Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / "Why Aren't We Happy?" with Scott Barry Kaufman

Transcript

"Why Aren't We Happy?" with Scott Barry Kaufman · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  What value should we put on being polite?
• 0:05
  How important is it to be civil?
• 0:09
  And alternatively, how can civility and politeness and niceness be used to avoid real conversations,
• 0:17
  to avoid genuine disagreement, to avoid constructive dialogue and exchange?
• 0:22
  Can civility and politeness be a way to dodge confrontation, to avoid discomfort?
• 0:30
  And in a way to disrespect the person we're speaking to by allowing their bullshit to fly,
• 0:36
  when really, if we respected them, we wouldn't?
• 0:40
  It's time for us to start practicing a little more than we do.
• 0:44
  The type of conversation that isn't benarly civil and polite, nor overtly hostile,
• 0:52
  a conversation that stretches us, that challenges us, and that feels occasionally just a little uncomfortable.
• 1:02
  Did I on the show? Where do you even start with Scott Barry Kauffman?
• 1:15
  He has the number one psychology podcast in the world.
• 1:19
  It's called, believe it or not, the psychology podcast.
• 1:24
  So you can tell right there in the name that it's a podcast, and it's about psychology,
• 1:29
  and then there's a definite article, the psychology podcast.
• 1:33
  Scott is fantastic. I've heard him around the traps a great deal because he's a terrific popularizer of science,
• 1:38
  but he's no lightweight to hackish popularizer.
• 1:43
  He is known in the psychology community and the intellectual community as someone who's done groundbreaking work on redefining intelligence.
• 1:53
  The PhD in cognitive psychology from Yale.
• 1:56
  He's the author of a number of books, one called Wired to create, unraveling the mysteries of the creative mind,
• 2:03
  discover the ten things, great artists writers and innovators do differently.
• 2:07
  Another one called, ungifted intelligence redefined cognitive psychology, Scott Barry Kauffman offers a new way of looking at intelligence,
• 2:14
  the subtitle being the truth about talent, practice, creativity, and many paths to greatness.
• 2:18
  His most recent book is called Transcend, the new science of self-actualization.
• 2:24
  I mean, this conversation could have gone in a million different ways.
• 2:27
  And as you will hear, we sort of bump and nudge and probe at each other's interesting little tidbits and nooks.
• 2:35
  But really, there are an infinite number of things that I would like to ask Scott about that I didn't have time to,
• 2:40
  like what is consciousness and why are we conscious in the first place and what is self-awareness and what is creativity.
• 2:46
  I hope to explore some of that perhaps on a future episode of the show,
• 2:51
  because this is really just an early, early taste that I hope you will find as brain tickling as I did into the mind of Scott Barry Kauffman.
• 3:01
  That was the worst, though. That happened to me on my birthday.
• 3:13
  Really?
• 3:14
  Yeah, that happened to me in my last birthday.
• 3:17
  My dad came in from Philadelphia, we had this big dinner, and I was spent 80% of it in the bathroom.
• 3:24
  Yeah.
• 3:25
  No.
• 3:26
  TMI.
• 3:27
  How good Scott.
• 3:28
  TMI.
• 3:29
  I know.
• 3:30
  I know.
• 3:31
  Well, I don't know.
• 3:32
  We haven't started the conversation yet.
• 3:33
  Oh, I'm recording already.
• 3:34
  This is going in for sure.
• 3:35
  Your explosive diarrhea is definitely going to make it into the final cut.
• 3:42
  I don't know if you're serious or not.
• 3:44
  Me neither.
• 3:45
  I mean, I am recording.
• 3:46
  It's all up to my producer out of my hands now.
• 3:49
  Can you do me a favor?
• 3:50
  And do you have like a voice memo on your phone or something that you can do a backup recording
• 3:54
  of your side?
• 3:55
  Oh, I can do better than that.
• 3:56
  I know.
• 3:57
  But you can.
• 3:58
  I have this really.
• 3:59
  The garage band.
• 4:00
  I don't know.
• 4:01
  Let me open that.
• 4:02
  Right.
• 4:03
  Crystal clear.
• 4:04
  Now, notice there's no video.
• 4:06
  That's so.
• 4:07
  No.
• 4:08
  So you still like.
• 4:09
  I know.
• 4:10
  I know.
• 4:11
  Person.
• 4:12
  You're totally okay with that.
• 4:13
  With us not seeing each other.
• 4:14
  I'm totally okay with it.
• 4:15
  You know, I once read that the Terry Gross, you know, who does fresh air.
• 4:19
  Uh, only does like never wants to see the face of the person she's talking to.
• 4:24
  So even when they get people into her studio, she puts them in another studio where they can't see each other.
• 4:28
  Is it like an implicit bias?
• 4:31
  I think so.
• 4:32
  It's got something to do with the fact that the listener is only getting the sound.
• 4:37
  So like all of those kind of visual cues that you would normally take from a conversation.
• 4:42
  Somehow sort of impede the conversation.
• 4:45
  I don't know if that's true or not, but, uh, as a sort of radio person, I quite like.
• 4:50
  Well, I certainly don't want you to be influenced by my dashing good looks.
• 4:55
  Very distracting.
• 4:56
  Yeah.
• 4:57
  Yeah.
• 4:58
  Also, the fact that every time you speak, you wave your arms about and, uh, and pull funny faces and try to decide where you're trying to fall.
• 5:04
  Or tick.
• 5:05
  Yeah.
• 5:06
  Correct.
• 5:07
  I didn't know so.
• 5:08
  Crazy man.
• 5:09
  Uh, I'm recording.
• 5:10
  I'm recording on my thing.
• 5:12
  Great.
• 5:13
  Good.
• 5:15
  Well, I was just going to say, um, I was talking, I was thinking of you the other day because I was on my radio show and I had a caller call in and he was talking about how dreadful the world is and how everything is awful and Ukraine and one of Australia's greatest sporting legends just died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 52.
• 5:35
  And there are floods in Australia and, you know, the end of the pandemic and everyone and I was just like, I had to channel my inner Stephen Pinker and kind of be like, you know what?
• 5:47
  Actually, if you actually look at it and you actually look at the, you know, the statistics then on all of the measures that we would care about violence, poverty, disease, they're all down globally.
• 6:00
  Massive education increases in education, in lifespan, in the amount of leisure time that we've got, we are safer than we've ever been.
• 6:08
  And he was like, yeah, but it doesn't make us happy.
• 6:11
  And I thought, hmm, well, but Scott's got some ideas about why, why don't we happy Scott?
• 6:18
  Well, I think it's because we're trying to chase happiness. I mean, that's, that's like the biggest paradox of them all is where so we think that something's wrong with us when we're not feeling happy.
• 6:28
  And so then we're like, oh my god, we got to do something right now to get us happy. And then all the things we do to get happy, we make us unhappy.
• 6:34
  Like what?
• 6:36
  Yeah, well, there's various things that we can be solving for, right?
• 6:42
  So solving for happiness means like you're trying to solve for how can I get back good feelings?
• 6:48
  If you're solving for meaning, it's well, what can I do in my life that will make me feel like it's meaningful that there's, that it's worth it, that there's something that things are connected.
• 7:00
  There's a coherency there. If you solve for experiences, some people want to live their life solving for just an experientially rich life.
• 7:10
  And so they're trying to, they're jumping out of airplanes. They're doing all weird, sort of weird sexual positions.
• 7:16
  Whatever. You know, the explosive diarrhea. Now we're on to tantric sexual positions.
• 7:22
  Yeah, it's going to bring us to that.
• 7:24
  Well, I think it's part of living an experientially rich life, quite frankly.
• 7:28
  Or the sex. No, no, no, no, the latter.
• 7:30
  Well, I mean, okay, okay, well, the former was a growth experience too, I would say.
• 7:35
  So all of it, all of it, I'm going to say.
• 7:37
  So it's like, what are you trying to solve for?
• 7:39
  And so if you're trying to solve for happiness, you might be like, okay, well, if I eat this pizza right now, that's going to make me feel really good in the moment.
• 7:50
  If you're trying to solve for happiness to restore that feeling of a good feeling in some way, well, it's really kind of like a temporary solution.
• 7:58
  I view meaning as a much more sustainable long term solution, and even just experientially rich and complex and challenging things.
• 8:07
  So I include having difficult conversations as part of living experientially rich life.
• 8:12
  And I think solving for that is going to lead to more meaning.
• 8:16
  And in the long run is going to be more sustainable in terms of a sense of less of a sense of urgency, less of a sense of this kind of pressure, you put it on yourself to be happy.
• 8:26
  Because when you're putting yourself, you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself if you want to be happy all the time.
• 8:30
  That's a lot of pressure. And that is making people so stressed out.
• 8:34
  It's paradoxical.
• 8:36
  Yeah, I remember, I think it might have been all of the Berkman who I love, who said, yeah, he said, I may be mistributing this to him, but if I am, I'm sure he'll take a compliment because it's a good point.
• 8:48
  Happiness is a little bit like a bar of soap in the shower, like the more you squeeze it, the more likely it is to kind of slip out of your hand and the more elusive it becomes.
• 8:57
  You have to have a gentle touch with happiness.
• 9:00
  And in actual fact, that happiness, happiness is sort of a byproduct of other pursuits that the pursuing happiness directly is, it's it's almost like going towards a light that you're never going to be able to approach.
• 9:15
  It's better if you just sort of allow it to arise as a consequence of being useful.
• 9:20
  Yeah, I think that's that's really correct.
• 9:23
  And what's named Anthony Bourdain, the chef who passed away, I was watching the documentary about him.
