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Talented Genius · Why We Do What We Do

• 0:03
  You're listening to Why we Do what we Do? Welcome to Why we Do
• 0:16
  what we Do. I am Your Gifted host Abraham and I Am Your Talentless
• 0:20
  host Shane Talentless where a psychology podcast. We talk about the things that people
• 0:27
  do, how they do them, why they do them, and all that
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  sort of thing. Sometimes we sort of dive more into the philosophy side of
• 0:33
  things, which personally I find to be among the most interesting, but we'll
• 0:37
  couch it inside of you know, real stories of real humans and their experiences,
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  and then that way you don't feel like it's just like over your head,
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  megod philosophy arm chairings. I mean, it is a little bit of
• 0:50
  arm chairing, but you know it's grounded it in real human experience. And
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  hopefully this episode doesn't make you feel less than adequate when we talk about some
• 0:58
  of these pretty incredible feats of humans and behavior. Arguably it should make you
• 1:02
  feel even better about who you are and who you could be. I have
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  a whole sort of intro for this that we'll get into, but first we'd
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  like to say thank you so much for joining us. If you're with us
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  for the first time, we appreciate you being here. You can support us
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  by subscribing, leaving us a rating and review, of joining us on Patreon,
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  picking up some merch telling a friend, or I don't know, starting
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  a talent agency called why we do what we do talent agency and giving us
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  some amount of credit and maybe some amount of proceeds from the profits that you
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  get from that. But if you're listening to this on the day that it
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  publishes, good on you for staying up on your podcast feeds. So so
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  well, I have trouble with that myself. I would like to wish you
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  a happy National Day of the Horse horses are red. Also, it's National
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  Cocoa Day, so if you like chocolate, good day, National violin days,
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  maybe a chocolate violin would allow you to combine those two beautiful. It's
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  also National ice Cream Day, which big fan a national chocolate ice cream violin.
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  I like it. I mean chocolate and ice cream good well, beautifully
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  here, so it is pick a pathologist pal Day. Can you leborate on
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  this? What is that it's so much alliteration? First of all, it's
• 2:10
  probably what it is. It's like alliteration about something, and they decided to
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  go with pathologist, yeah, which is very specific. So this day encourages
• 2:21
  us to make friends with a pathologist or coroner because we never know what tomorrow
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  holds. What wow, wow, that is Okay, moving on, I'm
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  gonna I'm gonna make friends with the coroner just in case I see you later.
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  That's right. Please treat my my remains with respect should we meet again
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  under different circumstances. Jeez. Okay. It is also National Cream Cheese Frosting
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  Day, just to cross over the last one. I mean, I like
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  that. I'm a big red velvet fan, so that rules. It's also
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  Human Rights Week, yay. As people on the show, we definitely support
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  that. Yes, the right to be human. There's also Logger beer Week.
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  So go do that thing if that's the thing you like to do.
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  If that's your preference, I guess yeah, do it safely and responsibly,
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  we recommend. Okay, ready for this, Shane, let's do it.
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  Let's talk about a very special person. The very special person we're going to
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  talk about is named Simone Biles. She rules, She does rule. She
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  won two World Championship gold medals in twenty thirteen, when she was just sixteen
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  years old. She then won four more in twenty fourteen and for more in
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  twenty fifteen. Then she won the gold medal in all around, team,
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  vault, and floor in twenty sixteen at her first attendance of the Olympics,
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  her first time ever at the Olympics, won a gold medal in all of
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  those So just really really impressive performance for her. Absolutely, and Simone Biles
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  has achieved thirty medals across various competitions, making her the most decorated gymnast in
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  world champion in ship history. Right, that's amazing, so cool. An
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  article in USA Today talked about her quote unique combination of natural talent, hard
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  work and smart training end quote, making a pretty clear distinction between what they
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  consider to be her training and her quote unquote natural talent. Right, And
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  this might not be an oversight by the writer of this article, as most
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  people define talent as a natural aptitude. I mean, I think it's a
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  really easy thing to default to when we say, oh, yeah, they're
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  just naturally talented. So most of our sort of discerning listeners who have been
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  with us for a while, and definitely those who share a similar philosophical worldview
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  as the one we have so commonly espoused, we'll sort of already know where
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  we are going with this episode. What is talent? How do we conceptualize
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  this within a behavioral framework that we tend to bring to understanding concepts and behaviors
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  that people do. So this one, while I think deep in the philosophy
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  side of understanding human behavior, is also fairly straightforward. I think it's not
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  a lot of complication or nuance in here, and as we said, couched
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  largely in examples of real human experiences. Absolutely, so it's nice to have
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  one that's kind of more of a linear topic compared to some topics that we
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  get into sometimes, you know, we're getting ready to come up on one
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  that is a little bit ridiculous. So yes, but so much fun.
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  I guess maybe it's worth unpacking kind of what is talent? If that's the
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  first question we're going to answer, then we need to ask that question.
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  And talent is used most synonymously with other words such as skill capacity, genius,
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  ability, aptitude, giftedness, and neck which I have all of those
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  things, and they all suggest an innate power and elevated performance within an individual,
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  specifically as compared to other individuals who lack the same level of performance.
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  It's not talent if it's as good as anyone else or anyone else can do
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  it. Yes, According to the Dictionary, talent maybe as old as the
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  twelfth century, while carrying a similar meaning that it does today, and the
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  idea of giftedness derived from the archaic and yet still contemporary somehow idea that one's
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  general abilities and proclivities are a special gift granted by God or gods, depending
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  on where you're coming from, although this is not strikingly different, I think
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  from the supposing that talents are gifted to one by nature in a sort of
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  cosmic lottery of chance, that someone would receive the talent bounty, and by
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  chance it happened to be person X, someone Biles, and our previous example.
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  It's interesting that that is a very old way to look at it,
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  but also a very current way that people still look at it. And it's
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  kind of like it's change to players, you know right now. Sometimes the
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  evidence quote unquote evidence of the talent is how quickly the skill can be developed,
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  how early it is developed in someone's life, or most often, how
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  proficient the skill is performed when observed. Yes, in a survey of the
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  most talented people in history, a common list of achievers might include those such
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  as Mozart, Beethoven, Leonardo da Vinci, Sir Isaac Newton, Margaret Mitchell,
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  who for those of you who don't know, this is actually someone like
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  I was looking up famous people and this was she was on the list.
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  I actually didn't know she was the author of Gone with the Wind, but
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  she was on that list of like talented people, Juditt Polgar who is a
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  grand chess master, Michael Angelo, and Hussein Bolt. For any of those
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  who are not familiar with any of the names I listed, essentially this is
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  a long list of musicians, artists, painters, mathematicians, athletes, and
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  I guess grand chess player as one. Yeah, gamers right, yes.
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  And writers have expounded that, for example, da Vinci had a quote hypertrophy
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  of the visual function end quote, which is to say, they supposed that
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  the reason he was so good is that he had an especially pristine eye and
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  vision, and that Mozart was endowed with supernatural hearing ability and that was what
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  allowed him to be so good at producing music as his excellent ears super interesting.
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  Yeah, Or that that Newton's brilliance was quote a grand sport of nature.
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  End quote, meaning he essentially possessed nearly superhuman ability. It was some
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  it was supernatural, it was exceeding what humans would normally be capable of.
