.

[1618] Turns out they're human before they're liberal or conservative.

[1619] So, anyhow, and it was very interesting or, you know, it was thought -provoking.

[1620] And then independently, I hadn't said.

[1621] seen the movie, but I had listened to this great.

[1622] This is about the fourth time I brought it up.

[1623] It's really good.

[1624] I recommend it's a BBC podcast called The New Gurus, and one of the episodes was about them.

[1625] So I actually ended up being really familiar with the whole thing.

[1626] Which is really interesting.

[1627] Having not seen it.

[1628] And I'll repeat the one phrase that I thought was really poignant.

[1629] She said, when your skin is seen as a weapon, you're never unarmed.

[1630] You're never unarmed.

[1631] So, yeah.

[1632] And I thought that hit the nail right on the head.

[1633] On that head.

[1634] Square on the head.

[1635] Anywho.

[1636] So, okay.

[1637] And then, yeah, then dinner itself was so delicious.

[1638] It was a pop -up.

[1639] Molly Ba's pop -up, one of my chefs.

[1640] I was unaware of her or anything.

[1641] This was blind faith.

[1642] I trust Monica.

[1643] She knows her food.

[1644] She planned the whole night for eight of us.

[1645] A truly benevolent, generous offer.

[1646] Well.

[1647] And it was wonderful.

[1648] I wouldn't say it was benevolent.

[1649] It was.

[1650] Well, you paid, so.

[1651] Oh, well, yeah.

[1652] You set it up, you organize it, you invited everyone, and then you paid.

[1653] That's benevolence.

[1654] If that's not benevolence, I don't want it.

[1655] Okay.

[1656] I just wanted us all to be together.

[1657] Yeah, well, it was fun.

[1658] It was really fun.

[1659] Notes.

[1660] Uh -oh.

[1661] What was the hotel?

[1662] The prospect?

[1663] The proper.

[1664] The proper.

[1665] Really cool place.

[1666] Like very old school.

[1667] It looks 20s are deco -y.

[1668] It's very cool.

[1669] Bathroom on the second floor.

[1670] For a guy like me who drinks a mononel, fluid I do and the teeny teensy little tiny torso bladder I have I was up and down and up and down.

[1671] That's a good note.

[1672] Let's get a bathroom on the ground floor.

[1673] Yep.

[1674] Yeah.

[1675] But other than that, great.

[1676] Callie and Max, that's where we stayed for their wedding.

[1677] Oh, you did?

[1678] Yeah.

[1679] Oh.

[1680] Yeah.

[1681] Their wedding was around the corner and so that's where we stayed.

[1682] Where was their wedding?

[1683] Redbird.

[1684] Red Robin?

[1685] Nope.

[1686] Red bird.

[1687] Do you get the egg burger?

[1688] Oh, my gosh.

[1689] But it was really delicious.

[1690] And then I wish I knew.

[1691] I got to learn the word because I talk about it all the time.

[1692] Once every two weeks I bring up.

[1693] You know, in Sweden, they have a word for just right.

[1694] Legome.

[1695] Legome?

[1696] Look at you.

[1697] You're a linguist.

[1698] Do you want to know why?

[1699] Tell me. It's a fact for today.

[1700] Get out.

[1701] Because I had brought it up.

[1702] Oh, my duck, duck goose.

[1703] Yeah.

[1704] Legome?

[1705] Yeah.

[1706] Okay, so the compliment I want to give Bosworth is Legom.

[1707] It was the perfect.

[1708] Baws.

[1709] Regular Baws.

[1710] Oh, my God.

[1711] Brian Bosworth.

[1712] No, give her the credit she deserves, Molly Baas.

[1713] But I'm just learning it.

[1714] So cut me a little slack.

[1715] I spilled tobacco in the former dirtbag.

[1716] The Baas, lagoon.

[1717] Lagom.

[1718] Lagoon is a peanut.

[1719] The night before I had also eaten with a famous chef, so spoiled this week.

[1720] Yes.

[1721] Yes, I got to eat with Jose Andres, which was fantastic.

[1722] And if you've seen his show, this was to be expected.

[1723] Yeah.

[1724] He just held the menu up and pointed at, in, shoved it on the glass to the kitchen.

[1725] And just Chris and I were eating.

[1726] He was barely eating.

[1727] The whole menu came.

[1728] I was so over full 30 % of the way through.

[1729] And then I had the codependency of like I gotta eat everything that comes.