• 9:30
  I believe it was Roadrunner and there's a scene at the end that just really struck me where he's in a canoe of some sort in a foreign country.
• 9:40
  So relaxed and he he looks around, he's like, huh, I'm happy.
• 9:46
  And like it's like it's like he's very like a huge like a shock, you know, that like it wasn't something he forced right it was like it was a moment.
• 9:57
  I think happiness are just moments and if you're you know you get them and they come and they emerge from from the kind of meaning we put in from from opportunities that we can get to actually feel whole to feel relaxed.
• 10:08
  There's a lot of things we can do where we can increase the likelihood that happiness will emerge.
• 10:14
  I'm certainly not saying that happiness is a terrible terrible goal.
• 10:18
  It's not anti happiness. I'm not saying, oh, you should do everything that'll make you unhappy.
• 10:24
  But I'm saying you can do things to increase the chances that you can get into every now and then that's pretty good life.
• 10:30
  Very now, then you can get in those states, those moments, even a whole day where you're like, look around you and you're like, huh, like, wow, like I'm happy right now.
• 10:38
  Look at that. Look at that.
• 10:40
  I mean, it's funny you mentioned Bourdain because a, the man kill himself.
• 10:44
  Exactly.
• 10:45
  B, he was a hero of mine and I actually brought a little gulogy after he died just saying that just making the point that he had everything that I could ever want in life.
• 10:58
  I mean, I love to travel.
• 11:00
  I love food.
• 11:02
  I love, I loved his, his way with words, his eloquence, his kind of debonair, like Renaissance man attitude towards everything, his hedonism, his, he influenced me a lot in the, in my creative output and in the sense that he was such a,
• 11:21
  he was such a breath of fresh air and not taking any bullshit and speaking plainly and directly and allowing his sort of sparkle to, to shine brighter than the conformist ways that we're supposed to talk to one another or the polite ways that you're supposed to talk about things.
• 11:37
  You know, he was a really a versed to cliche and to, to conformism.
• 11:41
  And my point was just that you can have all of that.
• 11:44
  You can have, you know, a loving partner.
• 11:47
  You can have a, a little daughter.
• 11:49
  You can have these, you know, first class or business class flights to wherever you want to go in the world, producing your own creative output, eating amazing food, meeting amazing people, seeing amazing things.
• 12:00
  And at the end of the day, all that matters is what's going on between your ears.
• 12:04
  You can be miserable as a millionaire on a mega yacht and you can be happy in a wheelchair.
• 12:10
  And everything outside is always subject to our gray matters interpretation of it.
• 12:16
  And his suicide was just a, like a such a stark and crushing reminder of, of that fact.
• 12:23
  So how do you avoid that fate?
• 12:27
  Well, first of all, do you have to have you met him?
• 12:29
  No.
• 12:30
  Did you never got dressed up?
• 12:31
  No.
• 12:32
  It's just interesting.
• 12:33
  Great.
• 12:34
  Great regret.
• 12:36
  You're bringing up so many good points.
• 12:39
  What was your pointed question?
• 12:42
  I guess how do you make sure that what's going on in your life actually has an impact on your subjective sense of happiness?
• 12:49
  Well, maybe it shouldn't.
• 12:50
  Maybe that's what I'm thinking about.
• 12:51
  It shouldn't.
• 12:52
  Yeah, that's, again, it's point to hate too much pressure.
• 12:55
  People put so much pressure on themselves.
• 12:57
  Like, what's my call?
• 12:58
  What's my purpose?
• 12:59
  What's my purpose?
• 13:00
  I don't have a purpose, therefore my life is meaningless.
• 13:03
  And I think even just that framing is just like, whoa, hate too much pressure, buddy.
• 13:08
  Like you, you can have meaning in like just walking by a flower.
• 13:13
  You can have meaning in being mindful when you're eating your pudding.
• 13:17
  I don't know, any kind of food.
• 13:19
  I don't know, I'm putting it in my mind.
• 13:21
  Whatever, you're eating.
• 13:22
  For our English listeners, pudding means, I think, have you noticed that in English?
• 13:27
  Yeah, that's like in British English.
• 13:28
  It's like, no, no, no.
• 13:29
  Black pudding is a thing, right?
• 13:31
  That's a thing.
• 13:32
  But in British English, pudding just means anything sweet.
• 13:35
  Oh, okay.
• 13:36
  There you go.
• 13:37
  That works.
• 13:38
  Can I have my pudding?
• 13:39
  Yeah.
• 13:40
  But for me, if they're bringing out a cream caramel, it's not a pudding.
• 13:44
  For me, a pudding is...
• 13:46
  Yeah.
• 13:47
  It has to be more pudding-like.
• 13:48
  It has to be a moose.
• 13:49
  Okay.
• 13:50
  Well, fair enough.
• 13:51
  We can get into the nuances of that.
• 13:52
  But I think, let's just pretend that I meant the English definition.
• 13:55
  Proceed from there.
• 13:56
  Proceed from there.
• 13:57
  You know, but this is the thing that I...
• 14:01
  It's part of...
• 14:02
  It's my thing.
• 14:03
  It's helping people realize that there's so much potential sources of meaning and beauty around them already that already exist.
• 14:11
  We're so...
• 14:12
  We're so...
• 14:13
  We feel this pressure to constantly get new things.
• 14:16
  New...
• 14:17
  What is my new purpose?
• 14:18
  Or what is...
• 14:19
  A new purchase I could make that will make me happy.
• 14:22
  I'm not going to lie.
• 14:23
  There are some purchases I make that do make me happy for at least two days.
• 14:26
  So that's something.
• 14:27
  But...
• 14:28
  But in the long term...
• 14:29
  Antidireals, for example.
• 14:31
  Oh, my God.
• 14:32
  So we...
• 14:33
  I feel like you made the executive decision that we're keeping that beginning in.
• 14:36
  Or else you're going to have to edit out like 50% of the interview.
• 14:38
  Yeah.
• 14:39
  That's right.
• 14:40
  You're just like...
• 14:41
  I'm forcing it.
• 14:42
  You're committed to it.
• 14:43
  You committed to it.
• 14:44
  I'm sort of...
• 14:45
  I'm stitching the diary through so many juncture points of the conversation that will henceforth become impossible for me to produce it to come out.
• 14:51
  I see what you're doing.
• 14:52
  I'm just embedding long amounts.
• 14:54
  Yes, that's right.
• 14:55
  I'm a Ukrainian defensive force just embedding landmine into beyond the frontline.
• 14:59
  Exactly what I was saying.
• 15:01
  Yeah.
• 15:02
  Yeah.
• 15:03
  Okay, so you can buy...
• 15:05
  I mean, should we start...
• 15:07
  Should we get to Maslow or Maslow?
• 15:09
  Is it Maslow or Maslow?
• 15:11
  I think it's Maslow.
• 15:13
  Maslow.
• 15:14
  Yeah.
• 15:15
  Off on both counts.
• 15:16
  About whom you've basically written an entire book.
• 15:19
  Remind people who he was and what his insight was.
• 15:23
  It's Abraham Maslow as a humanistic psychologist who basically created the humanistic psychology movement in the 50s and 60s.
• 15:31
  And there were a bunch of other humanistic psychologists around that time as well that were part of the movement who they all believed in
• 15:38
  understanding the whole human, not just our naughty bits, but our higher nature.
• 15:44
  They felt that psychology prior to that time had focused... had neglected the higher nature of humans and focused so much on what we share with other animals.
• 15:56
  Not necessarily what uniquely human, what is human... what is human potential, right?
• 16:02
  So that's what they're really interested in.
• 16:04
  And so Abraham Maslow was one of the leaders of that human potential movement in that era, which was intimately tied to the hippies,
• 16:10
  to Esselin Institute, to San Francisco, and that whole hippie-dippy thing.
• 16:15
  So all that stuff was part of the zeitgeist.
• 16:18
  What I'm trying to do is carry the baton, and I run the center for human potential, and I'm trying to see what a modern-day human potential movement could look like.
• 16:29
  What was his hierarchy of needs?
• 16:32
  Like personally or with his theory?
• 16:34
  His theory.
• 16:35
  His theory, catch it.
• 16:36
  That's a personal question about him.
• 16:40
  But that time you met Maslow.
• 16:42
  Tell us the truth.
• 16:43
  Number one was putting...
• 16:44
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:47
  Well, some people look...
• 16:48
  Okay, so some people on the internet have memes, right?
• 16:50
  At the bottom for COVID, it was toilet paper, right?
• 16:54
  Now, remember when COVID started?
• 16:56
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 16:57
  And this is like...
• 16:58
  If people envisaged like the pyramid, if they've never studied the psychology, then the Maslow...
• 17:03
  He has a pyramid like you might have a food pyramid or something, with the baseline and necessities at the bottom,
• 17:09
  and then I suppose the luxuries at the top.
• 17:12
  Yeah, I wouldn't say luxuries.
• 17:14
  So self-actualization really was the only thing he had there at the top.
• 17:17
  So the way it's usually depicted is that, like you said, there's a pyramid.
• 17:21
  And at the bottom you have basic need for food, shelter water, and then above that you have need for connection and belonging.
• 17:30
  Actually, actually, I missed a level.
• 17:33
  Below connection is need for security.
• 17:36
  Feeling like your environment is safe and secure.
• 17:39
  And then above that is connection and belonging.
• 17:42
  And above that is self-esteem.
• 17:44
  And the esteem needs, he called them the esteem, he's not just self-esteem.
• 17:47
  But a steam for yourself, but also a steam from others.