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  This is the idea that's sort of embedded in that. I love though that
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  people will write something like that where Mozart will be you know, because he
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  had supernatural hearing abilities, that's why he was so talented. But that totally
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  negates what Beethoven does. Yes, yeah, thinking about you're like, wait
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  a second, like, how how did he come out? It's like,
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  maybe Beethoven had a really great knack for putting pianos on floors. That's what
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  That's what it was. That's what it was. He's like, he's like,
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  you know what, you know what my talent is. I hate piano
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  legs, so we're gonna just lay these pianos on the ground. But while
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  talent is often used to describing skills in the arts or athleticism, it can
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  also be applied to a manner of proficiency, including speaking, building, fixing,
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  all sorts of skills like that, although of course that skill has to
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  be above average level of performance to be referred to as a talent. Yes.
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  Similarly embedded in talent and skill is this idea of genius creativity? More
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  broadly, intelligence, We did a whole series on intelligence for those of you
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  or the are with us, or whether or not you were, we did
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  well be landing on a very similar place here as we did in our discussion
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  about intelligence, which you'll sort of see as we unpack the rest of this,
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  right, and in another topic related to this specific thing is circular reasoning.
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  So how do we know Biles is talented? Well, because she is
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  the most decorated gymnast in the world championship history. Why is she the most
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  decorated because she has so much talent? And so you kind of start seeing
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  it like the snake eating its own tail when you start discussing this stuff,
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  it's like the cause begets the effect, which begets the cause, and the
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  evidence of the cause is the effect. The explanation for the effect is the
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  cause. So none of that makes sense when you really get into it.
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  Yeah, just philosophically speaking, you can't use the effect of something to assume
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  the cause and then justify the cause by pointing to the effect. Right again,
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  grass is green because of its greenness. That's not why it's green.
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  That doesn't make any sense, right exactly the logic is flawed, is a
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  logical fallacy. Yes, so talent is perceived to be something we either get
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  or we don't get by many people. If we'd sort of couch it inside
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  of that idea of it being natural innate, endowed in us from birth or
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  by our genes, or by nature the cosmic lottery of chance. Many of
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  course, do seem to implicitly refer to talent as something that you're good at
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  because you've worked at it. But it is implied even in those spaces that
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  at least some amount of talent is kind of luck of the draw, but
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  it is good that the person works at it too. You know, they're
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  sort of saying, like, you're so talented. You know, you got
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  lucky that you got to be so talented. Good for you, and it's
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  great that you work at this just in case it's not granted non contingently to
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  you. At least it's good that you can do continue to practice, otherwise
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  that innate talent might go away, right right, Yeah, you know it's
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  like just in case. What an oxymoron of a statement. I know,
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  in't that wild to think about? It is fascinating too to think that like
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  there is a divine intervention where like somebody gives you talent but then like totally
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  just screw somebody else over. And also this idea of like raw talent,
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  like the idea that raw talent exists, which means that you would have to
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  mind talent or like process talent, or that you need like a talent refinery
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  to make your talent work. Yeah, and again presumably thinking about what that
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  means is sort of as we said that like when someone someone is likely to
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  call something talent, it has to be in excess of what you might expect
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  from your average performer, right, possibly even among you know, the top
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  possible performances as ranked by somebody who's doing some metric against which they're comparing that
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  performance to others, right, you know, the fastest or the longest or
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  the highest or whatever you know metric they might use. So that's that's one
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  aspect of it, and then the other is just looking at like that looks
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  so competent, right, so competent, you know, and then without considering
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  how did we get there? You know, I can't do this quadruple backflip
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  from a standing position like some owe bios can do not yet That's the point
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  is like, does that mean that that she can just do this because she's
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  she can do it, she's lucky, she's got the genes for it.
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  Is I mean I just can't because I was just unlucky. I just didn't
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  get the genes for it. And that's that's exactly it. It's just like
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  people look at the performance itself and then call that talent is a descriptive term,
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  a reaction to a highly proficient performance. And I do like the idea
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  that your new Year's resolution is to learn gym routines, like gymnast routines so
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  that you can outcompete Simone Biles and you're flipping and you're doing the floor routines
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  and I don't know your song. I feel like your song would be booty
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  Leticious at the at the Olympics, and you would you would do the flips
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  and the cart wheels and you would stick the landing and it would be it
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  would be absolutely beautiful. Never mind that I'm like twelve years or senior,
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  But listen, talent. If it's raw talent, then it doesn't matter when
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  you mind it. And how would we know? But suppose that we mind
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  the opposite of raw talents, which is ads. Okay, so we listened
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  to I mean, you know, it takes some amount of talents to make
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  ads. You got people, which is to say, we're using that term
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  very loosely. Now, it takes some amount of proficiency to make ads.
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  You got people who spent time doing that sort of thing, and and there
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  their whole stick in life is to u just ruin the in everyone's day.
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  Yeah, just kidding, so rude. They're going to pay to do a
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  job. It's you know, everybody's doing the thing. It's the people who
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  make the choices that pay for that person to do that terrible job that we
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  should be angry at. You know, that's a lot of time spent talking
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  about ads. What is the answer when we're talking about talent here? How
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  do we talk about talent and how these people got so talented? Right?
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  So let's I think start by pointing out what is known about the list of
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  famously talented people from the earlier discussion, As one Sir Isaac Newton biographer discussed,
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  Newton came from a family of utterly unremarkable people who achieved very little.
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  But Newton would shut himself up in his room and work for days or weeks
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  on end on his experiments and math equations, rejecting food, rejecting sleep,
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  and definitely socialization. He's not known for being a very social person. No,
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  is not in favor of working and learning NonStop. And as Newton recalled
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  in response to praise for his talents, he said, quote I had no
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  special sagacity, only the power of patient thought end quote. Yes, and
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  this seems like a good time to unpack a vocab word here. Yeah,
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  So what is sagacity? Ti? Yeah, So sagacity essentially refers to keen
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  mental performance, shrewdness, or cleverness. You think of sagacity as being someone
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  not just who's particularly bright or intelligent, but is like discerning that they can
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  use their intellect in a clever and thoughtful and maybe strategic way. Right,
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  So, first of all, you're never gonna hear me say that word again,
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  like ever. It's a good word, it's a good word. But
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  I'm I just know that I will never say that again because of how much
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  I just struggled with it. I'm going to write it in every episode now,
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  and I'm going to be like, what is this word again. Basically,
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  what he was saying was that he was no smart than anyone else.
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  You just spent a lot of time thinking about things, which you know,
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  I mean you want to talk about context and opportunity something to think about,
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  yeah, And I mean you could call that being humble, But I also
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  think that he was self reflecting in a meaningful and important way in understanding what
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  contributed to the production that he was able to engage in is that he just
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  he spent a lot of time on this stuff. You know, most people
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  were not locking themselves in their rooms learning as much as they could do in
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  experiments and math equations and thinking through things. He was uniquely so relative to
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  pretty much everyone that was around him. So that is a very relevant factor
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  and trying to understand how did he get to the point at which he was
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  this prolific mathematician, one of at the time smartest people in the entire world,
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  possibly still you know, could be considered relative to many others. Right.
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  A historian of Beethoven discovered in Beethoven's notes and leftover materials that Beethoven scrapped
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  and rewrote his compositions as many as twenty times. He worked at and constantly
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  revised his work, just over and over again into landing on exactly the composition
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  he liked. You know, he never accepted anything but the best he thought
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  he was capable of doing. But it took dozens or more attempts to get
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  there. Where he would write something and then he would rewrite it, and
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  then he'd you know, fiddle with it and change it and omit it and
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  scrap it and rewrite it and revi Isaac constantly and over and over again.
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  And it was not this like he just sat down at the piano and cranked
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  out these masterful compositions. He spent tons of time revising every performance that he
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  that he developed as a musician myself. I think that's something that's really fascinating
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  to look at, is that some people, some musicians will write something and
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  never look at it again. They will, they'll write it, they'll put
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  it out, they'll never they'll never touch it again, they won't revise it.