[1730] Right.

[1731] So then I pop into bars and legome.

[1732] Yeah.

[1733] Perfect amount of food.

[1734] Yes.

[1735] You didn't feel so over full.

[1736] It was perfect.

[1737] I wasn't hungry.

[1738] I wasn't overly full.

[1739] The portions were beautiful The steak at the end So good and I had this like jammy shallot and lemon Yeah it even had a yeah the lemon that was curious and delicious It was so good Yeah that was a perfect meat dish And then I even went off the rails Because a dessert came Which I have not eaten In a long time A very long time I bet we're at 12 weeks Wow And hard to resist though It was too square.

[1740] You know me. I love...

[1741] You hate circles.

[1742] I love big features, but I love square stuff.

[1743] So this perfect fucking rectangle comes out.

[1744] Yeah.

[1745] And it's got peanut butter.

[1746] It's ice cream.

[1747] It's ice cream, but it's got a shell on one side.

[1748] It does.

[1749] Peanut butter shell.

[1750] Yeah, and I can't eat peanut butter.

[1751] I'm allergic to it.

[1752] It makes my joints hurt.

[1753] And I said, you know what?

[1754] We're going to have our joints hurt tonight.

[1755] Yeah.

[1756] And I don't regret it.

[1757] Good.

[1758] It was delicious.

[1759] The text years.

[1760] And the weirdest thing happened.

[1761] Everyone clean their plate.

[1762] Lickety lick.

[1763] They were slothering up every last bit of that yummy dessert.

[1764] We look over in teeny torso, miniature mouse, Maximus Overdrive.

[1765] Yep.

[1766] It'd eaten about 40 % of her dessert, legome.

[1767] And you were done, and it was perplexing and threatening to all of us.

[1768] Wow.

[1769] Mm -hmm.

[1770] You know what I attributed to?

[1771] You won't like what I attributed to.

[1772] IBS?

[1773] Nope.

[1774] Because that's the reason.

[1775] Wine.

[1776] You'd had a couple glasses of wine.

[1777] So you already had like enough sugar already.

[1778] Yeah, probably.

[1779] I think that was part of it.

[1780] If you were only drinking Diet Coke, I wasn't the only one drinking wine.

[1781] But you were the only one that didn't finish your dessert.

[1782] So exactly.

[1783] If all the wine drinkers had the same.

[1784] That would have been conclusive.

[1785] Yeah, this is proprietary to me. But that was part of my explanation.

[1786] Yeah, that is definitely part.

[1787] Also, I look.

[1788] Look at me. I love ice cream.

[1789] Okay.

[1790] But it's not my favorite dessert.

[1791] I like a chocolate cake.

[1792] I like a cookie.

[1793] I like cookies.

[1794] Warm cookies.

[1795] I love dessert, but ice cream hurts my stomach.

[1796] It just will hurt my stomach.

[1797] Like that is...

[1798] You poop your pants.

[1799] So I can only eat so much and I'm aware of that at this point in my life.

[1800] So I only eat so much.

[1801] So unlike me who's like, I'm also aware that this is going to make my knees hurt.

[1802] Yeah.

[1803] But it's not like, I mean, you're not going to poop your pants on the right home.

[1804] Like, it feels more...

[1805] Immediate.

[1806] Yeah.

[1807] Yeah, it does.

[1808] And not like something I can just push through.

[1809] I also have a medication I can take when I get home at night, which is exactly what I did.

[1810] I take my immune suppressant and then it alleviates a lot of that.

[1811] Yeah.

[1812] If I didn't have that, I probably might not have made that decision.

[1813] Yeah.

[1814] I probably might not have.

[1815] Yeah, but it was so good.

[1816] And then I got to meet her and that was really exciting.

[1817] Oh, she was there.

[1818] Yeah.

[1819] That was a very big chef week for me. Tell me more.

[1820] Because I got to meet.

[1821] Oh, you're here.

[1822] Easter egg.

[1823] I got to be two of my chefs.

[1824] And boy, oh boy.

[1825] That Easter egg.

[1826] It's great.

[1827] That, the Easter egg goes down.

[1828] The Easter egg.

[1829] It's in my top five moments we've had in five years.

[1830] I was very welled up.

[1831] Yeah.

[1832] It was very emotional and I was very proud of my friend.

[1833] Yeah, I feel weird.

[1834] I know you do.