• 17:50
  And then above that was self-actualization, which is becoming all year uniquely capable of becoming.
• 17:55
  However, so it turns out he never drew a pyramid.
• 18:00
  Turns out he never drew a pyramid.
• 18:02
  There's nothing in his writings.
• 18:04
  So I was going through all his writings.
• 18:07
  And he never drew a pyramid.
• 18:09
  So a huge misconception.
• 18:11
  I tried to put it in my book, which is why I came up with a new metaphor, which I think is a better hierarchy of needs.
• 18:16
  A metaphor than the one that's been going around for like 50 years.
• 18:20
  But he very much made it clear that life is not like a video game where you reach a certain level, like need for security.
• 18:27
  And then you hear some voice from above that's like congrats.
• 18:31
  You've unlocked family.
• 18:33
  And you move up in some sort of way, like some trek up a mountain.
• 18:38
  I've reconceptualized it as a sailboat in a sense that where life is to be experienced, not to be climbed.
• 18:47
  And integrated.
• 18:49
  Like a sailboat that has a really secure foundation of the boat that no holes the water isn't coming in.
• 18:56
  But also that opens its sail and explores.
• 19:00
  Right, but the sailboat needs.
• 19:02
  So in this metaphor, the coherence or the stability, the security of the sailboat would be things like security.
• 19:10
  You still need the bottom bits of the pyramid for the sailboat not to sink.
• 19:13
  Yes.
• 19:14
  So in the boat, I have the need for security, need for connection and the need for self-esteem.
• 19:20
  These things, these three things feed off each other in really, really important ways.
• 19:26
  They're a boat.
• 19:27
  When you feel like any one of those three is critically low, it tends to bring those other two down with it.
• 19:36
  And you feel like you're not standing on a firm foundation of your being.
• 19:42
  The three being security connection and what?
• 19:45
  Self-esteem.
• 19:46
  Self-esteem.
• 19:47
  Let's talk about connection because security is security.
• 19:51
  Well, we'll get to self-esteem.
• 19:53
  I think security we can probably park because unless we're listening in a situation of dire poverty in which case how are you listening to my podcast or unless we're in Ukraine or something.
• 20:03
  Most of us have a modicum of security in the modern world.
• 20:06
  But what has been upended over the past couple of years with the pandemic so much is connection.
• 20:11
  And what is also being disrupted by social media and our online lives is connection.
• 20:17
  How are we doing on that front?
• 20:20
  Oh, terrible.
• 20:21
  Absolutely.
• 20:22
  There are real crises, crises, whatever.
• 20:26
  There's a huge crisis of loneliness and certain age groups and certain demographics are showing it more.
• 20:35
  You can really get to the nuance of it.
• 20:38
  Research shows that males, like young adulthood males, are particularly really, really, really lonely.
• 20:46
  It's very hard for them to make friends after a certain age, like after 40.
• 20:53
  So they're showing huge loneliness.
• 20:55
  But then college students, they're, you know, regardless of the gender, there's there's huge anxiety and loneliness.
• 21:01
  It's very hard for college students to have meaningful connections with each other.
• 21:08
  There's a lot of superficial things going on, you know, like frat parties and stuff, but meaningful connections.
• 21:14
  And so this is a real big problem.
• 21:17
  And the question is, how can you structure society in weight in other societies that don't show this?
• 21:24
  And there are some societies that have been studied and you try to learn what are the lessons, you know, where the lessons you can learn.
• 21:29
  And what you see in those societies is, hey, there's much less of a focus on social media.
• 21:36
  I mean, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention social media as a potential one.
• 21:39
  Yeah, no, I definitely want to get to that.
• 21:41
  Yeah, you see a bunch of things.
• 21:44
  You see work care for the elderly, you see, you don't just shut them away, you know, in America,
• 21:50
  it's like after a certain age, after 70, it's like you can't find a job anywhere, right?
• 21:54
  It's supposed to be like, oh, 70.
• 21:56
  I mean, you know, it's 50.
• 21:58
  Yeah, maybe in 50.
• 21:59
  I mean, like if you're a 54 year old, it's tough, unless you're a senior executive level, it's tough.
• 22:04
  Yeah, yeah, no, that's right.
• 22:07
  The one of the ways that younger people find connection talking about that, that college cohort is, you know,
• 22:16
  if we don't provide some sort of connection, some sense of, of fulfilment and like development for that cohort, especially young males,
• 22:26
  then you do tend to find them ganging together and teaming up and creating their own versions of meaning,
• 22:33
  which can be unproductive or being taken under the wing of unscrupulous people joining alt-right movements,
• 22:41
  maybe the far right, maybe the far left, maybe becoming revolutionaries, maybe becoming violent gangs,
• 22:46
  maybe corining off into drugs, like how do you sort of corral that instinct for that craving for connection among young people in productive ways?
• 22:58
  There are many, many ways of launching off that question.
• 23:02
  The male-specific thing has its own sort of set of, that's a whole, like, can of worms, right?
• 23:08
  It's a whole topic of conversation, which I'm happy to open, if you'd like.
• 23:11
  Yeah.
• 23:12
  Yeah, I love opening Kansas poems. That's the point of the show.
• 23:15
  Oh, yeah, that's, I mean, if I'm going to ever open this can of worms, it's going to be in your show.
• 23:19
  It's going to be in your show.
• 23:22
  I want to have a very thoughtful answer to this, but it's a definitely can of worms.
• 23:27
  I do think identity is important, and I think having a healthy, and I've argued for having a healthy pride for your in-group,
• 23:34
  and I've distinguished that from a narcissistic pride for your in-group, and that's a topic.
• 23:39
  But I think that part of the loneliness is groups of people that have feel real difficulty in creating identity for who they are.
• 23:50
  You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, rightly so.
• 23:54
  There's a lot of positive affirmations for identities within the LBT, you know, Q community.
• 24:02
  It's a long alphabet now. I don't remember.
• 24:04
  I just don't have memorized the whole thing. I'm sorry.
• 24:07
  Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't.
• 24:08
  But in that, if you're part of...
• 24:10
  As an aside Scott, my partner will like every time he talks about anything regarding the gay community.
• 24:16
  He'll literally call it the LGBTQI plus, QIA, the LGBTQIA plus.
• 24:21
  And like, I'm like, where in the kitchen?
• 24:24
  Come on, you don't have to be using that jargon right here. Just call it gay or queer.
• 24:28
  I love that. I love that.
• 24:30
  I just solved the other day.
• 24:32
  I saw someone post the latest one, and it's 40, I think it's up to 40 letters now.
• 24:37
  Yeah, too much. We need a catch all. Come on. I mean, I understand that you're all very important little sunflowers in this, you know, in this.
• 24:45
  Exactly.
• 24:46
  Do we have to call you out by name?
• 24:48
  It's like instead of saying, ladies and gentlemen, we're, you know, we're going to say Andrea and Bob and Charlie and go through a, go through a whole full of a thousand people.
• 24:56
  Everyone gets their own special little love.
• 24:58
  It's like, no, I agree.
• 25:00
  And I want to make this point softly and sensibly.
• 25:03
  But I do want to make this point.
• 25:05
  You know, if you're anywhere in that alphabet now, it's almost like, it's like a pre-made identity where you can find meaning, right?
• 25:13
  You can say, you know, it's a sense of pride, right? It's like, I'm the, the Z. I don't know if Z is yet in that alphabet.
• 25:18
  Yeah.
• 25:19
  But it's like, but it's also kind of sending a message in a way where like, what if we get to the point where we have literally every letter in the alphabet except for white male.
• 25:30
  Yeah.
• 25:31
  You know what I'm saying? It's like, it's getting the point where it's like, wait, wait, what are you saying? Like just say it.
• 25:35
  You don't like white males. Just say it.
• 25:38
  Or you don't like straight. I should say cisgender white males, I should say cisgender.
• 25:42
  Yeah, I don't think the white comes in in that particular.
• 25:45
  No, it's just cisgender.
• 25:47
  But I mean, they would say of course that it has nothing to do with not liking.
• 25:50
  It's just about, you know, finding your identity and self expression in a way that is in a place that is well-being.
• 25:57
  I totally know what they would say.
• 26:00
  And I don't think that's wrong. I mean, I can be on board with exactly that framing.
• 26:05
  I mean, I personally think it's wrong because I personally, as someone who's married to another guy,
• 26:09
  I personally have always found it disempowering to be, to have to conform to some kind of conception of what gayness is.
• 26:19
  And so I actually, here and I always have playful disagreements about this.
• 26:25
  So I think in the future, in the same way, this is a bit of attention, but in the same way that in the future,
• 26:30
  if there is a world in which we can, in which white people can talk about how horrible the N word is,
• 26:35
  without having to say the phrase, the N word, but actually say the word, the word,
• 26:40
  that will be a less racist, not a more racist, future, almost by definition,
• 26:46
  because the word won't have its sting, the word won't have its supernatural power.
• 26:51
  And in the same way, a world in which a 15-year-old jock at high school can date a girl,
• 26:57
  and then maybe the next year, date a guy, and there isn't constant whispering and questioning of like,
• 27:03
  so where are you in the alphabet? What exactly are you?
• 27:06
  We'll be a less homophobic world, I think, not more.
• 27:10
  So I would rather lean away from the identity buckets and lean towards a more expansive conception of individualism and sort of common humanity
• 27:19
  and the sanctity of everybody, for whoever they happen to be, regardless of what, you know, label you on a put on them.
• 27:25
  But that's perhaps that's a conversation for another day, or perhaps, or that's somewhere too.