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  And then other musicians will do that. I am of the of the
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  former where I will write something, I'm like, I don't want touch that
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  again, because if I touch it, I'm gonna overwork it and I'll mess
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  that up. Whereas Beethoven it'll be like, Nah, we're gonna, we're
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  gonna get this. I'm gonna I'm gonna make this a finely tuned thing.
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  And I think and you see that too with authors, right, So Margaret
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  Mitchell would write and rewrite chapters Have Gone with the Wind over and over again
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  to get the exact sentiment or story that she wanted to best move the book
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  along, and reportedly she would rewrite entire chapters as many as thirty times before
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  being satisfied and ready to move on. That's a lot of writing. That's
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  a whole lot like that talk about overworking, Like after you've rewritten the same
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  chapter the fifth time and you're like, great, only twenty five more to
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  go, you know, and uh huh, that's so much work. That's
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  so much work that in itself is a book. Yeah, right exactly.
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  The rewrites themselves are a single book. Yeah. If you wrote that chapter
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  once but did thirty versions of it, you know you have a book length
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  treatment of a story. Right. It is that amount of work that goes
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  into it. In response to praise for his work, Michaelangelo responded, quote,
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  I'm lucky that toxic waste colloquially referred to as Ooz mutated my body into
• 18:33
  the perfect crime fighting machine. Wrong. Michael Angelo. Also he had a
• 18:40
  sense who trained him ruguorously in the martial arts, so you know for sure
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  there was that the original Michael Angelo, the painter of the Sistine Chapel and
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  sculptor of the Statue of David, among many others. He said about how
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  impressive and inexplicable his mastery quote if people knew how hard I have worked to
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  gain my mastery, it would not seem wonderful at all. Quote and again
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  really show that he puts so much time and work and effort into carefully honing
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  his his art, his skill, his products, to the point where he
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  said, like, the amount of time I've spent on this would make it
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  seem like this is a mundane skill, right, possibly someone, And I
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  think the sentiment he sort of was communicating there is that if someone had spent
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  as much time on this as I have, they might be even better than
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  I am. Like I just you know, I've spent a lot of time
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  on it and most people haven't. But that doesn't mean I'm actually any good
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  at this. I've just worked really hard at it. Right. I think
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  that's really important, and you'll see that as we kind of go forward.
• 19:36
  So Simone Biles practices twice a day, three days a week, and once
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  a day two days per week, only ever taking one day off. So
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  she practices a lot. Yeah, and she practices upwards of seven hours per
• 19:48
  day and uses some of the best trainers in the world. So when we
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  say, like, you know, maybe you do something twice a day,
• 19:55
  three days a week, you're like, yeah, that doesn't seem like a
• 19:56
  lot. Some of those days are seven hour days. Yeah, it's like
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  a full day of work, not days seven hour practice sessions like seven hour
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  p I mean this is effectively her job now, right, Like she's getting
• 20:07
  paid to do this thing. That's exactly it gets up and goes, I
• 20:11
  have to go to work, where she then goes and just trains at the
• 20:12
  gym for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, right, and
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  it shows, it really shows absolutely you consider this, would any of us
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  be able to perform at the level of these experts given a similar level of
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  training and dedication. Likely, yeah, like likely we would. We would.
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  We probably make sort of a different version of whatever they made, given
• 20:33
  you know, whatever the place they were at in their circumstance relative to whatever
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  place we would have been at in our circumstance coming at it, but we
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  would have done so with a comparable level of skill and acuity. So yeah,
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  I mean, I think just so, sort of to Michaelangelo's point,
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  like, if I had spent as much time working on sculpting and painting and
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  the things that he did, would I have been able to do something as
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  good as some of those works? Very possibly, you know, right,
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  very probably. In fact, I'd probably would make something different. It wouldn't
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  look exactly like his day, but I could do some with equal a plom
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  you know. Right. It is the amount of work he spending it,
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  And I think that that's something that's really important to consider in looking at these
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  performances, right, I mean, it's that whole Watson thing. Right,
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  I could take any baby and make him a surgeon or whatever I want him
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  to be, right, Like, you know, that's kind of how he
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  said it. I know he said it in jest, but like that's the
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  idea is that when you when you have an organism that has the same set
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  of circumstances, the same set of opportunities, the same set the same amount
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  of time, like or at least like the just a basic opportunity repetition,
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  you could possibly get to that same level or a similar enough level that it's
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  comparable. Yeah, and there are also those of us that produce things that
• 21:38
  some other people really enjoy but aren't particularly difficult to make. Nickelback comes to
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  mind, right, specifically in music that people really enjoy it, but it
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  takes very little work or imagination to create. Yeah. Honestly, a lot
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  of pop music is like that too. When you listen to pop music,
• 21:53
  you kind of get into it. You're like, oh, that's the same
• 21:55
  chord yea as every other song musically not interesting, no, not even not
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  even clothes just got a really catchy hook and a really good aesthetic. And
• 22:04
  there are those two who like they aren't actually very good at singing, but
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  like computers can auttune their voice, so they sort of show up and sort
• 22:12
  of wail into a microphone and then the engineers can make it sound like this
• 22:17
  beautiful vocalization. Now, I think most professional singers actually do receive specific training
• 22:23
  and coaching, and like they do get good at actual singing, But you
• 22:26
  don't necessarily only have to be right we've got the technology for anybody to walk
• 22:30
  into a studio and produce something that's effectively a gold record level quality in terms
• 22:37
  of how much it could possibly sell. Not that they're any good at music
• 22:41
  in any way, we've just developed it. We've lowered the bar of entry
• 22:45
  to all you have to do is have a pulse. Essentially, It's been
• 22:48
  real rough on music for some of us out here. Yeah, So all
• 22:51
  this is to say, as a sort of a main thesis here that will
• 22:53
  sort of keep coming back to, is that people who are exceptionally good at
• 22:56
  things work exceptionally hard at the those things. Michael Jordan lamented later in his
• 23:02
  life how often people treated his skill as if it were a God given gift,
• 23:07
  and this just ignored and he talked about this, it ignored the colossal
• 23:10
  amount of time he's been practicing all day every day as a child and throughout
• 23:14
  his career. Even when he was in the professional he was still practicing with
• 23:18
  a trainer for like five hours a day. And he said, we limit
• 23:22
  ourselves by believing that greatness must be borne into us instead of earned through hard
• 23:26
  work and dedication. Essentially saying, you know, people who assume that I'm
• 23:30
  good at this because I'm just good at it, are selling themselves short that
• 23:34
  they could also be as good at it or better if they put in this,
• 23:37
  you know, similar level of work. But he would sit outside and
• 23:41
  just practice throwing baskets, you know, for hours when he was when he
• 23:45
  was younger, and then you know, just kept on training throughout his life.
• 23:48
  And that is ultimately the argument for equitable practices around resources, right,
• 23:52
  I mean, that is the argument is that you never know how good somebody
• 23:56
  or how much talent somebody could have if they never have the opportunity to even
• 24:00
  do the thing. I hear that a lot about like the arts. In
• 24:03
  having arts in schools, It's like there are kids that will never be exposed
• 24:07
  to the opportunity to practice the arts because their public schools are not going to
• 24:11
  allow it, or there's no programs locally. So we may have the next
• 24:15
  Michelangelo or the next Banksy or the next Picasso or whoever it is, the
• 24:19
  next free to Collo. They may exist in some neighborhood where the arts can
• 24:25
  ever get to it because there's no equitable practice around this. And I think
• 24:27
  that's a really important thing. That's maybe something that we're going to land on
• 24:30
  later, but I think it's important to kind of talk about when we start
• 24:33
  talking about hard work and dedication, sometimes that only exists based on opportunity.