[1835] We'll talk about that on that episode.

[1836] I don't deserve crap.

[1837] Like, no, you shouldn't.

[1838] feel proud of me. I do.

[1839] Well, you can't change that.

[1840] You can't really tell me when I can't and can't feel proud of you.

[1841] You're right.

[1842] I can't.

[1843] But I don't take pride in that.

[1844] Right.

[1845] Like, I was just being a person.

[1846] I don't know.

[1847] You spoke positively about someone that was canceled, just without the Easter.

[1848] We just have to say that because this makes no sense without that.

[1849] Yeah.

[1850] So I was aware.

[1851] Because I think positively about her.

[1852] I know.

[1853] And I'm glad you were true to that and ignored whatever.

[1854] Decidal pressures might have been telling you to just keep it under your hat.

[1855] You could have just told yourself like, oh, yeah, if you meet me, Monica in real life, I'll tell you who I love.

[1856] I have no obligation to be public about it and ensnare myself in some debate.

[1857] Right.

[1858] My life's too short to be ensnared in these debates.

[1859] I make those decisions.

[1860] Yeah.

[1861] You know, we're all navigating like what level of ensnarement where, have an appetite for it.

[1862] This is true.

[1863] Yeah.

[1864] And I was proud that you didn't care, that you liked someone enough to be positive about them.

[1865] Yeah.

[1866] So it was a big, it was a big show.

[1867] I got to meet two and um yeah I feel like I didn't do as good of a drop with Molly why what what um as I did walk me through the whole thing like does she know you're a fan no tweet about her is she I do I do post I do sometimes post like I posted the chicken so you you went and you introduced yourself to her yeah and you know who you were no I don't think so hard to know no I just really hard to know.

[1868] I don't think she knew.

[1869] I said, hi, Monica.

[1870] Padman from armchair.

[1871] I didn't say that.

[1872] I didn't say that.

[1873] I said I'm a huge fan.

[1874] And she was really sweet.

[1875] Yeah.

[1876] But I started to get scared.

[1877] You know, I started to feel scrambly.

[1878] Did you ramble a little bit?

[1879] I did feel a little like, oh, God, like, what am I doing?

[1880] Like, what did I have to offer this or whatever?

[1881] And Kristen was right next to me. She was buying a book.

[1882] Okay.

[1883] And I said, and this is my friend Kristen.

[1884] And she was like.

[1885] Hi, I didn't say that.

[1886] And to be honest, I was like, I don't think she knows Kristen either.

[1887] Or didn't care.

[1888] So I know a lot of stuff about her because I watch her videos.

[1889] Yeah.

[1890] So the table that was right next to us was her family's table.

[1891] Okay.

[1892] Her brother was there.

[1893] Oh, you knew all that?

[1894] Yes.

[1895] Oh, my God.

[1896] He's on the videos.

[1897] He's on the videos, okay?

[1898] The husband was there.

[1899] He's also on the videos.

[1900] So I knew that.

[1901] I don't know.

[1902] You have to get her on the phone.

[1903] This will be like the Neff Campbell update.

[1904] Yeah.

[1905] She doesn't follow like any celebrities on it.

[1906] See?

[1907] Like Samin and pizza places that are good.

[1908] Well, okay, she's friends with Samin.

[1909] We could get to her.

[1910] Let's do it.

[1911] We got to, this is now, there's a mystery.

[1912] This is a gross thing to follow up on.

[1913] Did you know us?

[1914] I hate it.

[1915] Well, I said to Nev, do you remember?

[1916] That's a much different thing.

[1917] Okay.

[1918] Okay.

[1919] Well, we'll find out when we talk to her.

[1920] Anyway.

[1921] This is neither here nor there.

[1922] Bos makes me think of Bosworth, Brian Bosworth.

[1923] So he transitioned from football into acting.

[1924] Okay.

[1925] And it's really funny when they, when this is, this happened a few times.

[1926] The other notable time was when Howie Long got into film.

[1927] Okay.

[1928] And I'll never forget the trailer for the movie, this breakout movie, it said, I swear to God, this was the trailer.

[1929] Go Long.

[1930] Go Howie Long.

[1931] Oh, God.

[1932] Was it about him?

[1933] He was like, I think, a firefighter.

[1934] He's like a fire jumper maybe.

[1935] Firestorm?

[1936] Firestorm was like, go long.

[1937] Go Howie Long, fire starter.

[1938] Oh, boy.