• 27:29
  I don't think that's a conversation for another day actually.
• 27:31
  I think it's so in line with, there's something I think of obsessively,
• 27:35
  which is, what does true inclusion look like? Like true inclusion, where you don't apply principles selectively based on your in-group?
• 27:46
  And I think about that so much, because I'm all about having us view each other as a human first before the identity,
• 27:54
  you know, like leading with that sort of, leading with the common humanity.
• 27:58
  All about that, I mean, I'm a human six psychologist, that's on brand for me to say that.
• 28:03
  But I try to think of what is true inclusivity, and something has never sat right with me, with the alphabet, or with, I've never really been able to articulate quite well.
• 28:16
  I just don't feel like true inclusivity to me. Like a true inclusivity would be, you know, what sits better to me are things like, hey, we're having a meeting Friday, and I just want to, you know, like, everyone is welcome here.
• 28:28
  And just saying that, like, why can't you? But instead, when you start, like, singling out the ones that are included, then it, it's just, it's just, you're like, well, you're excluding some people.
• 28:38
  And then, of course, they can make the put, well, we've historically been the ones that are excluded, but I don't believe two wrongs ever make a right, you know, so I think that, kind of just, I'd rather just constantly be sending the message to everyone that, like, you're all welcome here.
• 28:51
  Right. Just stop. Period. The period there. Yeah, yeah, totally. And if your mindset is one of constantly trying to poke holes in other people's it like in interpreting their, their message in bad faith and poke holes in what they're doing, then no solution will ever be enough. I mean, you could say everyone is welcome here.
• 29:11
  And then you could say, well, what about people with dual personality disorders? You said everyone, like, what about people who, or what, you know, you're only talking about homo sapiens, are you? What about my turn, my ferret or my turtle or something who's here, like, you're being exclusive exclusionary and some, like, you're always going to be able to fault someone.
• 29:29
  If you're, if you're, if you're mode of interacting with the world is to, is to find is to pick out faults. So I almost feel like it's a futile. It's fundamentally a futile mission. And I wonder whether, whether you have thoughts about that as well, the fulfillment that can come from a certain grace.
• 29:48
  Well, I've personally have found that it's, it's possible. I like, I run a, I run a transcend course. I've taught in colleges, some of the, I've taught at the, probably the most well college in the world.
• 30:03
  And, and the reason why I think it works is it's the spirit you bring to the table. You know, I make a very clear on the first class, the first day of class, you know, I'm here to help each of you self actualize in your own way.
• 30:18
  That's my intention. And in order to do that, I want to understand you as a unique human with your own unique full human complex complexity.
• 30:28
  Like, to me, that's what's really interesting is the full human complexity, not just the singular identity. That's one part of you. And, and just setting that tone, like, you're all welcome here and you're all, you're, each of your individual self actualizing journeys are welcome here.
• 30:42
  It, it, it, it shifts the focus from, well, you, okay, we have this group in the corner here. Okay, all the LBT people on the far right here, the far left role is the football team.
• 30:53
  No, no, what it does is just shifts the focus in a way that no one gets defensive with that because at the end of the day, that's what individuals want. You know, like, that's what each human wants.
• 31:03
  You know, what is exactly what is it that even what did I want? Yeah, they want to actualize their potential. I mean, they want to actualize their unique creative potential. They want to feel like they matter.
• 31:13
  I mean, the, the need to matter is what we're seeing so much underneath so much of the conflict. We see everywhere we turn our heads these days. And people are acting as though their unique vulnerabilities are the most important vulnerabilities in the world. So we've created kind of a hierarchy of suffering.
• 31:31
  When underneath at all, or just people with severely deficient feelings of the need to matter, trying to have a voice.
• 31:40
  Right. Yeah, I call it the oppression Olympics, like, you know, everyone's competing for how, how oppressed they are or how wronged they've been or what group they can associate themselves with that has been persecuted.
• 31:52
  You know, it's the easiest move in the world for me to sloth off my white sis male cloak and embrace my grandson of Holocaust surviving Jews and, you know, member of proud member of the LGBTQIA plus community cloak and that suddenly gets me cred, right?
• 32:13
  Because I now I belong to a couple of the press communities so I can, I can sort of show those flashcards that give me the right to speak, which is completely not just because my white maleness should not undermine my sanctity as a human being any more than my being a gay Jew buys it for me.
• 32:33
  That's right. It's the victim. I call it the victim of Olympics, which is very up the alley of what you're saying as well. But that and that problem with that clearly is that when when you start competing in that Olympics, there's only one winner.
• 32:46
  It's just like the Olympics, right? It's suddenly a competition and that is not productive. There are more productive ways of engaging with your fellow human that has their own unique set of sufferings and things they feel victimhood over.
• 33:01
  Well, I am constantly just in awe and amazement at watching battles and fold on Twitter.
• 33:07
  Yeah, well, I mean, what if there are more productive ways, they must be more elusive. Otherwise, people wouldn't be behaving the way they are.
• 33:16
  Loose of well, there's like they're more difficult to find, right? I mean, why are people doing it if it weren't scratching an itch?
• 33:23
  Well, people are definitely suffering and I don't want to diminish that. And when you're in the state of deprivation, this is what I read about and you know, kind of just the whole theory that
• 33:36
  that Maslow talked about really talking about the difference between deficiency motivation and growth motivation.
• 33:42
  There are two completely different realms of human existence. So many of us are caught in the deficiency trap where it's so hard for us to feel or see a way out or to call ourselves out of it because that system of self esteem connection and security are so low that we're just fighting to just get out of it.
• 34:06
  And when you're in that mindset, you're not thinking about engaging someone for the purpose of growth. It's almost like growth is a luxury at that point.
• 34:15
  So it makes sense from a hierarchical need structure of human motivations.
• 34:23
  That's interesting. I'm just trying to. Yeah, yeah, or to shift the focus to growth.
• 34:34
  I mean, is that I'm trying to think I'm trying to I'm just interrogating internally now what it feels like when I'm owning someone on Twitter.
• 34:41
  Yeah, versus what it feels like when I'm doing something that is closer to the pursuit of, you know, the self actualization of humankind.
• 34:48
  And the latter is harder, less instantly gratifying, perhaps more fulfilling in the long run, but it is fun to dunk on someone on Twitter too.
• 35:00
  Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's also fun to eat fatty foods, you know, pizza, like, you know, there are a lot of things that are definitely immediately fun and more rewarding in the moment.
• 35:14
  And I see that too on what I'm on social media. If I anytime I try to pull a well in the one hand and on the other hand, it's like four likes.
• 35:23
  But then if I like I'm feeling particularly grumpy and I'm like, that person is a wack ass motherfucker.
• 35:28
  People like five thousand likes. Whoa, yeah, go Scott.
• 35:32
  You know, it's like so it's true. I mean, it's true. I want to see that tweet of yours. I want to see that person's a wack ass mother.
• 35:39
  Yeah, exactly. Where's that one? The wack ass? A lot of not a tweet.
• 35:43
  That happened to me a couple months ago. I let go. It's something slip, you know, someone just really pissed me off.
• 35:49
  But the funny thing about that story is you were involved in that in exactly that moment. Yeah, exactly that moment.
• 35:56
  And Brett Weinstein was criticizing your tweet when you when you were looking into the science of and you really I really appreciated the thoughtfulness of how you contacted a leading cardiologist and you had this very thoughtful thread.
• 36:09
  And then you retweet something like this guy's part of again, another person who's a smart person who went to the dark side or something.
• 36:16
  And I went and I just I lost it. It's so funny because you're the one involved in this. I don't know if you saw I responded. I really lost it.
• 36:24
  I had forgotten about that. But now I mean that whole period is needless to say a blur of tweets.
• 36:29
  You wanted to you wanted to repress that memory.
• 36:33
  Yeah, but at a very deep level because I really appreciate people who take the time to look at multiple sides and to consult an expert and to try to share knowledge.
• 36:45
  So that really upset me that he was diminishing that and I and I my normal sort of gates of on the one hand.
• 36:52
  And kind of went off those 10 p.m. at night as well. I've tried and maybe now have a rule not to tweet after 7 p.m.
• 36:58
  Because you know the ambitions lower and I kind of regret the way I I responded to Brett and Brett responded like well that was entirely out of character for you.
• 37:09
  And I was like well good. I mean, but your character is so so so endlessly infinitely polite.
• 37:15
  Scott that I think if you dial up your rudeness by 10% that's still.
• 37:20
  It's okay. I didn't get canceled more. But didn't cancel me. So that's good.
• 37:24
  Also, it is just frustrating when people have such self certainty about their own point of view.
• 37:28
  You know, people picking apart the opinion and if people unaware of the backstory here, I was on Joe Rogan's show Joe and I got into a dispute about whether or not the rate of heart inflammation from getting the vaccine is higher or lower than the rate of heart inflammation from getting COVID itself.
• 37:47
  Brett Weinstein is obviously highly skeptical of vaccines and a big pusher of misinformation about the pandemic and about vaccines.
• 37:56
  So I followed up because I'm not a scientist. So I followed up with the leading. I mean, I called like the cardiology institute, not the vaccine Institute of Australia or something, but the cardiology Institute of Australia just to get the actual facts about the heart impacts of the vaccine versus COVID did a half hour interview with this guy just to.
• 38:14
  So for me, that's kind of the end of it from my point of view. Like if if a leading cardiologist who represents the mainstream bulk of scientific opinion on the matter and is most is best informed about the latest science of it, I'm just not going to do my own research.