• 24:37
  Yeah, and I think arguabilate to that point. It does exist in every
• 24:41
  neighborhood. But the circumstances never prevail to foster that kind of skill, right,
• 24:45
  someone who might be an extraordinary virtuo, So a violin never picks up
• 24:51
  a violin. But honestly, that could have been anybody, because anybody with
• 24:55
  us, or with the right amount of training and coaching and development in practice,
• 24:59
  as far as know, anybody can get good at these things, right.
• 25:03
  Absolutely, so, the remarkable singers of our time spend tens or hundreds
• 25:07
  of thousands of dollars on vocal coaches and know how to do warm up and
• 25:11
  practice exercises to ensure the best possible performance of their vocal cords. They practice
• 25:15
  consistently, constantly and under the guidance of rigorously trained professionals, and even do
• 25:19
  physical exercises to ensure that their diaphragms are in optimal condition. I mean,
• 25:23
  even Ozzy Osbourne talked about the workout regimen that he would do just to go
• 25:27
  on tour. Yeah, right, the amount of cardio that he would do,
• 25:30
  Yeah, it is pretty wild. So for her performance of the Sound
• 25:33
  of Music at the Oscars, Lady Gagat trained with a coach every day for
• 25:37
  six months. This is from someone who was already a well established and highly
• 25:41
  competent performer. She's still trained and trained and trained just on that performance.
• 25:45
  Like that was the amount of work it took. And I mean it was.
• 25:49
  It was an incredible performance and well regarded and lauded by critics and many
• 25:53
  people alike. But like that wasn't just out of the blue. It is
• 25:57
  like, oh, I should sit down and play the song and then did
• 26:00
  it. It took tons of work. Like if you can imagine like a
• 26:03
  five minute performance, you're gonna spend five minutes on this thing and then spend
• 26:07
  the next half a year. Like at the time that this this episode comes
• 26:11
  out like this, you know this coming June, you will have practiced enough
• 26:17
  where you're practicing every day, every single day. You're practicing this for one
• 26:22
  like five minute little performance. Then you'll do at the end of the whole
• 26:25
  thing. Like that's incredible dedication for a pretty small output. I mean,
• 26:30
  right, obviously she got paid a lot of money, was well regarded,
• 26:33
  lots of people, you know, heaping praise on her, But the overall
• 26:36
  performance itself was six months worth of work for five minutes worth of right of
• 26:41
  output. Right, And it takes that level of distillation of skill and practice
• 26:45
  to produce that level of competency and a performance. And just as another example,
• 26:51
  Penn of Penn and Teller has frequently discussed that they practice their routines up
• 26:55
  to hundreds of times before they take them on stage, and he said they
• 26:57
  get so fluent and proficient at their trick they are literally thinking about other things
• 27:02
  while performing some of the tricks, including dialogue. And he has said that
• 27:04
  they are so well choreographed in time that they know that as if like kind
• 27:08
  of second nature. How much time they have to grab a snack off stage
• 27:11
  while the other is performing. I mean, that's pretty impressive stuff. It
• 27:17
  is a well oiled, tightly dialed performance that they give, and they know
• 27:22
  how to do it because they have practiced it so incredibly extensively. They are
• 27:26
  just very very very fluent at what they do. Right. It's really the
• 27:30
  more useful question in understanding where this comes from is implied by this discussion we've
• 27:33
  just had is how it is it developed, and essentially is as we've described.
• 27:38
  It is developed through this incredible amount of practice and hard work, dedication,
• 27:44
  often coaching, access to resources that allows you to do those things,
• 27:48
  Having the ability to spend time on this, which again restricts a lot of
• 27:51
  people who do not have the means to spend that kind of time on one
• 27:55
  particular activity or performance. And you know, look at us, how did
• 27:59
  we get so good at podcast? We've recorded three hundred and forty plus episodes.
• 28:03
  Arguably we're not good at it. Yeah, and maybe we'll get there
• 28:07
  after you know, ten thousand episodes. Maybe that's the trick one day.
• 28:11
  I mean also, and also just to kind of just like for full transparency
• 28:15
  sake, it takes hours of work per episode, reading and shading to put
• 28:19
  together a single hour of content every week. Yes, there is practice and
• 28:22
  hard work. I mean, it helps that we're both really brilliant, but
• 28:26
  that's neither here nor there. That's our raw talent speaking. No, but
• 28:29
  we do actually do a lot of work. We do a lot of work
• 28:32
  behind the scenes to make these episodes as good as they are. And it's
• 28:33
  a lot of practice. I mean for the three hundred and forty episodes,
• 28:37
  it's hours of work in each episode. It is, that's true, it
• 28:40
  is. It is a high level of work, just still done until like
• 28:42
  forty five minutes to an hour of content. And to your point, you
• 28:45
  know, we also spend way too much money and in just an enormous amount
• 28:51
  of time, stress and misery going to grad school. You know, we
• 28:56
  went to grad school for years and years and years and years in years,
• 29:00
  reading, studying, you know, being coached and guided by our mentors,
• 29:03
  writing, experimenting, and like all of those things sort of shaped up where
• 29:08
  we're at and as we're tuning our own horn. You know, this also
• 29:11
  didn't come from nowhere. We're lucky enough that we could go to grad school.
• 29:15
  Many people never find themselves in that circumstance, right, And we're lucky
• 29:18
  enough to have the kind of mentors and people around us that shaped us into
• 29:22
  the people that we are, with the kinds of skills that we have.
• 29:25
  And I think there are a lot of people who are much better at this
• 29:27
  than we are. But you know, I think that we are good at
• 29:30
  what we do on this particular podcast. But talent is worked at I think
• 29:33
  that's sort of the main point here is talents that worked at now quick quick
• 29:37
  noteing. We've got the paid version of Hulu, but it's like the lowest
• 29:41
  tier. And somehow when you have the paid version of Hulu, they still
• 29:45
  throw ads at you. And this just the other day, went to go
• 29:48
  watch a show and I actually put on the wrong episode. Had to sit
• 29:52
  through like two minutes of ads before I realized it was the wrong episode.
• 29:56
  So I went to go put on the right episode, had to sit through
• 29:59
  another two minutes as before I realized that that was the wrong episode, found
• 30:02
  the correct episode and started and had to set through another two minutes of ads.
• 30:06
  It was like six minutes of my life I wasted on these ads.
• 30:10
  You pernicious bastards, and yet we have to do it to you. I'm
• 30:14
  so sorry, listeners, will be right back. I eat going hard after
• 30:25
  the advertisers today, going hard, the ones that are paying us for stuff,
• 30:29
  the ones that are paying us. But you know, you know,
• 30:32
  we talked. We recently did an episode on influencers and how much they make
• 30:34
  and if you were to look if we were to look at exactly our ad
• 30:37
  numbers and then guess how much you make from advertising by being an influencer,
• 30:41
  it would be almost nothing. But nottheless, we do appreciate what little,
• 30:47
  what few scraps they throw at us because it does it does help. It
• 30:49
  allows us to do something and continue to do this podcast. We really do
• 30:53
  appreciate our patreons and if you like this show, you can join them over
• 30:56
  there. We'll talk more about more about that at the end of this discussion.