[1939] Yeah.

[1940] I don't know either of those two people.

[1941] You probably know Brian Bosworth.

[1942] Is Kate's his daughter?

[1943] Kate's father.

[1944] Is it really?

[1945] Not at all.

[1946] Type in Brian Bosworth.

[1947] He's the most identifiable white football player of all.

[1948] time the most outrageous hair ever and um yeahish i mean howie long might be more recognizable no way the bosworth's hair that crazy spike white hair with i think we're too young though i think we're too young yeah though the interesting and wonderful thing about bosworth was my favorite can't recommend it enough i think my favorite 30 for 30 ever was on beau jackson do you remember those commercials when you're a kid, Bo Jackson, because he did everything.

[1949] So he was a professional baseball player and a professional football player at the same time.

[1950] And he was great at both.

[1951] And so he was playing college football at the same time Bosworth was.

[1952] And there was all this rivalry between the two.

[1953] And I think Bosworth played for Notre Dame.

[1954] So traditionally kind of white school, right?

[1955] Right.

[1956] And then Bo Jackson's from the south.

[1957] And then when they both got to the NFL, Bo Jackson ran through him in broke him he he retired him basically he was so dominant but it was it was such a faux rivalry because beau jackson was so superior wow bow nose the commercials were bono nose oh bonoes bo nose bo no's baseball bonobos sonos sonos sonos bonobos bonobos bombas i'm wearing bombas right now even though they're not a sponsor anymore i still love them yeah i really am into these wools these alpaca socks i wear oh do they make your feet sweat not a not a bit really dry as a bone in there only part of my body that's not damp right now actually maybe they wick sweat is what they do wow i need to get an alpaca sweater to wear in this chair i don't think you'd like that no i think it would make you really sweaty my god am i sweaty when i got out of my sure it's crazy it's the only place in life that this is interesting it's the leather soon to be replaced yeah it's been ordered um all right let's jump in this is stephen dubner oh i love dubner he's so he's so fun to talk to and to listen to yes he is he's human talk catalyst he's like you could never have a dull moment chatting with him agreed in fact when he comes back he'll definitely come back a third time.

[1958] I'm not going to do one bit of research.

[1959] Like, there's no need.

[1960] I have like this whole sheet of paper.

[1961] I'm like, who gives a fuck?

[1962] You don't need a thing with him.

[1963] You say hi to him and then there's an explosion.

[1964] I agree.

[1965] I wonder if he's since watched seven, as we told him to do.

[1966] Let's get him on the phone.

[1967] I feel much better about calling him to ask if he's seen seven.

[1968] Right.

[1969] Then I do.

[1970] Let's get you on the horn to see if you know us.

[1971] Let's not, we got to check ourselves.

[1972] Want me to text them and see if he was saying?

[1973] No, that's not checking ourselves.

[1974] There's a high probability of humility in that phone call.

[1975] Like, in fact...

[1976] It's just a weird thing to want to even know.

[1977] Like, who cares if she knew us, you know?

[1978] I mean, on the surface, my knee jerk's like, yeah, right, that's healthy.

[1979] But then I want to really think that through because that might not be.

[1980] Because what we were trying to decide, we're trying to figure out who she is.

[1981] And there's a clue within there.

[1982] So I don't think it's about self -aggrandizement.

[1983] Like, I have an opinion of who I am, whether that woman knows me or you are, Kristen or not.

[1984] Yeah.

[1985] That's not going to change.

[1986] Well, it makes me, it changes me. It makes me like really like her.

[1987] You like her more?

[1988] Which one do you like more?

[1989] You like the version of her where she doesn't know who you are?

[1990] Yes.

[1991] The one where she knows who you are in acting like she didn't.

[1992] Doesn't know.

[1993] And now I need her approval.

[1994] Oh, okay.

[1995] I don't need her because I have.

[1996] The Easterer, but, yeah.

[1997] No, I, I want all the chef's approvals.

[1998] If you've thought about what you can do with this.

[1999] With shopping?

[2000] Yeah, like this is your obsession.

[2001] Your two obsessions outside of this that we share together is your fashion interests and your chef interest.

[2002] Yeah.

[2003] And have you, do you ruminate on what you could do with that?

[2004] Mm -mm.

[2005] Okay.

[2006] It's just an interest.

[2007] Like me, I am ruminating and about to do a Formula One podcast.

[2008] Mm -hmm.