• 38:32
  So to speak beyond that, like I'm not going to be digging. I don't know and none of us knows unless we're trained academic experts how to pass the data of one paper versus another paper. So I think it's ridiculous that Twitter is so awash with people like sharing, you know, pre publication, you know, pre peer reviewed papers about either mectin or something without the humility to understand that they don't understand.
• 38:59
  Really, the context into which that paper is dropping the other papers, you know, you have to rely on experts. So the idea that I would go to the expert do a Twitter thread simply outlining what the expert had said and then closed the book on it and then people pop up and go, yeah, but how do you know that?
• 39:16
  Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 39:16
  I'll study from June like 2020.
• 39:18
  Oh, I know.
• 39:19
  I'm like, I don't fucking know that.
• 39:21
  But how do you know?
• 39:22
  Yeah, well, exactly.
• 39:23
  All I know is that I'm the one with some epistemic humility
• 39:26
  here, and you're more than off like a jackass,
• 39:28
  as if you know everything, and you're impervious
• 39:31
  to further correction.
• 39:34
  I have a lot of thoughts about that.
• 39:36
  One is that, that, me, that whole Twitter thing,
• 39:39
  and me losing actually led to this, us getting
• 39:41
  to talk to each other and led to me reaching out to you,
• 39:45
  led to this podcast chat.
• 39:46
  So I don't regret it, you know, led to this great connection
• 39:51
  here, right?
• 39:52
  You know, and looking forward to having you in my podcast as well.
• 39:56
  But what I liked, what that moment did for me
• 39:58
  is I really thought, I really liked that person's way
• 40:01
  of being, that person being you.
• 40:03
  I really liked that, and it resonated
• 40:06
  my own sort of way of being.
• 40:07
  I also, I reached out to Eric Topol.
• 40:09
  I did something similar, and I invited him
• 40:11
  to be on my podcast, and that episode
• 40:14
  has been released recently, and has been awesome.
• 40:16
  And that was a really great chat.
• 40:17
  And I, I mean, I wasn't like over-appeasing.
• 40:20
  I asked him some tough questions, and the way he answered them
• 40:24
  is exactly how a scientist should answer them, you know?
• 40:26
  Like, there's a way that a scientist answers questions,
• 40:29
  right, an expert in a field.
• 40:31
  You know, you know the true experts
• 40:33
  when they're not like, I know the secret truth
• 40:36
  that no one else knows.
• 40:37
  That's not usually how the real expert talks.
• 40:40
  Yes, and the real expert doesn't hint darkly at things
• 40:43
  that they're not suggesting, but that you might be able
• 40:45
  to read between the lines and imply, you know,
• 40:47
  like Robert Malone did on Joe Rogan's show.
• 40:51
  Like, I can, I can just tell her a hack.
• 40:53
  I'm sorry, I can smell it.
• 40:54
  I've interviewed too many people, and as you say,
• 40:57
  real scientists don't talk, they don't hint at things.
• 41:00
  You know, they're very rational, and they'll qualify things,
• 41:02
  and they'll say, well, we don't know this,
• 41:03
  we don't know that, but they won't say, well, you know,
• 41:05
  I'm not saying, but you might wanna say
• 41:07
  that's bloody blah behind the scenes.
• 41:08
  Like, that's not a scientist.
• 41:10
  And they tend to also do the one on the one hand,
• 41:12
  on the other hand, things, and that's a tell,
• 41:15
  that's a tell that you're actually a scientist,
• 41:17
  or scholar, even just like, look,
• 41:19
  I think we're really losing the scholarly mindset
• 41:22
  in the world, not just scientist mindset,
• 41:25
  but there's a certain like scholarly,
• 41:26
  and I know that's a really truly nerdy thing to say, right?
• 41:29
  Like, almost like, academic elitist sort of thing to say,
• 41:32
  but I think anyone, if they want to have that mindset,
• 41:35
  you know, there's a way of thinking,
• 41:37
  where you're interested in the truth,
• 41:39
  you're interested in integrating multiple sources,
• 41:42
  as many data points as possible,
• 41:44
  to kind of see what that integration looks like.
• 41:46
  That's a certain scholarly mindset.
• 41:48
  I don't think we've lost that.
• 41:49
  I don't know if we have that.
• 41:51
  Have we lost it partly because of the democratization
• 41:54
  of information?
• 41:56
  I mean, I'm trying to grapple with this whole concept
• 41:59
  of doing your own research and being skeptical
• 42:02
  of traditional gatekeepers of information in the media,
• 42:06
  and in government, and so on.
• 42:09
  And I'm coming to feel that one of the worst things
• 42:12
  that's happened in the social media information revolution
• 42:16
  is the, I suppose the growth of taking responsibility
• 42:22
  for your own opinion about things in an overboard way.
• 42:28
  So like the do your own research phenomenon.
• 42:30
  I mean, nobody knows more about the details
• 42:34
  of what happened on November 22nd, 1963, was it?
• 42:38
  Then JFK conspiracy theorists, right?
• 42:41
  They've done all of the research.
• 42:43
  That's true.
• 42:44
  You know, they know a lot more about it than you do.
• 42:47
  They know exactly where the gun was pointing and all this.
• 42:50
  And a lot of what they know is probably correct.
• 42:53
  And from those nuggets of truth,
• 42:55
  they weave a castle in the sky of like all of these,
• 43:01
  well, these theories about exactly what happened
• 43:04
  and how they know the secret truth.
• 43:05
  Same with 9-11 truth is, you know,
• 43:07
  what I can tell you the ex, you know,
• 43:09
  what material was building seven made out of.
• 43:12
  I don't if I can know, you don't know.
• 43:13
  I'll bet a 9-11 truth in those.
• 43:15
  So there's a lot, you know,
• 43:16
  I think they really know the most on the whole.
• 43:20
  I don't think that I would push back that against that
• 43:23
  because I think that when I hear conspiracy theorists,
• 43:25
  I it's they're almost like nerds
• 43:27
  about a specific aspect of the whole truth.
• 43:30
  But I don't find that they tend to ever really like look
• 43:35
  at the competing information and try to integrate it.
• 43:37
  I don't see a scholarly mindset there at all actually.
• 43:40
  No, that's kind of what I mean.
• 43:43
  Like is the scholarly mindset undermined
• 43:46
  by an undue fixation on detail,
• 43:50
  on doing one's own research, on finding out the truth?
• 43:53
  Because at some point,
• 43:55
  the reality is that I don't have a scholarly mindset
• 43:58
  because I'm not an expert in any field.
• 44:01
  I'm just a conversationalist
• 44:02
  and someone who likes to draw out the opinions
• 44:05
  of smarter people than me or more expert people than me.
• 44:08
  And as a result, I relinquish my duty
• 44:13
  to do too much research into things
• 44:14
  and I outsource my opinions essentially
• 44:17
  to the people who do have a scholarly mindset.
• 44:20
  I think you do have a scholarly mindset.
• 44:22
  Well, really?
• 44:23
  What does that mean then?
• 44:25
  I think I think scholarly mindset
• 44:26
  is like a domain general kind of mindset
• 44:29
  that's not, you don't have to have the knowledge
• 44:31
  in the field to have one.
• 44:33
  And it's a whole method
• 44:34
  in a way of acquiring information.
• 44:36
  So you can have no scholarly,
• 44:38
  you can have no knowledge of epidemiology
• 44:42
  or cardiology.
• 44:43
  Like I'm not an expert in cardiology,
• 44:45
  but I was just curious like,
• 44:46
  okay, what does the truth say about my carditis?
• 44:49
  Well, I just go on Google Scholar
• 44:51
  and I opened up 150 tabs.
• 44:55
  I looked at the abstracts.
• 44:57
  It's knowing how to interpret data.
• 44:59
  It's knowing how to interpret research.
• 45:02
  It's the I don't.
• 45:03
  If I opened up 150 tabs about my carditis,
• 45:06
  I would get confused and I would probably assume,
• 45:09
  and there would be enough in there
• 45:11
  that led me astray that I would probably start thinking,
• 45:14
  maybe there is something in there.
• 45:16
  I need the insider to contextualize it for me and go,
• 45:21
  yeah, although this piece says
• 45:23
  that there's actually a higher incidence,
• 45:24
  what you're not understanding is that that's offset
• 45:26
  by over here, this epidemiological thing
• 45:29
  that showed that bloody blind,
• 45:31
  because the cohort was different here,
• 45:32
  that what you're not understanding is that in Israel,
• 45:35
  they actually only gave it to these people.
• 45:37
  Like there's a lot of all that qualifying scaffolding
• 45:39
  that I would not be aware of.
• 45:42
  And I worry that sometimes the details overwhelmed
• 45:46
  the larger truth.
• 45:49
  But you're thoughtful.
• 45:50
  Can I say that at least?
• 45:51
  Would you accept the compliment?
• 45:52
  Definitely.
• 45:53
  Because when I think scholarly,
• 45:56
  maybe my example is too high level,
• 45:58
  but I think that I associate with thoughtfulness,
• 46:01
  which is simple,
• 46:04
  understanding the nuances of a situation,
• 46:06
  understanding that the more data you can acquire
• 46:08
  about something,
• 46:10
  the more likely you are to get at the truth.
• 46:12
  And in an unbiased way of acquiring the data,
• 46:15
  not only trying to go down a rabbit hole
• 46:18
  and find all the data that confirms your prior conception,
• 46:21
  but being like a robot about it,
• 46:22
  like just opening up the 150 tabs
• 46:24
  of whatever we're talking about,
• 46:26
  and looking at every single perspective,
• 46:27
  and looking at to try to think,
• 46:28
  well, what is the way to the evidence,
• 46:30
  really say not what I want it to be?