• 31:00
  Let's instead move on to what role does nature play and helping us be
• 31:04
  talented performers. I would imagine that if you're listening to this episode and you're
• 31:07
  going, I am not the same build or structure and do not have the
• 31:14
  same genetic features as Simone Biles, Like for me, I'm six foot three.
• 31:18
  She is much shorter than me, which makes her an ideal candidate for
• 31:22
  being a gymnast and me makes me a small forward in the NBA. If
• 31:26
  that really good comparison. Very different, very different kind of structures, but
• 31:33
  we can acknowledge it. In comparing the expectations of people with disabilities to people
• 31:36
  without, there would be those discrepancies and the ability to do certain skills in
• 31:40
  general, depending on the skill set. Another way, some people will have
• 31:44
  an easier or more difficult time with some skills, depending on whether or not
• 31:47
  they have a physical condition that might make some skills more difficult. Someone who
• 31:51
  is born without vision will have a more difficult time learning to drive than someone
• 31:55
  who's born with vision, considering the technology that is available today. This may
• 31:59
  change in the future with advancements and stuff like that, as more of those
• 32:02
  activities become more accessible to folks that are born with disabilities. But yeah,
• 32:07
  just exactly that. As you compare those features, you know, we must
• 32:09
  have the requisite physiological features to do certain things. No human being can survive
• 32:15
  in the vacuum of space unprotected by some kind of clothing for more than a
• 32:19
  few minutes. No human can flap their arms fast enough or in a skilled
• 32:22
  enough orientation that they're able to achieve lift off and fly through the air unaided
• 32:27
  by other technology. Right, so no one will be good at flying.
• 32:30
  Yet this is a simple activity for a bird or a bat or a flying
• 32:34
  insect, for whom they barely need to work on this behavior to be able
• 32:37
  to perform it with ease and fluency. Some of them don't even have a
• 32:40
  centralized brain, and yet they're able to do this thing that is completely beyond
• 32:45
  what humans are capable of doing because their physiology allows that kind of behavior to
• 32:50
  have developed so effortlessly. Right, So, an animal born with a capability
• 32:53
  of flying, but never given a chance to develop the skill, or existing
• 32:57
  in an environment where it can never be used, still will not fly,
• 33:00
  no matter how easy or naturally occurring it is for them. So if they
• 33:04
  have the capability but they don't get the chance to develop it, they don't
• 33:07
  live in a space where they can, they simply can't do it, even
• 33:10
  if it is easy for them. Yeah, I mean. And as an
• 33:13
  example of this, some experiments have done this with birds. This would not
• 33:16
  be considered ethical today. This was back in like the thirties or forties or
• 33:20
  something, but they kept birds from being able to fly during their early development
• 33:24
  and just that all they ever did was walk around. They were completely restricted
• 33:29
  from ever flying. And then what happened is they let loose a dog or
• 33:32
  a cat and the bird simply ran away and hit It didn't try to fly
• 33:37
  because it didn't know how, like it never had learned. Even though flying
• 33:40
  is so easy and natural for them normally, they do still have to work
• 33:44
  at it. But they could not fly away, even to save their own
• 33:46
  lives when threatened by one of these creatures. And I don't think that they
• 33:51
  let the animals kill the bird. Again, this is a long time ago,
• 33:53
  but I'm hoping that they didn't. But really, the point being that,
• 33:57
  like that thing that looks effortless for them is still something they have to
• 34:01
  develop. As far as we know. This is even true for like as
• 34:04
  simple an organism as a spider. Like if we put them in a situation
• 34:07
  where they cannot get their web to stick to anything, will they still be
• 34:12
  able to form a competent web when they later in life, when they're finally
• 34:15
  given access to a thing. I mean, I don't know if anyone's done
• 34:16
  that experiment, but that is something that they practice and they get better at,
• 34:21
  and they practice and they practice and they practice, and it does look
• 34:23
  easy and effortless for them. But their biology is set up for that sort
• 34:27
  of thing. Right. Even if I excreted sticky stuff from my abdomen,
• 34:30
  I don't know that I'd be able to form a very good web unless I
• 34:32
  practice at it for a while, but eventually I'd be able to. I
• 34:36
  would be very uncomfortable if you did that. Yeah, that is understandable.
• 34:39
  Yeah, you don't go in my don't go on my on my abdomen web
• 34:44
  web, Nope, don't like it. Now. No other animals have demonstrated
• 34:47
  the use of language in the way or to the extent that humans use language,
• 34:51
  and I think that's kind of something that is going to play a unique
• 34:53
  role in all of this as well. Humans learn to speak with barely any
• 34:58
  direct teaching at all, so we start kind of babbling and making noise almost
• 35:01
  from the womb. I mean, we are a vocal species. Yeah,
• 35:05
  there is something about the arrangement of our vocal cords and features of our brains
• 35:07
  that allow us to develop speech early and easily. And I think that's I
• 35:12
  think that's something to consider when we start talking about the fact that not every
• 35:15
  human speaks. Yeah, well exactly, we've seen that people who are prevented
• 35:21
  from speaking early in life may have difficulty ever learning to speak later in life,
• 35:24
  even though it is generally very easy for us to do. Is that
• 35:28
  there is during our development we'd start to learn and develop these things, And
• 35:32
  the longer we go without doing that as part of our development, the harder
• 35:37
  it is for us to then pick it up later, because at that point
• 35:39
  we have sort of formed other habits around how we use our vocal cords in
• 35:44
  our mouths, and we don't get an opportunity for practice and feedback, such
• 35:46
  that the practice and feedback we get then is a lot more difficult to mold
• 35:52
  because it's now trying to overcome other other habits and probably some amount of atrophy
• 35:55
  honestly, like a lack of the opportunity, you know, lack of muscle
• 36:00
  development, lack of coordination of the vocal cords and the lips and the tongue
• 36:04
  that they've just never been able to use. And it's really difficult. And
• 36:06
  so even though it seems fairly early are fairly easy for humans to do is
• 36:09
  to produce the speech thing, and it is generally if restricted from doing so,
• 36:14
  then we don't do it. So again, it's one of those things
• 36:16
  that it still must have an opportunity to develop, right, But excluding physical
• 36:22
  restriction or skill development, why then are some people better at skills such as
• 36:24
  drawing or musical instruments or math or whatever, when presumably they had the same
• 36:30
  opportunity as someone else trying to learn that skill, who has a more difficult
• 36:34
  time with it. So there are some times in situations where both, like
• 36:37
  multiple people have the same opportunity to engage in a skill, and one excels
• 36:42
  over the other person despite the fact that they've had the same opportunity, they
• 36:45
  have the same resources, the same ability to do those things, at least
• 36:51
  it seems so, you know, we observe that some people do pick up
• 36:53
  some skills more easily than others. We simply can't we observe that, like,
• 36:59
  right, I think people who need to do this will have been yelling
• 37:01
  at this, saying, like, what about people who you know, they
• 37:04
  the first time they try it, they do you know, they start to
• 37:06
  pick it up really quickly. Right, And there are some scenarios where people
• 37:09
  have a slight edge in their physiology that allows them to capitalize on training more
• 37:14
  so than another might, but it's it's likely almost imperceptibly minuscule what edge they
• 37:21
  get from their overall physiology. The important part here is how they got to
• 37:25
  the point where they could pick up that habit or that skill or that performance.