[2009] Because I'm like, this is.

[2010] silly that half of my brain is occupied with Formula One.

[2011] Yeah.

[2012] It's my favorite thing to talk about outside of what we talk about here.

[2013] Yeah.

[2014] And why wouldn't I be doing that?

[2015] Yeah, because I'm trying to, you know, do the thing where, like, you don't have to capitalize on every single thing that you like.

[2016] Not you, me, me. It's just like, this is something I'm on fire for and I would enjoy doing.

[2017] But you could just talk about it.

[2018] You could just do that without, yeah.

[2019] So you are commodifying it.

[2020] The end result will be commodification for sure.

[2021] But the motivation is not that.

[2022] Just like the motivation for this wasn't commodification.

[2023] Right.

[2024] I don't have, I don't know because never say never, who's to say, J .D .K. Just don't know.

[2025] Maybe eventually there maybe there'll be something fun that comes up.

[2026] I'm saying it in the way that like you set out in life, you have some agenda, you have an objective, you have career goals.

[2027] And then little things keep presenting themselves, and they're not the things so you ignore them.

[2028] And then often you do explore them and you find out that you were supposed to be doing something that you never even thought you were going to do.

[2029] I think that's how I'm pitching it to you.

[2030] It's like this thing has presented itself to you as an insatiable interest.

[2031] And so in some capacity, if you could make that also your work, it's like it's the best two for one ever because it's not work.

[2032] at all.

[2033] Yeah, but I have work.

[2034] Maybe it's you right about it.

[2035] Like, I don't know.

[2036] I don't know what it is.

[2037] It's just...

[2038] I have a lot going on, you know?

[2039] Like, I don't...

[2040] I'm not sitting at home twiddling my thumbs either.

[2041] Yeah, but I don't...

[2042] So that's my point.

[2043] I have enough work that's also fulfilling going on that why would I do that?

[2044] That is a place to go not work.

[2045] That's the thing to do at night when I can...

[2046] It's like, yeah, just watch these videos and cook my chickens and carve my chickens and all of that.

[2047] Like, I don't actually want that.

[2048] Fashion is different.

[2049] Okay.

[2050] Much different.

[2051] Okay.

[2052] I would love, I don't want to make that work, but I want to make that part of my life.

[2053] See, that's what my thing with F1 is like, by me having a podcast, it's going to open up the door to me, maybe going and experiencing the race in a different way.

[2054] Like, it's a way for me to actually get involved with this obsession I have.

[2055] Yeah.

[2056] In a way that's more than just observer.

[2057] Like, I wanted to somehow participate in it.

[2058] I get that.

[2059] So it's really like an avenue for participation for me. Yeah, I mean, I really do want to go to fashion shows.

[2060] Speaking of cars.

[2061] Yeah.

[2062] The Jaguar is that the third biggest cat?

[2063] Jaguar is also a car.

[2064] Hold on a second.

[2065] I just want to double check myself.

[2066] Tiger's the biggest.

[2067] Lions is the second.

[2068] Yeah, Jaguar is the third.

[2069] Yeah.

[2070] That's right.

[2071] Followed by the leopard.

[2072] Yes.

[2073] Then followed by the cheetah.

[2074] No Oh, okay Oh, the cougar Or the Puma Puma, yes Puma Cougar And then Cheetah Yes And then The Lynx No Well, uh, no And then Donut the end The Osolot Let me read Okay I did pretty good though Really good Tiger Up to 715 pounds That's a Siberian Much bigger than the Bengal tiger Lion Up to 600 pounds Oh, daddy.

[2075] Jaguar, up to 300 pounds.

[2076] Oh, baby.

[2077] Leopard, up to 200.

[2078] Oh, no. Oh, my God.

[2079] How much foods do you eat with your big jaws?

[2080] Some of my red, me. Leopard, up to 200 pounds.

[2081] Puma up to 175.

[2082] Cheetah, up to 145.

[2083] Snow leopard.

[2084] We have as up.

[2085] Splend hairs, but okay.

[2086] Well, up to 110.

[2087] Eurasian lynx up to 55 Sunda clouded leopard up to 55 Mainland clouded leopard up to 50 Those are the top 10 Top 10 I think Ocelot's next Okay Oh, tiger panthera tigris Oh wow tigers are so pretty They're beautiful Yeah they're beautiful and then you know of course The Ligers that would be at the top of the list Right, lion tiger.