• 46:32
  But is it true, Scott,
• 46:33
  that you get most of your information
• 46:35
  about things by going directly to the data?
• 46:37
  I mean, like is your opinion about
• 46:39
  whether 911 was an inside job driven
• 46:41
  by your deep examination of data?
• 46:47
  Yeah, and I went down that rabbit hole once.
• 46:50
  Really?
• 46:51
  I did.
• 46:52
  Also, and also by the way, the JFK thing,
• 46:54
  I really went down that rabbit hole
• 46:55
  because I wouldn't know what the truth was about that.
• 46:58
  But just the 911 thing,
• 47:01
  I think part of the acquiring the information
• 47:02
  is also seeking out experts.
• 47:05
  So that's part of my point as well,
• 47:06
  like what you did was very thoughtful.
• 47:10
  I mean, it was scholarly.
• 47:11
  Dare I say, I don't know, maybe you don't like that word.
• 47:14
  But when I acquire as much information as possible
• 47:18
  about something, I'm also including that data set
• 47:20
  as much of what the experts think is the truth.
• 47:22
  That's right.
• 47:23
  I'm not averse to being called a scholar
• 47:26
  or a wizard or a king.
• 47:28
  I just don't want to take any credit away
• 47:30
  from actual people who've gone through the hard yards
• 47:33
  of doing things.
• 47:34
  Well, experts are different than scholars.
• 47:36
  I think some experts actually
• 47:36
  cannot have not be scholarly.
• 47:38
  Could I pass as a king?
• 47:40
  You know, no.
• 47:43
  But like 911 is a good example
• 47:45
  because say, you know, 911,
• 47:46
  I was completely open to the possibility
• 47:48
  that there was something fishy going on.
• 47:50
  And then there was one article
• 47:51
  in popular science magazine
• 47:53
  where they finally were like, okay,
• 47:55
  let's actually examine all of the conspiracy theories
• 47:58
  about this.
• 47:59
  And they got all the experts together
• 48:01
  and they wrote this big, huge feature piece.
• 48:03
  I think it took up the entire magazine.
• 48:05
  I read that one piece and then I was like,
• 48:06
  okay, I'm not going to think about this anymore.
• 48:08
  I'm not going to dive into the data.
• 48:09
  I'm not going to look up any papers.
• 48:11
  I'm not going to look up anything peer reviewed.
• 48:12
  I trust popular science.
• 48:14
  I certainly trust all of the people who are writing here.
• 48:16
  More than I trust the conspiracy theorist.
• 48:18
  So as far as I'm concerned,
• 48:19
  I've outsourced my thinking on this
• 48:22
  to people who know more than me.
• 48:23
  Yeah.
• 48:24
  I like what you're saying.
• 48:25
  And I think it's also important to really look
• 48:27
  at where the controversy is lie
• 48:29
  with among the experts within the field.
• 48:31
  So for instance, if there's pretty much a scientific consensus,
• 48:35
  I'm not, there's those cases where I don't tend to
• 48:41
  we need to look much, much further.
• 48:43
  But there are some really nuanced debates
• 48:45
  within fields among experts.
• 48:46
  And that's what really interests me
• 48:48
  sometimes, like I get really stimulated
• 48:49
  and really can go down that rabbit holes
• 48:52
  where it's not really agreed upon
• 48:55
  an interpretation of certain data.
• 48:58
  And then that does leave room open, not for conspiracy theories,
• 49:00
  but it leaves room open for not having complete faith
• 49:04
  or trust in a particular interpretation by one X,
• 49:07
  one set of experts.
• 49:10
  That's good, yeah, yeah, that's true.
• 49:13
  Let's loop back to social media
• 49:14
  because I definitely want to get your thoughts on it.
• 49:18
  And we can either put this in the context
• 49:19
  of our sort of hierarchy of needs
• 49:22
  and work our way back to the basic sort of punchline
• 49:24
  of your book about self-actualization and transcendence.
• 49:29
  Or just, actually let's start with the fast food analogy
• 49:33
  because you raised it and I think it's a good one about the,
• 49:37
  I guess the speed of our gratification
• 49:40
  that social media facilitates
• 49:42
  and how that's impacting the way that we think about
• 49:46
  our lives and the world.
• 49:47
  I think that the likes have become a major source of power
• 49:52
  in people's life.
• 49:54
  Can you imagine the power, I'm not there yet,
• 49:57
  but you know how there are some people
• 49:58
  like they can just say one sentence
• 50:01
  and then immediately gets like 50,000 likes.
• 50:04
  But it could be like a platitude,
• 50:06
  it can be like the dumbest statement,
• 50:08
  it could even be the same as X statement
• 50:09
  you wrote the day before, but you got like five likes.
• 50:12
  And then you look at it, the other person,
• 50:14
  you know like you say something,
• 50:16
  also something like happiness emerges
• 50:19
  as a product of meaning, right?
• 50:21
  It's like 10 likes.
• 50:22
  And then I'll see like some really famous self-up guru
• 50:26
  or so they said happy, the same sentence
• 50:28
  and it's 50,000 likes.
• 50:31
  There's actually an existential question there now
• 50:33
  if we, this is a philosophical question like,
• 50:35
  so is there, does there life have more value than mine
• 50:37
  because them saying the sentence has 50,000 likes
• 50:41
  whereas mine has five?
• 50:43
  Well, you need to know what the question,
• 50:45
  but you know, you would need to know what people are doing
• 50:48
  or what people think they're doing
• 50:49
  when they're tapping the like, wouldn't you?
• 50:52
  What do you mean?
• 50:53
  What do you mean?
• 50:54
  Well, so like, you know, to determine whether or not
• 50:56
  in some grandfield.
• 50:57
  Are they like masturbating or something?
• 50:59
  Oh, they type it, is that what you're saying?
• 51:02
  No.
• 51:03
  What are they doing exactly?
• 51:05
  That's not what I was saying, Scott.
• 51:07
  Okay.
• 51:07
  No, I just mean, so if, let's say, you know,
• 51:11
  beaver, treat something that's such an old man's reference
• 51:15
  for what young people like.
• 51:16
  He's probably 40 years old by now.
• 51:17
  But, you know, whoever the modern day,
• 51:20
  you imagine Beaver at age 80, by the way.
• 51:21
  Can you imagine that?
• 51:22
  Yeah.
• 51:23
  Yeah, he's still going to be cute.
• 51:25
  He's still, there still be adorable.
• 51:26
  I guess so.
• 51:27
  And, but whoever the modern day beaver is, yeah, yeah.
• 51:31
  I don't even know who that is.
• 51:32
  Who is that?
• 51:33
  You're only talking with the young kids these days.
• 51:38
  Siri, who is the modern day beaver?
• 51:41
  No.
• 51:42
  Got nothing.
• 51:43
  Anyway.
• 51:44
  I don't know.
• 51:45
  But anyway, let's pretend there's some.
• 51:46
  It's probably, I mean, I guess like Billy Eilish is the only person who I can think of
• 51:49
  who's actually young and is also really talented and famous.
• 51:52
  Okay, let's talk about that.
• 51:53
  Yeah.
• 51:54
  So let's say that Billy Eilish, you know, tweets out, you know, happiness is the, is the
• 51:59
  holy grail and gets 50,000 likes and you do that and you get five, five likes.
• 52:06
  The question of whether or not your worth less than Billy hinges for me on whether or
• 52:13
  not those people who are liking her tweet are voting for a deep sense of gratitude for
• 52:20
  film and perspective or whether they're just going, I like Billy.
• 52:26
  Yeah.
• 52:27
  Yeah.
• 52:28
  Yeah.
• 52:29
  Well, that's part of it is that we have acquitted, it's part of the point I'm trying
• 52:32
  to make in a cheeky way, but is that we are equating likes on social media.
• 52:38
  So we're so called in the social status trap that we're starting to bound up our own sort
• 52:45
  of sense of self worth to the extent to which people are like, yeah, I like that person
• 52:49
  on social media.
• 52:50
  And that's, that's a huge problem.
• 52:53
  That's a huge problem psychologically for the, for the, for the higher values and the
• 52:57
  higher needs to be fulfilled.
• 53:00
  That's what it is.
• 53:01
  It's keeping us in that D of world of, of, of, of, of D realm, as Mazda, what Mazda called
• 53:07
  a deficiency realm of human existence, which doesn't allow us to kind of get out of that
• 53:12
  to, to have growth options that may not get us many likes on social media, but in the
• 53:18
  real world, we're growing.
• 53:19
  Right.
• 53:20
  Yeah.
• 53:21
  What's the deficiency realm?
• 53:23
  Yeah.
• 53:24
  So the deficiency realm is when you're making decisions in your life and you're living
• 53:28
  your life and doing certain actions in order to relieve some hole in your heart, relieve
• 53:34
  some deficiency, whether it's a deficiency of, of connection, deficiency of self esteem.
• 53:40
  And that's what I'm seeing a lot of is it's a lot of the stuff is for self esteem motive.
• 53:45
  The likes are really, really hit tapping into that dopamine circuit or the need for security
• 53:52
  or feeling insecure.
• 53:54
  People talk a lot about the hedonic treadmill, well, people don't talk about it a lot, but
• 53:58
  it's the thing that people are aware of, right, you know, you get everyone's aware that,
• 54:02
  you know, you get the new job and then that's, that's fun and fulfilling for six months.
• 54:07
  And then it becomes the new baseline normal and you need some new achievement or some new
• 54:11
  trinkets, some new distraction.