• 37:30
  What got them to that point first? Right, And I think every
• 37:36
  skiller performance is comprised of dozens or hundreds or even thousands of other smaller foundational
• 37:40
  skills. Even people who seem to learn things effortlessly, we must account for
• 37:45
  the what other skills they had already established before, assuming that any of their
• 37:49
  performance was natural. If you want to understand what role nature plays. So
• 37:52
  far, no one has done this as far as we know. I mean,
• 37:55
  you think about skills like awareness of of body positioning or sensations like just
• 38:01
  propius have to feedback, and some people can pick that up. Some people
• 38:07
  can visualize and calculate the arch of the ball they're throwing. And that's why
• 38:12
  you have Steph Curry who can sink so many threes from every single part of
• 38:15
  the basketball court because he practices so much. But one of the micro skills
• 38:22
  that's in that is being able to see and identify and visualize angles for the
• 38:27
  trajectory of the ball. So that comes with practice, but he's like it's
• 38:30
  like a specific skill set that he's got. It's unbelievable watching him. I've
• 38:35
  heard this about like some of those really professional pool players that they they're so
• 38:37
  good at visualizing angles and like understanding sort of momentum and how that contributes to
• 38:44
  movement around you know, the board and angles and that that that is essentially
• 38:49
  why they're so good at it. But again, they do practice this a
• 38:52
  lot, like a lot, a lot a lot. So what I'm saying
• 38:54
  here, I guess is that like someone who actually does have better than average
• 38:59
  vision, better than average hearing, for some reason, their muscles are strung
• 39:01
  up in such a way that they're like but pretty reactive, fast and recover
• 39:06
  quickly, like, they will have that edge where when given the opportunity to
• 39:10
  practice and train, it does look a little easier for them. Right,
• 39:15
  That is a little bit of sort of luck of the draw. But there's
• 39:16
  no skill that they can develop that they would not have been good at if
• 39:21
  they had not had the opportunity to try. Right again, the edge that
• 39:24
  it gives is relatively minor. What right talents, what proficiency, what ability
• 39:30
  they gain comes from practice, coaching, feedback, and all of those micro
• 39:36
  skills that got them there in the first place. If you can imagine,
• 39:38
  like a chess prodigy, have we accounted for every spatial task they've ever done
• 39:45
  that could allow them to visualize and plan ahead? Have we accounted for every
• 39:49
  activity where they had to construct or play in something that they will have ever
• 39:52
  practiced and done where they got feedback and routine and have it around that before
• 39:57
  they ever saw a chessboard. Have we ruled out the fact that they've never
• 40:00
  seen or heard of any game or competition before where they could possibly understand the
• 40:05
  rules, Like, No, we haven't done that. We don't know all
• 40:07
  the skills that they have fostered and developed the first time that they sit down
• 40:12
  and learn chess such that then they were able to capitalize on their learning experiences
• 40:15
  in that moment faster than someone who did not have those same experiences that they
• 40:21
  had going into that scenario, who then is trying to capitalize on a less
• 40:24
  robust history that would facilitate them being good at that skill. No one's done
• 40:30
  that analysis, and I don't think that we will we can, because you'd
• 40:32
  have to follow someone every minute of every day and then also try and understand
• 40:37
  the relative importance of every experience that they have. So like, it's I
• 40:40
  think an impossible question answer and we'll get to I think another philosophical question that
• 40:45
  helps us understand why we just need to be conservative about this approach. But
• 40:50
  you know, the overall the sort of short takeaway from that is just that
• 40:53
  it is not something that we can explicitly understand what kind of advantage is granted
• 41:01
  to you by nature, except to say that we know that it's got to
• 41:05
  be small. Like you got to have the physiological basis for it, but
• 41:08
  you also have to have the opportunity experience and opportunity for practice to get good
• 41:13
  at it. Researchers exploring the development of a particular set of skills, and
• 41:17
  an example I'm looking at here it was typing skills described quote the whole process
• 41:22
  of learning as the gradual building up of hierarchical habits end quote, which I
• 41:27
  think it says this beautifully. Well, Yeah, that talks about the fact
• 41:30
  that some habits are sort of clumped together versions of smaller habits, and that
• 41:35
  those then contribute to a sort of clump together version of a slightly more larger
• 41:38
  habit, and it just keeps building and building until you have what looks like
• 41:43
  highly competent performance that started as many individual, smaller foundational steps right well,
• 41:49
  and I think to add to that, like it's also there's so much contextual
• 41:52
  stuff to go into that that make those variables that are just you can't account
• 41:57
  for all of them. So like as the example that I was kind of
• 41:59
  thinking about as we were talking about this was that I tend to try to
• 42:01
  be pretty humble about stuff. But one thing I was really good at when
• 42:05
  I was playing baseball was I was a good hitter. And so to kind
• 42:07
  of establish that discussion I had going into playing baseball in high school, I
• 42:13
  had my vision test and I had twenty fifteen visions. So I had really
• 42:16
  good vision, you know, I practiced and just just kind of like the
• 42:20
  physiological parts right. I could swing a baseball bat quickly, I was strong
• 42:22
  enough to swing a baseball bat as a certain size. I could see really
• 42:27
  well, and that all made for me. That kind of primed me for
• 42:30
  being a good hitter. But I also played baseball from the time that I
• 42:34
  was four. I played all year round. I preferred hitting and batting versus
• 42:37
  fielding. I was playing against kids my age all year who had, like,
• 42:44
  you know, I'd seen all different types of pitches. I was trained
• 42:46
  to identify different pitches when they were released from the pitcher's hand, so you
• 42:50
  could see the difference between curveball versus a slider versus baseball with a snap judgment.
• 42:54
  I mean, you're talking about fluency proficiency opportunity, and why I was
• 43:00
  batting so well is because I was playing literally all year round. I was
• 43:02
  practicing multiple times a day, every day for years. By the time I
• 43:07
  got to high school. Not to mention the copius amount of steroids you were
• 43:08
  taking, I was taking so many steroids, like Barry Bonds was my hero,
• 43:13
  you know, and so walking into ninth grade with a full beard and
• 43:17
  uh and just like just mad at everybody testicles the size of baseball I got.
• 43:22
  Yeah, it was. It was a wild time. I'm so glad
• 43:25
  I got off of those. I think it's one of those things where when
• 43:28
  you kind of put all that together, you go, Okay, there's so
• 43:30
  many other variables to look at. Like I lived in the South, where
• 43:34
  I could play baseball all year round. Somebody up north can't. Yeah,
• 43:37
  you know, I played with the same kids, so I got exposed to
• 43:38
  the same pitches over and over and over again, so that I kind of
• 43:42
  knew what to predict. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of things
• 43:44
  that kind of go into that that that you know, it's really difficult to
• 43:45
  pin down over you're talking twelve years of learning history before I entered high school,
• 43:51
  or before I got to that point where I was batting like that,
• 43:52
  I mean, your point about the North South thing explains why the Yankees are
• 43:55
  so bad. Oh my god, boohooo, just kidding, just kidding.
• 44:01
  I got so mad. I got so mad I hit my mic But no,
• 44:04
  I mean I don't care about the Yankees. Everybody hates the Yankee.