[2088] Yes, because this weird phenomenon happens when you breed those two.

[2089] They don't medianize.

[2090] They don't average out.

[2091] They double.

[2092] They double.

[2093] Yeah, they're like 1 ,200 pounds or something.

[2094] Oh, my God.

[2095] Oh, my God.

[2096] Yeah, and they're like fucking 13 feet tall.

[2097] 750 pounds of Liger, it says, which.

[2098] That's not what I said for sure, but.

[2099] I. Okay.

[2100] What if I started talking like him?

[2101] Oh, my God.

[2102] A female.

[2103] Frida.

[2104] Oh, my gosh.

[2105] Frito and Frita.

[2106] Hey, Frida.

[2107] No. Are you my sister or my lover?

[2108] Make up your mind now because I won't stop.

[2109] Choose wisely.

[2110] Oh, God.

[2111] I don't think he'd care, unfortunately.

[2112] And sauce is gross.

[2113] but I can overlook it.

[2114] Not speaking of.

[2115] Okay.

[2116] Total divergent.

[2117] Totally not connected at all.

[2118] Uh -huh.

[2119] I watched the dock on the Southern.

[2120] The Murdaws.

[2121] Yes.

[2122] That is the old school.

[2123] It is.

[2124] Fucking old boys club power.

[2125] Yeah.

[2126] I was telling when we were talking about it a little bit privately.

[2127] Yeah.

[2128] I said the striking thing about that is, and then this shows how naive I am.

[2129] Like how I was naive once about how I was, and still they're teaching, you know, this, whatever the Pilgrim thing is.

[2130] They are, you know, right.

[2131] I'm naive about that.

[2132] So I was a little naive.

[2133] Like, the whole doc seems like a documentary made about a family in the 1930s.

[2134] Exactly.

[2135] Like, you just don't think that in our modern day of communication and Twitter.

[2136] Like a family without power like that?

[2137] Yes, like a whole stranglehold, like multi -generational DAs and all this stuff.

[2138] Like, that's a Taylor shared in TV.

[2139] show but that's real yeah not only real this is like two years ago yeah if you don't know it's a southern family in south carolina in south carolina the sun is in a boating accident someone dies and there's kind of a cover -up ease yeah he was clearly driving or he was allegedly driving let me be they are all a family of lawyers it doesn't matter he's dead that's what's crazy is they That's a good point.

[2140] That's spoiler.

[2141] No, but the family, I talk about a conflict of interest.

[2142] The family is all DAs.

[2143] Yeah.

[2144] And they own the biggest law firm for defense attorneys in the town.

[2145] Yeah.

[2146] County.

[2147] I don't know what it is.

[2148] Yeah.

[2149] So they own law, whether you're prosecuting or defending.

[2150] Yeah.

[2151] And so, man, can they manipulate?

[2152] When the people who appear on the dock and who are talking, like the friends and stuff, it's like, I know all these people.

[2153] I know every single one of these people.

[2154] That was the part that was really reminiscent for me is his friend whose girlfriend was killed by him.

[2155] Yes.

[2156] Has this weird continued loyalty towards him.

[2157] And that's so where I'm from.

[2158] Like the level by which we all overlooked each other's indiscretions because we were all drunks, basically.

[2159] Like the level of just, yeah, loyalty above all other things was so familiar.

[2160] to me. But do you know the update, like in the real world, it happened a few days ago?

[2161] That he got sentenced?

[2162] Yeah.

[2163] Yeah.

[2164] The dad.

[2165] Yeah.

[2166] It's crazy.

[2167] Crazy, crazy.

[2168] Okay.

[2169] Bodie McBofease.

[2170] The name Bodie McBoatface was originally proposed in a March 2016, quote, name our ship online poll to name the 200 million pound polar scientific research ship being constructed in the Camelaird Shipyard and Birkenhead for the United Kingdom's Natural Environment Research Council.

[2171] BBC Radio Jersey presenter James Hand coined the humorous suggestion, Bodie McBoatface, for the poll, and the name quickly became the most popular choice.

[2172] Power of suggestion.

[2173] Yep.

[2174] Okay, you mentioned Herman Melville, and then you said you thought maybe something on the sins.

[2175] But I didn't see that.

[2176] But were you thinking of Dante's Inferno?

[2177] It's like a Milton.

[2178] Oh.

[2179] Yeah, I said that wrong.

[2180] Okay.

[2181] John Milton?