• 54:13
  My mum once had a t-shirt that said, he who dies with the most toys wins.
• 54:19
  And you know, that's a good example of the hedonic treadmill.
• 54:22
  Yeah.
• 54:23
  And here you talk about self esteem.
• 54:24
  I wonder if there's a self esteem treadmill, you know, like, yeah, I think there is.
• 54:31
  And that's a brilliant phrase.
• 54:33
  You should coin that right now.
• 54:34
  Okay.
• 54:35
  Trademarked.
• 54:36
  It's your trademark.
• 54:37
  Yeah.
• 54:38
  Yeah.
• 54:39
  Because you did coin it.
• 54:40
  Yeah.
• 54:41
  And I like that.
• 54:42
  I think that's what we're seeing a lot on on social media.
• 54:45
  And I think it explains the, the reward value incentives for fighting on social media.
• 54:53
  People are rewarded for the fighting.
• 54:56
  People are rewarded for taking it, taking down someone else for viewing people's opponents
• 55:02
  for, for gathering your own tribe and rallying them, you know, to your cause.
• 55:08
  That's, that's the reward structure.
• 55:09
  But what is, what is the reward though, like when we really get beneath it, the reward
• 55:13
  really is your own ego.
• 55:16
  And that's not the, the healthiest, most growth oriented reward a human could have.
• 55:22
  This brings us to an article that I read of yours in scientific American diagnosing
• 55:26
  the ego as really the source of all our modern ills.
• 55:29
  Do you want to expand on that idea?
• 55:31
  Yeah.
• 55:32
  And I define the ego specifically because there's a lot of definitions in psychology of ego
• 55:36
  and a lot of definitions of self, I view the ego is not the same thing as yourself.
• 55:42
  The ego is that part of yourself, that, that sort of set of values and representations
• 55:49
  and actions that has an incessant need to depend, defend a positive image of yourself
• 55:56
  at all times.
• 55:58
  And it's, the ego has its own rationality to it, it has its own sort of structure.
• 56:05
  And when you're totally just dancing in the world, here you go, a lot of things make sense
• 56:10
  to you, even though you might be born up the whole world.
• 56:14
  What are some examples of the way people do that?
• 56:17
  So many things can activate those ego defenses.
• 56:19
  I mean, even the slightest criticism, the slightest, you know, you see, you see this, this
• 56:25
  doesn't only happen in the, the, the level of individuals I wrote an article for the Atlantic
• 56:29
  about this on the collective narcissism.
• 56:31
  This happens at the collective level as well.
• 56:34
  So even the slightest criticism of your, of your group, like coming from the inside, everyone
• 56:42
  will look at person as disobey, I see that as a really big, big, big, big problem.
• 56:46
  Like you're part of this group and you're like fighting for the cause, but you're like,
• 56:49
  well, hey guys, actually, I think you went too far there, they'd be like, you're out.
• 56:54
  It's not, they're not like, they're defending it at all costs.
• 56:57
  Like we'd rather like kick the person out than to even entertain the possibility when
• 57:02
  we might not be perfect.
• 57:04
  And that happens at the individual level as well.
• 57:07
  If someone individually threatens us, the same, very same principles often apply at the
• 57:11
  individual level of narcissism with the group level of narcissism, very same principles
• 57:15
  was I'm seeing everywhere.
• 57:18
  And at the individual level, it's like the very, you know, slightest sort of comment,
• 57:23
  and I'm not talking about trolling, I think we got, we all dislike trolls, but, but even
• 57:27
  just someone who's might write a very thoughtful comment like, what's an interesting point
• 57:31
  to make?
• 57:32
  But I disagree with it.
• 57:33
  You know, I think that XYZ disagreement has now become World War III.
• 57:38
  Yeah.
• 57:39
  Although there's also this, I do, but there's also this parallel thing that you're reminding
• 57:44
  me of where there's an elevation of the virtue of civility above all else.
• 57:51
  The reason I'm pausing is because I'm a bit of a champion of disagreement, disagreement
• 57:56
  with you.
• 58:01
  I was amazed not to keep banging on about Joe Rogan, but when I left the studio from doing
• 58:08
  Joe Rogan's show, I mentally asked myself in the Uber on the way to the airport.
• 58:13
  So have I said anything there that's going to blow up?
• 58:16
  I've done his show six times before, I know what sort of catches fire and I didn't want
• 58:21
  to cause trouble for my employer.
• 58:23
  And I was, I was scanned through, you know, a half dozen exchanges that could have gone
• 58:27
  viral.
• 58:28
  And I was like, I think they're pretty much okay.
• 58:30
  The exchange that ended up blowing up wasn't even one of those six.
• 58:34
  So at the time for me, it did not strike me as being at all heated that he and I had
• 58:40
  butted heads a little bit about some arcane side effect of the vaccine and adolescence.
• 58:47
  And then it took about a week for it to gain traction and to really explode.
• 58:52
  And what I found notable about the fact that that was the point that was the moment
• 58:56
  that did go viral was that it just showed how unwilling most people are just to have the
• 59:01
  basic modicum of self-respect to push back and disagree with other people.
• 59:07
  Like I actually sort of think there's too much civility and politeness.
• 59:12
  Like maybe it's my Australian, this has something, but I just think we should be calling
• 59:16
  bullshit a lot more in much more blunt and friendly ways.
• 59:19
  Like, you know, not demonizing the person, but just could I always say, if you were at
• 59:23
  a pub and your friend said something that was, you were pretty sure was nonsense that
• 59:28
  they'd read online, you wouldn't just polite, you wouldn't just wait for them to stop
• 59:33
  talking, politely note your objection and then move on.
• 59:36
  You didn't drop them and go, mate, that's bullshit, at least I would.
• 59:39
  Wouldn't you?
• 59:40
  And wouldn't that be an appropriate way to, to, to joust?
• 59:45
  No, man, I think that's bullshit what you're saying.
• 59:47
  That's totally bullshit.
• 59:51
  No, yeah, I hear what you're saying.
• 59:55
  I'm trying to think of what it, like, again, that's my, like, what's an integration.
• 59:59
  Can multiple things be true at the same time?
• 1:00:01
  Can you point out that problem, but also point to the problem that disagreement seems
• 1:00:06
  to be equated with hate these days as well?
• 1:00:10
  I feel like that's sort of what all things are.
• 1:00:12
  And then things, isn't it?
• 1:00:14
  Like I'm saying that people, I'm saying that people are afraid that they're going to
• 1:00:18
  come across as being full of hate for simply intellectually disagreeing with someone.
• 1:00:23
  I think they're afraid of that because that's what happens is that that's what's happening
• 1:00:27
  is.
• 1:00:28
  So, okay, cool.
• 1:00:29
  So I think we have it figured out here again at first second.
• 1:00:32
  So I agree with you and I think the reason what's holding people back from being more
• 1:00:38
  like that, like the friend of the pub is that we're seeing such a sensitivity these days
• 1:00:44
  that if you do act like that friend of the pub, you immediately get treated like you
• 1:00:49
  are the devil.
• 1:00:50
  And so I think that's, that's where we are kind of, we are agreeing on the same thing
• 1:00:55
  just coming from different points.
• 1:00:58
  And then being excluded from the group, I like the fact that you said earlier, like
• 1:01:01
  this, the threat of having someone say you're out, you're out of the tribe is keenly
• 1:01:07
  felt at the moment.
• 1:01:09
  And what that then makes me think is that we've also got this ecosystem at the moment where
• 1:01:13
  the outsiders are themselves a tribe.
• 1:01:16
  Like you mentioned Brett Weinstein, right?
• 1:01:19
  There's this whole kind of group thing going on between, you know, I think of Brett Weinstein,
• 1:01:26
  I think of Marjorie Noah's, I think of Tim Pool, I think of like people from all across
• 1:01:31
  the ideological spectrum, Dave Rubin, who have come together in this, like, we're sort
• 1:01:37
  of edgy outsiders who don't take any bullshit from the mainstream and that itself has become
• 1:01:42
  a tribe that you can get excommunicated from as the likes of, I suppose Sam Harris and
• 1:01:48
  if we were ever in it, have become excluded from.
• 1:01:52
  And so even the anti tribe becomes its own tribe and even the non-conformist becomes
• 1:01:57
  the conformist.
• 1:01:58
  It's also weird because you're right, I mean, it's all tribes, like as much as I try
• 1:02:02
  to be like, I'm tribe with, like if you had to like force me, I'd be in you and Sam's
• 1:02:07
  tribe.
• 1:02:08
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:02:09
  And now we're in a little mini tribe that's been excluded from the, from the, from the
• 1:02:13
  tribe that was excluded from the other tribes.
• 1:02:15
  It's true.
• 1:02:16
  I talked to Sam about this very topic and yeah, it's very true.
• 1:02:19
  It's very true.
• 1:02:20
  And even when I don't, no matter how hard you try to not be in a tribe, we live in, in
• 1:02:25
  a body, a human, we're humans and humans are tribal.
• 1:02:30
  And it's almost incomprehensible for us to view people in any other way.
• 1:02:34
  And that's a huge problem.
• 1:02:35
  But I do think a big part of my mission and my project in, in transcendence is, is being
• 1:02:40
  able to harness this kind of mindset that Maslow called dichotomy transcendence.
• 1:02:45
  It's not a phrase that ever caught on, but I think it's a really brilliant form of transcendence
• 1:02:52
  where we really are able to think outside of these kind of, lots of these dichotomies
• 1:02:56
  we have in our society that can be transcendent if we can just reach that kind of aspect of consciousness.