• 44:07
  I actually have no feelings about Yankees at all. I just couldn't think of
• 44:10
  another baseball team that was from the North. So I was like, that's
• 44:14
  what I'm gonna throw out. Speaking of throwing things out, taking copious amounts
• 44:16
  of steroids and other things that you shouldn't do, We're gonna have to play
• 44:21
  some more ads. A. All right, let's wrap this up by sort
• 44:30
  of where and continue to focus on again sort of the some philosophical arguments and
• 44:34
  considerations here. There's a quote I found in a book I really liked that
• 44:37
  talks about talent and what it is. And so they talk about talent is
• 44:43
  focused time and attention on any activity. Quote, so that one behaves energetically
• 44:47
  and proficiently with respect to these things, and can bring to bear upon any
• 44:52
  present behavior situation results in similar experiences. End quote. And I think they'm
• 44:58
  had to say that results in similar experperiences in that one. But I think
• 45:00
  they said exactly summarize the things that we've sort of talked about so far in
• 45:04
  this discussion. Right, So we can consider understanding talent by asking a couple
• 45:08
  questions at least what amount of genetics can we rule out of proficiency? And
• 45:14
  what amount of environmental circumstance in practice history can we rule out? And the
• 45:17
  answer is zero. You can't rule any of those things out. Performance does
• 45:21
  not happen without genetics, and genetics cannot produce a skill that has no opportunity
• 45:24
  to be performed. So those two things are in it. You can't separate
• 45:30
  them. The fact that you cannot rule them out, I think makes it
• 45:32
  a little bit more complicated. Yeah, exactly. That question I think gets
• 45:36
  at the heart of how we would try and make sense of what is natural
• 45:38
  talent, which is to say there isn't a natural talent, right, not
• 45:42
  in the way that a lot of people think. At the very least.
• 45:45
  There's also the question that some people might have, like what about twins?
• 45:49
  Could we do twins studies? We're looked at twins raised together versus raised apart.
• 45:53
  Often said, reared together or reared apart, Can we determine what amount
• 45:57
  of talent is due to genes by comparing those Well, No, it's a
• 46:00
  nonsensical question. I mean, twins raised apart or together will still have a
• 46:05
  unique enough set of circumstances that theirs similarities or differences are most parsmoniously determined by
• 46:09
  their individual learning history. Even doing this comparison will show that when one is
• 46:14
  good at something and the other is not, it is due to competencies developed
• 46:17
  through training for more proficiency. When they're both good at it, they've both
• 46:22
  worked at it. And even when only one works at it, like the
• 46:25
  other one likely has been around. When they're raised together, one will be
• 46:29
  present for the learning of the other. They're around when they the other one
• 46:32
  practices and't engage, even if they choose not to participate. Like I might
• 46:37
  have a slight edge at playing piano even if I never practice, if I
• 46:40
  live with someone who's a virtuoso at a piano right right, Like, at
• 46:44
  the very least, I'm familiar with what chords and scales should sound like.
• 46:47
  At the very least, I have some idea of what like finger placement,
• 46:52
  movement and coordination looks like, so like, I have a model that shows
• 46:55
  me some amount of proficiency there. And then the other thing to is is
• 47:00
  considering this whole thing like raised apart, and like they're both good at this
• 47:02
  one thing must be their genes. But I mean, the same logic that
• 47:07
  would apply of like an expert painter is not amazed when they meet another expert
• 47:10
  painter that they're not both related by blood somehow, Like someone who is a
• 47:15
  particular like a super skilled painter and meet someone's like, wow, you're really
• 47:20
  good at painting too, We must be brothers. Like No, nobody thinks
• 47:23
  or says that, because it should not be surprising that some people who are
• 47:28
  related are good at particular skills anymore the people who aren't related are good at
• 47:31
  particular skills. You know what I mean, right exactly? And so I
• 47:36
  guess maybe a way to kind of round this out is that talent, like
• 47:38
  genius, like creativity, like intelligence, is just a set of competencies.
• 47:44
  In development, it's at the point that we observe a performance and call it
• 47:46
  talent, it has been through enough development or more development than most other people
• 47:52
  have ever gone through. So when somebody reaches that level where they are quote
• 47:55
  unquote talented. They are an expert at a thing. It's because they been
• 48:00
  exposed and practice that skill so many times, so many times that at that
• 48:07
  point in time they are proficient. They have mastered that. Yeah, and
• 48:10
  you know, we call it talent because it looks like a higher level of
• 48:14
  proficiency than we would expect in ourselves and other people, et cetera. As
• 48:19
  David Shank wrote in his book The Genius in All of Us, quote,
• 48:22
  everyone is born with differences, and some with unique advantages for certain tasks,
• 48:25
  but no one is genetically designed into greatness, and few are biologically restricted from
• 48:30
  attaining it. End quote. And although I don't totally agree with the idea
• 48:35
  that some are born with unique advantages, sort of as we discuss, like
• 48:37
  where there are advantages, they're going to be fairly minute in terms of what
• 48:40
  they actually do contribute. They're not nothing. Right Like, as I said,
• 48:44
  I think what they give you is a relative edge to capitalize more efficiently
• 48:50
  and more effectively on the kinds of training and experiences you might have. Right,
• 48:54
  But they also like someone who doesn't have those advantages can still get just
• 48:59
  as good or better at that skill, depending on the kind of work that
• 49:02
  they put into it, and so I don't know that there is much in
• 49:06
  the way of unique advantages. There's some. I mean, he's not totally
• 49:08
  wrong. I just don't know how much weight I would put into that part
• 49:12
  of the definition. But I think his final point is a really good one,
• 49:15
  is that we're not genetically designed into greatness, and few are biologically restricted
• 49:20
  from attaining it. Again, it's not nobody, but like there is going
• 49:23
  to be a spectrum of sort of physiological arrangements and capabilities and that sort of
• 49:27
  thing as far as we describe, like people who are shorter are probably going
• 49:31
  to find gymnastics easier, people who are taller are probably going to find basketball
• 49:35
  easier, et cetera, generally speaking, and those are physiological arrangements that give
• 49:39
  them a very real edge. But a tall person is not going to be
• 49:44
  good at basketball just because they're tall. They never practice. And a short
• 49:46
  person's not going to be good at gymnastics just because they're short unless they train
• 49:50
  right. Again, they give you that edge, they do not give you
• 49:52
  the recipe right. And I think also too, it's important to remember that
• 49:55
  like in the space of talent and like those things that you mentioned, like
• 50:00
  stuff like sports and whatnot, Like sports are specifically designed by humans, so
• 50:05
  like how we interact with those contingencies, Those contingencies are themselves arranged by humans,
• 50:09
  so they're completely made up, Like they're not occurring. Basketball is not
• 50:13
  occurring in a natural environment, right, You're not going out into a jungle
• 50:16
  and then discovering like a stumbling upon a basketball game. Like, that's not
• 50:20
  what's happening, right, So I think it's also important to remember that,
• 50:22
  Like, despite whether we're talking about genetic kind of opportunities or we're talking about
• 50:28
  like learning opportunities or any of those things, I still think it's really important
• 50:30
  that like those things that we're talking about where people have talent are editable and
• 50:36
  changeable because we have designed those things ourselves. Yes, we can adapt our
• 50:38
  environments to make sure that people that don't have those advantages can still access those
• 50:44
  things in a meaningful way. Beautifully said, you're exactly right, is that
• 50:46
  like a lot of what of what we've developed that people have been able to
• 50:52
  capitalize on and get good at that has been restricted from others. The barrier
• 50:58
  to entry has been lifted as as many technologies have come along and made it
• 51:01
  more accessible so that people who don't have all the same physiological characteristics can nevertheless
• 51:07
  get really good at those performances. And I think that we keep striving towards
• 51:13
  that. I think the goal should always be to continue to strive to make
• 51:15
  as equitable access to resources and opportunities as possible to people, regardless of the
• 51:22
  relative social status, their wealth, or their physical capabilities, like a person
• 51:27
  who you know, we've seen now that people who are born with or end
• 51:31
  up at some point through circumstance a lack of use of their legs, can
• 51:36
  become very good at basketball, you know, And they can become very good
• 51:39
  at racing. They can become very good at a variety of sports because people
• 51:45
  have strived to make those things accessible to them. And you know, we
• 51:47
  are planning a discussion down the road and talking about accessibility and how that needs
• 51:52
  to just be on the forefront of everything that we do. I think moving
• 51:55
  forward as a huge consideration. Right Anyway, you said it better better than
• 51:59
  I. I just pontificated a bunch about it, so we should have ended
• 52:01
  on your point, but I just kept talking. I think we landed in
• 52:05
  the same place. I think we're good. That's the talent that we have
• 52:07
  together. Great. Well, I think another talent could be recognizing when we
• 52:15
  have run out of things to say, yeah, that is that the notes
• 52:17
  are done. But also you know that doesn't always stop us. I didn't
• 52:21
  today, So we are going to go ahead and starting to wrap this up.