[2182] Milton McBotty face.

[2183] John Milton.

[2184] Yeah, Paradise Lost.

[2185] Ooh.

[2186] Scary.

[2187] What did I say?

[2188] You said Herman Melville.

[2189] Oh, that's fucking Moby Dick.

[2190] Which makes sense because then he said something about Moby Dick and I didn't understand why, but now that makes sense.

[2191] Okay.

[2192] Booty McBovies.

[2193] Everyone's thanks, Moby had such a big dick.

[2194] That's not even true.

[2195] It's about a horse.

[2196] Oh, my God.

[2197] Okay.

[2198] How many grandchildren does Mitt Romney have?

[2199] Okay.

[2200] Mm -hmm.

[2201] He has 24.

[2202] Wow.

[2203] Yeah.

[2204] Good luck, man. And one great.

[2205] One great.

[2206] 24.

[2207] Two thoughts.

[2208] Fun Christmas.

[2209] Yeah.

[2210] At Papa Romney's house.

[2211] Two, the amount of stress I would have, remembering the names.

[2212] I couldn't do it.

[2213] I'd have to start calling them.

[2214] And there'd be a few you knew really well.

[2215] And then the others would be so sad.

[2216] Yeah, whatever one's reminded me of myself, I'd be really drawn to and memorize everything about them.

[2217] The ones that didn't reflect my own vanity.

[2218] Oh, sad.

[2219] That's not true.

[2220] I'm particularly keen on Delta, and she's not my carbon copy.

[2221] Well, she, you called her a hot head the other day.

[2222] She is a hot head.

[2223] Oh, because I'm a hot head.

[2224] He gets that from Kristen.

[2225] Oh, Contrere Montfriere.

[2226] Oh, Montfriere.

[2227] Oh, Kristen is much more explosive than me. Like, when we were first together, when we would fight, I was shook by the volume and loud and the slamming of the doors and the peeling out.

[2228] Like, actually, yeah, I don't know.

[2229] Okay.

[2230] All right, that's pretty much it.

[2231] I mean, there's some others, but it's not all that.

[2232] You lost interest in it?

[2233] Yeah.

[2234] it's just not that important yeah that's that that's that well i love him he's great smart son of a gun very that was a pop -out when we were talking about the same guy yeah pulski sepulsky robert sepulsky and i didn't even know i felt so that's a great example of his grandchildren i'm a that's my favorite book yeah and i don't know the author's name that's okay of course i want to blame it on like a blog Oh, my God, that's Sapolsky?

[2235] Yeah.

[2236] He looks like a Nick Offerman character.

[2237] He does.

[2238] He's a very large beard.

[2239] And he's too busy for us.

[2240] We keep reaching out to him.

[2241] He's a lot going on.

[2242] Yes.

[2243] And generally when we reach out to people, like either it's a no, or if it's a yes, but they're busy, they'll go like, we'll touch back in a month or something.

[2244] And they were like, we'll talk to you in the fall.

[2245] Yeah.

[2246] Yeah.

[2247] Stephen said one of his other books that's popular is why zebras don't get ulcers.

[2248] And it's for understanding the science behind the stress and all the harm that stress can inflict.

[2249] It's pretty cool.

[2250] Really cool.

[2251] He also has one called A Primate's Memoir.

[2252] I must read that.

[2253] You must.

[2254] It's stupid I have it.

[2255] And monkey love.

[2256] Oh, I specialize.

[2257] Oh, one called The Trouble with Testosterone.

[2258] He has a lot of books.

[2259] There's nothing wrong.

[2260] Behavis is from 2017.

[2261] Oh my God.

[2262] I'm so late.

[2263] But he has a new book.

[2264] Oh, my God.

[2265] What is it?

[2266] Determined.

[2267] What?

[2268] The science of life without free will.

[2269] Oh, shit.

[2270] It comes out in October of this year.

[2271] Why is the...

[2272] Maybe that's what I said fall.

[2273] Oh.

[2274] He said he had just finished writing this book.

[2275] We figured it out.

[2276] That's what was confusing.

[2277] Thank you, Rob.

[2278] That's the most material thing was that.

[2279] said he just finished writing a book.

[2280] Well, talking in fall.

[2281] It was him directly.

[2282] Oh, wow.

[2283] You're talking with him personally?

[2284] So special.

[2285] All right.

[2286] Till then.

[2287] Love you.

[2288] Love you.

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