• 1:03:04
  How?
• 1:03:05
  Oh, boy.
• 1:03:07
  The, the theory is, is easier to roll off the tongue than the practical, how to.
• 1:03:12
  But, you know, so much of it is, is, is shift in perspective and, and, and start, starts
• 1:03:18
  from within really, it starts from, cultivating spiritual practices within your own self, that
• 1:03:25
  you practice on a regular basis that, that get you outside of that way of thinking.
• 1:03:29
  I mean, I'm a big fan of Sharon Salzerberg, like, she's my spiritual mentor.
• 1:03:33
  We have, like, you know, we have, like, Zoom chats, like, yeah, ask her, like, what is Sharon
• 1:03:38
  Salzerberg?
• 1:03:39
  Okay.
• 1:03:40
  Sharon Salzer is a beautiful human.
• 1:03:41
  A modern day, loving kindness, meditation, you know, really like the leader in, in, in that
• 1:03:47
  whole way of bringing that, this principle is from the Buddha to the West.
• 1:03:53
  And when I practice her loving kindness, meditations or just read her writings and stuff, I, I really
• 1:03:59
  do see the world very differently.
• 1:04:01
  I do, I find a much gentler, a much more open to multiple perspectives and other ways
• 1:04:09
  of being.
• 1:04:10
  And I really think that it's, it takes, it takes practice.
• 1:04:13
  It's just like growth itself, you have to constantly choose the growth option, love, you
• 1:04:17
  have to constantly choose love.
• 1:04:18
  And I don't, and again, I don't, I, maybe sometimes I say love and you might roll your eyes
• 1:04:22
  because you think we should have more disagreement in the world, but again, that's dichotomy
• 1:04:25
  transcendence, I think we can have this agreement and love as a higher order of construct.
• 1:04:29
  No, absolutely.
• 1:04:30
  In fact, Richard Dawkins says something that I, that I always hold dear, which is that he
• 1:04:36
  says, I respect you too much to pretend to respect your stupid opinions.
• 1:04:39
  Yeah.
• 1:04:40
  There's actually a love that, you know, if I don't give a shit about someone and I have
• 1:04:46
  total contempt for them, then I'll let their bullshit slide because it's not worth the
• 1:04:50
  fight.
• 1:04:51
  If I'm fighting with you, I am, that is an expression of love from my perspective.
• 1:04:56
  I care about you enough to, to rescue you in a way intellectually like that or to engage
• 1:05:01
  with you.
• 1:05:02
  I want it, I want to hear your push back against mine.
• 1:05:05
  You know, either I want to pull you out of an intellectual hole the way that I would
• 1:05:10
  practice tough love on a drug addict because I loved them or I respect your point of view.
• 1:05:16
  And so I want to hear your ways of pushing back against mine in order to make mine better
• 1:05:20
  or perhaps abandon mine.
• 1:05:22
  I think that's a, my sense of bullshit detection and pushback is entirely consistent with
• 1:05:29
  your conception of love.
• 1:05:31
  I agree.
• 1:05:32
  And let's just say kudos to you for creating the podcast you did and just making that even
• 1:05:37
  in the title of your podcast.
• 1:05:38
  You're like, look, this is what's going to happen here, folks, because people, you're right.
• 1:05:43
  I'm glad that someone did it, right?
• 1:05:44
  I didn't do, you know, I have a different kind of, my podcast about something a little bit
• 1:05:48
  different, but I'm glad you did this.
• 1:05:50
  Like I'm glad that this exists because we do live in this environment where it seems like
• 1:05:55
  everyone is like tiptoeing around each other.
• 1:05:58
  They're so scared of being canceled, like everyone's kind of like walking around into
• 1:06:02
  the circle of each other, no one's really engaging each other authentically.
• 1:06:06
  And they're kind of scared to engage authentically.
• 1:06:10
  And when that's what we need more in the world, we need, I would rather feel as though, and
• 1:06:15
  I personally do feel more respected when the person feels they can say anything to me.
• 1:06:21
  To me, that's a sense of, I do receive that as a sense of love and respect.
• 1:06:25
  When I feel like someone's tiptoeing around me, like they're so scared of saying anything
• 1:06:29
  to me that might hurt my feelings, then to me, that kind of signals that like, they think
• 1:06:33
  I'm like, really that week that are really like, I can't deal with the truth or I can't
• 1:06:38
  yeah, there's something very distancing there.
• 1:06:42
  If you are emperor of the world and you could snap your fingers and make one big change,
• 1:06:47
  big magical change of some kind, what would it be?
• 1:06:52
  I think it would be to create a self-actualizing society where every human on this planet has
• 1:06:58
  the opportunities to realize their full potential.
• 1:07:02
  Let me rephrase the question, here's what you get when I give you, I'm your genie and
• 1:07:07
  I respect you.
• 1:07:08
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:07:09
  You're just too big and too non-specific, you know, one thing Scott, one thing, you know,
• 1:07:14
  how they say that goal setting, you know, when you set goals for yourself, it has to
• 1:07:17
  be specific and measurable, you know, document as bullshit about world peace, you know,
• 1:07:21
  God.
• 1:07:22
  Like, what's the one, you know, you have to pull a lever and something has to happen
• 1:07:27
  in the world.
• 1:07:28
  What is that thing that happens?
• 1:07:31
  I feel like all my things are like, so broad, because I think about, you know, things
• 1:07:43
  I care deeply about in education as well, like, like, offering accessible, high quality
• 1:07:50
  education to all, is that too small or too big, is that too big as well?
• 1:07:55
  Almost, but I mean, you could probably whittle it down.
• 1:07:58
  I mean, you could say, you know, quadruple the funding of public education in America or
• 1:08:03
  you could do, it could be something related to social media that we were talking about,
• 1:08:06
  you know, change the algorithm or, you know, make Facebook never have happened or it
• 1:08:11
  could be something about, you know, the way that people, you know, prevent people from,
• 1:08:15
  but I think so much is the sort of chicken in people brains that makes them not focus on
• 1:08:19
  the negative.
• 1:08:20
  I love all those things.
• 1:08:21
  It's gratitude.
• 1:08:22
  But I think why I go back to education, if that is the, if I only get one thing, the
• 1:08:26
  point I want to try to make me, you can help me like, you know, the business plan for
• 1:08:30
  it.
• 1:08:31
  But because I know I definitely, you're, you're talking to me like an investor, right?
• 1:08:34
  An investor.
• 1:08:35
  Yeah.
• 1:08:36
  Well, what's the, the process of investing, yeah, I know exactly what you're asking me.
• 1:08:42
  I get it.
• 1:08:43
  I get it.
• 1:08:44
  And I just want to tell you where I'm coming from, my answer.
• 1:08:46
  I think that if I had to do one thing, the lever I would pull would start as young as
• 1:08:50
  possible because I think that so many people are uneducated, so many people are so ignorant,
• 1:08:56
  so many people are not, they don't know how to think in a way that has the, the, the
• 1:09:03
  announce of, announce of nuance.
• 1:09:06
  And I think education is such an important lever.
• 1:09:10
  Hmm.
• 1:09:11
  I'm, I'm trying to think about how much nuance and critical thinking skills I got from the
• 1:09:19
  school institutions of education.
• 1:09:21
  Yeah.
• 1:09:22
  High quality.
• 1:09:23
  That's why I said, yeah, if we could offer, well, you're, you're giving me the magic
• 1:09:25
  one.
• 1:09:26
  So I'm saying, you're going to have the magic.
• 1:09:27
  Yeah.
• 1:09:28
  Okay.
• 1:09:29
  All right.
• 1:09:30
  Yeah.
• 1:09:31
  High quality being defined as encouraging critical thinking, no, no, I would, I'm talking
• 1:09:39
  more like self-actualization.
• 1:09:41
  So encouraging, and I understand why you said, because I did say, you know, that there's
• 1:09:48
  so much ignorance and so on, but I, but just like high quality education, I think would
• 1:09:52
  include the component of, of, of critical thinking that would certainly be a component
• 1:09:57
  of it, but also signal for, for students that, that their own individual being matters,
• 1:10:04
  because we talked earlier about how so much of the fighting and everything stems from
• 1:10:08
  that need to matter.
• 1:10:10
  If we could create an education system where people felt within the structure of human
• 1:10:15
  knowledge, they matter, I just think later on, it would prevent so many problems.
• 1:10:19
  There you go.
• 1:10:20
  There's your spreadsheet.
• 1:10:21
  Yeah.
• 1:10:22
  There's your investor manifesto.
• 1:10:23
  I mean, I'm in.
• 1:10:24
  I'm in.
• 1:10:25
  You put me on the 100, you've got the $100 trillion.
• 1:10:29
  Scott, congratulations.
• 1:10:30
  Great.
• 1:10:31
  Okay.
• 1:10:32
  Scott, it's, it's terrific to talk to you.
• 1:10:33
  I mean, we could do this for three hours, but I have to go and do a radio show, but perhaps
• 1:10:37
  we can keep looking, looping back intermittently, because there's an enormous amount to explore,
• 1:10:42
  and I'm looking forward to being on, on your show in a few weeks.
• 1:10:46
  Can't wait to keep up with the conversation.
• 1:10:51
  Uncomfortable conversations is produced by Stefan Postuma.
• 1:10:56
  Follow me, Josh Zeps, on Twitter and Instagram, for all the latest, may your day be fruitful,
• 1:11:01
  your mind humble, your enemies generous, and your conversations perfectly, sparklingly,
• 1:11:07
  delectably, uncomfortable.