• 52:27
  I like to, as I said, if you like what you heard
• 52:29
  today, if you like to support us, please consider joining us on Patreon.
• 52:30
  The people who do that, I mean, you get access to all
• 52:32
  kinds of other goodies, and honestly, it just really helps us do this
• 52:37
  show. Like we really do depend on those people, and it's just so
• 52:39
  it's so kind and generous and wonderful love you get, you get an ad
• 52:43
  free stuff. We still have to listen to the ad seguays, but just
• 52:45
  you know, there's just a short break and then the episode comes back.
• 52:47
  You don't have to actually suffer through the misery that is adds. The other
• 52:51
  thing that you get is we thank those people, the wonderful people who helped
• 52:53
  make this show happen, which includes Mike m Megan Leyla, Mike t,
• 52:58
  Justin, Kim, Joshuaup, Brad, Stephanie, Olivia Brian and Ashley again
• 53:02
  and for always and forever. Thank you so much for all that you have
• 53:07
  done for us and all that you continue to do. Y'all are the most
• 53:08
  wonderful and we appreciate you, and we definitely, of course think you know,
• 53:12
  thank all of our listeners today. You know, there'd be no point
• 53:14
  in having a show if we didn't have people who were listening to it every
• 53:15
  week, and we've we've had some wonderful people who listen to us and write
• 53:21
  it into us and join us on the various platforms that they join us on.
• 53:23
  So thank you for being here. Also, thank you so much to
• 53:25
  my team, without whom this entire podcast would not be possible. Writing in,
• 53:30
  fact checking from Shane and myself, production and editing from Justin and our
• 53:35
  social media coordinator is Emma Wilson. Is there anything that you have before we
• 53:38
  get to a recommendations? Shane, No, I don't think so. All
• 53:42
  right, awesome, Well, then let's again if you join us for the
• 53:45
  first time, it's the thing we do. We're gonna recommend some things.
• 53:46
  Yay, recommendations. I'm a recommending a book. I just finished this book
• 53:59
  recently. I've only read a couple of this author's books, but I do
• 54:02
  enjoy his writing. That would be the writing of Truman Capote, and that
• 54:07
  is the book in Cold Blood. So, like you said before the show
• 54:10
  started, was this was one of the books that came up as part of
• 54:14
  like the talent discussion because Capoti is known for being a pretty incredible writer,
• 54:20
  being known as like the exemplar for specifically looking at true crime. This is
• 54:23
  like one of the they say, one of the first like true crime books
• 54:27
  that was written the way it that like kind of we understand of true crime
• 54:30
  today. So it's about a farming family who was murdered. It's a true
• 54:35
  story they were murdered, and it's kind of the whole investigation and the story
• 54:39
  and the shock in the aftermath of this particular event in this small town.
• 54:45
  And when you kind of get into like the story and the lore of how
• 54:49
  this book came about. It took quite a long time to read it.
• 54:52
  Truman Capoti did go and interview many people in the town, and I think
• 54:58
  it's just one of the better version of how like investigative reporting and nonfiction true
• 55:04
  crime writing should go. Wow. This book came out in nineteen sixty six,
• 55:07
  is what I'm seeing. As the data was first published, I had
• 55:10
  no idea it was that old. I thought this was much more recent than
• 55:13
  that. Yeah, that's that's wild. Yeah, who knew it'd kick off
• 55:16
  one of the most lucrative genres of podcast, TV, movies, books,
• 55:21
  television, radio, and any other form of storytelling that has ever will ever
• 55:24
  exist. Yeah, you know, and it's just it's when you get into
• 55:28
  it. There's so few people that do it quite as well as he did
• 55:30
  with this. Yeah. I think Michelle mcmara did a really good job with
• 55:35
  the book that she did I'll Be Gone in the Dark, and that was
• 55:37
  a really great kind of investigatory journalism piece. But yeah, there are a
• 55:40
  lot of people that sensationalized stuff, and it's unfortunate because you know, they
• 55:44
  could use this as an example in Cold Blood. So that's a strong recommendation
• 55:46
  for me. Cool And yeah, just as you said, I actually chose
• 55:50
  to exclude that, and maybe I shouldn't have, but that was an example
• 55:52
  in my reading and development of this episode. They're saying, like, you
• 55:55
  know, it took him five years to write this. He really really spent
• 55:59
  time working on the pros, on the writing, on trying to get it
• 56:01
  exactly right on the storytelling, on the organization. So yeah, those people
• 56:07
  who just the overall product is the result of a ton of work. Absolutely,
• 56:13
  this is maybe a ton of work. I don't know, it seems
• 56:15
  like it was. I'm recommending a board game again. This is a relatively
• 56:19
  new one that I got. It's I don't know if it'll be commercially available
• 56:21
  at the time this is released, but I got the sort of Kickstarter version
• 56:23
  of it is so far just called Mercurial. The game designer is David go
• 56:29
  who has designed one other game that I'm aware of. This is a card
• 56:31
  game essentially about you use cards to sort of craft spells. So there's custom
• 56:37
  cards that are in here that have essentially what you're trying to do is collect
• 56:40
  these cards that allow you to sort of buy these bigger, sort of objective
• 56:45
  cards, if you will, And it's about sort of strategically choosing which ones
• 56:49
  you're going to take and how you're going to use them once you get them.
• 56:52
  Like I said, the whole idea is about it casting spells. It
• 56:54
  is probably on a little bit heavier end in terms of complexity than what people
• 56:59
  are maybe used to, but it's really it's really not bad. I think
• 57:01
  most people who can follow general rules will be able to understand and play this
• 57:07
  game and enjoy it. And the artwork on it is just beautiful, just
• 57:09
  really incredible. Like look of the game when you see it all set up,
• 57:14
  it looks amazing, even though they're just they're sort of oh the very
• 57:16
  large cards almost tarot sized. Yeah, really really cool game. So if
• 57:21
  you are in, if you're looking for a cool new card game, then
• 57:22
  you like the theme of spellcasting. I think you would really enjoy Mercurial.
• 57:28
  For those out there who are in that sort of thing, Yeah, it
• 57:30
  looks really cool. Okay, I think that that is all I have.
• 57:32
  Do you have anything else that you'd like to add or that I missed before
• 57:36
  we wrap up? Uh? No, I think that covers it perfect.
• 57:38
  If you would like to tell us anything that we got wrong or got right,
• 57:40
  or just to tell us how awesome we are, you can email us
• 57:44
  directly info at wwdwwdpodcast dot com, or of course, reach out to us
• 57:47
  on the social media platforms that are not run by Nazis. Yes, I
• 57:51
  think that that is it. So thank you so much for listening. Thank
• 57:52
  you for recording with me today, Shane Always, this is Abraham and this
• 57:57
  is Shane. We're out Seeya listening to why we do what we do.
• 58:01
  You can learn more about this and other episodes by going to WWD WWD podcast
• 58:07
  dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you have an awesome day